“Sounds French.”
“Much of your language is, kitten.” He was doing very well, Lukas thought. A quiet, rational discussion represented progress; he rose from crouching at the tub’s side, carefully controlled all through the movement.
Not slowly enough, perhaps. She retreated, blundering away toward the sinks. The mirrors held faint traces of condensation now; in a short while this lair would be alive with her scent and the hum of a well-regulated household.
Approaching a quivering, exhausted leman was particularly enticing. He had not stalked so carefully in many a mortal year. She refused to look directly, gaze downcast, heavy lashes darker than her eyebrows hiding those lovely gold-threaded eyes. When he reached for the front of the buttoned shirt she flinched, nearly cowering onto the counter.
“I can do it myself.” A tiny, defiant mutter. “Are you going to drown me? That’s not a bathtub, it’s a swimming pool.”
Ah. Her behavior suddenly arranged itself in a coherent pattern; the shock of realization was exquisite. He would never grow used to the jolts of sensation, stinging-raw, unfiltered by creeping numbness. “You are attempting to provoke me.” His fingertips touched the button just over the lump of the necklace, worked it free.
“I’ve had enough of the psychological torture, thanks.” The words shook, her tremors intensifying.
Lukas restrained the mounting urge to rip every scrap of cloth free, set her on the marble, and bury himself in that volcanic velvet heat again. His knuckles brushed white cotton, the T-shirt stretched over her breasts, and the flare of desire was so sharp it tasted of sweet, iron-heavy mortal claret. His fangs throbbed, longing to sink into her once more; he paid very close attention to the buttons.
“You can have the necklace.” Desperate now, she was rigid despite the trembling. “I’ll walk back to town, I’ll keep going, you’ll never hear from me again. I promise. I swear.”
Too late for that. “The time to flee was before I caught your scent.” He slid the button-up from her shoulders; she cooperated woodenly. “Lift your arms. Or I can simply tear your clothes off.”
“How many women do you do this to?” More provocation, but she slowly obeyed.
“None.” He had to concentrate, lifting the T-shirt’s hem. Every inch revealed was a fresh paradise, but he must exercise restraint. She was safe, she was claimed, she was his. Now he had to keep what he had taken, ease her through the stages of grieving for a mortal life, and deal with the greiben.
The last part was easiest. The entire infestation had to go—messy work, but unavoidable. The only quandary was whether or not to allow her accompaniment; the level of violence might be cathartic or traumatizing, depending on her state of mind. “None at all,” he continued. “In my entire time upon this earth, you are the only leman I have ever seen.”
One heard gossip, of course, but any sanguinant—ancient or otherwise—with the good fortune to find such a prize would not easily allow another to lay eye or hand upon it.
A great shuddering breath. Her face crumpled, and she began to weep in soft, heartbreaking gasps.
Bathing a shaking, crying leman was another new experience; his own nakedness was inconsequential, his personal cleansing accomplished in perfunctory fashion. The last of the greiben stench was sluiced from them both as he explored, soaping and rinsing with infinite care, and her sobbing as she cooperated with dreamlike slowness tore at his own chest.
The storm passed as he pressed a fresh towel against her hair, examining wet strands. Soon they would slough the dye; such things did not take to sanguinant well, if at all. Her lashes, wet and matted, stayed down. She was either semiconscious or pretending slumber by the time he carried her thought silent halls to the saferoom, and he laid the invisible seals with care.
This bed was not quite so vast as the Everly’s, but the linens were fresh. Certainly the staff were accumulating no little merit; his new cover could afford to be correspondingly profligate with reward.
He settled her gently, pulled white blankets and snowy counterpane high, glanced at the wrought-iron bedposts. Had he chosen this particular stead, or simply had a shopper handle the detail? He could not remember, and it irked him.
His prize curled upon her side; Lukas eased under the covers next to her. Slowly, he gathered her close, damp near-mortal softness sliding against the different texture of sanguinant skin. His knees behind the hollows of hers, a stiff yearning pressed into the firm roundness of her bottom, his arm securely locked about her waist, his nose buried in her hair, breathing in the tang of herbal shampoo and the deeper, far richer aroma of his very own leman.
The twilight came swiftly, unstringing preternatural muscles, slowing his old, powerful heartbeat. He could rest without calcification triggering the wasting lassitude; not only could a hidebound ancient commit an error of camouflage or simple carelessness, but both feeding and necessary rest could end in true-death.
It made a certain amount of evolutionary sense, he supposed. Sanguinant could lay waste to humanity without such winnowing; leman were a scarce, irreplaceable resource. How many of his kind had died of wanting what he now possessed?
“Sleep well,” he mouthed, far too softly for mortal ears to hear.
She did not stir.
CHAPTER 13
Bea would have called it impossible to snatch a restless nap while cuddled with a monster, much less an entire night—or longer, there was no way of telling. She might have slept for a decade, for all she knew.
Sleep was a horrible thing. It crept up on you, even after prolonged spells of terror-induced insomnia, and when it receded you were faced with the problem of yet another goddamn day to get through.
Dead, she wouldn’t have to deal with this strange stage set of a mansion, its windows constantly slapped by a real howler of a winter rainstorm likely to fill with ice if the wind kept up, or a persistent dry throat and a monster who kept watching her. Every time she snuck a glance in his direction, he was looking.
From the moment she opened her eyes in the bare, airless ‘saferoom’—a copy of her first prison but without windows or nightstand, holding only a huge four-poster in wrought iron plus an antiseptically clean bathroom with an untouched round of green, faintly balsam-smelling soap next to the sink—the monster hovered.
He’d had time to get dressed, of course. Maybe he’d even done it with superspeed; the thought of him fast-forward ironing a crease into his own trousers could have been funny if she’d felt even a little bit like laughing.
