Chapter 36

Chapter Thirty-Six

O leg strolled along the back terrace that overlooked what Luana had once called his moon garden. The shape of the garden mimicked a crescent moon that curved out from the house, its tips leading to winding paths through the evergreen forest behind the house.

The lushness of the moon garden reflected the climate of the subtropical coast, and the plants looked more like a Mediterranean paradise than a formal European garden.

Fragrant citrus trees mingled with waving palm trees that wintered over thanks to the microclimate that survived even on top of the hill overlooking the sea.

Wrought iron arches crawled with fragrant, white-blossomed jasmine. Carefully clipped gardenias and camellias lined the pathways. All the flowers were white, heavily fragrant, and luminous under moonlight.

Now the whisper of the wind through the pine trees was joined by the cooing of six pigeons Tatyana’s mother had sent her from home.

When Tatyana had told him the birds were coming, he felt an unexpected lightness in his chest. It pleased Oleg that she would keep pets in his home, and he immediately ordered supplies to build a large aviary and a dovecote at the back of the garden in a sunny spot that would be warm enough for the birds but sheltered from the wild animals that lived in the forest.

He and Mika had finished the structure in a matter of hours with the help of his brother Lazlo, just in time for the truck from Sevastopol to arrive with two heavy chests of Zara’s gold, the birds from Tatyana’s mother, and more homemade food than half a dozen vampires could eat in a week.

Tatyana had let the birds loose in the aviary and spent two hours sitting with them and whispering secrets as he tried not to listen in.

When she’d returned to the house before dawn, her expression seemed slightly more relaxed, and Oleg had been encouraged to see peace on her face instead of anger.

But that night as he walked through the moon garden, Oleg heard her crying.

He walked down the path, past the massive reflecting pool in the middle of the garden where a delicate fountain shot water upward in a crescent-shaped fan.

She was leaning against the trunk of the small apple tree, staring at the ground where his old gardener’s body had been found on the night he came for her.

“My little wolf,” he whispered. His heart ached because there was nothing that pierced the immortal soul like the sting of regret.

Oleg walked over, and just as Tatyana was turning, he bent down, picked her up in his arms, and cradled her in his lap.

“Oleg, I don’t have the energy to fight with you right now.”

“Stop.” He pressed his lips to her temple. “No lessons tonight.”

He had spent the past week teaching Tatyana the basics of using her amnis. He’d taught her to draw it over her skin like a shield. He’d watched as she learned the beginnings of control over her instincts, calling on the water with clumsy but potent power.

Every moment had been like pulling teeth.

His little bookkeeper was resistant to mental manipulation of any kind now that she had an immortal mind. She was stubborn, determined, and defiant.

And frightened.

“No lessons tonight,” he repeated, pressing her head to his shoulder. “Let me be sweet with you.”

She sighed and pressed her tearstained face against his shoulder. “I thought that was an insult.”

“Only when I’m trying to seduce you.”

“Don’t try to make me laugh when I want to die.”

The air caught in his lungs.

Oleg had a sudden vision of Tatyana, her skin smoking and her glorious blue eyes turning black in the sun’s hateful light. The image was so repulsive that he felt fire whispering in his ear.

Lock her away.

It is for her own good.

His urge to possess her was growing stronger every night.

Oleg forced himself to breathe calmly. “Don’t say things like that.”

“I was walking through the garden and then all of a sudden I was here. And all I could think was: I killed an innocent man, and I don’t even remember doing it. I’m a monster.”

“If you’d been conscious enough to remember, you wouldn’t have done it.” He kissed her temple again. “It is not your fault.”

“You told me that even when I’m not out of my mind with hunger, bloodlust can still overwhelm me, so how do I know?—”

“Tatyana, stop.” He shook her a little bit. “Even in the worst throes of bloodlust, you will still be you. I know you would never have harmed my groundskeeper if you had any kind of control over yourself.”

She let out a shuddering breath but relaxed in his arms. “He’s still dead.”

“And I am not happy about that. But he had a long life. He was a grumpy bastard who was brilliant at pruning fruit trees and had no patience for self-pity, so stop saying you want to die. It won’t bring him back to life.”

She slid an arm around his waist and snuggled closer. “Don’t be sweet with me.”

