Damien woke with a start, surprised to realize he had fallen asleep.
The first thing he noticed was that Syreena was no longer in his arms.
She was sprawled across him, and, to his amusement, had somehow managed to turn completely upside down in the bed so her foot was nestled snugly in the vicinity of his neck. He raised his head slightly to look at her, getting a rather stimulating view of her bare bottom, and realizing his feet and ankles were sheeted in her brown and gray hair. Somewhere between her back and his thighs, they were twisted up into the bedspread, tied together like an odd pair of Siamese twins.
Feeling extremely happy just because she was there, he turned his head and kissed the bottom of her nearby foot.
She jerked in her sleep, sliding against him for a moment, and then settled down into deep, even breaths again.
“Oh, you must be kidding,” he whispered to the silent room, biting his lip hard to keep from laughing out loud.
He instantly reached for the same foot and drew a quick finger up the instep.
Damien had to dodge to keep from getting kicked in the head.
Syreena, heir to the Lycanthrope throne, was ticklish.
Unable to resist, he reached for her again.
“Touch my foot again and I will take your head off,” came the sudden mumbled threat through the muffling of bedclothes.
“Too good to be tickled, Princess?” he teased, ignoring her warning and attacking her foot in earnest.
Syreena yelped, trying to kick him again, rolling over in her sudden wakefulness.
“I’m warning you!” she shouted. Her threat came out as a squeal, however, stealing its intended punch.
To escape him, she slithered right off the bed and onto the floor. Damien dared to look over the edge of the bed in search of her.
“Come now, pouting does not become a Princess.”
“A black eye doesn’t become a Prince,” she countered tartly, tossing back her hair as she sat up. “You are not a very considerate bed partner,” she accused.
“I heard no complaints last night,” he mused, giving her the cocky combination of half a smile and a lifted eyebrow.
“Perhaps that is because you were snoring too loud to hear them.” She laughed when his expression immediately altered to a frown. “What? Too good to snore, Prince?”
“Why is it that when you say Prince like that, I feel like a German shepherd?”
“If the breed fits …”
She got to her feet and shook her hair back into place with a primp worthy of her royal status. Then she settled back onto the bed, sitting to face him and studying his amused expression.
“You know, I never actually considered it before …” She trailed off as if contemplating her thoughts. Damien was not fooled. He knew a setup when he saw one.
He indulged her, however.
“Considered what?”
“I never thought you might actually be fun. Here I was thinking sex was going to be my only entertainment.”
“I see. I guess you have to consider yourself fortunate then. I, however …”
Syreena smirked as he teased her with her own verbal trick. “However?” she prompted dutifully.
“I think I am the more fortunate one.”
The answer was surprisingly serious, taking her a little off guard.
“How do you see that?” she asked, looking away from him to smooth absent fingers over the sheet beneath her.
“Because no one has ever been in the position to tell me that I snore before, and I find I am quite delighted to hear it.”
Syreena looked immediately taken aback by the comment. “How is that possible?”
“Because I have never been in the habit of sleeping in the presence of others. Call it a Vampiric trust issue.”
Syreena felt the impact of the remark quite keenly. In an instant, it rewrote over a dozen suppositions she had made that were in error. “I never thought about that before.”
“I always have to think about it. I find I like my head securely attached to my shoulders. I would have lost it long ago if I were easily able to trust.”
“But Jasmine…?”
“Jasmine?” He chuckled. “Jasmine would rather run naked in daylight than sleep near the likes of me. She is much smarter than you are.”
“I am getting that impression.” She leaned forward, lying over his chest until they were practically bumping noses. “Can I ask you something without you getting bent out of shape?”
“You practically accused me of carnal intentions with another woman less than a minute ago. If that does not disturb me, I do not see what can.”
“Can I have it back?”
Damien blinked questioningly for a second, and then came that slow smile of comprehension. “I did not think you had noticed.”
She laughed at him and held out her hand.
He slid his hand beneath his pillow and then reached to give her what she wanted.
Gold and moonstones fell into a glittering pile in her upturned palm.
Jasmine was sitting in the main parlor with one leg slung over the arm of the sofa, the other braced on a coffee table, as she slowly leafed through a slightly mildewed volume that was wider than her lap and thicker than the width of both her hands laid end to end.
She leafed through the pages slowly, reading with interest.
