I didn’t get far.
The bastard, wet and as nude as the day he was born, caught me before I’d gone twenty yards, and I had not been slow. He grabbed me and turned me around, and for once, he had dropped the sweet, solicitous, compassionate act and genuinely looked angry. It was a marked improvement.
“What is this?” he asked, holding up the bundle of wet clothes.
I smirked. “Did you think you were the only vampire to try to seduce me? It’s almost a pastime with some. I have a Venetian patrizio who regularly hires me for jobs he could have any of his minions do, only he’s already slept with all of them. I’ve made a fortune avoiding his advances; did you really think you would do better?”
“Advances?” Louis-Cesare put his hands on his hips, looking half annoyed still, and half amused. “I was taking a bath. If I was attempting a seduction, believe me, you would know the difference!”
“So would you,” I said, deliberately letting my eyes roam over the fine lines of his chest, which were what I’d expected, and the dusting of freckles on his shoulders, which were not. Masters using a glamourie would have covered those, seeing them as an imperfection. Which meant—
“You can’t really look like that,” I said before I thought, and it was his turn to smirk.
And to toss the clothes aside before stepping closer. “A glamourie doesn’t fool touch. Feel free to discover for yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. It was a challenge and an attempted seduction, all in one. And a trap, if I was right about his motivations, of the kind that I frankly hadn’t thought he had in him.
What was the idea? One touch of his manly muscles and I would swoon? And follow him around like a little puppy dog, happily agreeing to whatever he and Mircea wanted?
He was a bastard, I decided, but then, so was I.
Which was why I didn’t reach for his chest, despite the fact that he’d pushed it out slightly. Or the strong arms, which he’d unconsciously flexed. Or even the hard muscles of the stomach and torso, although I admit they were tempting.
Instead, I reached around and grabbed him where I’d stabbed him, causing him to jump slightly.
And then to grab me back, only I pushed him away. “I didn’t make the same invitation,” I pointed out.
This one was a fighter, despite the tender facade, because a definite gleam of battle lit those lovely eyes. But he stepped back and held his hands up, conceding my point. And I went back to my former occupation.
The wound had healed, of course; it had been hours. Try as I might, and I tried very hard, I could not find so much as a dimple where the blade had gone in. I found several other dimples, however, and stroked and explored them, until his breathing had sped up and he had flushed a lovely pink.
His skin really was something, not the silk of a woman’s, but soft nonetheless. Almost like very closely shaved velvet. I liked touching it, liked even more the way his pupils expanded and his lashes fluttered and his hands had to clench at his sides to keep from touching me back. But best of all was the growing fire in his eyes, half anger, half . . . something else.
They changed color as his power rose, shading from the clear blue of a summer’s day to a stormier slate, something he seemed unable to prevent. Like certain other responses. I left the lovely arse alone and grasped something else that was begging for attention, and they abruptly flipped all the way to silver.
Good look on him, I thought, like anything wasn’t. I had determined that he had been telling the truth—he wasn’t using a glamourie. Or if he was, it was merely to flush the skin a pleasing peach, which he shouldn’t have had otherwise, but the rest was as God had made him.
God had been in a very good mood that day.
My own was improving rather quickly, as I investigated the other side of the man. At least part of him likes me, I thought, and laughed at his expression as I stroked. And petted and fondled and squeezed, with just the right amount of pressure, and watched his expression tilt from aggrieved toward desperation.
I decided to help him lose a little quicker, because this was going to become torture soon enough, and where was the satisfaction in that? And because I was ready for a little satisfaction myself, although not if I had to forfeit the game for it. But I didn’t think I was going to forfeit.
Make that knew I wasn’t, I thought, laughing, when I scraped a thumb over the end of him and he finally broke.
A decidedly inhuman sound erupted from his throat, and I abruptly found myself on my back. But I had expected it, threw off his hold and sprinted for the river, shucking my gown on the way. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to follow, because I heard no pursuing footsteps.
And then he came out of nowhere and took me down; with no warning, not even a twig breaking or a startled bird erupting out of the undergrowth. Nothing, which was impossible! I was the stalker, the hunter, the one who heard everything.
But all I heard this time was my own laughter, because I had been well and truly caught.
He stared down at me, and the intensity in his face caused me to sober up slightly. That looked less like the expression of an eager lover than a man in genuine pain. “What is it?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. And when he did, it was in a voice unlike any I’d heard from him before. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“You’ve never had me,” I pointed out. “At least not yet.”
But my attempt to jolly him out of whatever was causing that look on his face failed utterly.
“I almost lost you,” he repeated savagely. “For a moment, I thought—”
“For a moment, so did I. I was wrong. So were you.”