Oleg grunted. “I will be sweet if I want to be sweet.”

“You shouldn’t.”

He held her close and turned.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Out of the garden.” He had something in mind, and if that couldn’t put a smile on her face, he would have to stoop to asking Oksana for advice.

He didn’t want to ask Oksana.

“I have something to show you,” he said.

“I can walk.”

“I know you can.” He carried her toward the house. “But why walk when I am willing to carry you?”

He pushed the door open with his foot, setting Tatyana inside as he went to light the lamps that would illuminate the space properly. “Have you ever heard of the Amber Room?”

In the darkness, he heard her suck in a breath. “The room made entirely of amber panels in the Catherine Palace in Saint Petersburg?”

“I saw the original room once.” He lit an oil lamp set into a niche in the wall, and gold light filled the space. “Before it was destroyed by idiotic humans.”

Tatyana slowly walked to the center of the room. “I thought they reconstructed it.”

“The reconstruction is not terrible, but the amber doesn’t have the same quality as the original.” He walked to the next lamp. They were set at even intervals around the room. “Now this is not a reconstruction?—”

“Oleg.” Her voice was breathless. “What is it?”

He lit the last lamp and turned to see her spinning in the center of the room. “This was inspired by the Amber Room, but it is my own creation.”

Like the original Amber Room, the walls had been layered in gold, but instead of a pure amber overlay, Oleg had envisioned an amber glass mosaic that danced in the candlelight, a garden of mosaic flowers illuminated by flame and mirror so that every part of the room appeared lit from behind by sunlight.

“Oh my God. It’s so beautiful.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “Why is it so beautiful?”

“Because you see more now than you ever could as a mortal.”

Oleg closed the door and latched it so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Then he went to the center of the room where Tatyana was turning in place, taking in every corner of the exquisitely decorated room.

He wanted to make her smile. He wanted to make her think of anything but ending her newly immortal life.

Oleg took her hand and lifted it over her head, then spun her around. “Do you still dance?”

She looked up at him, her eyes swimming a little from the unexpected spin. “What?”

“When you were a child, you studied dance. One does not simply stop being a dancer because their mother cannot afford classes.” He spun her again. “Do you still dance?”

She frowned. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I became a bookkeeper, not a ballerina.”

Oleg kept her fingers woven with his. “Take off your shoes.”

“What?”

“You’re wearing stockings, yes?”

“I’m wearing socks.”

“Take off your shoes.”

She toed them off, and Oleg kicked them to the edge of the room.

“Releve.”

Tatyana’s back stiffened, and she rose onto the ball of one foot, the other knee bent with her foot braced against her leg.

Holding her hand, Oleg pulled her arm gently away from her body and into second position. Her posture remained erect as Oleg walked her around, twirling her in the center of the glittering room like a tiny figurine in a jeweled box.

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, watching the play of candlelight and shadow in the golden room, watching herself move in the mirrored panels that reflected the light.

She was wearing loose pants and an old T-shirt, but she was luminous. Exquisite.

“You don’t stop being human when you become immortal,” Oleg said. “If anything, it makes you more human, not less.”

He didn’t stop turning her, and her body, newly fortified by amnis and elemental power, didn’t tire.

“Your senses are greater. Your desire is greater. Your appetite is greater .” Oleg stopped and walked toward her, drawing her hand to his chest.

His heart wanted to thump. He could feel the cold organ warming at the feeling of her touch. What are you doing, you sentimental fool?

The enchanted expression on Tatyana’s face made him ignore the voice in his head telling him to keep his distance.

She relaxed her feet to standing and her blue eyes were glittering. “I haven’t done that in years.”

“This room took me over a hundred years to make. I couldn’t have completed it exactly to my vision if I was human.”

Oleg kept his eyes on hers and saw her mouth form a small O. Do you understand now, little wolf?

“You didn’t choose this life,” he continued, “but you can make the most of it if you want. You can dance on mountaintops and pirouette on the seafloor. But you cannot do any of that if you live in regret or wish that you were dead.”

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from hers. Her clear blue gaze captured him, and the careful words he’d been about to say caught in his throat. A strange, creeping awareness teased the edges of his mind.