“Is that from the Library?”
Jasmine looked up when Syreena addressed her, giving the Princess a long, disapproving appraisal. The Lycanthrope female was wearing one of Damien’s silk shirts, the extra fabric hanging to her knees. She was not very big, Jasmine thought. She could not see how Syreena could ever prevail in a fight, yet she was supposed to be some kind of an expert at Lycanthrope battle techniques.
Jasmine was unimpressed. Considering the fact that the Lycanthropes had been on the losing side the entire three hundred years of war with the Demons, it was not saying very much.
The female Vampire had been aware of Syreena’s presence in the house immediately upon her return from her most recent foray into the Nightwalker Library. Judging by the clothing she wore and the loud laughter coming from the vicinity of Damien’s bedroom earlier, she imagined that they had found a way to reconcile. This was also unimpressive. Jasmine was glad Damien was happy now, but the memory of his despair was too keen to be easily forgiven.
“Yes, it is. Your sister assigned a librarian a couple of days ago so we might begin to take selective volumes with us. It is easier to study in familiar surroundings, without so many strangers around.”
“She did? Whom did she choose?”
“A sexy little thing,” Jasmine said with a smile. “Dark and pretty, beauty mark on her neck.” Jasmine’s smile grew with taunting mischief as she purposely noted the area her kind was notorious for exploiting.
“Jinaeri,” Syreena said absently. “I see.”
“If you do not mind, I was just getting into this.”
Jasmine dismissed her without waiting for a polite response, turning a page in spite of the fact that she had not finished the previous one.
Syreena was not dense. She knew Jasmine did not like her. Normally, she wouldn’t care. Jasmine was important to Damien, however, so she figured she had to care. There would be time to improve the situation later, so she left the other woman to her reading.
She continued to move through the enormous house that Damien called home. The windows were all tinted so dark they were nearly black, except those in the library and the kitchen, which were stained glass. She understood the kitchen, because they had little to no use for it, so the colored light coming through was weak enough in case someone had to enter the room, yet able to add enough light to add appeal to the otherwise darkened hallways just off it.
Damien had warned her not to enter the library before she had even left the bedroom. Although the windows were stained, the balcony doors leading into the upper level of the room were not. They only used that room at night, which was why Jasmine was using the parlor to study.
The Princess touched absent fingers to her collar. Unlike her sister, she knew the secret to putting hers back on. She wasn’t supposed to know it until after she was wed, but she had picked it up covertly from an instructive manual they thought they had sufficiently hidden from her. She did not know how to take it off. Now, however, all she needed to do was ask Damien to do so.
She had thought she would feel enormous relief at the proof of the removal of the necklace, but she had not. Not because she was not reassured, because she supposed that she was. She had not felt relief because she had already given way to her convictions. She supposed Damien had known this, and that was why he had removed it from her as she slept. He had waited until it became an issue that had nothing to do with their decisions to choose one another.
Well, her choice was most definitely made. There was no turning back for her now. Though there were additional ceremonies to formalize such things, the minute Damien had breached her maidenhead, he had become wed to her soul.
As if the sexual act had anything to actually do with it, she mused with humor. His soul had captured hers long before that. That and his wisdom and perfect words. His gentleness of touch and his understanding. How she had ever resisted, why she had ever resisted, was now completely beyond her understanding.
She sighed, looking around the kitchen for something to eat, having little hope of actually finding anything considering it was the home of a Vampire.
He was exhausting.
Granted, she was working on a reduced blood supply after she had fed his hunger the night before, but he had also proven his stamina and appetite to be worthy of his legend. He had woken her repeatedly through the dark hours, making fine love to her body, always with the same intensity as the first time. Though he had experienced no pain the last time he had taken her blood, he had not taken it again. She had mistakenly thought that it was a major part of lovemaking with a Vampire, one that she could very easily get used to because of its powerful aphrodisiacal abilities and its blatant eroticism. His passion, however, reached the same extraordinary heights no matter what he did or did not do to her. She had never realized the body could be manipulated to pleasure in so many ways.
Lessons on sex and sexuality paled in comparison to the actuality of it.
Especially the part they neglected to mention about how sore it left one. It was a physically demanding workout, one that taxed even her athletic and well-trained body.
She realized that there was not even a refrigerator in the kitchen. Not so much as an icebox. She made a sound of consternation.
