Sex, Lies, and Vampires

He closed me out of his mind, gently but firmly pushing me back so that I could still feel his emotions but not read his thoughts. I didn't need to read them, though—the regret and sadness that stained the happiness of our Joining were enough to tell me that he still believed he would not survive the next meeting with his brother.

"Hey! I thought we Joined?"

Adrian stirred as I prodded him with my toe. I refused to allow myself to be distracted by his sheer masculine beauty as he slept before the now-dimmed fire, the light of the candles casting a golden glow over his skin. He slept on his back, one hand on his chest, his face relaxed and so handsome it all but stole my breath. The dark smudges of lashes parted, and a cool, icy blue regarded me standing before him wrapped in a peach-colored towel.

"You took a bath without me?"

I smiled to myself at the accusation in his voice. "The sun is going to go down in an hour. We have a lot to do, and you were sleeping so soundly, I figured you needed the rest more than you needed to frolic in a soapy tub. Besides, we have to have something to look forward to."

His eyes went dark as he propped himself up on one elbow, his hand caressing my bare calf in a way that had me shivering with want. "Do you honestly believe that we need to save such treats against potential boredom?"

"No," I said, dropping the towel to kneel beside him. "I don't think there's enough time in all eternity to get bored with you. I have a feeling you're going to be infinitely interesting."

"Mmm," he agreed, pulling me down across his chest, his mouth moving over my breast with a warm, wet heat that immediately drew answering fire in other, more secretive parts of my body.

"Adrian, my love, we don't have time," I protested, albeit weakly, as I tried not to melt onto him. My hands ignored my commands to stay put and stroked a path down the thick ropes of muscle on his arms. His teeth grazed my nipple before he turned his attention to the other one, his mind and body humming with simultaneous satisfaction and unfulfilled need.

"To hell with the time," I murmured, giving in to our shared desire.

My feelings exactly, he thought, his mouth moving lower on me as he positioned me beneath him. His hair trailed like black skeins of silk down my belly as he parted my legs, my entire body tingling as his stubbled cheeks brushed against my sensitive flesh. I gave up trying to hold on to a thought, and allowed my being to merge with his.

"Why did you ask if we Joined?" he questioned my shoulder an eon or two later. "You made the choice to take my blood despite my pleas for you not to. Your regret now—"

"I don't regret it," I interrupted as he levered himself upward to peer down at me with suspicion. "Not one bit. I might be a reluctant newcomer to your world, but you truly are everything I've ever wanted in a man. Other than that whole eternally damned thing, that is, and I'm fairly certain we'll be able to work that out somehow."

"Then why did you ask me if we were Joined?"

I kissed the furrow between his brows, and accepted his hand when he got to his feet. "Because," I answered, wrapping the towel around me. Adrian didn't seem to feel the least bit self-conscious as he stood before me starkly male, his body all hard lines and muscle, but I was much less perfectly made than he. "I looked while I was in the bathroom, and nothing seems to be changed. In me. Does it take a while before the effect is seen?"

"Effect? What effect?"

"The Beloved effect. Or whatever you want to call it. Look." I smiled and pointed to the left side of my face. "See? It's still lopsided. And my leg and arm feel the same, too."

His frown deepened until enlightenment suddenly dawned in his eyes. Then his face went stiff, as if a mask had dropped into place. "You believed you would be made perfect when you Joined with me."

"Well, yeah! Isn't that part of being immortal?"

"No." His voice was a harsh whisper that disturbed the silence of the room, but it was his eyes, his expressive eyes, that haunted me. Shuttered and flat, they were empty of all emotion. "In the case of a Dark One and his Beloved, immortality merely refers to an inability to die of natural causes. It does not mean that physical imperfections are eliminated."

"Well, hell!" I stormed, my hands on my hips as I glared at him. "Why didn't you tell me that?"

His entire body went still as I tossed my hands into the air and marched toward the bathroom. "I mean, shoot, you could have mentioned that! Here I was hoping that I'd be fixed up when we finally Joined, and now what do I have to look forward to? An eternity of having a weak arm and leg, and a face that isn't quite symmetrical. Lovely. Just lovely."

It wasn't until I was in the bathroom that I realized something was seriously wrong.