In the bathroom, he wet a cloth with warm water. His reflection was an unfamiliar one: color high, face soft, and tired, the light in his eyes warm. It took him a long moment, warm water rushing over his hands, to realize that he looked happy.
He shut off the taps, turned back to the door, and paused in the threshold.
Mia had turned onto her side and pulled the sheet up over her hip. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, and the lamplight did artful things to the curve of her waist and breasts, her skin pearlescent with drying sweat. She looked like a painting, right down to the enigmatic smile she was sending his way.
She laid one arm across the mattress, toward him, palm-up in invitation. “Come back.”
He did. It felt like she’d hooked him by the collar he no longer wore and towed him in, and he went unresisting. Willingly. Not an order, not an ultimatum, but a choice, and he grinned like a fool as he climbed onto the bed and knelt at her side. Slowly, reverently pulled the sheet down.
“Here, darling, let me clean you off.”
She turned over, but blushed, slow to open her legs for him. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Oh, but you’ve awakened my inner gentleman, and I absolutely have to, I’m afraid.”
She chuckled. “You’re always a gentleman.”
“Hmm. That’s what you think.”
“Pretentious, anyway.”
“You wound me, darling.”
He wiped her breasts, and belly, and between her legs with the cloth, tender and intimate, but without any kind of heat. He wanted her, yes, but he loved her too. Wanted to care for her. To take that awful taint of sickness from her blood, and to do every little thing she would let him, down to braiding her hair and bathing her skin. He would clean her with his tongue if it wasn’t completely ridiculous.
The night table was topped with green marble, so he set the cloth there when he was finished, vowing to wring it out properly over the sink later – not that they would be here later, but it was the thought that counted, so often. When he turned back, he expected to find her blushing – and she was – but she was staring at him, her gaze trained between his legs.
Her brows scaled her forehead, but he thought her sideways smile was impressed. “Really? Already?”
He resisted the urge to squirm. “Vampire biology is…a little different. We can…um…yes. Also…” No, he couldn’t tell her that.
“What?”
He bit his lip and realized his fangs were still fully descended. Blood welled up from the pinprick mark he’d left, and he swept it away with his tongue. Even though it was his own, the taste of blood only left him more eager, if that was possible. “Sexual lust and bloodlust can often be…linked. In a vampire’s subconscious.”
“Oh.” She sat up, and subtly tugged the edge of the sheet into her lap, covering herself. It didn’t look like a conscious move, but Val eased back, not wanting to frighten her. “And you’re…?”
“It’s only anticipation, love. But if you–”
She shook her head. Took a deep breath and let it out slow. Smiled at him. “I’m not afraid of you. I promise.”
“I know. But it’s overwhelming. I understand.” The glow was beginning to fade, and he didn’t want that to happen. He shifted around her so he could stretch out on top of the sheets, head resting on the pillow. “Will you lie down with me?”
She snuggled up to his side with a grateful-sounding exhale, head on his shoulder, hand on his chest, over the steady thump of his heart. The skin-to-skin contact soothed worries he hadn’t known he’d had. It had been so long since he’d been touched with kindness or affection that even the simple act of his brother braiding his hair elicited breathless emotion. This, having her pressed to him in a long, warm line all down his side…that nearly brought tears to his eyes.
He blinked away the burn and tried to focus on the sensations: the softness of her skin, the weight of her breasts against his ribs. Her lashes tickling his throat as she blinked.
“Have you ever turned anyone before?” she asked, voice hushed.
He traced the back of her hand with his fingertips, little circles around her knuckles. “Yes. Once.”
“Then it’s just the first time for me, then.” She pressed in closer, and in a very small voice said, “I’m ready. Just…whenever.”
Val hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her onto his chest, hauled her up until her face hovered above his. He didn’t expect her to look startled.
“You’re really strong,” she blurted out, and he grinned.
“You will be too, soon.” Then sobered. “Physically. You’re already strong in every other way.”
She rolled her eyes.