“Hungry, pet?”
She turned with a start. Now at full power, Damien could once again use the little tricks of stealth and strength that were seemingly an automatic part of his makeup. He had crept up behind her without raising so much as a hackle on the back of her neck.
“You need to teach me how you do that,” she said with envy as he moved to wrap a single muscular arm around the slight circumference of her waist. He drew her tightly to himself, swinging her slightly as he leaned in to kiss her collarbone where the gaping of his shirt in front left it exposed.
“It is a trick of the mind. I would be very interested to see if you could accomplish it one day. I would not put it past you.”
“Neither would I,” she agreed smugly, making him laugh at her.
His laughter vibrated over her skin, giving her a shiver as he moved his mouth in a line of slow, moist kisses up her throat and neck. She giggled when his whiskers coasted over her damp skin, and she squirmed out of immediate reach of his mouth.
“I warned you about that!” she scolded him, pushing at his chest when he would not allow her to wriggle free.
“So you are not ticklish there only if I am biting you?” he concluded in delight with a flash of mischief going off in his eyes.
“Some Vampire you are. Ooh. Watch out! The Prince of Vampires might tickle you to a horrible death!” She threw the back of her hand up to her mouth and went as wide-eyed as a serial heroine. “Somebody save me!”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you are a troublemaker?” he asked dryly, reaching to pull down the obnoxious hand blocking her lips from his.
He ended the entire repartee by kissing her into obedient silence. The kiss was just as stimulating to her now as it had been from the start. The only improvement was in her skill, she felt. She was learning the ways of his mouth and his kisses, just as she would learn the topography she used to fly from point A to point B when she was the falcon. Every crest and every valley was a marker, his clean, masculine taste and the dominant sweep of his tongue like road signs and landmarks to guide her.
Within the span of a minute, Damien had her body melting against his, as if she were made of a soft, pliable clay he could mold perfectly to the bend of his body. She became very aggressive with her kiss, in spite of the relaxation of the rest of her. Syreena knew best what would please him. A lick. A nip. Unmatchable appetite for him that always floored him in its intensity and abandon. He could bend her over backward, as he was almost doing now, with the ardor of his kiss, and she would gladly accept it. More than acceptance. Encouragement. She had a way of making attractive, compelling sounds of delight and invitation.
When he finally was able to make himself withdraw from her hot little mouth, he did not go very far. She was clinging to him like a second skin, a leg snaked around him, arms wound over his back and shoulders, and her entire torso clinging to his like a magnet.
“Syreena,” he said with soft relief as he pulled her sweet face into the curve of his neck.
Syreena knew every nonverbal sentiment that came with the action. She felt it just the same.
“I am very fortunate,” she whispered into his ear. “I know that now. From this moment on, I will always find my way back to you, Damien. I will know that your kiss, your touch, and your warm sensitivity will always be waiting patiently for me, just as I will always make my heart your home, so you always have a place to come back to.” She kissed his neck with a sweetness that rang like a poignant bell through his spirit. “If you ever did hurt me—and believe me, I know I am well deserving of it after what you went through—but if we had a misunderstanding, I would find you or wait for you or anything I had to do to make it better.”
Damien swallowed as emotion rose like tight fingers under his skin. She was making a confession that could potentially make her weak to him and give him the power to make a slave of her emotions and promises. It was a measure of trust from her that he had not expected. Time would bring more depth like it; time and familiarity. There was no arguing that they were still learning about each other and, given their varied lifestyles, a great deal of understanding would need to come.
It was clear to him that when Syreena defeated an enemy, she did it entirely or not at all. All or nothing. Independent woman who made choices for herself, or automaton at everyone else’s command. It was a bemusing trait for a woman who played the role of a royal advisor, someone who had to exploit the gray areas of a situation at every turn. He could see the benefits of decisive thinking, of course. Syreena was the one who would agree or disagree with a monarch who might one day wish to go to war.
There were very few gray areas in war.
She had always had a strong opinion, always fearlessly expressing it. She had just never expressed her opinions about what she wanted. Now that she had, now that he was what she wanted, he knew he would never be able to do anything to change it. He was already irrevocably attached to her, his shadow sewn to her feet, in a manner of speaking, and he could not imagine taking himself away from her and managing to survive the segregation.
