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Louis-Cesare was usually a tender lover, but not tonight. That was all right; I didn’t want tender. It would have ripped me apart, sent me screaming into the void. I wanted a partner who could meet my frustrated fury with his own, and turn the terrible need to hurt into something else, something glorious.

The light from the nearest lamp threw our shadows on the wall and I laughed, because together, we made a monster. A hunched backed, multi-limbed thing that would have sent anybody else scrambling for the hills. That was good; that was perfect. I’d been called a monster all my life, and for once, I was fine with it. Let the fey find out exactly what they had awakened.

Louis-Cesare seemed to understand what I wanted without my having to tell him. Although perhaps my body was already doing that. I scratched my nails down his back, hard enough to leave bleeding lines in their wake, and he healed them before I finished the movement. But his eyes caught fire, turning blood red in the lamplight, and I laughed again, baring my throat.

He already wore my mark, the one I’d given him on the night we chose each other, the one that made him mine. But he’d never reciprocated, I didn’t know why. But this seemed like the perfect time.

“Take it,” I urged. I wanted to feel his fangs in me, wanted the distraction of the pain, but also the sense of belonging that such a bite gives, a closeness beyond anything else I’d ever experienced.

But he shook his head. “No.” It was raw.

“Why not? I’m giving it to you—”

“I don’t want a gift!” The strange eyes blazed. And no, that wasn’t lamplight. “I want to earn it. I want to deserve you—”

“And you think you don’t?”

“After tonight?” It was his turn to laugh, and it was bitter. “No, I think I don’t.”

He tried to get up, but I wrapped my legs around his waist and hung on. I could feel him next to me, hard and thick and long and perfect, but it wasn’t his body I craved. All right, it wasn’t only his body. I wanted to wipe that expression off his face, the one that said that all the titles and money and success in the world didn’t matter. That to him, he was still that little boy inside, the one whose family had abandoned him, had locked him away, had left him to rot.

Louis-Cesare had never felt like he belonged anywhere, deserved anything, although I’d thought that had changed after we found each other. And maybe it had, to a degree. I’d never seen him happier than after I claimed him—me, a lowly dhampir, who had dared to mark that aristocratic neck. Any other vamp would have been outraged, appalled and possibly homicidal.

He had been incandescent.

But he’d never done it back.

I turned his face to me and kissed him, gently, sucking on the full lower lip for a moment before nipping it hard enough to draw blood. I smeared it with another kiss, white hot and burning, and then pulled back to watch his body absorb it. That never got old.

“We’re really screwed up, you know that?” I whispered, and felt rather than heard him laugh.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Some say it’s a danger fetish, having a dhampir girlfriend.”

“A dhampir wife,” he said, and the bite in the tone told me that he’d heard them, too: the nasty little comments, the furtive looks, the smiles quickly hidden by a fan or a hand. ‘She’s pretty enough, but so is a viper. And you wouldn’t see me letting one of those near my—’

Louis-Cesare slid against me, making my breath catch in my throat, as if he could hear my thoughts. But he couldn’t. Not anymore. Dorina had facilitated that on the few occasions when it had happened, or I had by borrowing her gifts. And now she was—

“Don’t,” he said, watching my face.

He kissed me between my breasts, which was nice but not what I’d asked for. He kissed my stomach, my thighs, the knee I’d unconsciously pulled up beside his ear, opening myself, offering. He kissed me there, too, longer, slower, sweeter, but it still wasn’t enough, wasn’t what I—

He bit me, finally, and despite it not being on the neck, not being a claiming bite, it was still perfect. I arched up with a cry, the pain and pleasure of a vampire bite being heightened in that particular area to something approaching ecstasy. Make that all the way there, I thought, half delirious in seconds, especially when his tongue joined the action, to kiss and suck and lick the tiny wounds better. Oh, God, so much better!

If they could put this in pill form, they’d addict the world.

As it was, the monster on the wall was bucking and flailing and yelling ‘now, damn you’ within seconds, but to no avail. The long, slow warm, wet torture continued, because he wanted me to lose my mind, I thought, panting. If I lost my mind, I couldn’t think . . . about anything . . . oh, God!