Val cupped the back of her head and pulled her down into a kiss.
It started slow and easy, afterglow kisses. But then Mia slid her leg over so she was straddling him, planted her knees on the mattress and rolled her hips. Easy little movements, slow flexes, but the friction had Val curling his hand into her hair, chasing her mouth, lifting up to meet her.
Val caught her lip with his fang, and the taste of her blood bloomed across his tongue for the first time.
It did things to him. His insides were a riot; competing, visceral urges: bite, keep, claim, feed, mate. His growl started low in his chest, a deep rumble, and worked up his throat; she caught it in her mouth with a little gasp.
When she pulled back a fraction, her pupils were blown. A bead of blood welled up on her lip, and Val didn’t think: he leaned up and licked it off with a slow swipe of his tongue.
The sound she made in response was incredible.
He was purring now, and the sound threaded through his voice. “Ready?”
“Y-yes.” It was desire that made her stutter; he couldn’t catch a trace of fear anywhere on her.
“Alright, darling.” He turned them onto their sides. Swept her hair back over her shoulder to expose her throat. He could see the leap of her pulse beneath the skin, as beckoning as a sly look and a crooked finger. “We’ll go slow.” His voice was rough and awful, more animal than man, but she leaned into it, pressing her head into the pillow, offering her throat. “It won’t hurt, darling. Just a little, at the start, but then it won’t.” Please God, let that be true. “I’ll do it right. I promise.”
The last he breathed across her skin, leaning down closer and closer as he spoke. He watched goosebumps form, smelled the rush of blood, and sweat, and skin, and sickness. He was going to pull that out of her – draw it into his own body and let his impossible immortality duel it to the death. He felt like an awful predator, poised above her, tip of his tongue tracing up her jugular, but she wasn’t his prey. This wasn’t a feast.
This was a beginning. The start of the rest of his life as a free man. As someone with a mate. As someone loved again, for the first time in so, so long.
Mia put her hand on his shoulder, and pulled him in that last half-inch.
Val closed his eyes and bit her.
57
ADMIRABLE
Dr. Edwin Talbot’s upstairs office – the showpiece, some of the others called it – was above reproach in all manners. But in his downstairs office, the same office across which Major Treadwell had been thrown a few weeks before, he tended to let his packrat tendencies overtake his sense of decorum. Files sat stacked and precarious; at least two dirty dinner dishes had been set aside on the tops of file cabinets. A few cobwebs swayed in the high corners. He hadn’t let the cleaning staff in here in two weeks, afraid they’d accidently trash something critical.
He knew where everything was, though, including the half-full bottle of Crown Royal in the bottom left cabinet. Liam regarded him with an intense amount of judgement when he pulled it and two mostly clean glasses out and thumped them onto his blotter.
“You aren’t a teetotaler, are you, Mr. Price?”
“Obviously not.” He sat like every elegant, martini-drinking British villain that had ever graced a movie screen. “But…Crown Roya
l? Really?”
“You are most welcome to go upstairs and find something more to your liking.” Earlier, even this morning, Edwin might have offered to go get it for him. He’d overhead two of his technicians saying that he was a suck-up, and he couldn’t really argue that he wasn’t. But right now, he was tired in every sense of the word.
Liam sighed, but accepted the glass that was slid toward him. “Fine. But if you offer me a cola to mix it with…” He shuddered and took a delicate sip – and then shuddered again.
Edwin downed his all in one go and refilled it.
A good thing, too, because Liam said, “Alright, Doctor.”
He threw down the second for good measure.
“Things are, apparently, a mad house around here, and you’ve managed to avoid me on this so far. We need to discuss my daughter.”