Deep behind the cage of his ribs, Oleg’s heart gave a single thump. “Tatyana Vorona, I would see you dance.”

She stood on her toes again, but this time she offered her mouth to him in a slow, velvet kiss that stirred his blood and drenched him in heat.

Careful.

Careful.

She was stronger now; he couldn’t break her.

But can she break you?

Tatyana seduced his mouth, her lips moving with aching tenderness as she learned the curves and lines of his kiss.

She had no elemental control, so when her amnis crawled from her body and slid over his skin, Oleg hissed in pleasure, ignoring the unconscious intrusion of her energy into his.

Her amnis was as eager as her mouth.

His cock roared to life, thrilled by the naive intimacy as her power curled and melded with his own.

Tatyana had no idea how forward and how vulnerable she was being. If Oleg had his way, she would never know. He would bind her to him so thoroughly, she would never want another lover and never know what she’d offered him in innocence.

She opened herself to him, and his amnis slipped along her own, thrilling with the slow, sensual caress of power against power.

Her amnis was fresh and cool, like fog covering a banked fire. He lifted her shirt and pressed his hands to her back. “I want skin.”

His fangs were down when she lifted her arms and he pulled the shirt over her head, leaving her in nothing but a thin satin slip that did nothing to hide her breasts.

Oleg picked her up and walked to the wall where candlelight illuminated the glass and the mirror mosaic, reflecting her bare skin as he drew the satin up and over her head.

She shivered in the cool night air, her nipples coming to hard little points, so he covered them with his mouth and brought the fire to his skin, heating both of them with his body.

Tatyana gasped and arched her back against the wall, pushing her breast into his mouth as he teased one with his tongue and the other with clever fingers that had spent too many months imagining this single act to rush.

“Do you like that?” He scraped his fangs along the rise of her breast. “Tell me what you like.”

“I can’t.”

Her breath was already coming in pants, and Oleg knew she’d never felt pleasure like this because—like all her senses—this sensual storm was heightened. Her nerves were exquisitely tuned to his energy, and he was going to linger, taking full advantage of her newly primed responses.

He lifted his head and licked the top of his tongue along her collarbone. “I’m going to taste you properly now.”

She tried to reach for his cock, but Oleg wasn’t ready to let her out of his control.

“Not yet.” He pressed her wrists to her sides. “Keep them there, or we stop.”

The intimacy was so intense Oleg knew he was going to have trouble controlling his fire. His element was sparking on his skin, and she didn’t have the control yet to counter him should his fire come to life.

But she would. Soon, she would.

Kneeling in front of her, he slipped his thumbs in the waistband of her leggings and pulled them down.

The scent of her arousal, potent before, enveloped him, and he growled low in his throat, lapping his tongue up the inside of her thigh as she trembled.

“Lift.” He patted one leg and she raised it, allowing him to toss the leggings across the room. Oleg looked up, and Tatyana rose above him like a goddess, her gold hair falling over her shoulders and her skin lit with amber glass, mirrors, and candlelight.

She was breathtaking.

“Some night I am going to draw you like this.” He trailed a single finger down the inside of her thigh as her body melted in pleasure. “You will stand just like this, and I will draw you.”

“Please,” she whispered. “I can’t?—”

“Yes, you can.” He lifted her leg and put it over his shoulder, baring her sex to him, and then he didn’t make her wait any longer.

Oleg feasted on her, gripping her ass and lifting the wet center of her desire into his mouth, lapping at her folds until the pointed tip of his tongue reached her clitoris and her amnis went wild.

She reached out, gripping his hair in her fists as her body exploded in pleasure. She sobbed, and he drank in the sounds of her climax, reveling in the burst of elemental energy that drew to her. The water in the room clung to her skin and spread over his, turning to steam as his body heated.

She cried out, “Enough!”

It wasn’t enough, but if he kept eating her, he wouldn’t stop.

Oleg pulled away from her pussy and looked up, licking his lips as he met her pleasure-flooded eyes. He tapped the inside of her thigh, just to the left of where her flesh was soft and full. “I’m going to bite you.” He licked at the spot. “Just here. If you don’t want me to?—”

“Yes.” Her lips were full and swollen with blood. Her fangs were long in her mouth.

