I tiptoed to her door. “Easy, boy,” I whispered.
He growled again.
I opened the door a crack. “Ares! Shhh.”
The dog lay down in his crate, wagged his tail twice.
I shut her door and proceeded down my stairs, weaving the odd path I knew would keep squeaking boards from announcing me. Midway down, I could see into the living room. Nana had left candles burning. Or Zhan is setting a mood.
I remembered how Mountain had reacted when he looked at her. I considered returning to my room, but Mountain wouldn’t set off the wards either.
A few more steps, and Menessos came into view. Well, his unmistakable backside did, anyway. He was admiring the Waterhouse painting he’d given me. He wore his usual flattering trousers and a businesslike white-on-white striped shirt. His jacket was draped over the arm of the couch.
I lingered there on the staircase. He stood in the room that, once upon a time when I lived here alone, had been my sanctuary. It held my Pre-Raphaelite posters and my bookshelves full of everything on the king of Camelot. Lit by wick flames, the room held an ambiance redolent of ages past. And, moreover, he simply fit. Admittedly, I was projecting what I knew of him into the mix, but one thing I wasn’t embellishing: despite his modern clothes, there was a majestic quality to his posture and aura. He was innately regal and no one in his presence could deny it.
Especially me.
My mind flashed on the moment before I staked him, before I kissed him, on the moment when I knew the sacrifice he was about to make and saw not the meddling vampire, but the Arthur I dreamed of so often.
I remembered how in the memory we now shared, Menessos was alive, his skin sun-kissed, shoulders thick from hard labor. His hair curled to his shoulders now, but then, in the memory, it was much longer—the kind of hair a woman could run her fingers through just before she passionately raked her nails across his back… .
Surely this adoration is a side effect created by the bonds. All masters must struggle with this.
No need for surprising an intruder now; I released the ward alarm. Menessos strode toward me.
“You tripped the wards on purpose?” I asked quietly.
“Would you prefer I enter your bedroom and wake you personally?”
“No. Where’s Zhan?”
“I sent her to get a report from Mountain. I told her to take her time.”
He gave me his hand over the rail as I took the last few stairs. It was ceremonious and unnecessary, but as soon as he touched me, the power of the hex awakened and again lit my spine like a fuse. My mouth opened to protest, but when my feet hit the floor I found myself eye-to-eye with him, witnessing the mixed need and danger in the blackness of his pupils, swirling like a thing alive. And I didn’t really want to scold him. He gave his life for victory.
“I waited until your grandmother and the child would be at rest.”
“I thank you for that.”
His arm snaked around my waist, drawing me to him, inspecting my bruise.
“I’m fine,” I said before he could ask anything.
He backed across the hall, guiding me as if we were dancing, and the fuse continued to smolder, its flame caressing me as he guided us to the couch. What I felt wasn’t heat like the other times he’d employed his supernal seduction on me. This was different; my second hex was on him now, making him not unlike an Offerling to me. And this blazing fuse felt like … a promise … a promise that the warm slow burn could detonate with earth-shattering force.
When he sat on the couch there was no resisting the strong arms clinging to me. I sank onto his lap, straddling him. His shirt, I realized, was mostly unbuttoned and when we were seated he tugged it free from his pants and finished unbuttoning it. Deftly maneuvering his knuckles, he stroked my aura and sent sensations rippling over me.
Goddess, he knows what he’s doing.
After removing the shirt, he flung it atop the jacket then reached for the belt of my robe.
My hands stopped him. “I’m not comfortable with the sexuality of this.”
“The nature of my feeding imitates intimacy.”
“But you don’t need to remove your shirt to feed from your master. It’s not like bloodstains are uncommon in your laundry.” Besides, this was where, and very much how, Johnny and I had first made love.
“You do not like this, my master?”
Apprehension buoyed me above the blissful euphoria to speak my objection more firmly. “Menessos.”
His touch on my legs sent sparks through me. Fingers splayed, he guided his caress toward my hips, thumbs on my inner thighs and just millimeters from touching my—
“Let me warm you, Persephone … it is cold in here.”
He went on, making it all sound so reasonable. For a moment, I was lost, submerged in desire as he kindled my flesh, engulfed in ecstasy as he draped me with adoration the color of candlelight. I sighed over the stimulating tone of his voice and marveled at the melodic quality of his words and how I could feel them seize me tighter in the seconds after he invoked my name. When he finished speaking, I realized the belt was untied and my robe was on the floor. But I wasn’t cold. His fingers rounded my arms, and brought me nearer.
Tilting his head, Menessos put his mouth to my throat. He knew better than to kiss my lips, but he eagerly kissed from my jaw to my collarbone. If his touch wrapped me in the blanket of his seduction, if his voice was an irresistible siren song calling to my soul, then his kisses were a web of mystery and flaming exultation. Every time his lips touched my flesh, it was a tender and reverent exploration. And each time my pulse answered, growing stronger, faster.
His lips pressed over the vein. He lingered there, just breathing. His touch trailed down my arms until he could thread his fingers between mine.
Motionless, caught in the glow of the burning marks I’d placed on him, I waited, testing, feeling, trying to break through the surface of this hex haze. This was new, a glorious arousal of body and soul—I wanted to know more, but I was also afraid.
Since it seemed he was giving me a chance to dictate how this would go, I dared not move to respond; it would only encourage him. Giving in to this feverish desire would end with my love and my world in ashes. So I remained stock-still.
When the moment peaked, threatening to become the most arduous exercise of my self-restraint, Menessos ended his immobility. He stroked the backs of my arms. When he reached my shoulders, his touch rounded forward, fondling downward, gliding, caressing my breasts, slowly, reverently—
“No,” I whispered, denying him.
“But you kissed me,” he whispered back. He tantalized every part of me he touched, and his breathing so warmly on my neck all the while only enhanced the torture.
It was all so sensual, so careful, so delicate. I was being charmed. I nuzzled into his walnut-colored waves. His hands strayed low to rest on my hip bones. Again, I said, “No.”
And the seduction ended. With quick ferocity, he struck—jerking my body against his as his fangs stabbed into my flesh.
My instinct was to fight, to throw this attacker off and to struggle against giving him blood, so I had to convince my instinctual self this was not an attack. Not like that.
He was rock hard beneath me, and as he drew my blood, he used his grip on my hips to rock me as if we were engaged in much more. But I knew what he was doing—baby-stepping me into an affair that robbed me of my loyalty to Johnny.
“Stop,” I whispered.
He didn’t.
“Stop,” I said more firmly. I weighed my options about which to try removing first: his viselike grip or his razor-sharp teeth. Though he’d drank from me before, this was the first time he’d done so as a truly undead vampire. “Menessos.”