“It’s true, though.” Ruvan gives me a tired smile. “I’m only the vampir lord because my people had to plan out thousands of years of leaders when the long night began. I am far, far from their first choice. And the next person will be even less so. That’s why Imustend this curse. I can’t trust that the next person, or the one after, will.” He pauses, head dipping back into his pillow. His eyes are glassy, gaze soft and distant. Ruvan turns his head, looking to the window. “No…it’s more than that. I want to end the curse selfishly, too. To prove that I was worth something—that my life has meaning. That I wasn’t some throwaway lord at the end of the list.”
“I don’t think anything about anyone is ‘throwaway.’”
“Even about a vampir?” He brings his eyes back to mine.
“Perhaps,” I say. But then force myself to say what I really mean. “Yes.”
Ruvan smiles gently. “Now, I’ve told you of the inner workings of my heart. Tell me, Floriane, what are yours? What does yourheartsay about us? Not the instincts brought on by your training. Your heart.”
The one thing I’ve never listened to. The one thing I’ve hardly ever heeded. I’ve always known what’s right for me because I’ve been told and directed.
What does my heart say?
“That…I feel for you,” I confess. “That I want to keep learning who you are and knowing you.”
“And I feel for you.” He pulls me a bit closer, his hands still around mine. “I ache for you. I burn for you.I want you.”
He wants me. Heat pools in my lower stomach. My throat is dry, mouth wet. I swallow thickly.
“There might still be a part of me though that sees you as my enemy,” I confess.
“I know.”
“And sometimes, that part that tells me I should hate you, all the voices of my family and ancestors, might win out over my want to be gentle to you, to know you. I might not always be the person I want to be toward you, for you.”
“And that’s all right.” Those words are among the sweetest I’ve ever heard. It feels as though he has accepted me for all I am and yet also all I’m not. It’s as though he is the first person to look at me and really, truly begin to know me. My mother sees me as her daughter. My brother as his sister. The hamlet knows me as the forge maiden. They all see and know parts of me, but has anyone ever, truly tried to see the whole picture? “Neither of us will win against our entire upbringing in days, or weeks, or even years. We will have to work to learn something new day after day. But…” Ruvan leans up to brush his nose against mine as he tempts me with an almost kiss. “I dare think learning you will be a delight.”
I shiver as his warm breath runs over my cheeks. I consciously force all doubt aside. All second-guessing. And, for a moment, it works. Long enough for me to say…
“Kiss me.”
“There you are, commanding the vampir lord again.”
“What are you going to do about it?” The words are coy, sensual, said on the back of my tongue with the edge of a grin.
“I’m going to kiss you, just as you command.” His lips press gently against mine. Ruvan doesn’t go for my neck, he doesn’t go for my blood at all, only my lips. The kiss is relief and more tension. It’s everything I needed to free my brain of this constantly burning desire. To heat myself to the point that I’m malleable enough that everything will go back into place.
Instinct tells me to loathe everything about this man. Ishouldresent these circumstances. The way he makes me feel…
I should hate it. I don’t want to hate it. Ican’thate it…
I love it.
CHAPTER25
I’m lostin the kiss for what must be a shameful amount of time. His tongue slips into my mouth, grazing against mine. It begs permission. He sings to me without words and my body rises in harmony, soaring high above the rafters and the castle spires overhead.
His hands frame my face, holding me in place against him. They provide me structure so my world doesn’t rattle apart with howgoodthis moment feels. Hunter’s Hamlet, the title of forge maiden, they fall away like shackles I didn’t know were wrapped around me so tightly that I hadn’t been able to take a full breath in my entire life.
Be with him, Floriane.
Justbe, Floriane.
I push him back and his hands slide down, skimming over the curves of my chest. The touch is barely there and yet every muscle in my core shudders with delight.Take me, make me, break me,my body silently demands of him as he collects my thighs in his palms. I move to his whim, straddling him as he kneads the muscle of my rear.
We slip apart and come together, again and again, until he finally pulls away as breathless as I am.
“We should go,” he whispers across my lips.
