“Tell me you love me,” Theo said desperately, pulling me on top of him.
“I love you, Theo,” I murmured, kissing down his chest.
“Tell me you still want me,” he said, his hesitancy mixed with fear.
“I will always want you, always need you, always love you,” I said, running my hands over his strong body, the now barely visible scars and especially the patches of white scar tissue by his hips that were unchanged. “Now take me, Husband. I’m yours.”
Theo kissed me back tenderly. He held me still, gently slipping into me with none of his usual franticness. Every caress of his body and mine was filled with emotion that slowly built to a panic, our orgasms leaving us shaken, clutching one another. Afterward we lay in bed, holding each other as if we’d never let go.
* * * *
The next morning, Theo and I talked as we drove into work, the tension that had been between us so long replaced with easy familiarity.
“Will you be target practicing today with the newer foxes, or does Danial have conference meetings? You’ve said Hans can’t hit the broad side of a barn.”
“Neither. Brian and I are going to take both Hans and Warren into Syracuse to get fitted for a type of armor to repel those explosive bullets. We’ll be gone all day, but I’ll be back to pick you up around four or so. Terian will be watching over you and the kids today.”
Well, a promise was a promise. “Theo, do both you and Danial have that same armor? Devlin had a form of it, but not much was left once he’d been shot. The damage he had to heal was extreme. If you don’t have some, can you please get some while you’re gone?” I squeezed his hand “I don’t want anything to happen to either of you.”
“Don’t worry. Danial has a full vest. He’s safe from everything except maybe a missile.”
“What about you?” I said worriedly.
“I have a set of full body armor now,” he said, giving my hand a hard squeeze. “I’m coming back to you in one piece, Sar, no matter what might happen.”
“Good,” I said with relief. “Since you’ll be back in time, do you want to go out tonight and have dinner?”
“Sure,” he said, almost purring. “It’s a date.”
He parked the truck and then got into one of the black Expeditions as I walked up the steps of Danial’s porch.
As he started the engine I called after him, “Don’t forget, this weekend is the one we’re all going to go get pumpkins!”
“I didn’t forget,” Theo shouted back. “Remind Danial though!” Then he was gone in a cloud of dust, headed to the werefox compound.
I went inside, locking the door behind me, then went to check on Theoron. He was sleeping. Janice wouldn’t be in to feed him until noon or so. Leaving his room, I stopped and paused before Danial’s door, knowing I should make good on my idea of an apology. Then, like the coward I was, I went upstairs instead and checked on e-mail first. There were a few new clients, a new hate mail to stick in the possible suspects file and one client thanking Danial for a job well done. I printed that one out and left it on his desk, drawing a big happy face near the bottom. Danial kept a bulging file of good notes to remind himself on bad days that he did a great job with a lot of clients, even if they all didn’t praise him.
Now that e-mail was done, I could put it off no longer. I went downstairs and knocked on Danial’s bedroom door. A strange man threw it open to my surprise.
“Sorry!” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Paul. Me and my guys are fixing the hole someone made in the wall here.” He pointed backward. Looking in, his men were visible in the back room putting finishing touches on the repaired wall Brian had smashed through.
“Looks good!” I said, giving him a smile. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“No problem,” he said, giving me an appreciative glance. “We’ll be leaving in a few minutes anyway. Which is good as we were late completing this job.”
Danial hadn’t been happy about that, Theo had said. The basement wasn’t as secure, obviously. “Thank you.”
I moved into the great room, then stopped, considering if I should wait until the workmen left to knock on the basement door. I didn’t want to, but neither did I want to draw attention to Danial below. We were still low on guards with Hans and Warren not up to speed yet, even with Brian’s wife having arrived a few weeks ago, after Devlin had released her. Terian had agreed to stay until spring, according to Theo, but that was only six months away...
My cell phone rang. “Hello?”
“I hear you walking around up there,” Danial said sleepily. “Come down, please, before you wear a hole in the floor.”
“Okay.” I hung up, opened the door and walked downstairs. Danial was waiting for me in jeans, buttoning his shirt.
“Are the workers keeping you up or just me?”
“They were. I’m glad they’re leaving soon.” He led me over to the bed, and we sat at the edge of it. “Sar, we need to talk. I have something to ask you.”
“I have something to ask you, too,” I said, my voice cracking with emotion.
“What is it?” he said anxiously and made to get up.
“Please sit down.”
He eased back down, looking at me in trepidation.
I got up, went over to stand before him and then got on my knees.
“Sar, what are you doing?” Danial asked, confused and apprehensive. “I was just teasing about your walking around—”
“Danial,” I said, looking up at him through tears. “I’m so sorry for everything I did to you and for how you must have felt when I left.” My voice was all over the place, cracking and breaking and warbling so much that I hoped Danial could understand my words.
“Sar, get up. This is—”
“Theo told me about Tasha.”
Danial gave a sigh and sank back down, looking at me sadly. “I’m sorry—”
“I feel now how you felt. How you must still feel. He is only with me because she’s with someone else, and he can’t be with her. The anger and jealousy eats at me inside like poison.”
“Sar, please—” he started again.
