Chapter 6

Syreena lay bundled beneath clean, warm covers an hour later, trying to figure out what he had meant by that.

She heard him speaking with Windsong in the next room. Every time he laughed, she had to fight the urge to be curious as to why he was doing so. It was an infectious thing, in no way as dark and mysterious as he was. It made her want to hurry into the room and ask what the joke was.

She wanted to hate him, but she realized it was impossible. She had even found his confession of degeneracy to be fascinating and character defining, not a scandalous waste like she had been trained to think. In truth, he was nothing like she had tried to make him out to be. He was painfully courteous, even when she railed at him, charming without malicious intent, and terribly wise despite his claims to be less than judicious in his behaviors both past and present.

The Princess realized she had been taking out her foul mood on him, that she was angry with herself for ending up in this entire predicament. He had borne it patiently, even with an ounce of wisdom and a dash of seemingly infinite serenity.

She sat up in her borrowed bed, pushing back the brown side of her hair, which clung wildly to her bandages. She began to unwrap her hands, suddenly tired of their restriction and the way it made her feel like an invalid. She couldn’t be as liberal with the coverings on her severely damaged head, so she satisfied herself with the freedom of flexing her fingers and her hands. All that remained of the penetrating wounds was the angry red indications of where they had been. They were also very sore, even a bit painful, but it was nothing she couldn’t bear if she put her mind to it. In another few hours it would pass. The more she healed, the stronger she would get.

But it would take a very long time to grow back her hair.

She felt like Samson, shorn to the quick and left betrayed by the resulting weakness. Had love also betrayed her? Like that biblical character had allowed love to become his weakness, had she allowed her love for Siena to weaken her? Or had the Queen’s love for her left Siena vulnerable?

Syreena despised the idea that she was considered a weakness to Siena. Worse yet, one that could be exploited in order to attain revenge.

“Stop it!”

Syreena jolted in surprise as the deep bellow preceded the sudden slam of the bedroom door.

She saw the livid fury in Damien’s eyes and looked down at her bare hands and the bandages in her lap. “I don’t need them—”

“I am not talking about the bandages, Syreena!”

He strode across to her, his irritation evident in every step as she tried to figure out what he was so mad about. Her heart was beating rapidly as he faced her, paused for a moment, and then kneeled down on a single knee before her.

He reached for her wrist, closing long, strong fingers around it and tugging so she would be sure to meet his eyes.

“Are you so bent on punishing yourself?” he demanded of her, his deep blue eyes radiating with the break in his patience. “Will you take on a definition given to you by a madwoman to satisfy that desire? Just because Ruth’s convoluted logic made you her means to get to your sister does not make it the truth!”

“How did—?”

“I swear, you are enough to try the patience of a saint. Or is this what you are trying to attain? Sainthood? No wishes of your own, no ambitions of your own, no love and no lovers? Everything for everyone else? What is it you hope to achieve with this thinking, because I know the purpose escapes me!”

“It escapes me, too!” she bit back defensively. “Unlike you, the world has not been my playground, Damien. One day I was a child like any other, with all the freedoms a child should have. The next I was waking from a fever, and from that very instant my entire life has been mapped out for me. I have been shaped to obey everyone else’s ideas of who and what I should be. It is all I know!”

“It is all you will allow yourself to know. I have seen you stand up against this conditioning before. You did it the day you defied your teachers for Siena’s sake. Why can you not do it for your own sake?”

“Who the hell do you think you are? You are not my keeper! You are not my teacher! I have enough people telling me what to do!”

“I am the one you chose to show that child to just a few hours ago, Syreena. The child inside of this woman who still hopes in spite of herself and in spite of a century of people trying to wash it out of her.”

The kiss.

She knew that was what he meant. A part of her even knew there was truth behind his words. She had indeed shown him that part of herself. She had kissed him simply because she had wanted to. No one had told her to, no one had expected it of her. It had been an impulse of her own desires and her own wishes, born of a longing for things she had relegated to a low position on her list of things she might get around to one day, once she was finished doing everything that was expected of her.

“Stop talking to me as if you know who I am,” she said, her entire body shaking with emotion as she tried to free her hand from his grasp.

“Only when you admit that even you do not know who you are,” he countered sharply.

“Shut up!”

“Very snappy comeback, sweetling. All that education and that is all you can think of?”

She threw out a word of even less sophistication.

It made him laugh. “You know, I think your temper is the only thing left for you to truly lay claim to,” he mused tauntingly.

Syreena smacked him.

A little too hard.

She yelped in pain, nursing her stinging hand to her lips as she groaned and cursed against it. Her only satisfaction was the impression of her fingers just above the line of his beard.

