"Really, Antonio," Lady Kathryn said, "can you not wait until you have her under the sheets?"
Cheeks hot with embarrassment, Vicki looked over Antonio's shoulder to see the ghost standing in the kitchen doorway, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
Antonio muttered an oath as he loosened his hold on Victoria and turned to face the intruder. "I have not seen you for days and now you appear?" Though his voice was gruff, Vicki didn't miss the underlying note of affection. "Be gone with you, spirit!"
Lady Kathryn laughed again as she glided into the room. "Are you two so caught up in each other you would let the house burn down around you?" She gestured at the stove.
"Yon dinner is aflame."
"Oh, no!" Vicki ran to the stove and opened the door. The chicken wasn't on fire, but it now resembled charcoal more than chicken. She pulled the roasting pan from the oven, uttering a wordless cry of pain as the hot metal burned her hand.
Antonio was beside her in an instant. Taking her injured hand in his, he bit his finger hard enough to draw several drops of blood, which he spread over the angry burn on her hand.
"What are you doing?" Vicki exclaimed, and then murmured, "Oh, my," as the throbbing pain receded to a dull ache and then disappeared.
She looked up at Antonio, shocked beyond words at what had just happened. She looked down at her hand, which was healing before her eyes, the raw, red patch fading until only healthy pink skin remained.
"That's… it's… " She stared up at him, stunned.
His gaze met hers, filled with the knowledge of what she was feeling, thinking. Gently, he lifted her hand and brushed a kiss across her palm. "I am sorry I ruined your dinner."
She nodded. Did all vampires possess this wondrous gift of healing? If so, he should be saving lives, healing children, fighting disease in every corner of the world.
"No," he said quietly. "It does not work like that."
"Why not? Why would it work for me and not for someone else?" She looked at his ravaged cheek. It looked better each time she saw him. In the places where it had healed completely, there was no sign of a scar. "Think of the lives you could save."
"No, my sweet one. It works for you because we have… " He hesitated to say the word.
"We have what?"
"We are bonded, heart to heart and soul to soul."
At his words, Vicki's heart began to pound. "We are? When did we do that?"
"When I first tasted you."
"But… Falco drank from me." Fear twisted in her gut, worse than anything she had ever known. "Does that mean that I'm bonded to him, too?"
"No."
"Why not?" She lifted a hand to the stitches in her neck. "He took far more blood than you did."
"Because I tasted you first," Antonio said. "But, more importantly, you gave yourself to me willingly."
"And if I hadn't?"
"There would be no bond between us."
"That's how he found us, isn't it? Because he took my blood?"
Antonio nodded. "But he has no power over you."
"Well, this has been most enlightening." Lady Kathryn hopped down from the top of the refrigerator where she had been sitting and observing. "There's just nothing like young love, is there?"
"Young?" Antonio asked with a wry smile. He had not been young for over five hundred years.
"Perhaps I should have said new love," Lady Kathryn amended airily. "Behave yourself, Antonio. Do not bed the girl until you have wed the girl."
And with that bit of unexpected motherly advice, Lady Kathryn vanished from the room.
"She's quite a character," Vicki remarked.
"Indeed," Antonio said dryly.
Lady Kathryn's talk of marriage left Vicki feeling oddly nervous. As much as she cared for Antonio, as much as she loved him, if she was being honest, she knew they could never marry or have a normal life together. The thought saddened her. Not wanting to dwell on it, at least not while he was in the room, she pasted a bright smile on her face.
"Well," she said, going to the refrigerator and pulling out a large bowl, "it looks like I'll just be having salad for dinner."
" Victoria?"
"What?" She pulled a fork from the silverware drawer and placed it on the table, along with the salad bowl and a bottle of Italian dressing.
"Something has upset you."
"I'm not upset."
"You cannot lie to me, my sweet. What is it that troubles you? Was it Lady Kathryn's reference to marriage?"
"Why should that upset me?"
Moving up behind her, he placed his arms around her waist and drew her back against him. "I would like nothing more than to make you my wife."
"Would you?" she asked tremulously.
"You know I would." His breath warmed her cheek. "I can think of nothing that would give me more pleasure, but you would not be happy as the wife of a vampire."
When she started to protest, he turned her in his arms and silenced her with a kiss.
"You would not mind at first, but in time you would come to resent the hours that I cannot be with you, just as you would come to resent the fact that the years had no claim on me."
She wanted to argue with him, to tell him that she loved him, that the differences between them didn't matter, but in her heart, she knew they did, knew that everything he said was true. In time, she would grow old and frail while he remained young and robust.
Breathing deeply, he buried his face in the wealth of her hair. "When Falco has been destroyed, I will take you home to your old life."
His words dropped like cold stones into the pit of her stomach.
"It is for the best, my sweetest one."
"Whose best?" she cried. "Not mine! If you loved me, you wouldn't want to leave me!"
"I do not want to leave you, but in time you would come to hate me, and that is something I cannot bear."
Whispering, "I don't want to live without you," she pulled his head down and kissed him, pouring all her love and all her desire into that one searing kiss.
Antonio moaned deep in his throat as hunger and desire warred within him. For a moment, he returned her kiss with all the passion and yearning in his heart and then, with a strangled cry of despair, he put Vicki away from him and fled the room before his hunger and his desire dragged them both down a path that could only lead to disaster.
Chapter 29
Fleeing the castle, Battista sought refuge in the dark of the night. Finally, after centuries, he had found a woman to love, a woman who accepted him for what he was. A woman who wanted him.