Sex, Lies, and Vampires

I leaned forward to kiss him, changed my angle of attack, and flicked my tongue across the tip of his nose instead. He looked startled by the gesture, just as I intended. "You know, I've never been one to buy into that whole fate thing. I've always believed that life is what you make it, and as I fully intend to spend the rest of mine with you, I'd appreciate it if you weren't quite so doom-and-gloom and 'I am the Betrayer, I must perish!' and start thinking about ways to beat your brother, because I'm not giving up on you. On us. So let's talk about Saer and what his weak spots are. I understand that he wants power, and heaven knows he certainly has that with Asmodeus's ring, but what does his Beloved have to do with it? And why wouldn't he Join with her if it would give him back his soul?"

Adrian sighed a long, put-upon sigh, one that had me smiling to myself. I knew how hard he struggled to maintain his bad-boy image, but I also knew that his Betrayer days were over. It was time he realized that he'd been dealt a bad hand, but now the deck had been reshuffled and I was dealing. "For a Dark One to Join with a Beloved means his life is bound with hers. Their souls are entwined and cannot be separated."

I ignored the pointed look he gave me and nodded.

"Thus any decisions he made would affect her, and vice versa. The type of power Saer seeks would require him to forfeit not only his soul, but that of his Beloved as well."

"And he doesn't want to damn an innocent woman that way," I said, nodding again.

Adrian shook his head. "I would like to believe that Saer could not hand over his Beloved, even without having Joined with her, but the truth is simply that only she can make the decision to submit to a demon lord. Saer, on his own, cannot force her."

"Oh." I thought about that for a few minutes as the train stopped at a station, a couple of people leaving, but more getting on. Adrian peered at each person intently, relaxing only when everyone settled into their seats. "So he hasn't Joined with her because she won't give herself up to a demon lord, and Saer needs to be able to do that to get the power he wants. Got that. But why is he trotting off to see her now?"

"He has the ring," Adrian answered grimly, glancing out the window. There wasn't any sun to be seen, it being a typical rainy English day, but the gray outside was lightening significantly. "He will Join with Belinda, then use the ring against her to force her into compliance with his plans. It is the only way he can do so."

My heart sank. Not only had I screwed up royally in failing to rescue Adrian's nephew, now my stupidity had damned an innocent woman to an eternity as a demon lord's slave? "Crap!"

"Exactly," he agreed, watching as the next station's advance warning signs flashed by. "We will get off here. I cannot risk being caught out in the full light of day."

"Do you know Saer's Beloved?" I asked, more to distract myself from wallowing in guilt than because I really wanted to know. I followed Adrian off the train and through the small suburban station.

He shot me an odd look as he pulled up the collar of his coat.

"You called her Belinda," I pointed out. "I wondered if that meant you know her."

"Yes, I know her. She is… she was… I mated with her. You will please go ask that taxi if he is free. If he is, I will join you and we will go to Belinda's pub. If we hurry, the light should not harm me."

I grabbed his arm and shoved him into a corner of the room, out of earshot of the few people trickling in and out of the station. "You mated with her?"

He frowned, just as I knew he would, but at that moment I wasn't overly concerned about his emotions. "Yes. Did you think I was a virgin?"

"No, of course not, but you don't just blurt out something like that. And especially you don't use the word mated. It sounds so… so… animalistic."

"It was animalistic," he answered, still frowning. "I thought at first she was my Beloved, but as soon as I merged with her"—I ground my teeth, pushing down hard on the need to rail at his cavalier manner of flaunting his ex-lovers at me—"I realized she was not. We engaged in sex for a few months. That's all there was to it."

"New rule," I said, releasing his arm to shake my finger at him. "No introducing lovers without warning. No using the word 'mating' in a sentence mentioning said lover. And absolutely, positively no warm remembrances of your fun time in the sack with her!"

"You are overreacting," Adrian said. "You were not a virgin, and yet I did not demand to know everything about the two men you were with before you gave yourself to me."

"How do you know it was just two men?" I asked, momentarily distracted from my diatribe.

His eyebrows rose.