Amma was still standing by the edge of the bed, face changed from the overwhelmed look she’d been giving him while she delivered the not-so-new news of their hosts’ origin. Now she was anticipating what he was about to say, but he’d cut himself off to save both of them from it. She ran a hand through her hair, eyes lingering over him, still wide with something like fear.
“I suppose I should have warned you they we were entering into a vampire den, but I thought—well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”
Amma said nothing, but he could see an unease in her face that he wanted to chase away.
“Would you like me to find Kaz and have him sleep in your room?”
She squished up her features but quickly wiped the grimace off. The imp wasn’t even there, yet she was still trying not to offend the horrible, little beast. Darkness, why did she have to be so thoughtful? “He doesn’t really like me very much,” she said, quite reasonably. “And I think he’s busy with the lady imps. I haven’t seen him at all since we got here, and I’ve seen…a lot.”
Damien huffed, a little jealous of Kaz though glad for his absence if it left the room to just the two of them. Then again, Rapture had said he had his own chamber next door. “Well, that only leaves me, but certainly you don’t want to sleep together. That is, uh, have me in your bed.” Basest beasts, why did he have to go and say it like that? He could have had Rapture with so little as a look, but here, now, with Amma, he was tripping over words and feeling like an absolute idiot. “Beside you,” he clarified, perhaps unhelpfully.
Amma took a very slow breath as her shoulders raised, working up to something that turned out to be only a small noise that was neither confirmation nor declination. A wonderful time for her to be so brilliantly clear.
Damien tapped his fingers on the door, testing it was closed completely, then slid his hand to the latch. The sound of it locking cut into the air. He pushed off the door, taking careful, measured steps to where she stood, giving her time to tell him to stop, to back up, to show him in any way she wanted him to leave. Amma only tipped her head up when he was finally standing right before her, small frame trapped between him and the edge of the bed.
She’d saysomething, she had to.
He leaned closer, watching her features soften in the low light of the room. The chill of the den was chased away, her body giving off the heat that he’d been seeking earlier. He may have been nearly drained, but he wasn’t so spent that he couldn’t lift her up and dump her backward into the nest of blankets she’d hoarded, climb atop her, and make good on the torture he’d promised when she had been drunk.
But while he held himself back, the noxscura made its own decision. Despite being so close to exhaustion, the dark arcana slipped out, wrapping invisible tendrils around Amma and touching her in his stead. His magic felt her blood as it pumped mercilessly in her veins, heartbeat wild though she held herself very still.
Damien’s hand found its way behind her to the bed, and she still didn’t move, didn’t speak, but her pulse was frantic. His fingers closed into a fist around a linen, holding tight as he willed the noxscura to leave her, and then all at once stepped back, bringing one of the blankets with him.
“Sleep.” He gestured with his chin as he turned away. There was a chaise before the fireplace just off from the foot of the bed. “This will do,” he said, and sat.
“You’re just,”—she cleared the husk from her throat—“You’re just going to sleep there?”
He shrugged, pulling off his boots.
“But you can’t. You’ll be so uncomfortable, and it’s stupid for me to be afraid, like you said.”
“I did not say it was stupid,” he insisted, removing his chest leathers and relieved to have the weight off him. “And this is a fair bit more comfortable than the forest floor.”
Amma worried her hands on the edge of her loosened tunic, fallen further askew down her arm and exposing more of the soft curve of her shoulder and the thin strap of her chemise beneath. She wouldn’t sleep in those clothes, and he wasn’t sure if he should be thankful or morose he hadn’t suggested once more they share the bed.
But, he reminded himself sharply as he unstrapped his belt, Amma was still the vessel for a talisman that allowed him to completely override her will with a single word. Even asking her outright wouldn’t have been sufficient. Damien paused his modest undressing. “Unless you want me to leave, then I will go.”
She bit her lip, eyes averted, but shook her head forcibly.
“All right, then. I have reading to do anyway.” He pulled from his satchel the parchment he’d kept from Xander’s, the notes he had taken on the Lux Codex translations and the ripped-out page from the fire mage’s book, and laid back, feet up.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Amma’s figure hesitate then climb up onto the four poster. The bed was high and large, shrouded with sheer curtains that she moved behind. His focus on the notes he’d written became impossible no matter how hard he tried, constantly glancing over as she undressed, silhouetted against the drapes. His own writing was a blur, but every movement of hers was sharp, cutting into his peripherals, reminding him of when he’d been alone with her in that tiny tavern room in Faebarrow and she’d stripped down to almost nothing.
Apparently Damien wasn’t quite drained of as much blood as he’d thought, readjusting as he rolled to his side to turn his back on her shadow. He squinted at the pages, firelight behind them, making the script even more difficult to read. The sounds of Amma moving about quieted, and his eyelids felt heavy, thoughts about how to reverse his own arcana inside her mingling with fantasies of just being inside her at all.
“Damien?” Amma’s voice jolted into him though it was just a whisper. “Are you awake?”
He was, but he hesitated. If she’d changed her mind, he couldn’t sprint into the bed as eager as this, but then she could just as easily tell him to leave. He rolled onto his back again and blinked up into the glow of the fire reflecting on the rocky ceiling. Hopefully, whatever she would say would douse his wanton thoughts. “Yes, Amma, I am still awake.”
“Did you say that, um…when a vampire bites you, it feelsgood?”
Bloody Abyss, she really needed to listen to him a little less. “I’m fairly certain I did not.”
“Yes, you did,” she insisted a bit louder though her tone was gentle. “You said it can be, what was it? Pleasurable?”
He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Look, don’t get any ideas.”
“I was only wondering—”