When I could breathe, I pushed him back, caught him behind the neck and sat up, taking him fully inside me as I did so. And groaning as I sat down, straddling his lap as he shivered against me, inside me. He was big, and I wasn’t quite ready, but the stretch and burn were exactly, exactly what I wanted tonight.

When I finally had him all, I stopped, panting, and stared into his eyes as his forehead came to rest against mine. “You don’t have to prove anything,” I said. “Not to me.”

“I know,” he said, and then gasped, because I’d just pulled up again, sliding along the full length of him, giving him no rest.

“Do you really know?”

“Dory—”

“Do you really, really know?”

His face flushed, possibly because I was working him harder now. Or possibly because I had leaned back, supporting myself with one arm on the bed and one on his forearm, giving him a view all the way up my body. Everything from where we were joined to my sweat-slick abs, tightening under the workout they were getting, to his favorite parts of all, which had started bouncing in time to the rhythm I was setting, which meant that they were bouncing hard.

I had never thought of myself as beautiful before I met him. My looks were something I played up when it would help me bring in a bad guy with a decent bounty on his head, but somehow, they were almost something outside of me. Another tool to be used, not something that mattered.

Because, when people find out that you’re dhampir, not much else does.

But with him . . . I saw myself through different eyes. His eyes. And in those eyes, I was beautiful.

Even better, the next moment, his head was thrown back, his own eyes closed, and his face, while still flushed, was somehow calmer. Fiercely determined but also at peace. It was a strange combination.

But it was better than the anguish I’d seen there before, the struggle of a man who insisted on taking the weight of the world on his shoulders, even when he didn’t have to. I loved him, but he drove me crazy sometimes, as crazy as I was determined to drive him. Which wasn’t all that difficult, frankly.

I clamped down, hard, and he growled and rolled us off the bed. We hit the floor, taking one of the lamps with us, which sloshed out enough oil to set the rug on fire. “Leave it,” Louis-Cesare said, and I arched an eyebrow.

Vampires went up like kerosene-soaked tissue paper when exposed to flame, but I guess tonight was about conquering fears. Or something. I was having a hard time concentrating, since I had ended up on the bottom, with the powerful vampire on top seemingly determined to pound me through the floor.

Or maybe that was the door, I thought, unsure of where the hammering was coming from. Or my heart, I thought, getting sloppily romantic, because the orgasm of the gods was about to hit and hit hard. “Louis-Cesare!” I screamed, and I guessed it had been the door, after all. Because it practically blew off the hinges and there they were, half a dozen of Hassani’s servants staring at us.

They had buckets of water in their hands, I didn’t know why. The sprinkler system seemed to be working fine, I thought, as it proceeded to douse us along with the flames. “Get out,” Louis-Cesare suggested, pulling the crimson and gold robe down from the bed to cover me.

The servants just stood there, looking appalled, because I guess Hassani didn’t run a den of iniquity sort of court.

“Get out!” Louis-Cesare ordered, and put some power behind it.

They got out, which I appreciated considering that he had never stopped his current occupation, or indeed so much as broken rhythm.

“They’re definitely going to gossip about us now,” I told him, giggling.

“They would have been disappointed otherwise,” was the blithe response.

“And we wouldn’t . . . want to do . . . that,” I agreed, as his pace picked up, and my head encountered the bedpost a few too many times, and my butt threatened to freeze to the chilly stones on Hassani’s now waterlogged floor.

I decided I’d live.

And then, just in case the bastards were listening outside, I gave a few screams of appreciation. And then a few more. And then I was basically screaming all the time and I am not a screamer, particularly in bed. But that . . .

Damned well deserved it.

I stared upwards afterwards, panting and lightheaded, my body tingling and throbbing in places I had not known that it could tingle and throb. And watched a diligent little sprinkler overhead shower me with ice cold water. Too late, I told it, grinning sloppily.

Much too late.

