Sex, Lies, and Vampires

I smiled into his neck and relaxed against him, my body still trembling with little aftershocks of pleasure. I didn't want to put a name to what I was feeling for him, I just wanted to enjoy it.

May God have mercy on you, Beloved, for you will find none in me.

"I'm not going to grow fangs now, am I?"

"No."

"Good." I traced a swirly pattern idly across the curse that bound Adrian's chest, admiring both the strength he possessed and the gentleness he'd shown me. "I don't think I could cope with a bloodlust, although I have to admit I find it incredibly sexy when you… you know… dine on me. But I can do without the fang issue. So, any guesses as to why yours suddenly went retractable?"

He opened one eye and gave me an outraged look.

"Oh, right. Recovery time. Sorry. I forgot that men don't like to chat right away. You rest. I'll just lay here snuggly warm and remember how wonderful it felt when we merged together."

He groaned as my hand slid down over his belly. "Is there any reason you feel the need to draw wards on me?"

I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at his chest and stomach in growing horror. "I didn't… I mean, I don't remember how… I've never really drawn wards before."

"You drew a binding ward on Sebastian," he answered, both eyes open now, his irises a speculative light blue. Glimmering faintly in the dim gray light that seeped in through the curtains, an intricate pattern of green spread across his chest and down over his stomach. Beneath the swirls and curves and dips of the pattern, the harsh, sharp lines of the curse glowed red. "It takes a strong ward to hold a Dark One."

"I know I did it, but I don't know how! It just happened!"

His disbelief was strong in my mind. I shook out the mental welcome mat and allowed him in to see the truth for himself. "You must have had some sort of training. People do not just draw powerful binding wards by accident."

"It's kind of odd having you in my head," I mused, running my finger along one silky auburn eyebrow, smoothing out the frown that had formed. "I'm not quite sure I like it. Except when we… you know. Then it's really fabulous. And before you say what I know you're going to say, no, I haven't forgotten any Charmer training. I was never trained. Not formally. I met with a Wiccan a couple of times, that's all."

"But something happened to you, something so horrible you will not allow me access to the memory." His fingers touched my left cheek. What happened to you, Hasi? What happened, to leave the left side of your body weak, and a dark place of sorrow in your heart?

I looked away, biting my lip against the unexpectedness of his endearment (Hasi, a literal translation of "bunny," is a German term often used by lovers), and needing to pull away from his questions.

"I'm not allowed to ask?" His voice was a deep velvet rumble along my skin that had me shivering in sensual delight.

"No, you can ask. It's only fair, since you've put up with me asking you all sorts of personal questions." I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I'd been more intimate with him than with any other person, and looked him dead in the eye. "I killed my best friend when I was twenty. I had a stroke after that."

He stared at me, plainly waiting for more. I curled up on his chest, hiding myself so his cerulean eyes couldn't see into my soul.

"That is all you are going to say? That is all the explanation you are going to give me?"

"The stroke is why my smile is crooked, and why my left side isn't as strong as the right," I said to his nipple. Beneath my cheek, his chest rose and fell, warm and strong and alive, and I wondered how anyone could think of a Dark One as the undead.

It is a matter of some misconception, the silky voice whispered through my mind. Why did you kill your friend?

I heaved a mental sigh and knew I wasn't going to get away with not explaining the whole of my painful past. I stroked along his chest, feeling the slight tingle of the curse as my fingers crossed the path of its pattern. "I told you I couldn't charm the curse that binds you. That's not only because I don't exactly know how to charm, but because the one time I did try, my roommate ended up dead, and I spent three months in the hospital after having fried my brain."

Adrian's mind curled itself around mine as memory of that horrible night filled me, images dancing before my mind's eye of Beth's smiling face as she urged me to try to untangle the curse woven into an altar cloth said to have been owned by Tomas de Torquemada, the infamous Spanish inquisitor.