“But...”
His mouth hovered over mine, lingering. Hesitant. His hands held my face. I tugged on his lapel, pulling him closer. Closer.
Until his lips brushed mine. We were both trembling. Both breathing as if we’d been running from a pack of wolves. I shuddered violently, and his mouth came down on mine.
For a moment a stranger was kissing me. Someone wholly unfamiliar, unsure and clumsy. Someone who was nervous and mademenervous, and it was all wrong, and it wasn’t supposed to be like this, and then—
We found each other.
There you are.
Rapture.
We kissed each other like we’d been apart for lifetimes, searching for each other. Soft lips, warm mouth, deeply. Nothing between us. My armor disappeared, and he dropped his weapons, and we were both defenseless and exposed, and all the agony of the last year just... fell away. He was Huck. The same and yet different, a stranger and yet still mine. All mine. The scent of him, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his hands running down my back, pulling me against him until I could feel the unmistakable warm length of him between us, my breasts pressed to his chest...
He still wanted me.
I still wanted him.
Nothing else mattered.
This was too good, and I’d waited too long for it. Us. Together. Our separation had chiseled away at my soul, and now I held him like he was the answer to life itself. Everything I wanted.
“Banshee?” he said against the side of my head.
“Yes?”
“It’s still there, what’s between us. It didn’t break or die.”
“Still there,” I agreed.
“Strong and stubborn, this thing.”
More than I dared to imagine.
But was it strong enough to survive the wrath of my father again? Or would we live to regret this?
Being enemies was easy.
Falling in love was harder.
19
IN THE TAXI RIDE FROMthe university to the bus station, Huck and I held hands hard enough to make my knuckles ache, but I didn’t let go. His kisses clung to my stinging lips like a blissful dream that lazily lingers after sleep. In another place, under different circumstances, it would have been everything I wanted. But once we were back in the bustle of the city, thrust out of the taxi and into the cold, the tiresome burden of reality returned.
We sloshed through melting snow to cross a busy street and barely made it to our bus on time. The driver was closing the doors, and Huck banged on them until we were allowed on grudgingly. The only seats available were at the very back of the bus. They smelled sour, and springs in the seats threatened to poke through worn holes in the fabric, but at least we were able to sit together.
Huck lifted our luggage into a sagging net above our seats’ dirty window while across the aisle, a wizened Romanian woman with a floral kerchief tied over white hair stared at us as if we were monkeys in a zoo. If I had any hopes of canoodling with Huck, they were quashed; nothing like the judgmental stare of a nosy grandmother to put a damper on runaway feelings.
Bra?ov was a five-hour trip through the Carpathians. After I settled against Huck’s side, my mind returned to everything the professor’s assistant had told us. Now that I’d gotten over the initial shock of it all, I was having trouble letting it sink in.I am related to Vlad the Impaler.One of the most vilified men in European history was my not-so-great-great-great-times-twenty-grandfather? I mean, sure, he lived well over four hundred years ago. But Lovena’s words still hung inside my head. Old blood. Vlad’s blood?
Is this why I could hear the ring in the museum?
I had a killer’s blood running in my veins?
And Rothwild might also be Vlad’s descendant from another wife?
Did Father know this?Did he?
