She reached up, pressing her fingers across his lips. “Shh…if you’d come out in daylight then, you would have died. And I would have died, too. To get me out, you had to pull apart that twisted metal—no human could have managed that. You wouldn’t have had the strength to do that if you’d come out during the day.” She narrowed her eyes, as she noticed her fingers—her ringless fingers on her right hand.
Julian lifted her left hand from the comforter. “The ring is here. I moved it.”
“To my left hand?” She stared at the ring, which glinted in the faint candlelight. “But I turned you down.”
“Because you didn’t think I loved you,” he guessed. Correctly.
“How do you know me so well?” she asked.
“We have a connection.”
“Because you have my blood?”
“We had a connection even before that,” he insisted. “We’ve had a connection for years. That was why I asked you to marry me—because I couldn’t lose that connection. I couldn’t lose you.”
He had loved her—even before he’d realized it, as Ingrid had suggested.
“So why didn’t you ask me again? At your grandfather’s house?”
“I didn’t know if I’d make it. I didn’t know if either of us would make it. And I didn’t know what I had to offer you,” he explained. “And every minute you’ve been unconscious, I regretted not asking, not moving this ring to your left hand when you were awake and could answer me.”
“So ask me again,” she suggested although, from how she ached with exhaustion, she still wasn’t convinced that she could survive the turning. Or hadn’t she been turned at all? But before she could open her mouth to take back her advice, Julian slid off the bed and dropped to his knees beside it.
His hand grasping her left one, where the diamond twinkled, he asked, “Will you become my bride, Sienna Briggs?”
She focused first on the ring, then on his face, where the diamond-shaped scar marred the masculine perfection of his cleft chin. “Are you sure?”
“Sienna!” he exclaimed, his face paling with shock. “I’m so sure. I love you so much.”
The words warmed her heart and curved her lips into a smile. But…
“That wasn’t what I was referring to—I mean, the ring? Are you sure this is the ring you want me to wear…as your fiancée, as your bride?”
He stared down at the ring, too, now. “Oh, my God, I didn’t think…Did you want me to buy you a new ring? One that I picked out?”
She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes, as she remembered her grandmother, using the last bit of her fading strength, to slide the ring onto her finger. “No.” If she had believed she would be strong enough to risk her heart again, she would have wanted to wear this ring. “This is the one I want. It symbolizes the greatest love I’d ever known…”
“Until now,” he said, “until ours.”
Her heart warmed more as it filled with the love of which he spoke. Their love. The greatest love she would ever know.
“But this ring doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it does to me,” she said. She managed to raise her hand to touch her fingertip to the scar on his chin. “To you it means rejection. To your grandfather it means dishonor.”
“Your grandmother and I—we weren’t meant to be,” he said. “I think I even knew that then. I was just being an arrogant jerk. She had every right to hit me.”
“Yes, she did. You insulted my grandfather—the man she loved more than life itself.”
“More than the eternal life I offered her.”
“It wasn’t enough. You didn’t love her.”
“I didn’t know that I could love,” he said. “I didn’t think I was capable until I met you. This ring—” he slid his thumb over the sharp points of it “—means something to me, too. It reminds me how much I changed—how much you changed me. It represents our love, too.”
Tears blurred the ring, and his handsome face, from Sienna’s gaze. “Yes, it does.” And her grandmother’s gift had been accurate again—that the right man would come along someday and slide it onto Sienna’s real ring finger.
“That’s the right answer,” Julian said, “but to the wrong question.”
She blinked back the tears. “What?”
“You haven’t answered my first question,” he reminded her. “Please, woman, put me out of my misery and respond to my proposal. Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” She tried to lift up from the pillow, but her body was limp, her muscles weak. “If only I were stronger, I would marry you now. Right this minute.”
Because she wanted to be part of him…for the eternity he’d promised her. Fear tempered her happiness; she doubted that the “turning” had worked. Instead of eternal life, she would have to leave him…like her grandparents and parents had left her—to death.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. She’d taught him how to love, only to leave him—only to leave him to the anguish she’d had to endure when she’d lost the ones she’d loved. “I’m sorry…”
Panic pressed on Julian’s lungs, so that he struggled for breath. Like Sienna struggled for breath. He could not lose her now. “You have no reason to be sorry,” he assured her. He was the one who’d messed up—as usual.
“I’d hoped it would work…that we could be together…forever,” she said. “But I’m so tired…” Her thick lashes brushed against the dark circles beneath her eyes as her lids closed.
He couldn’t let her slip into unconsciousness again. He couldn’t lose her again. He cupped her cheek in his palm. “Come on, Sienna, stay with me.”
She blinked her eyes open, giving him hope. She hadn’t slipped away yet.
And he wouldn’t let her. He would do anything to keep her with him. “I know how you can get stronger,” he said. “Use me.” Like she had insisted he use her.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her blue eyes still dim with fatigue.
She wasn’t dead yet. But he’d hurt her. His stomach clenched with dread and regret.
