Damien actually laughed. “Why would you ask a thing likethat,Amma? Surely you don’t intend to stake one of them.”
Grumbling, she fidgeted on the bed, the linens shuffling. “Well, did she stop when you told her to?”
“Yes, of course she did.” He snorted, grinning wider. “Do you intend to defend my honor, Baroness?”
Amma’s shadow fell still, and then she shifted to lay back down, her form disappearing from the drapes. “Well, someone should if need be.”
He expected her to begin laughing, to signify how ridiculous her own suggestion was, but she didn’t, and as unnecessary—and frankly unhelpful—as it would be if she attacked any of the vampires, something in Damien’s chest cracked at the thought of Amma courageously defending him. It was just a narrow fissure, but when he let his mind truly consider what she meant, it grew deeper than the Abyss.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, throat hoarse. “Nothing further occurred, she only collected my blood and agreed to convince the elder council to strike a deal with me.”
He listened to Amma shift under the blankets. “Thank you,” she finally said.
“No, thank you, Amma,” he replied, likely too quiet for her to hear, but—and of this he was curiously relieved—it felt quitegoodto say.
CHAPTER 14
A THINLY VEILED ANALOGY
Amma woke in the soft, downy comfort of a bed, covered in many blankets to keep out the cold, and feeling curiously blissful considering the shock of the day before. She’d been left with eerie strangers, seen a woman’s neck split open by fangs, and fainted. But then Damien had finally come back, and he’d stayed with her.
She sat up, slow and deliberate, the linens and furs falling away so that her bare shoulders were caressed by the frigid air of the vampire den below the karsts. Without windows or the sun, time was difficult to keep track of, but the candle left on the bedside table was down to a stub to suggest the night had passed. Amma slipped forward onto her knees and crawled silently to the foot of the bed where she pushed the sheer curtain away.
Sprawled out on the chaise before the dying fire, Damien had an arm hanging off to trail the ground and a small stack of parchment on his chest. His head hung to the side, hair falling in his face, lips slightly parted, out cold. She’d seen him asleep before but never quite so relaxed.
Brow unpinched and mouth not pulled into a frown, he was so much more handsome, if that were even possible, and for a moment, her chest actually ached. What was she thinking? Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne was the son of a demon, a demon who was imprisoned by the king of her realm, and she was ordered to marry another man for the supposed good of her barony and people. But, gods, did she wantthisman instead.
She’d been fighting it, telling herself she was mad to think it could ever work, but the night before when she had thought, even for an instant, that he had made love to someone else, a burning anger propelled her upward, and then as soon as it rushed into her, it rushed back out, leaving her cold and empty and bathed in grief. As if her heart had shattered, tears welled up at the thought he had chosen to be with someone else and she had lost him.
And thatwasmadness, she knew it, madness beyond the very simple and obvious reason she shouldn’t have had any of those feelings at all: she had no claim to him. Damien didn’t belong to her—and the way he acted suggested he didn’t want to belong to anybody—but it wasn’t just jealousy clawing away at the wall of good sense she’d been building up since learning of his destiny out in the Accursed Wastes. It was how completely foreign the heartbreak that had followed felt.
Even when Amma had to tell Thomas they couldn’t be together, she hadn’t experienced something so all-encompassing, and she’d barely ever touched Damien in comparison. And gods did she want to do more than just touch him, especially when he growled about how she belonged to him and loomed over her with a protective presence that somehow made her feel safe from everything else in every plane of existence.
Amma fell forward from her position on all fours, burying her head into the blankets and letting out a long, muffled groan. He was everything she should have run away from: domineering, brutal, and, chiefly, evil, but—
“Amma?”
She sat up with speed, back straight, as if she’d been doing something she shouldn’t have, which was accurate if pining after him counted.
Damien was blinking awake, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “How’d you sleep?” he asked in a drowsy, tender voice with none of the sharpness it normally carried.
Her heart fluttered. “G-good.”
Damien stretched, arching his back and groaning, still half-asleep as the blanket he’d used fell to the floor. She watched with wide eyes, his muscled form writhing there in front of what was left of the fire, tunic undone to the middle of his chest, sleeves pushed up over muscled forearms, the tops of his hips and the hard lines running down his abdomen exposed when he stretched back completely.
Amma swallowed hard—to speak of ruining someone’s virtue, the sight of his navel could have done that to her all on its own. She regretted interminably not inviting him right into the bed the night before.
When he pushed up onto an elbow and blinked those violet eyes fully open to set them on her, the chill that worked its way across her back wasn’t from the room’s temperature. “So, is it safe to assume you did not go on a murderous rampage, staking the whole den last night?”
“No, of course not.” She pouted, embarrassed, then sat straighter. “Did you?”
A lazy grin crawled up the side of Damien’s face, gaze drifting down her body as he leaned against his elbow. “Did I…” She watched his throat bob, chest rising with a deep breath, and then his eyes quickly shot back to her face. “Hmm—what?”
Amma glanced down at herself, chest barely covered in just her thin chemise, the dying firelight not quite shadowy enough. She fell back onto the bed and pulled a fur over herself. “Nothing, nevermind!”
From her hiding place, she listened to him shuffle around. “It appears to be morning,” he said after a few moments.
Amma popped her head out and pushed the draperies away.