It would only grow stronger over time. However, if he did try to walk away from her, he had no doubt that she would hunt him down and force him to keep every verbal and nonverbal promise they had made to one another these past few days.
“I would not punish you on purpose,” he said to her in quiet admonishment. “I am not capable of being that petty.”
“I know that. I only said I would deserve it. I cannot imagine that we will never argue. I know that one day we will have a disagreement. Possibly a very bad one. If I thought this was all going to be sunshine and glorious sex, I would be a naïve and silly female.”
“You are neither of those,” he assured her with a chuckle. “Glorious, hmm?”
She giggled, nipping at his sensitive neck in punishment. “As if your ego requires any stroking,” she remarked.
“I was not thinking about my ego, actually …” he murmured suggestively, reaching for her hips and rear, sliding his hands with clear appetite and sensuality over them.
“Damien,” she scolded, squirming against his body. “Damien, I’m hungry,” she complained. His hand continued to run the intimate curve of her backside, his fingers slipping beneath the bottom of the shirt so he could reach her bare skin.
His hands and wickedly adept fingers, she decided, were lethal. The grace with which he always seemed to move made for a flow in his touch that seemed perfectly uninterrupted. It was mesmerizing and easily addicting. It took a dizzying five minutes of standing under the enchantment of his touch before she remembered to protest again. Her skin was numb or tingling in slow paths that swirled her entire body, everywhere his clever caress had swept over her. She had to drag herself out from under his weighted spell in order to speak.
“Damien …”
He chose that moment to slide both of his hands up over her belly, under her shirt. His fingers splayed over the heat and softness of her skin as he slowly slid them over her breasts, her peaked nipples being burned by the continuing stroke as he continued to let them flow without stopping over her skin until they reached her shoulders, then her neck, then her hair.
By the time he reversed the route, she was moaning softly, her breath rasping out of her so hard that she began to feel the dizzy rush of hyperventilation. All she could do was cling to his shoulders, feeling muscles shift beneath her fingertips as his arms moved to access her heated body.
“I am hungry, too,” he whispered, pausing to toy with her earlobe and the entire sensitive circumference of her ear. “I believe my appetite for your delicacies will prove to be insatiable, sweetling.”
“I am getting that idea,” she responded breathlessly.
When his hands reached her bottom again, they gripped her tightly and pulled her up his body. He turned toward a nearby countertop, bracing them against it as he slid forward between her knees. He drew her up tight and close so she could only look into his face and his darkly intent eyes. His hands still crept over her, but this time he moved down her belly, over her navel, and on to the softest, silkiest skin he could ever imagine. She gave a little wriggle of momentary protest, but he had her locked up tight around him.
His fingers slid into honeyed heat, intimate places flushed with arousal and nerves that were sensitive and very susceptible to his skills. Syreena gasped, a pleasured sound that made him smile with knowing confidence.
“There now, let’s ease your hunger, Princess,” he mocked her in sexy playfulness.
She laughed at him, a sound crossed between her amusement at his delight in mischievousness, and the incredible response she was having to his manipulation of her pleasure centers.
“Not working?” he asked. “We can try mind over matter, then.”
His free hand closed around the back of her neck, holding her head in a locked grip so she could not look away from his deep eyes. Syreena’s pupils widened as she felt him passing into her thoughts and perceptions. It felt, for a moment, as if he was crowding her inside her own head. But within half a minute, his consciousness had spooned itself against hers, catching on to the rhythm of her thoughts and functions.
Instantly, Damien gave her a new understanding of being touched everywhere at once. This time, she truly did feel him all over her skin, not a single inch of it deprived of an encompassing stroking sensation. She shuddered hard and groaned with unmanageable pleasure. Damien’s mouth fell over hers, muffling her intensifying cries with the play of tastes and tongues. He manipulated her as if he were sculpting art, running with intimacy over every place he had come to know so well. He blended the mastery of touch, kiss, and thoughts together, whipping her up into something light enough to defy gravity. He did not even skip a beat as he freed himself of his clothing and brought himself smoothly inside the trembling trap of her hot body.
His sudden invasion sent her spiking off into uncharted sensations of explosive pleasure. She screamed into the seal of his mouth, clutching him tightly enough for her nails to pierce his skin. He refused to release her from that peak, conning her systems into believing they could maintain the brutal crest the entire time he made fast and fierce love to her. Her wild, gasping reactions and the pulsing hold of her pulled at him like a merciless whirlpool, drawing everything violently toward it without prejudice. He groaned deeply, the cadence of the sound matching the maddening tempo of his thrusts into her.
