He nodded, taking deep breaths. The thought of Rith going mind-diving sent his protective instincts skyrocketing. But this wasn’t about him, or his reactions to what she was saying. This was about her. “So what happened at the dinner to put you back there, back in your prison?”
She shook her head and released another sigh. “The whole situation suddenly felt the same to me as being in Rith’s home. Go here, sit there, do this, obey. Nothing else is important.”
“Endelle, then. You know she can be a pain in the ass.”
“It’s not that. Did it ever occur to you that you’re all living in the same kind of prison? This is a beautiful villa, but Antony, you’ve been a warrior for thirteen hundred years and it appears to be without end. You don’t do anything except make war.”
“But I choose to serve Endelle.”
“Do you?”
Her expression was so earnest that he was taken aback. He thought for a long moment. “Life isn’t simple, Parisa. Not as an immortal, not as a vampire, not for anyone. There are worse things than what I endure as a warrior or what you’ve endured as a captive.”
He was afraid his words would be offensive to her, but she nodded. She leaned forward and stroked a hand along his back so that her fingers rippled over his scars. “Fiona has suffered more than I ever did,” she murmured. “Like I said, I had three months of being struck by cotton balls and all the while she was a D and R slave.”
He nodded. She didn’t seem quite so distressed.
“Thank you for not coddling me,” she said. “I don’t want to be coddled. I know I’m not strong like you, but I’m trying. I want to be stronger, Antony, I really do. I want to be of use, but I also know it’s going to take some time for me to adjust to everything.” She slid her hand over his shoulder and down his arm, all the way down. He shivered.
She turned his wrist to face her. “This freaked me out at dinner. This is what set me off.”
He leaned forward. “Damn, I’m so sorry but I thought you enjoyed it. In fact—”
“I did,” she cried. “I loved … taking your blood.” Color flooded her cheeks. Was she going to start weeping? “I don’t know if I can explain it but it just became so real while I was sitting next to you that I’d entered the world of the vampire. I guess I felt claustrophobic.”
At that he smiled. “In a building with ceilings fifty feet high, you felt claustrophobic?”
She squeezed his arm. “Yeah. I did.” Then she laughed, a long trill that warmed his heart. Afterward, she leaned forward and rested her head on his forearm.
He shifted slightly and stroked her lovely dark brown hair. It wasn’t fine but coarse. He’d pulled her onto his lap at the Ambassadors Festival, the night Havily had been abducted by Crace. He’d held her close then. She’d gone through so much during that time without being ascended yet. Then she’d lived for three months as a prisoner. Now she was here, ascended, bearing fangs, confused, distressed.
“I can really see how this must feel like just another prison to you.”
She released a heavy sigh. “Yes, it does, but thank you for understanding or trying to.”
“I do understand and you’re right, I sometimes feel like a prisoner of this war.”
“So what do we do?” She remained leaning on his knee.
He kept stroking her hair. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, but he also didn’t want to disturb this time with her. “Well, I start training you to do battle, and after that, let’s bring Fiona home. I think that’s our first duty, Fiona and the rest of the D and R slaves.”
She lifted her head and looked up at him as though seeing him for the first time. “It is that simple, isn’t it. We take one step and then another—”
“—and we try not to let the horror catch up with us.”
“That’s it exactly. Yes, I felt exactly like that. I was sitting there and then I realized, Now I’m a vampire. It turned me upside down.”
He smiled because he’d just realized something himself. “You turned me upside down. I was going along splendidly, behaving myself, except at the Blood and Bite, of course, and the next thing I knew I was smelling tangerines in my villa. Just out of a shower, still dripping, and there you were. The most beautiful woman in the world standing in my kitchen.”
She smiled. “The most beautiful in the world?”
“Yeah.” His voice had dropped an octave again.
She met his gaze, and something flickered in those amethyst depths. “You dropped your towel.”
He nodded and shrugged. “I dropped my f**king towel. Have I apologized for that?”
“There was never a need for an apology, Antony.” Her voice had gotten very low as well. “I had never seen anything so beautiful. I thought I was looking at a god.”
He leaned close and dragged his lips across the line of her cheekbone. “Do you know what I remember about that day?”
“No, what?”
“I remember that you put your hand to your neck and stroked your skin, right about here.” He used the knuckle of his forefinger to touch her throat. “Do you remember?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh. I do. My vein was throbbing.” She drew back. “Right here, pulsing like it was waiting for you.”
He leaned a little closer lowering his knee so that she was forced to move into him. “Is your vein waiting again?”
He could smell a thick wave of tangerine rise from her body, flowing around him, drifting heavily into his nostrils, his sinuses, his brain. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver, sitting the way they were, but he balanced on his hip, slid an arm around her back, and held her in place as he dragged his fangs across her throat.
Here, he sent directly to her mind.
“Oh, God, yes,” she murmured. He felt her fingers now on his throat. As he drew back, her lips parted and he saw her fangs. Oh, shit, he was so in the wrong position to have his c**k start demanding attention.
He rose up on his knees and caught her around the waist with his hands. He drew her close and kissed her. “Will you come to bed with me?”
She nodded, “Uh-huh.” Her lips were still parted, the tips of her fangs calling to him.
He whispered, “My vein throbs for you as well.”
***
Parisa rose to her feet, Antony with her. She dipped down to pick up her shoes. He slid an arm around her shoulders and guided her into the adjacent formal living room, then down the long, long hallway to his master suite. The house smelled sweetly of his rich sage mixed with leather and the musk of his skin.