Edwin really, really didn’t want to do that. “The story hasn’t changed since I told it to you last,” he said wearily. “Though we’d put precautions in place, we were unprepared for the outside interference of–”
Liam sliced a hand through the air, cutting him off. “How could you have been anything but prepared? Doctor, when you called to tell me that she’d been taken into custody, you assured me that Major Treadwell and his team had neutralized her – her bodyguard.” The word obviously left a sour taste in his mouth. Edwin imagined it was much like the taste in his own when he was forced to acknowledge that Mia and Prince Valerian were friends. “And yet the man was alive, and somehow managed to befriend Robin of Locksley.”
“An unanticipated development, I assure you.”
“It was unanticipated that your little toy soldier wouldn’t follow orders?”
He poured a third round, resolving not to drink it – yet. At this moment, he longed for Vlad Dracula’s blunt approach to conversation. The prince might have a reputation for brutality, but when it came to dueling with words, Liam Price was by far the more dangerous party.
“Major Treadwell is a decorated soldier. He jumped at the chance to resume an active duty position. He’s the sort of man who comes to the military for a career, Liam. I had no way of knowing his emotions would compromise the mission. How could I?”
“Hmm.” Liam settled deeper into his chair, elbows propped on its arms, hands steepled together. It should have been a cliché pose, but he lent it a particular gravitas. “She manipulated him? Magically, I mean.”
“Not that I’m aware. But by the time she was here, she’d been contained by the cuffs, and we hadn’t had a chance to fully test her capabilities. Is that something you can do yourself?”
Liam gave one of his enigmatic, infuriating little close-lipped smiles. “A mage can do all sorts of things.”
Edwin wanted to bury his face in his hands. He said, “Not to sound callous, but there are other children. One of the boys – part of the same batch as the Russell girl – is showing great promise. The New York team thinks he’s ready to send here for training.”
“Excellent,” Liam said, toneless. For a second, the lamplight caught his eyes so they seemed to glow. These damn immortals. “Though I’m troubled by the fact that you seem to think I care only for them as weapons. They are my children, after all.”
“Yes. I know.”
Liam cocked his head. “Do you doubt that I love them?”
“I…” Yes, he did. But how could he admit that considering the father he’d been himself? Deep down, he liked to think that, though he’d been absentee, he at least hadn’t grown a whole hoard of children in a lab and entrusted them to the care of others. He’d made use of those lab-grown children, yes, but…that was only science.
If only Mia could see that…
Liam chuckled. “Doctor Talbot, you might be wise, but I’ve been alive for a very long time. I’m immortal, and so are my children. If I miss their first few years, that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.”
“Of course.” But Kate had shoved more than one parenting book under his nose during Mia’s early days, wanting him to be present. Mia hadn’t needed his attention then, he’d said, when she’d been drooling and learning basic words. Resentment, though, was something he’d since learned could last well into adulthood.
“I suspect you don’t believe me. I would say that you will understand one day, but I suspect you won’t live that long.”
Hand shaking, Edwin reached for his glass. “Suspect?”
He grinned with teeth. “Mortals can always be turned. But I doubt that will happen to you.”
“Yes. As do I.”
Liam lifted one elegant hand in a speaking gesture. “Your daughter on the other hand…”
“My daughter,” Edwin said, firmly, “has agreed to undergo treatment. And frankly, she doesn’t concern you.”
“Yes, yes, of course not.” A toothy smile. “Let us hope not, to be sure. In any event, we should be talking about my daughter.”
Edwin sighed. “We’re searching for her, I assure you.”
“If she’s joined up with Locksley and his crew, you won’t find her.”
Curiosity got the best of him. “About that. I always assumed Robin of Locksley was a myth. I never suspected that he was not only real, but an immortal and a werewolf as well.”
Liam’s smile was cutting. He flicked his wrist and conjured a palmful of fire. “Really? You find out there’s actual magic in the world? You raise Vlad Tepes from his slumber, but you doubted Robin Hood?”
“Well…”
He laughed. “Rest assured, Doctor, I don’t think anyone suspected he was still alive. We did know he existed, though. He might not be the most powerful, and certainly not the most ambitious, but Locksley is the wiliest creature to ever walk this earth.” He grew pensive. “I wonder where he’s been hiding all this time. And if he’s still got Richard stashed somewhere.”