He just shook his head. And then buried his face in my chest, and I somehow found myself comforting a shaking master vampire, smoothing his glorious hair, and whispering nonsense things into his ear as you would for a child. But it seemed to help.
He looked up after a moment and grimaced. “You should not be comforting me. I should be doing that for you!”
“Is that why you came out here?”
I watched his face closely when he answered, and there was no deception in it. “Of course; why else?”
I sighed and wondered what to do with him. I had never met a vampire like him. I had never met a person like him. “You did that when I’m the reason you’re displaced in time?” I asked. “We’re more than one hundred years away from my own, and for you—how long has it been for you?”
He answered immediately, without thinking. “Over four hundred more.”
It felt like a gut punch. “So many?”
That time it was me answering spontaneously, something I thought I had long ago trained myself out of.
But I had felt his answer in my bones.
“We have . . . known each other a long time, then?” I said, trying for casual.
But I must not have done a very good job, because he paused that time and stared down at me, searching my face. “Why do you ask?”
It should have been easy enough to turn his question aside, a simple “no reason” or “merely curious” would have been enough. But I had trouble lying to those blue eyes. My God, it was catching!
And then I actually answered him, I have no idea why. And my hand came up to push some of that ridiculous hair out of his face. “I wondered how long I will have to wait. All those centuries—”
It was the wrong response, I thought, seeing his face fall. Or perhaps the right one. For the next moment he was kissing me, and this time, it felt like he would never stop.
He hadn’t answered my question, but that was answer enough. It would be a long time before we met, possibly very long. And it seemed that he wanted to give me something to remember him by.
And he did, kissing the honey off my lips, and then depositing it on my breasts when he laved them with his tongue. And then kissing it away there, too. Should have made even more of a mess, I thought, as he mapped my body, taking his time, making me squirm.
If I’d had any doubts about his veracity as far as our past acquaintance went, they evaporated quickly. He knew exactly what I liked, precisely how to touch me, the perfect moves to send me gasping and laughing and tearing up and writhing on the grass. And I gave as good as I got, once he provided the opportunity, which took some time, and it was a revelation.
Desire, I discovered, felt very different when it was with someone who cared about you, who gently directed you, and who seemed to view your pleasure as his own.
No one cared for a dhampir. I was a trophy, a dare, a quick grope in the night while on a mission to while away time or to quell rising fear. That was all I knew; that was all I had come to expect.
That was not what I found here.
He taught me to go slow, to let our rising passion build, to take time to know his body as he had mine. To listen for his little tells, and he had many of them: a catch in his breath when my teeth grazed him; an audible swallow when I licked along his length; and all over shudder when I swallowed him down.
But he didn’t want to finish that way, and neither did I. That was for when you had days, weeks, months to luxuriate in your lover’s arms; we had this one day, assuming Morgan didn’t show up to finish the job. I was greedy and wanted everything, an entire lifetime in an afternoon, which was stupid and I knew it.
But if an afternoon is all you have . . .
He noticed my agitation, but instead of telling me to calm down, he met my pain with passion, my selfishness with generosity, and my fear with love. Or so it seemed to me. I didn’t know love, had never experienced it, had no idea if this was how it felt.
But his groan when our bodies merged was the prettiest thing I’d ever heard, and the way he looked at me . . .
I will remember this, I thought. It didn’t matter how long the time, or what might be done to tamper with my already shredded memory. I might forget the world, but this, this I would remember.
It was perfect, it lasted forever, and it was still over all too soon.
“You were right,” I told him, when I could speak again.
“About what?” he asked, and I was pleased to see that it took him two tries to get the words out.
“I did notice the difference!”
* * *
“What if they don’t come for us?” I asked, sometime later.
Louis-Cesare and I were lying on the riverbank, not still but again. We’d had a bath, and several more sessions with the optional activities I had originally spurned. We had been very lucky not to shock any passing fishermen. But the sun was starting to slide toward the horizon, and the day was ending, whether we willed it or no.
Louis-Cesare had been gazing up at the sky as if lost in thought, but now those extraordinary eyes met mine. He didn’t ask who I meant. “They will. Rhea and Hilde are both highly skilled.”
“A fact that matters not if Morgan succeeds in her quest,” I pointed out. “She could obliterate the future, and perhaps neither of them will ever be born.
“Perhaps you will not be.”
It was a thought that had really started to bother me. He had told me a little about himself, in between bouts, and it was not encouraging. He was younger than me, younger than this. Younger even than the time we’d just left.
He wouldn’t be born until the 1630s, meaning that if Morgan succeeded in whatever she was doing . . .
He frowned, watching me. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.” I got up, found my ruined dress, and shrugged it back on. I’d never wanted to do anything less, although not because of the state of it. I had seen worse. But because putting it on meant that we were going back soon and I didn’t want to go back.