I cut him off again. “It was easy for me to act like you should be happy taking what I could give. I was callous and stupid and unfeeling. I want you to know that there’s not a day that’s passed that I didn’t love you. I was wrong to leave you the way I did, both times. I’m sorry that I thought too much of myself and what I wanted and not enough of you. I’m grateful that we had Theoron together, that we had that time together raising Elle. I’m sorry I wasn’t more grateful for all you did for Elle and me. I’m sorry I was too selfish to see any of this until now.”
Danial came off the bed and sat beside me on the floor. He pulled me into his lap and held me close. “I forgive you,” he said softly. “Be at peace, Sar. Don’t go over the past. It can’t be changed. You and I both made mistakes and suffered for them. None of it matters now. I love you, regardless of what you did or didn’t do, and that’s never going to change.”
I shut my eyes, relaxing in the comforting familiarity of his cool body close to mine, the slow beat of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed and the strength of his arms around me. We said nothing for some time. It was enough that we were together, that he’d forgiven me.
Finally he spoke. “There were times I wanted you to say some of what you just said, terrible times when I wondered if you had ever loved me. Still I’m sorry you’re as hurt as you are.”
“I’m not hurt. I’m wrecked.”
“Theo’s confession of loving another woman and his plan to not come back unsettled me, too, the night he told me. It sounded like the reflections of an infatuated teenager. There was no logical reason for not contacting us when he had the opportunity,” Danial reflected.
“I thought that, too. What do you think was the real reason he didn’t call?”
“He’s obviously ashamed of his scarring and likely was worried about returning to find you repelled by how he�
�d changed. Knowing you as I do, I don’t understand his fear over that. But then, I’m not the one who’s carrying the scars. It’s also obvious when he found you with me and pregnant, his worst expectations were confirmed. I believe he didn’t call because he didn’t want me to tell him that I’d reclaimed you. What we were to each other obviously still makes him jealous, even though we’ve ended our relationship.”
That made a skewed kind of sense, in the way that most men’s actions usually did. “But what about Elle? How could he not come back to her?”
“I mean no insult by this,” Danial said slowly. “But Theo’s fatherly instincts do not run as strong as mine do. He doesn’t protest her living here with me and not the two of you where I would if I were him. I think it’s enough for him to know she’s well taken care of. He knew I’d do that if something happened to him.”
“You’re making me feel like a bad mother,” I sighed. “I’m acting the same as him.”
“You could not have done anything differently with Theoron than you did,” Danial countered. “Dr. Camlyn himself advised it, even for you to separate from me. It was I who acted badly, trying to convince you to stay in spite of the evidence you were turning.”
“And I’m still at the same point now,” I said dejectedly.
“That is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Danial said tentatively. “Tell me what happened with Devlin. All of it.”
“Why?” I answered. “It will hurt you to hear it. I know how you felt about him being intimate with your past loves.”
“It will hurt you more to not tell someone,” he countered. “You didn’t tell Theo. He believes the man who forced you is dead.” He paused. “I need to know if it was force or just seduction.”
“For what?” I said, exasperated. “I don’t want Devlin dead or to lose Theo for weeks or months while he pursues a vendetta. I forgave Devlin for what he did.”
Danial sighed. “Did you go to him willingly?”
“No,” I said defensively. “He threatened to turn me if I didn’t submit, so I did.”
“How did he go from savior to defiler? What prompted his attack?”
“A taste of my blood. He was weak from blood loss, so I gave him my blood willingly. He said I tasted of summer, that I was the only one who tasted like that.” I turned to look up at him. “Is that true?”
“It’s true,” Danial replied. “I have never known why, but your blood does taste unusual. It is almost addictive in its sweetness. It was hard to be with you sometimes when we were intimate, knowing I couldn’t take any from you but that it was there just beneath your skin.”
“Why did you never say anything?” I said accusingly.
“Because I thought you might be worried that I’d lose control and take too much or that I wanted you only for how you tasted,” Danial answered. “It was important to me that you knew that your blood was not the reason I loved you.”
Pride swelled within me that I was so special and unique. Yet there was more than a little fear there, too. If both Danial and Devlin could taste the difference in my blood, likely any vampire could. What if another vampire tasted me, one who didn’t care if I lived or died? I’d be dead when they decided they couldn’t get enough of me. “Danial, I’ve been wearing the choker,” I said quickly. “I’m going to continue to wear it. Manir is still unaccounted for—”
“Please do. It gives me happiness to see you wear it,” he said, kissing me on my cheek. “But you were telling me of what happened with Devlin.”
“What exactly do you want to know?” I said, flushing. “How many times the both of us reached orgasm?”
“You misunderstand me. I know what he did to you in the hours of that day,” Danial said finally.
I looked at him in shock and horror. “He didn’t tell you about it, did he?”
“He refused to talk about it,” Danial said, annoyed. “Even when I told him that I knew he was lying, that something happened, he denied it.”
“Then how can you know what he did to me?”
“Sar, I’ve known Devlin my whole life. Hundreds of years. You think that in all that time we never shared a woman?”