“I want you to do the same thing to me,” he explained, with sensitivity to her unease about the vampire lifestyle, “that you had me do to you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can. I’m going to have to find another way…to live…”
“There are other ways,” he assured her. “We don’t feast off people for sustenance. But I’m not talking about sustenance. I’m talking about survival—and about the connection between your soul and mine. It can only be complete when the same blood flows through us.”
“It does.”
“No, I have yours,” he clarified, “but you don’t have mine. Take mine.”
“Julian…” She sighed. “I don’t even know how. I don’t have—”
He kissed her, deeply, sliding his tongue through her parted lips, stroking it over hers before tracing the line of her teeth. Her tongue followed the path of his then she tensed. So he pulled back.
“I have them,” she murmured, in shock. “I have fangs…”
“It worked.” He hadn’t been entirely convinced himself until now. He had actually turned her. But she was still so pale—so weak. He could still lose her…if she didn’t do as he asked.
“You’re as surprised as I am.”
He tensed, startled that she’d read him so easily. “What?”
Her lips curved into that faint smile. “I can hear you—your thoughts. Remember?”
Their connection was complete already. But it had to last. “Then you should remember what happened the last time you didn’t do as I asked.”
A grimace momentarily twisted her delicate features. “I almost got us both killed.”
“So obey me, woman.”
“Obey?” she asked as she lifted a blond brow. “That won’t be part of our vows.”
“We won’t be able to exchange those vows if you don’t get stronger,” he reminded her. “Use me to regain your strength.”
“Julian…”
He
did as she had, just the day before, he leaned forward and pressed his neck against her lips. “Bite me…”
Her lips parted, the heat of her faint breath warm against his skin. His body tensed again, with desire, with desperate need of hers. He wanted her completely—body and soul and her indomitable spirit. “Come on, Sienna.”
“I can’t…”
“You have to…for us,” he urged her then groaned as her teeth nipped his skin.
She stopped and moved her mouth away. “I hurt you.”
“No,” he assured as he joined her on the bed, pressing his lower body into her hips so that she could feel his arousal. “You only hurt me by stopping. Don’t stop this time.”
She lifted her arms, wrapping them around his shoulders, and pulled him fully down on her. Then she sank her new fangs through his skin, into his throat, and she drank him in the way he’d drunk her.
Instead of feeling drained by her possession, Julian felt energized—completely invigorated. He vibrated with passion for her. “Sienna…”
She pulled her teeth from his skin and licked the small wound she’d created. “I feel…”
“What?” he asked, rolling them both to their sides so he could see her face. Her skin, once so pale, was now flushed, and her blue eyes sparkled.
“I feel alive.”
And for the first time since he’d tried to turn her, she looked alive. Vibrantly alive.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, his hand shaking as he palmed her cheek. “So beautiful…”
“You’re beautiful,” she said, her steady fingers clawing at the buttons of his shirt to open it. “You’re perfect. And you’re mine.”
“All yours,” he assured her with a chuckle as she shoved his shirt from her shoulders. He reached between them and dragged the blankets off her, baring her to his sight…and touch. He’d taken off her dress, so that she wore only those tantalizing scraps of lace. For the moment.
He intended to take them off her soon. But first he rose from the bed. Or tried to. Sienna clutched his shoulders, then his waist and murmured in protest.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she told him.
He shook his head as he unclasped his belt and dropped his jeans and boxers. “I’m not going anywhere—not without you. We’re spending eternity together, my love.”
“I wonder if that’ll be long enough,” she teased with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
“Long enough?”
“To do everything I want to do to you.” She reached for him, her hands sliding over the muscles of chest then his hips to his straining erection. First she stroked her fingers down his length, then she closed her lips around him and sucked him deep in her mouth. Her fangs scraped over the sensitive flesh.
He groaned, as passion like he’d never known surged through him. “Sienna!” He tried to pull away so he could reach for her.
But she was strong now, stronger than she’d been. And she grasped his butt, holding him to her—as she tortured him with her lips and tongue and the tips of her new fangs. He tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled, but it was too late. As her lips slipped down the length of him, he came, his legs shaking, his body shuddering as his orgasm spilled into the warmth of her mouth.
She licked her lips and lay back on the bed, as if she were satisfied. But he shook his head. She’d no idea the satisfaction he intended to give her.
“Promises, promises,” she teased, speaking to his thoughts.
He joined her on the bed, pushing her into the mattress with his body—tense again already with desire for his fiancée. And he kissed her, tasting his own desire on her lips and tongue. Their teeth clinked, scraping across each other’s—raising the hair on the nape of his neck. “Just when I thought I couldn’t love you more…”
“You love me more,” she said, scraping her nails down the rippling muscles of his back.
He dipped his head, nuzzled her neck.
“Bite me,” she invited him.
He shook his head. “I want to taste you another way.” He skimmed his lips down her throat to the slopes of her breasts. With just the tip of his tongue, he teased each pebbled point. Then he suckled the nipple deep into his mouth, his fangs nipping lightly into the soft flesh of her breast.