She had also cut his lip against his own teeth, and he touched the bleeding spot with a finger. He looked at it with amusement. “So, I guess Siena is not the only catty one in the family,” he observed.

“Why you—!”

She leapt at him, ignoring all the reasons why she shouldn’t, her hands going right for his smug face. It didn’t even enter her thoughts that he was far faster than she was and could have stopped her quicker than a wink.

He fell onto his back on the floor, his head striking the wooden floorboards with a satisfying whack. She scrambled over him, straddling his waist as she tried to get her hands around his fool neck.

He had her by both wrists, however, and there was no way she could ever overpower him arm to arm. She realized she was in a bit of trouble only when he suddenly rolled her over onto her back, laying his heavy, powerful body over her and trapping her beneath him.

“Get off me!”

He ignored the furious command. Instead, he pressed her hands gently into the floor and looked down into her livid eyes. He felt her trying to dig her heels into the floor for purchase, her entire body wriggling in resistance and in search of escape.

“Keep it up,” he encouraged her with a sly smile. “It is about time you had a little foreplay.”

Syreena gasped, outraged, shocked, and flustered all at once. She froze in place, finally aware of the position he had caught her in. He lay flush against her, and she had managed to put him directly between her thighs.

“Oh …” she said, the strangled sound all she could produce in her shock.

“I should think so,” he agreed, his infuriating grin widening as he looked down at their meshed bodies with clear speculation. “Let us see, now …”

Syreena shivered as he took a second inventory, except all he used was his sense of smell. He started at her neck, the feel of his breath a curious stimulant as he moved his face down over her shoulder, across her throat, and down the arch of her breastbone right between her breasts.

It was a terribly erotic thing to do. She just could not figure out why he was doing it.

Damien wanted to keep her off balance. She did not think in an orderly fashion when she was working on instinct.

In his opinion, she could use quite a bit of that.

He had, however, forgotten to take his own instincts into account. She still smelled of lavender, but now she carried the scent of the night on her as well. Her time out of doors clung to her like a perfume. The only difference was that she had warmed it, robbing it of its biting chill.

Of all Nightwalkers, Lycanthropes had the highest normal body temperature. He had always seen that in his heat vision.

It had never prepared him for being this close to that heat, however.

“Damien, don’t …”

“Damien, don’t what?” he demanded against the fabric of the dress she wore. He lifted his head so he could see her eyes. “What don’t you want? What do you want, for that matter?”

“I …” she stammered, everything so confusing and unexpected. If she could only think! “I don’t want this!”

“This? What is this?” he asked, clearly being obtuse on purpose. He drew the tip of his nose up the long plane of her neck, inhaling her fragrance the entire way. “Don’t do this?”

“No,” she breathed, closing her eyes as she tried not to feel the rush in her pulse that responded to his curious caress.

“So I should do it?” he asked, immediately repeating the action.

Syreena exhaled with a shudder, the tremble vibrating against him everywhere. He closed his eyes for a moment as he absorbed the reaction.

“Damien …” she tried to complain breathlessly.

“Not good enough?” he questioned.

He improved the touch by using his lips instead.

She turned her head in spite of herself, giving him just a little more access, probably not even realizing she was doing so.

Damien was suddenly caught in a web of his own making. The slight gesture exposed the beat of her pulse, the conduit carrying her blood pounding against his mouth in provocative rhythm.

It took a very long series of moments, but he jerked back from the temptation.

Syreena opened her eyes when she felt the abrupt movement. He turned his head aside, cursing under his breath. It was at that moment that she realized she was not the only one reacting to his manipulation. She pieced together the memory of what she had done to disturb him, immediately realizing what she had inadvertently accomplished.

Normally, she might have apologized for her unthinking actions, for baiting him against his own nature, but she realized that she was not at all sorry for it. A tumult of choices opened up to her, and she knew that if she contemplated it too long she would end up doing whichever one she thought she was supposed to do. She would do what was proper; what was expected.

And she did not want to.

Then she understood that this was exactly what he had been trying to make her comprehend. That there was a choice beyond what others chose for her to do, if only she would listen for it.

Damien released her wrists and went to back off her. It had not been his intention to endanger her. He had not meant to stimulate himself in this or any other fashion. He should have realized from the start that it was not a safe game to play with her. She tickled his senses far too easily. She was so different, so unique, and just the sort of thing that he would crave.

Especially since he had tasted her already.

No, wait . The opposite was usually true. He almost never yearned for the same thing twice. Not when it came to a feed. To him it would be like dining on leftovers. Dull, cold, boring.

Confused, he pushed his hands against the floor and rose away from her warm body.