* * *

Round two was in a new room down the hall, which we’d found open and empty after a foray wrapped in a half-drenched fur. The servants had fled, so we weren’t caught in flagrante delicto with our bear skin, instead of on it. And the bed in our new digs was just as big as the old one and, soon, just as well used.

Louis-Cesare sprawled on his stomach afterwards, boneless and effortlessly graceful. We hadn’t thought to bring a lamp, so he was lit only by moonlight. It was a good look on him.

Silver limned his face, turning it dark blue in the hollows and bleaching the lashes almost white. It did the same with the tiny, soft hairs along his spine, running down to the sweet rise of his buttocks and thighs, before deepened into the nest of curls that showed briefly between his spread legs. I let my eyes wander down the smooth line of muscle running from hip to knee, and then again from knee to long, elegant foot. The bottoms of his feet were as smooth and uncalloused as a newborn’s, thanks to vampire healing abilities.

He cracked an eye, feeling the weight of my gaze. “You wish to go again?”

“Just looking.”

He appeared vaguely relieved. I grinned. So much for vampire stamina.

In reality, I wasn’t perving . . . much. I just couldn’t believe that this was real. Any of it: my marriage, my new status, the fact that I was an honored guest at a vampire court. But especially that I had someone to come home to. Someone to grieve with. Someone . . .

Who gave a damn.

That wasn’t supposed to happen and it kept freaking me out.

A strong, long-fingered hand lay limply on the mattress. I picked it up and a faint roughness met my touch along the pads of the fingers and ball of the hand. It shouldn’t have been there. Fighting with a rapier doesn’t usually leave callouses, and his body should have erased any damage before it could build up anyway.

But it existed, nonetheless.

Relics of early sword practice, I thought, my fingers tracing the lines. I closed my eyes and could almost see him, from all those years ago. An earnest faced little boy, probably still redheaded at that point, holding a wooden practice sword. Running around a courtyard with his fencing masters and studying everything about them, from their stance to their finger positions to the direction their eyes darted before they struck, giving away the direction of their lunge.

I bet he’d been a quick study, that he’d surprised them.

He constantly surprised me.

Like tonight. I’d been furious when I thought he was trying to keep me from pursuing my enemies, from avenging two of the only people who’d ever fought for me. But in fact, he just didn’t want me running off exhausted and vulnerable and alone. He wanted me to understand that this wasn’t my hunt; it was ours. That this wasn’t my family anymore; it was ours.

And that I never had to hunt alone again.

“Something pleases you?” Louis-Cesare asked. I opened my eyes to find that he’d turned on his side, watching me as I explored him.

“You please me,” I said roughly, not knowing how to process this much emotion, all at once.

I smoothed a hand up his arm, wanting to touch, wanting something to ground me. But it was caught before it got very far. Clasped and held and then examined, as I had been doing to him.

I didn’t like that. My nails were short and utilitarian, and my skin bruised from some part of tonight’s adventures. There was nothing to admire there.

But Louis-Cesare didn’t seem to agree.

A kiss to the back of the hand, another to the wrist. Blue eyes looking at me with his lips still pressed against my flesh. “You please me, too.”

My breath started coming a faster in my chest.

I reached out with my other hand, desperate to feel all those little details: the chest, hard and lean and beautifully defined; the Adam’s apple that moved so temptingly under my fingers; the shoulder blades with their dusting of freckles that matched the ones on his back—another relic of a former life. The skin was different there, light golden brown instead of the cream of areas further down, speaking of long days spent shirtless under the French sun.

I wondered if it would have a different texture under my tongue. If I could close my eyes and map his body as easily by taste and touch as by sight. I bet I could—

But he wouldn’t let me.

I’d closed my eyes again in preparation, but a second sense had me opening them again. And discovering that my lover had moved, in that so quiet way that vamps have, to the point that I hadn’t even noticed it. Of course, I’d been distracted, I told myself, staring directly up into blue, blue eyes.

“What?” I asked, a little breathlessly.

A faint tilt to the edge of the lip, and a glance that seemed to rake my body with an actual, physical touch, did not help my breathing.