Frankly, I would have been happy to stay here with him. Not for a day, but forever. I had nothing in Italy, except a bad room above a terrible tavern, a profession that frequently threatened my life, and a father who forgot about my existence until it was convenient. If I never saw that place again, I wouldn’t spill any tears over it.
I let myself think for a moment, looking out over the river and the golden fields beyond, where the wheat was beginning to ripen. The sky was very blue, the forest was very green, and there were flowers, in little pink clusters, in the grass. It was as pretty a picture as anyone could hope for.
I could be happy here.
Or perhaps not, with my head splitting open every time something struck me as familiar. But we could go somewhere else, anywhere else! I had traveled widely, and knew a dozen countries well. We could be happy . . .
Except that we couldn’t, I couldn’t, not while waiting for the day when he disappeared like smoke.
“Dory?”
His voice called me back from my reverie. “Nothing,” I said. “I am in a strange humor today. Alive, dead, alive again, and soon possibly dead once more. . .”
“You will not be affected,” he assured me. “Even in this scenario you hypothesize—”
I had leaves and sticks and tiny flower petals in my hair. I had been trying to comb them out with my fingers, but at that I turned to look at him. He made a pretty picture, sprawled in the grass, but I couldn’t appreciate it.
“I will be affected if you are affected,” I pointed out. “And that is assuming she does not come for me—”
“She?”
“Morgan! In fear that, if she doesn’t end this, in a century or so, I will end her.”
And if he had ceased to be, she would not die well.
Louis-Cesare blinked. Perhaps because the measured voice I had been using had given way to something vicious. And yet it still fell short.
I hated Morgan, but not for the reasons that I should hate her. But for this, for knowledge I didn’t want about a future I would likely never have. And a past that I would never understand.
I’d had a life. I had accepted it. I hadn’t been happy, but what dhampir is ever happy? I had been content.
Now what was I?
Standing on a riverbank, dreaming about things that could never be, things she had inadvertently shown me and then ripped away. It was worse than not knowing anything. It was far, far worse.
“You were not content,” Louis-Cesare said, his forehead wrinkling.
“Are you reading my mind, vampire?” I snarled.
“You were not, nor was I,” he continued evenly, sitting up. “Both of us were wandering, rudderless, uncertain where we fit in in this world, or if we ever could—”
“And then we found each other?” I meant it to be sarcastic; I wanted to distance myself from him. I was too fond already, and it had been less than a day!
Until he looked at me with those guileless blue eyes, that open face that no vampire should have, that completely blind trust. And said a single word. “Yes.”
For the first time, I believed. Not some of it, all of it. Everything he’d said or implied.
And for a moment, I thought about what that meant. About having someone who loved me, who brought me sausages and wine and sticky cakes and did not run from what I was, or flinch back at the touch of my skin, as some of his kind were known to do. Someone who would always be there, whom I didn’t have to leave behind. Someone who was mine.
And not just him. He had let something slip about not being a part of Mircea’s family . . . yet. Meaning that he was at some point in the future.
Meaning that I was.
I didn’t know how to feel about that. My emotions where my father was concerned were all over the place, and didn’t even make sense to me. But maybe they would someday. Maybe they would become something different, something better. Maybe . . .
But not if Morgan won.
It suddenly crashed through me, like the bolt of lightning had done to that mage, exactly what she was trying to take away from me. And the operative word was trying, because it hadn’t happened yet. I was standing here, feeling sorry for myself, mourning a life I desperately wanted . . . and that I still had.
Not now, perhaps, but in some distant future it existed, everything I’d ever wanted in this world. And I could wait for it, oh yes, I could, as long as I knew that it was still out there, that this pervasive loneliness had an end. I could wait as long as it took . . .
But I couldn’t wait for her.
“Where are you going?” Louis-Cesare asked, when I abruptly strode off.
I didn’t answer—until he caught up with me, still trying to pull his trousers on. “To find a way out of this,” I said. “We have to get back to Morgan—”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but there must be another Pythia, here in this time, someone who can help us—”
“I do not believe it works like that—”
“Then we’ll make it work!” I rounded on him, and saw the compassion in his eyes. Compassion that I didn’t want right now; I wanted him to fight!
“From what I understand,” he told me quietly, “the Pythias cannot take someone to a time ahead of their own. Someone must come back—”
“Then we’ll come up with something else! We have to—”
I broke off, because a commotion was happening in the direction of the city. A large one. People were yelling loudly enough that I could hear them from here when the wind was blowing right, and every church bell in town had started ringing madly. Louis-Cesare and I looked at each other, and then scrambled to the path going down, the one I’d been following without realizing it.
It looked like our perfect day was over.