He was not expecting her hands to snake into his hair and pull him back, so he fell easily to her wishes. His nose bumped into her neck and he realized he was precisely where he had started with her.

With his mouth pressed firmly to her pulse.

She chose that moment to lock her strong legs around his hips, seriously trapping him to herself.

Great . Now she grows a will of her own, he thought heatedly.

“Syreena, don’t,” he murmured against her skin, realizing he was pleading with her.

“Syreena, don’t what?” she countered softly, turning the tables with an artful twist.

If he were looking at the saucy little thing from a distance, he would have laughed.

But the truth was he was too close for comfort.

“Syreena, I have not fed tonight,” he reminded her gently.

She did not respond. He felt her turning her head, felt her nose drifting up the column of his neck, over his ear, and into his hair. When he realized she was taking in his scent with slow purpose, he had to bite back the groan welling up in his throat.

Syreena thrilled to his reaction to her play. She did not know why it delighted her so much, but it did. And she knew he was reacting. She could feel it with every inch of her body, wherever he contacted her. He had tried to frighten her away, but she realized she was in no way afraid of him. She probably should have been, especially considering his warning, but she was not.

She understood it was because she trusted him. Because he had never given her reason not to, and had given her dozens of reasons why she should. Mostly, he had proved it by telling her the absolute truth.

A truth that even her sister was unaware of.

“I think I need to return a favor,” she whispered softly into his ear.

Damien had no idea what she was talking about, but it had an almost ominous ring to it. He tried to push away from her once again, but she chose that moment to open her mouth and place it against his throat where his pulse would be.

Amazingly enough, his autonomic systems reacted to the erotic nip and provided her with exactly that.

A pulse.

A Vampire’s neck was a key erogenous zone. And it was very clear as she scraped her teeth across it that she actually knew that. Damien cursed, dragged in a reflexive breath, and instantly tried to roll away from her.

The nimble little minx clung to him like superglue, rolling with him until she was straddling him once more. He reached for her waist and tried to push her away.

“You are the one who wanted to know what I wanted,” she reminded him as she resisted him with an easy twist of her body. Eluding the grasp of his fingers entirely, she swept her neck and throat across his lips, covering his eyes with the silky rainbow of her hair.

This time there was no stopping the sound of hunger that erupted from his throat. She laughed with pure delight when he released the heavy groan of tempted pleasure and reflexively sank a hand into the hair at the back of her head. The noise he made stirred something inside her, an answering beat that sought a certain rhythm with which to match.

“Syreena,” he said breathlessly, “you are playing with fire.”

“I’ve been burned by your fire before,” she countered carelessly.

Damien’s fingers curled into a fist in her hair, letting her know she had flustered him enough to forget to be careful with the bruised tendrils. That felt somehow powerful and exciting. He was always so composed, so holier-than-thou patient, that it just begged her to rattle his cage.

She felt his mouth open against her skin, his tongue drawing a ravenous line up her pulse. A moment later he seemed to realize what he had done in spite of himself, and once again tried to seize her and push her off him.

“Syreena! Stop!”

“Why should I?” she demanded, her determined eyes flashing wicked fire down at him. “You don’t like aggressive women?”

“I like them too damned much!” he bit back.

“Good!”

Her hands became very aggressive very suddenly. Using the way he was pushing against her as a support, she slid them down his chest, onto his stomach, and over his hips. Her path back up was far more blatant, pressing up over his fly, his navel, and on until her nails scraped over his nipples.

Damien’s head jerked back, his entire body twisting to match the ripple of her bold touch. He swore savagely as her fingers ended their journey in his hair, jerking his head forward once more, thrusting his mouth against her pulse yet again.

This time there was no stopping his reaction. Fangs burst out in his mouth, the violence of the eruption making him suddenly dizzy. Instinct took over from that moment, and there was nothing civilized left as he reared back and forward again with blinding speed.

The strike was so quick that she hardly even felt it. But she felt the subsequent closure of his mouth over the opening he had made. Syreena released a strangled sound of utter pleasure. Her body released endorphins and adrenaline in response and she immediately became dizzy with the rush of them. It took a full minute before she realized she had somehow ended up on her back beneath him again.

She gasped a distorted encouragement to him, trapping his head against her, afraid he would stop the overwhelming pleasure of it before she could come to understand it. As he drank of her, he was pressed tightly to her, his body broadcasting his incredible arousal to her with its sudden heat and hardness. His hand was gripping her waist just a little above her hip, the coolness of his fingers fading as they were flooded with the warmth of what she presumed was her blood.

