He sucked her tongue into his mouth and bit down with his fangs, piercing her and letting her blood flood their mouths. He drank her in silence as his amnis overwhelmed her senses.
She skimmed her hands up his arms and over his shoulders, running her hands up the back of his neck until she could slide her fingers into the heavy waves of his hair.
He made a low growling sound in the back of his throat, which she loved.
Oleg liked it when she played with his hair, especially the hair on his nape. It was her way of playing with fire as the neck was the most sensitive part of a vampire’s body.
She teased her fingers over the skin there as Oleg shoved her legs apart and stepped between them. He gripped her hips, deepening the kiss as he pressed his erection against the growing heat between her legs.
“Wait.” He lifted her and walked across the room.
Tatyana wrapped her legs around his waist. “You’re tellingmeto wait?”
“I told you I would show you your crown.”
She could hear the smile in his voice. “I don’t really care about jewelry right now.” She squeezed her legs tighter and dug her fingers into his skin. “I have other things on my mind.”
“Indulge me,” Oleg said in a rough voice.
He kept one hand on her bottom, holding her as he reached out, and then the light from the library disappeared and she was swallowed in shadows.
Oleg snapped his fingers and tossed a ball of fire into the center of the room where the flame grew, twisting in a spiral as it slowly lit the darkness they had entered.
Tatyana blinked, her mind taking a few moments to register what she was seeing.
They had entered a chamber of mirrors, a long, low-ceilinged room with niches and jeweled cabinets built into the walls.
She slowly pushed away from Oleg. “Let me down.”
“I see I have distracted you.”
The heat of the moment hadn’t left her, but she banked the fire in her belly, turning in a circle as she took it all in. “What is this?”
“The treasury.” Oleg leaned against one mirrored pillar, a smile dancing at the corner of his mouth. “Do you like it?”
“You know…” She blinked, trying to take it all in. “My god.”
There was not a word for wealth like this.
Though the ceilings were lower, the room was almost half the size of the library on the other side of the wall, with much of it still enveloped in shadows. Glass cases were set into niches in the gold-trimmed walls, and marble pillars held up what must have been a massively heavy mirrored ceiling that reflected the marble mosaic on the floor.
The flame Oleg had lit moved around the room, lighting one sconce and then another and another until they were surrounded by flickering lights covered in faceted glass that illuminated the inside of Oleg Sokolov’s personal treasure chest.
She could see wooden chests stacked against one wall. And each niche held an elaborate crown or a matched set of jewels. Sometimes both. There were dark wooden cabinets with thin drawers, probably holding more jewelry and gold.
“There are many crowns and tiaras.” Oleg walked across to a particularly large niche where a massive crown of finely wrought gold was perched on a white silk pillow. “But this is your wedding crown.”
It was a golden kokoshnik headdress, the swirling filigree designs rising from an orange-gold stone in the center of the forehead to reach up and outward so that when placed on the wearer’s head, it would give the impression of a rising sun, haloed around the face.
“I’m going to wear that for our wedding?” Tatyana could barely take it in.
“It’s not heavy,” Oleg said. “In fact, it’s quite light.”
It was the most beautiful crown she had ever seen.
It was traditional for Orthodox brides and grooms to wear crowns, but Tatyana had never seen anything as exquisite as this work of art. Not even in a museum.
“With your hair braided and your gold sarafan, you will be the… rising sun of the Kievan Rus.” Oleg walked over and lifted it. “It was created for a grand duchess in the eighteenth century, but now it belongs to me.” He turned, the crown in his hands. “I have been saving it. For you.”
