Page 90 of Fortune's Blade

“When you figure out who you are, what you are. When you’re comfortable in that new skin of yours. When you’ve met more people, better people—”

“There are no better people.”

“Dorina! Stop this! I’m trying to help you.”

“No, you’re trying to help you.” I walked back over to the bed and sat down, and began unwrapping the mittens. Or started to; there was a lot of fabric. “You’re afraid, too.”

“Hey, don’t do that,” Ray said, following me over. And was pushed onto the bed with me straddling him, because I was done being coy. “Hey!”

“You’re afraid,” I repeated, taking my time unwinding the bandages I didn’t need, as my wounds had already closed up, while keeping him imprisoned with my thighs.

“Of you getting an infection maybe!”

“Dhampirs don’t get infections. And that’s not what you’re afraid of. You’re afraid because this is a new world for you, too. Here you’re not Ray, the unwanted, bullied child cast out into the world too soon, with no one to help you. You’re not Ray, the sometime nightclub owner and Cheung’s favorite whipping boy. You’re not Ray, bound by vampire customs and limits, with a set place in their society and that near the bottom. You used to be all of those things, just as I was a hated monster instead of a daughter. But you said it yourself: this is a new world where none of that matters anymore.

“If I can be anything here, so can you. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You may not have liked your old life, but you knew who you were, what you could and couldn’t do, who you could and couldn’t be.

“Now you don’t, and it terrifies you—”

“You’re the only thing that terrifies me,” he muttered, trying to get away, but not trying very hard.

“—now you’re just Ray, a new man in a new world who can have whatever he wants. Or whatever he’s willing to reach out and take. I imagine after hundreds of years of being told where you fit, and what your limits are, that that could be . . . panic-inducing.”

“I’m not panicked!” he snarled, and flipped me.

I looked up at him, and his expression was angry and flustered and hopeful and terrified, as if he couldn’t settle on just one. “You’re only thinking of me,” I said wryly.

“Yes!”

“Good. You keep telling me that I have to learn to think for myself, to make my own choices, and now I have. I choose you.” I smiled up at him. “What are you going to do about it?”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Leave,” I thought he’d say. And get up and walk away again. Because he was afraid, whether he admitted it or not.

I could feel it in his hands, trembling on my skin. I could see it in his gaze, flickering around the room. He wasn’t into this; he wasn’t into anything.

“It’s okay,” I told him, after a moment, my heart dropping. “We don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to be—”

“But I want!” Ray said, his eyes suddenly blazing as they came back to me. “And yet I’m—why am I like this?”

“Maybe we are broken,” I whispered, wondering if it was possible for two people like us to really make a new life, or if we were only kidding ourselves. All of that had sounded good, but what did it mean in practice? If it meant anything at all.

Perhaps the scars of the old world were just too great.

But he shook his head again savagely. “No! We’re not broken. They are. They always were.” And he kissed me.

And there it is, I thought, my arms going around his neck. The courage and passion and joy that I had always associated with him. There it is!

I found myself laughing in relief, and then so was he. “Don’t laugh yet,” he told me gasping. “Not yet. You haven’t even seen my dick.”

Which set us both off.

Is it supposed to be like this, I marveled as we rolled across the oversized bed. It never had been with Dory’s lovers. Except for possibly Louis-Cesare, but I had made myself scarce whenever they were together, trying to give them privacy.

So, I didn’t know in his case. But the others . . . there had been no joy there. Just fast, desperate couplings in order not to feel alone for a few minutes, often followed by regret. No laughter, no friendship, no love.

And I’d had to watch it all, because I didn’t trust them not to hurt her.