This time she was fully aware of the desire that screamed through him with the madness of a banshee. She was cognizant of the narcotic she was within him. For a moment, she even saw herself and felt herself through his eyes and his body. For that space of time she knew what it meant to be a male, holding the body of a female who aroused and impassioned him beyond reason of thought. She knew the taste of her own blood and the way it flushed and nourished him.

She also knew with perfect clarity how he saw her as a person.

As a whole person.

As she faded back into herself, it was with a sense of unimaginable completion. In a single moment she had experienced the fusion she had sought between her two halves all of her life. She experienced it through the eyes of an outsider who had never seen her as a before or after picture, as a student or an advisor, a falcon or a dolphin. He saw it all. Liked it all. Wanted it all.

If it were possible, she was sweeter and more intoxicating than the first time. The chemicals flooding her bloodstream were like spices and wine, making him drunk with the threedimensional flavor and effect of them. The most startling was the spiking of her hormonal levels as she was roused to passion. He felt the weight of her breasts pressed against him, the heat between the legs which still clasped him so tightly. For the first time in his life, he became aware of the possibility of mortality.

If he were inside her, deeply embedded in her heat and clutched by the pleasure that was even now quaking through her, he could give way to the idea of death without batting a single eyelash. That would be the pinnacle of life itself, he realized. And since it was not likely he would ever be claimed in such a way, at least not anytime soon, it opened up the idea that he could repeat the pleasurable visitation again and again and yet again.

As if in response to his thoughts, Syreena arched up roughly beneath him, convulsing and crying out with a rapturous exultation. He absorbed the buck of her body, felt the swirls of heat racing through her, and could define the scent of feminine musk coating her trembling being.

It was when she went quiet and limp that Damien started to come to his senses again.

And in that single horrific second, he realized what he was doing.

The Vampire Prince launched himself away, falling over in his haste and hitting the floor hard. A bitter taste filled his mouth and he realized he had forgotten the finishing bite.

He tried to move, to get back to her, to stop what could only be inevitable if he did not complete his feeding the proper way.

But he was paralyzed and could not move a single inch further.

All he could do was turn his head and watch as her blood pooled beneath her neck and head.

“Merde!”

Windsong could not help the exclamation that burst out of her when she opened the door to her bedroom and saw the Prince and Princess lying on the floor.

Syreena was laying in an ever-widening ring of her own blood, and Damien was seizing fitfully.

“Lyric! Lyric! ”

She screamed the name even as she stumbled to kneel beside the Lycanthrope Princess, quickly putting her hand on the wound on her neck in order to stem the flow of blood.

“What is it? There’s no need to yell at me, Wind—”

Lyric broke off with a horrified gasp, slapping her hand over her wide-open mouth in her shock.

“Get me my bitters! Hurry, girl!” Windsong commanded harshly, her tone galvanizing the young woman into obeying.

Lyric scrambled for the bag of herbs that always sat at the ready in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Windsong reached to press her hand to Damien’s chest.

“What in the world possessed you, Damien,” she muttered under her breath.

Softly, slowly, she began her most potent healing song shy of the Spirit-singing. The Spirit-singing could not be done without a healthy spirit, and hers and Lyric’s were not compatible with the victims lying on the floor.

She did not break a single note when Lyric skidded back into the room, falling bravely to her knees beside her mentor. Windsong knew that the sight of blood was something Lyric had not faced as yet, so she was proud of the girl when she slid through the liquid to reach Damien’s thrashing head and prevent him from harming himself. She immediately chimed in with her less experienced song, a totally different tempo and composition, meant to soothe a body in shock. Lyric had only learned the song the night before, when they had found the two in the forest. She had learned it on the fly, and now prayed her memory did her good service.

Windsong was in and out of her herbal bag without even looking at it, knowing by touch exactly what was what and where it was located. She quickly removed her hand and smeared a coagulation salve on Syreena’s throat.

The herbs worked swiftly, but the Mistral did not miss a beat in her song to sigh with relief. Instead, she reached back into her bag and then forced a blood-building liquid down the Lycanthrope’s throat. She felt for Syreena’s pulse on the opposite side of her neck, the side that was still healing from the previous night’s encounter with Damien’s bite. It was weak but growing in tempo, and that was all that mattered.

She then turned to her second patient.

Damien’s skin was gray, and then flushed, and then a strange color that looked similar to the tan coloration of a Demon’s skin. For this, Windsong was at a loss. Vampires were totally alien to her. They had no circulation to speak of, no pulse and no breath, and the mysteries of their nutrition, both good and bad, were utterly beyond her skills. All she could do was support him with her song and use the intent of her eyes to encourage Lyric to do exactly what she was doing.

Syreena woke with a sharp intake of breath, her eyes flying open. The first thing she noticed was the bereft feeling of weightlessness.