Syreena couldn’t even breathe anymore to scream. She was arched back into a silent whipcord shriek of blinded bliss. In a sudden frenzy of movement, as if he could not seat himself deep enough within her to ever give his soul satisfaction, he reached the ferocious culmination he was seeking so aggressively.
In a moment, Syreena was able to catch the breath she needed in order to cry out as he finally released her from that mental crest of fulfillment. Her entire body seized fitfully in his grip, and he held her tightly in order to absorb it into himself. She was slick with perspiration, so it was not an easy task. Luckily, she soon settled down with a sudden increase of weight, dropping forward against him. She was gasping for breath, her struggle for air punctuated by the occasional disbelieving giggle.
She laughed even harder when he drew their entwined bodies away from the counter and dropped with obvious weakness onto a nearby bench in the breakfast nook.
“Nice nook,” she chuckled.
“Nice cranny,” he rejoined, wiggling his eyebrows lecherously.
Syreena laughed so hard that she nearly fell out of his lap.
In the hallway, leaning against the wall just outside the entrance to the kitchen, stood Jasmine. She had turned away from the scene a moment before Damien’s turn in position would have revealed her. He was so wrapped up in his new toy, literally, that he had not noticed her observation for even a second.
Jasmine was beginning to realize that she was going to end up paying a heavy price for her monarch’s happiness. Maybe not right away, but sometime very soon, she would be forced to leave his household. The truth of the matter was, she was far too selfish for her happiness for him to ever outweigh her own self-interests. The Lycanthrope had breezed into their life and changed everything in the matter of a heartbeat.
A heartbeat, compared to five hundred years of friendship.
And the heartbeat was clearly going to win.
Jasmine wished she had the guts to stick it out, but again her feelings for Damien interfered. If she stayed, she would end up in a confrontation with Syreena, and it would probably be a very bad one. Damien loved Jasmine, but he was clearly in love with the little Lycanthrope tart. That meant that anything the two women did to hurt one another would end up hurting him instead.
That was an unacceptable consequence.
Jasmine reached up to brush away the single hot tear that had escaped her control.
Whatever would she do without him?
Damien walked through the quiet house looking for Jasmine. Syreena had left in search of something to eat, promising to return soon. He had passed Jas in the parlor earlier, but a glance told him she was no longer there. He followed his senses to the cellar. Blasted out of solid rock, the cellar was a vault of safety in the event that they felt the need to protect themselves as they slept. There was only one entrance, and it was invisible to human eyes. It also required great strength to remove and replace the stone portal leading to it.
He was disappointed to realize Jasmine had chosen to sleep behind it. He understood it was probably because she did not trust the new presence in their household, and he knew he would have been very likely to do the same thing had the tables been turned.
Still, he could not help his moment of dejection. It passed quickly, however, and he decided to let her rest in peace. They would have plenty of opportunity to talk about the situation later.
Meanwhile, he returned to the ground floor, resealing the hidden entrance to the stairways leading down to the cellar. California homes did not often have basements. It was impractical when there were fault lines rocking and rolling every chance they got. No one would even think to look for such a place, never mind a hidden one. That, plus the heavy bolts on the opposite side, made it virtually impossible to discover.
Damien moved back into the parlor and sat down in the seat Jasmine had been in earlier. Sitting on the table across from him was the volume she was currently studying. With all that had happened, he had practically forgotten about the Library. It occurred to him that he had not had the chance to pick up even a single book from the vast hidden Nightwalker vault.
Amused with himself as he recalled exactly what his distractions were, he stood up and left the book untouched. His desire to shower and change before Syreena returned was stronger.
Jasmine waited until Damien was in the shower.
She moved to the book Damien had left untouched and swept it up in protective arms.
The volume was three times as old as Damien was and it held the explanations to a lot of elusive questions. Yes, these questions were probably answered repetitively in the other books in the Nightwalker Library, but the difference was that Damien was not likely to appear there anytime soon. He no longer seemed interested in such information, no longer seemed to need it, so she had no motivation to share it. If he asked her directly, that would be another story. For the moment, she would be more protective of the old compendium.
What Damien did not know, hopefully would not hurt him.