Oleg struck without a second of hesitation, sinking his fangs into the soft flesh as the shock of her pleasure made Tatyana fall forward.

He caught her, lowering her to the ground even as he continued to drink her in.

Too much. Too much.

He felt her amnis mingle with his own.

Dangerous. Tempting. This was how blood bonds were formed.

He pierced his tongue, healing the small wounds with the blood on his tongue before he licked up her body, cleaning every drop from her thighs and her sex before he kissed her belly, her breasts, and back to her mouth.

She was drunk with pleasure as she reached for him, but he was still fully clothed.

He stood and stripped off his linen shirt and wool trousers, catching the hungry stare she sent his cock when it sprang from the confinement of his undergarments.

Oleg smiled and gripped it in his fist, shaking his head a little bit. “Ah-ah.” He knelt down beside her. “You don’t get your mouth on that until you can control your fangs a little better, volchitsa.”

The corner of her mouth ticked up. “Fair.”

She was so beautiful in that moment Oleg forgot to breathe.

Stretched across the wooden floor, lying on her side so the round curve of her bottom was mirrored back at him from a dozen angles and her breasts glowed in the gold light.

“You’re beautiful.”

She didn’t hesitate. “So are you.”

Oleg lay next to Tatyana and pulled her body over his. “The floor is cold.”

“I didn’t even notice,” she whispered, staring at his mouth.

She was energy drunk, feeling her amnis stirring in his body as their elements mingled together. It was startling intimacy and a boundary that immortal lovers rarely crossed unless they were mated.

But Tatyana didn’t know that.

He lifted her and she braced her hands on his chest, leaning forward so her breasts made his mouth water to taste her again. But his cock was screaming for relief, so he lifted her, angled her over his aching erection, and slowly invaded the waiting heat of her body.

Bliss.

Oleg closed his eyes, willing his climax to hold off until he could make her come again.

“Ride me.” He gripped her hips with his hands and moved her body up and down his shaft. Once she had a steady rhythm, he kept one hand on her hip while he brought his other over to stroke the swollen bead of her clitoris with his thumb.

“Oh God.” She shook her head. “I can’t. Not again.”

“Yes, you can.” Tension was building at the base of his cock and his balls were tight and ready to come, but he held off, waiting for her to climax again.

He reached for her hand on his chest, keeping the rhythm of his thumb steady as he brought her wrist to his mouth and licked along the delicate, blue-veined skin, imagining what her fangs would feel like at his neck.

The urge to feel her teeth break his skin only ratcheted up the fire sweeping through his body. No one had bitten Oleg since Luana. Imagining Tatyana’s teeth in his neck was a riotous thought.

“Oleg?” Her body began to shake, and the water in the room drew to her skin again, drenching her as it dripped on Oleg’s bare body and steam rose in curling puffs where their flesh met.

The room was filled with a gold mist when Oleg slowly slid his fangs into Tatyana’s wrist, lapping at her vein as her body exploded again. She convulsed in pleasure, and he let his climax rip loose.

He threw his head back and released months of pent-up energy in a surge of elemental power. The flames in the candles grew until they nearly reached the gilded ceiling, and his hips arched, driving deeper into Tatyana’s body as flames burst to life over his shoulders.

Her energy rose up and matched his with unexpected control. Mist fell over them both, dousing the fire before it could burn out of control. Tatyana’s climax continued to roll through her in a slow wave as she fell forward, her skin sizzling against Oleg’s when she collapsed on his chest.

Oleg’s mind was spinning in pleasure, release, and silent shock. His amnis twined with Tatyana’s in a spiral that wrapped around them both and pulled so tight that it nearly choked him.

The fire was churning through his veins, confused and delighted by the revelation of Tatyana’s amnis spinning through his system.

He felt everything. Her pleasure, her fear, her desire and the aching need for tenderness. Her energy whispered along his own, and his amnis embraced it without reservation, without doubt, and without reserve. She was in his blood, and his element didn’t only accept her.

It demanded more.

“That was…” She kissed the skin on his chest, just where his heart gave a reluctant thump. “I don’t have words.”

Neither did he. Oleg grunted something under his breath and put his arms around the delicate woman who curled onto his chest and released a deep sigh.

The woman who might have just destroyed him.