“I never thought about it...” I trailed off, as images rose unbidden in my mind of Danial and Devlin together, light and dark at the same time loving me as one.
“Ahh,” Danial said huskily. “I see you are thinking about what it would have been like with the two of us in bed with you.”
I flushed red to my toes. Danial chuckled, seeing my embarrassment.
“Did he ever ask you to—?” I began hesitantly.
“Of course he asked,” Danial said, looking down at me like that was so obvious he couldn’t believe that I needed to ask the question. “He asked that first night he met you, right after he tasted you for the first time and Tatiana had gotten you away from him. I refused, Sar. I didn’t want to share you.” He sighed. “I knew what letting you be like that with him would do to us. Even if you were afraid of him at first, I knew he would work at you, until he got you to trust him enough to let him touch you without fear. Then I’d lose you to him, as I lost the other women I’d shared with him over the years. I know well what he can do to a woman, both with his body and his voice.”
A tremor went through me at his words, remembering Devlin’s lovemaking. Unsettled, I said, “Why did you ask about this? It was more than just lending an ear, Danial.”
“I needed to talk to you about this for two reasons. The first was to hear the truth from you, so you can stop holding it inside. The second reason was because I have something to give you.”
Danial got up and went to the edge of the basement, returning with a large box. He put it on the bed. “This came yesterday for you.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, gazing at me with serious eyes. “It’s not my present to you.”
Curious to see what Devlin had sent me, I opened the box. Inside was a pair of women’s boots made of polished supple black leather. They were long, to be worn up over the knee, with ties behind it to make the boots fit snugly. They were in the style of Danial’s old-fashioned boots, the ones he and Devlin favored. Devlin had remembered my liking them years before and my comment that I wanted some of my own. “They’re beautiful,” I said passionately, stroking the smooth leather with my fingertips.
“Try them on,” Danial said, putting the box aside.
I tried them on over my leggings. “They fit perfectly.”
“He likely had them made for you,” Danial said, handing me a note. “This was in the attached card to me, which is why it has no envelope.”
“I know you too well to think you’d open my mail,” I reassured, unfolding the note.
Danial, Give these to Sar with my apologies. I’ll call you soon. Dev
I put the note in the box with my sneakers and closed it, leaving the boots on. “What should I do?” I asked, resting one hand on my knee. “Should I keep the boots?”
“Do you want them?” Danial answered pointedly.
“Yes,” I said, barely audible. “Of course.” That was an understatement. I didn’t ever want to take them off. I loved the way they fit me, like a second skin stretching to conform to my shape.
“Then keep them,” Danial said. “If you like, I can say that I gave them to you.”
I met his eyes. “Why are you so eager to cover for me and him? Theo’s your best friend. Why aren’t you angry with me? I expected you to be, to denounce me, in fact.”
“Because I love you,” he replied gently. “And I love Devlin also, despite what he’s done. He’s my brother. I don’t want him dead. You are protecting him by not telling Theo. Theo would kill him if he knew that Devlin had been with you, if not for revenge than out of sheer jealousy.” He let out a sigh. “And there is nothing to be angry about or to get revenge for.”
“You’re taking this very well,” I said in disbelief. “You carried me into Dr. Camlyn’s on your shoulder.”
“I believed you were hurt then. You haven’t been. I can accept what happened, knowing you wanted it to happen.”
“Please tell me you forgive me,” I asked guiltily. “It eats at me that I wanted Devlin as much as he wanted me, that I desire him still.”
“You think that you’d feel better if you had been raped?” Danial asked incredulously.
“I’d still have the dishonor, but none of the guilt. I could be angry. Instead I feel weak and immoral.”
“You are not either weak or immoral. I told you, you are not the first to succumb to him. Dev has always been a great lover of women. He has a gift for it.”
“I suspected as much,” I muttered. “I was likely one in a long line. What he did and said was just to bed me.”
“Does that matter?” Danial said dismissively, hugging me. “You both enjoyed yourselves.”
“He said he wanted to change,” I said disgustedly. “To be a better man. God, what a line. And I fell for it.”
“Don’t be so sure you had no affect on him,” Danial cautioned. “Dev is without a moral compass as he ever was, yet something is different about him.”
“What do you mean?” I said, disdainful. “Because he paid me with a pair of boots?”
He raised my chin so I looked up into his eyes. “You touch everyone around you, Sar. No one after remains as they were before you. Don’t sell yourself short. I’m serious.”
“I’m sorry. What do you mean?”
“Dev called me. He was somewhere in South America, he said.” Danial’s eyes were moist. “He asked me to forgive him for what he had done, for letting what happened to us both happen all those centuries ago. He apologized for keeping his blood from me, for not sharing his power with me. He has never mentioned any of this to me before. We have never talked about it, not in all the time we’ve been vampire.” Danial paused. “I forgave him. We are brothers again, as we haven’t been since we were mortal. That’s all due to you. He didn’t just wake up one morning after hundreds of years and decide it was time to say he was sorry. Something you did or said prompted this.”
“You’re saying my behavior is excusable. Yet what if I was yours, if I had oathed to you instead of marrying Theo? Would you still think it was fine that I’d been with another man?”
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