That is, the lack of Damien’s weight lying across her body.

She had apparently passed out again.

“Damn,” she muttered, sighing in frustration at herself.

She turned her head and immediately winced at the incredible soreness on her neck. Not that she was very much aware of the last time Damien had fed from her, but she didn’t remember it hurting so badly.

She sat up, immediately reaching for a brace as the world spun around her. Her fingers touched hair, and she was aware suddenly that someone was sitting on a chair at her bedside, sleeping soundly with their body bridging the distance between chair and bed and their head on the mattress. She noticed Lyric’s hair color immediately.

“Lyric?”

“I have tried to wake her. She is exhausted, poor thing.”

Syreena looked up at Windsong, who was seated in a similar fashion next to Damien.

Damien.

The Princess darted her gaze to his face immediately, instantly becoming aware that something was terribly wrong.

“Do not move from that bed.” Windsong anticipated her, her stern voice immediately rooting the Lycanthrope in place.

“What happened?” Syreena demanded of the Mistral.

“Perhaps you should tell me. Why on Earth would Damien repeat an act that very nearly killed him the first time?”

“Killed him?”

“He did not tell you that?”

“No,” she said, her stomach suddenly queasy, the room spinning a little faster. “He said he was fine. He made it seem …” She swallowed convulsively. “He made it seem like it was nothing to him.”

“Well, I assure you, it was something. He keeps going cold and hot by turns. I am no expert on Vampires, but I know they have a body heat that ebbs in one direction over the course of the day. From hot to cold and not back again. Not until they feed.” She cleared her throat a little. “Feed normally, that is.”

Syreena’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you know what this will do to him? Will he live?”

“I think so. He did last time. He is a powerful being, not to be underestimated. Besides, Lyric and I have brought you both quite far in a short while.”

Syreena looked down at her hand, which was absently stroking the sleeping adolescent’s head. So much for her first bid at independent choice, she thought painfully, blinking her eyes in an attempt to escape the burn in them. She refused to sit around and weep like a child. It would do no good.

Stop that …

Syreena laughed a bit hysterically as Damien’s earlier words filtered into her thoughts. If only he’d known what he had been setting himselfup for.

I do know. And I would not trade away a minute of it.

Syreena gasped when she realized it truly was his voice she was hearing in her thoughts. She fought off Windsong’s enchanting command and struggled to get out of bed. She pushed past the bewildered Mistral and fell onto Damien’s bed.

“Damien? Can you hear me?”

She could tell what Windsong had meant immediately. Damien was hot to the touch, feeling almost feverish, if such a thing were possible in his kind. She pressed her hands to his chest, feeling his heated skin and taking it in as an affirmation that he was indeed alive.

“Syreena …”

“Shh!” The Princess hushed the Mistral sharply.

“Syreena …”

“Damien! Damien, why did you do it if it was going to hurt you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Stop worrying. I will be okay in time. I am grateful that you are not harmed. I was worried I had hurt you badly .

“No. No, I am okay. Just tired.”

Windsong was baffled. For a minute she thought the Princess had gone straight around the bend, but after a moment of listening to the one-way conversation, she began to get a sense of what Syreena was hearing in her own head.

Of course. Vampires were capable of speaking to the minds of others. Usually it was images and illusions, she mused, but she supposed a conversation would not be such a stretch. She watched with fascination as Syreena leaned close to the Prince, who looked like he was in a sound and peaceful sleep. Apparently he was, but only in body. His thoughts were quite alert, it seemed, and eager to check on the Princess.

Bemused, Windsong stood up and moved to leave the room for a moment. She would give them only a minute, and then she would command them both into sleep. Whether they liked it or not.

The elder Mistral went into the kitchen to check the blue dress that was soaking in the sink. She had been forced to replace the bloodstained garment with a night rail on the Princess, since the dress Syreena had arrived in had been beyond reclamation. She was not worried because she knew the right combination of herbs and agents needed to remove the red staining.

Satisfied with its progress, she immediately returned to the bedroom.

She stopped short on the threshold of the door and pressed her fingers to her lips to keep herself from smiling.

The Princess had crawled into bed next to the Vampire, her head pillowed on his chest and her hands wrapped tightly around one of his as if she were afraid he would escape while she wasn’t paying attention. She was so exhausted that she had immediately fallen asleep the moment she was certain he was safe.

Windsong decided to let her sleep.

She crossed the room and nudged Lyric into the vacant bed, rolling the young girl over until she was faced away from the sleeping duo. Then, glancing at the clock that indicated it was far past noon, she left the room and retired to the couch in the little living room of the cottage.