She moaned and shifted beneath him, pressing her hips into his—rubbing her damp curls against the erection that strained again to possess her.
But he denied himself the pleasure of burying himself inside her. Instead he moved again, sliding down her body until he could taste her desire for him. He pushed his tongue through her folds, dipping inside the moist heat. She arched again and clutched her fingers at his head, clasping his mouth to her so tightly that his fangs pressed against her mound.
She moaned and shifted and came, pouring honey into his mouth. Burning with desire for her, he rose up and thrust himself inside her.
She arched so abruptly she nearly bucked him off, then she turned them—so that he lay flat on his back and she straddled him. He sank deeper than he’d gone before. And his hands, shaking slightly, grabbed her hips.
She rocked back and forth then lifted her hips, sliding his erection in and out of her wet folds. “Julian!” she said, desperation in her raspy voice and dilated eyes.
He moved his fingers to her butt, clasping her soft skin with one hand while he raised his other hand to her breast and massaged the swollen flesh. She lifted her hands to his shoulders, digging her nails in as she rode him.
Her mouth had taken the edge off his urgency, so that he could take his time now, teasing her to the brink of release only to pull out again. Her muscles clutched at him, pulling him deeper. And she knocked his hands aside to cup her breasts and roll her nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. Julian sat up and flicked his tongue across the tips she teased herself. Then he reached between them, sliding his thumb across the most sensitive part of her.
And she came, screaming his name—pouring her passion over him. He dug his fingers into her butt, lifting her up and down, until another orgasm slammed through him—this more violently than the last. “It’s a good thing we can’t die,” he murmured between desperate pants for breath, “or you’d kill me for sure.”
She collapsed against his chest, pressing her lips to where his heart pounded hard in rhythm with hers. “I will never hurt you,” she promised him.
He smoothed his hands over the perspiration-slick skin of her bare back and asked, “So are you ready to make an honest man of me now?”
Her lips curved against his skin, into a smile. “Honest man?”
“When are you going to marry me?” he asked, urgency rushing through him despite being completely sexually satiated. He couldn’t wait for her to become his bride.
“Now too soon?”
“Now is perfect—as perfect as you are.” As perfect as their life together promised to be.
Chapter 9
S tars glittered in the night sky as brightly as the lights wound round the boughs of the pine trees lining the park path. Big snowflakes drifted softly out of the darkness, sparkling as they hit the lights and the path. The flakes dropped onto Sienna’s face and slid down her cheeks like the tears she fought from falling.
She would not cry. Not when everything was so perfect…and Julian awaited her, standing next to an Underground minister beneath the tallest pine in the park. Clutching tight to Orson Vossimer’s arm, Sienna started down the aisle toward her groom. But the elder Vossimer’s steps slowed, and he turned to her.
Had he changed his mind? Was she not good enough to be a Vossimer bride?
“No,” he answered aloud her unspoken thoughts. “You’re perfect. The perfect bride for my grandson—the perfect princess for the Vossimer prince.”
“Because he turned me?” She had to know.
The older man shook his head. “Because you love him as he’s always deserved to be loved—completely and unselfishly.”
“The same way he loves me.”
“I see tha
t now,” Orson admitted. “I’m sorry…”
“For trying to kill me?”
The older man’s handsome face, so eerily similar to Julian’s, lifted in the wicked grin his grandson had evidently inherited from him. “Honey, if I’d actually tried, you would be dead. Not undead.” He covered her hand with his and squeezed. “I may not be the nicest man, but I’m not a killer.”
“But you threatened Julian,” she reminded him, unwilling to let the man rewrite history. “You told him—”
“I warned him. I suspected how he felt about you. Ever since he’d pulled you from that crash, he’d had an attachment to you. I wanted to test that attachment.”
“So it’s not a rule that no human can learn of the Underground?”
He sighed. “It’s a rule that fortunately hasn’t had to be enforced too often.”
Just with her parents. She winced, reliving the accident—reliving her loss. But she wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore. Or of loving with her whole heart—the way she loved Julian.
“You wanted him to turn me,” she realized. “You wanted us to be together?”
“I wanted my grandson to be happy,” he said as he turned toward where Julian waited beneath the lit pine tree. “You make him happy.”
“And he makes me happy.”
The old man nodded, then added with satisfaction, “And your gift would have been wasted on a human.”
“Gift?”
“Telepathy, like your grandmother had,” he said and admitted, “and I have.”
“I don’t have telepathy.”
“But you know what Julian’s thinking.”
Right now she knew he was getting impatient, waiting for his grandfather to bring him his bride. Her lips curved into a reassuring smile she hoped he could see. Or at least feel. “Only Julian,” she said. “We have a connection.”
“Because of your gift,” Orson said.
She shook her head. “Because of our love.”
“Love…” Orson sighed. “I guess I might actually have to try it for myself.”
They started forward on the path, which wound through chairs that had been set up in the park. Members of the Underground, friends of Julian’s who had already accepted Sienna, occupied the chairs. One of those was Ingrid.
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