Edwin stared at him; his face was beginning to feel heavy with exhaustion, the bones of his jaw hard to move as he spoke. This conversation had gone completely off the rails. And yet, his curiosity was still piqued. “I’m sorry, Richard who?”
Liam dropped his hands into his lap, expression alive with disbelief. “Richard the First? Tell me you’ve heard of the Lionheart. The Crusader King of England.”
“Yes. Of course.” He made a mental note to Google that later.
Liam’s gaze drew inward, faraway in the past. “Truth told, I think the Western historians gazed upon him too favorably, having never met him. But he was resplendent. It was a personal sort of majesty, not merely the vampirism. A king in all ways. And,” he added, conspiratorial, “I heard it said he was insatiable in bed. Man, woman, he didn’t care so long as you were beautiful and you could keep up with his appetites. Not that I ever cared to test that theory firsthand, mind you.” He chuckled.
Edwin took a deep breath and willed himself to speak calmly. “Liam. When we first sat down twenty years ago, I asked you for a list of the immortals you knew who might be able to help us in this fight.” He opened the upper righthand drawer of his desk and pulled that list out now, laid it on the desk. He’d laminated it, so it was perfectly preserved. “There’s not a king of England anywhere on it.”
“And indeed there shouldn’t be. I have no idea whether Richard is still alive. Up until your phone call a few weeks ago, I had no idea Locksley was still alive. I thought you wanted concrete information, Doctor, and not speculation.”
“You know that I do–”
“Doctor.” Liam sat forward, a sudden burst of movement that left Edwin shrinking back. The mage braced his hands on the edge of the desk and leaned in, his smile more a baring of teeth, his carefully smoothed hair shaking loose into untidy curls that framed his narrow face and turned its edges razor-sharp. His words came slow and precise, dripping with threat. “I admire the work you’ve done here. You’ve made great strides, for a mortal, and you have, perhaps for your own selfish reasons, given me children, when I never thought I’d be able to have any. But you are in so, so far over your head, and
the water continues to rise.
“You want to save this world – humanity – and that is admirable. But you understand nothing of its history. Of the monsters that have shaped it down through the centuries. How can you hope to control a threat that you can neither understand, nor recognize? Do you think you can go around waking vampires and be thanked for it? That you can control them? Do you think for a second that Vlad answers to you?”
His voice had grown higher and louder, and he seemed to realize that now. He paused. Sat back, raked his copper hair off his face with both hands. “Forgive me, I – I have so very little patience with mortals these days.”
Edwin lifted his glass and drained it. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you’ve made a good start, all things considered. But that I won’t allow you to fritter that away now, because you fail to grasp the enormity of your undertaking. I’m saying I’m taking charge of this Institute, Dr. Talbot, whether you like it or not.”
58
VAL, MATE, MINE
During her fight with her first tumor, after her operation, Mia had taken the kind of opiate painkillers that sent her kaleidoscopic waking dreams, all awash in color and nameless pleasant sensations. That’s what this reminded her of – only now that pleasure was acute and definable, and through the acid-trip glow of delight, she could see each detail with aching clarity.
Val pressed his wrist to her mouth again, and this time she could smell the blood in a way she’d never been able to before. The salt of it, yes, but she could read what it said on a cellular level, too: vampire, male, Valerian, mine. The knowledge bloomed in her head; she couldn’t have explained it if she tried, but she knew these things.
His wound was red and ragged from her mouth, and from his – he kept reopening it with his fangs so the blood would flow fresh; she knew it must hurt when she opened her lips over it and sucked. It had just tasted like blood at first, salty like when she accidently bit the inside of her own mouth. But slowly, as they fed, passing blood back and forth, she could feel the beginnings of a change. It tasted now like something to crave: like wine or chocolate. Her head spun pleasantly, and she closed her eyes; held his arm with both hands, holding him to her, though he had no intention of pulling away.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 75