“What?” I said again, as he slowly gathered my hands, holding them together in one lazy, iron-fisted grip, above my head.

“What?” I demanded, as he went back to that disturbing exploration.

He kissed my forehead. “My turn,” he whispered, and my whole body shuddered.

He took his time, examining every inch of me, refusing to stop when I squirmed. I supposed it was fair, but I couldn’t imagine what I looked like: beaten and bruised, bangs half gone, sweaty from two previous sessions . . . not too tempting. But he didn’t seem to see it that way.

A big, elegant hand dragged those callouses from breast to thigh and back again. He seemed fascinated by the color difference between his hand, probably the darkest shade of gold on his body, and the milkiness of my skin. I’d seen the sun plenty in my lifetime, but dhampirs don’t tan. The same healing abilities that prevented me from wearing earrings or bleeding out after a battle also erased a tan in a day, often less.

It was annoying, as dead white skin was a fashion no-no these days, but Louis-Cesare didn’t seem to mind. Or maybe it was the textural difference that intrigued him. The rough spots on his skin found no purchase on mine, sliding easily back and forth, back and forth, back and—

“Stop it,” I growled. “I don’t like—”

“To be admired? Why? You are exquisite.”

I stared at him. “Yeah, that’s why most people run at the sight of me.”

“They’re intimidated.” He kissed my stomach. “Do you know how many people I saw watching you tonight?”

“Afraid I’d steal the silver. Or possibly stab them with it.”

He looked up, and the dark eyes were serious. “They were admiring glances. Do you have any idea what you looked like then? What you look like now?”

I started to make a joke, but the look in his eyes stopped me. “No.”

“Then perhaps I should show you.”

I’d thought he meant in a mirror, but apparently not, because a warm, wicked mouth captured a nipple. The talented tongue played with it for a moment, swirling around my softness, then playfully biting the little nub he’d teased up until I was aching with it. Before abruptly starting to suck.

And, okay, I thought, that’s—that’s not fair.

Louis-Cesare did not appear to care. In fact, he compounded the issue by slipping that talented hand between my thighs, where he found another little nub. And, for the record, callouses on certain things are . . . nice. Very nice. Exquisitely fucking nice and suddenly I was squirming constantly.

I may have also started to vocalize, just slightly. I wasn’t screaming—I was not a screamer—but I might have been panting a little. Which was completely understandable considering the twin provocations. And then maybe a moan or two slipped out, and some Romanian curse words that I thought I’d forgotten but apparently not, and then a few things that might qualify as shrieks, only they were way softer than that and they should probably come up with another word but I couldn’t think of one right then, maybe because I was having problems remembering my damned name.

And then the shrieks became louder, but I didn’t care, because you try to stop it when he’s—and then he—and oh, yeah, oh yeah, right there, right there.

“No, go back! Go back!” I shrieked, when he deliberately strayed off target. And it was deliberate. The wicked little glint in his eye gave it away, as well as the fact that he went back to the exact spot as soon as I said something, finding it with no problem whatsoever, the bastard.

And, all right, there might have been a little screaming going on at the end, but I can’t be sure because I think I black out for a second. When I came around, he had a self-satisfied look on his face and my body was quivering and shaking and moaning in a way that would have been embarrassing, but I was way past that. Way past.

“In case you were wondering,” he breathed in my ear. “Darkly dangerous, seductive red lips, sleek dark hair, black stilettos and a thin, barely-there dress that flashed open now and then to reveal a stake. At a vampire ball.”

I cleared my throat and tried to remember how to talk. “Well, I wasn’t going to go in unarmed—”

He laughed suddenly, full throated and genuine, and his cheek came to rest on my stomach. His eyes met mine. “I do love you.”

I’d been about to point out that he hadn’t been unarmed, either, but at that, I stopped. I found that I couldn’t speak, suddenly. My fingers found his hair, and I let them comb through it until his eyes closed and his breathing evened out, and the powerful limbs went slack. And then I kept on doing it anyway, just because I could.

“I love you, too,” I whispered, and finally went to sleep.