Oleg forced himself to smile. “You’re right. This will be fun.”
This would not be fun. This would be torture.
She smiled, and her eyes were dancing again. “Text me when this is over and tell me where to go. I’ll sneak away with Rumi.”
A few hours. That was all he would have to last.
Just a few hours, and she would be his again.
“Good.” He nodded to the door. “Go. I’ll figure out where to hang up the axe.”
“Oh good.” She looked at the weapon near her feet. “Yes. Thank you. I completely forgot about that.”
She stood on her toes, pressed a kiss to his cheek, then darted out the door.
And Oleg was left in the billiard room with a two-foot axe and no relief except the mental picture of slicing that wind vampire’s head from his body with an antique axe. It could take several strikes with this dull a blade. There would be blood and gore. It would be painful and take some time.
He enjoyed picturing it.
Half his immortal soul had walked out of the room and back to the party, and Oleg could do nothing about it.
He had to stop this.
They might have agreed five years ago that patience and discretion were necessary, but Oleg had changed his mind approximately five seconds after Tatyana admitted that she loved him.
One hundred years was far too long to wait.
Chapter 6
Tatyana
“So that didn’t go as planned.” Rumi lounged in Tatyana’s room after the reception. “I told you that you should avoid Samson.”
“And I told you that Oleg would have to get over it.” She took off the platinum earrings that Diana had put in her ears and placed them in a silver jewelry box. “He’s a friend. He’s going to stay a friend. But lesson learned—my husband does not like surprises.”
“That probably comes from having most surprises in his life be unpleasant and violent,” Rumi said. “Surprise, you’ve been kidnapped by vampires. Surprise, you have to drink blood for the rest of eternity and can’t see the sun.” She grimaced. “Surprise, a few of your brothers will try to kill you forever.”
“Yes, Rumi. Thank you.”
They were staying in a literal castle in the countryside outside Budapest where Kezia lived. There were in the east wing, appropriate for the Eastern Poshani delegation, and Tatyana had a large suite of rooms for her entourage, which included Rumi, Diana, Sándor, and all of Sándor’s human and vampire guards.
The front of the east wing was populated by the human and vampire guards, the humans to guard her during the day and the vampires by night.
Then there was a reception room at the front of her personal suite, an office where Rumi had set up her work area, then the bedrooms and day chambers for her staff beyond that. She could have brought an entourage of a dozen other immortals and had plenty of room.
Tatyana glanced at Rumi in the mirror. “Is he here yet?”
Rumi nodded. “He’s waiting in the front living room.”
Tatyana took a deep and unnecessary breath.
“You realize he probably already knows,” Rumi said. “It’s Sándor. He knows when my children have a toothache. I think he knows that you and Oleg are lovers.”
“I’m going to tell him we’re married too.”
Rumi’s mouth formed a smallO.
Having a furtive physical affair meant little to most vampires. You didn’t even have tolikea lover to enjoy having sex with them.
