“Yeah. And I’m pretty sure the two bodies I”—I wave my fingers in the direction of the wall—“out of here this morningwent straight to her. Or somewhere. I don’t really know. It was a weird morning.”
Vlad only sighs. “It was.”
Asher looks like he’s torn between gaping at us and laughing hysterically. Can’t blame him. I’ve been there.
“Right,” Quinn says. “What do we do next?”
Vlad shifts subtly, and I tuck myself against his side even tighter. “I believe our best course of action is to liaise with those here who would fight against Jakob and the others.”
I gape at him. “We can’t!”
“This room is well-warded. I do not believe Eirian would make it through without great effort, which allows us some time to prepare. Bringing Margot and Rachel here—”
“Vlad!”
“It is that or we return to London.”
“What?” I look at him, then at Asher and Quinn. “You can’t be serious.”
“Your job here was only to get Eirian’s name,” Asher says. “We have that. There’s no reason to have stayed at all.”
“Then why did we?”
They’re all silent. Vlad swallows when I look at him, eyes darting away, just for a second. “I believed… I did not want you to wake in London and be angry. Someone needs to stop Jakob. Even if he no longer needs to procure young vampires for Eirian—”
“He’s still a danger,” I say. Fuck, I agree. But Asher’s right, too—we’ve done the job, even if Vlad got the name in the end because I got myself captured—and the fact that Vlad asked Asher and Quinn to come here and made no moves to get us out of here after sundown— “You didn’t want me to be angry?”
Vlad looks away entirely then, and I feel the tremble of his embarrassment at being so exposed, but he just admitted that and not only in front of me, but in front of Asher and Quinn, too.
And there’s a thought. “Come back later.”
Quinn laughs, even as Vlad shakes his head and Asher ruefully gets to his feet. “How much later?” Asher asks.
“No,” Vlad says. “We have to—”
“I’ll ring you,” I interrupt. “Time to go.”
Asher’s trying to pay me back for the night we were all at his, when Quinn killed the high fae out to kill the pair of them, but Quinn pushes him from the room and when I hear the click of the door, I turn my whole body to face Vlad.
“Is their room well-warded, too?”
“Of course. And Quinn is more than capable of holding his own against a high fae, should it come to that.”
And I’ll feel that. My power has curled out of me since I’ve woken, extending beyond our room and into the rest of the building. I’ll know as soon as she comes inside.
“Good,” I say and kiss Vlad just like I did this morning. He doesn’t hesitate to kiss me back. I moan when his tongue slides alongside mine, then do my best to clamber over him. He pulls back and huffs but helps me straddle his hips, and this gives me a nice new angle to explore. The way he grabs at my hips when I tip his head back and kiss him again leaves me panting. Fuck. I’ve imagined all kinds of things but never anything quite like this.
More importantly—I’m still dressed. He isn’t. Well, except for his pyjama bottoms, but they’re thin and the more I move my hips, the more I feel how interested he is in what’s going on. When he pulls back again, the skin around my mouth tingles from the friction of his moustache and beard.
I grin and roll my hips. “What’s the problem?”
“Who said there was a problem?” His eyes are all dark, an amused little twinkle in them I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. My breath catches again, and I can’t help the words that spill out of me.
“I didn’t actually die out there, did I? Like, this isn’t some weird dream before I’m gone forever?”
“No! No.” Vlad’s fingers shake when they stroke down my jaw. “This is real.”
“But you…”
