"Early reports are often misleading. And by the time a conclusive answer can be obtained, the meeting will have already taken place."
It sounded like Mircea was gambling that, given the opportunity to talk to them face-to-face, he could bring them around. And maybe he could. But I wouldn't have liked to look at that group and say, Sorry, just joking!
"Pritkin thinks someone sabotaged the line," I told him.
Mircea frowned. Since that was his usual response to any mention of John Pritkin, I ignored it. "To engineer such a breach would require a fantastic amount of energy. More than any known magical alliance possesses. Our experts are convinced that a naturally occurring phenomenon was to blame."
"Let's hope so," I said fervently.
"Where are the consuls meeting now that MAGIC is gone?" Sal asked.
"Here. Casanova is arranging lodging as we speak, and the wards are being reinforced." He looked at me. "That should not go beyond this room, by the way."
"I don't gossip!"
Mircea smiled. "That goes for everyone."
Yeah, but he'd looked at me.
Horatiu entered, leading a vampire in hospital scrubs. The nurse, I assumed. He looked at us nervously and gave a quick bow before ducking his head and scurrying past. And for the first time that night, I felt myself relax. A vamp medic should know how to care for Rafe.
Mircea was on his feet when I turned around again. That seemed to signal the breakup of the party because, within a moment, everyone had disappeared. For once, even Marco found somewhere else to be.
Leaving me alone with Mircea.
I started for the door, but a hand snagged the back of my shirt. "A moment," Mircea said quietly. I sighed but didn't fight it; we needed to talk.
I was ushered into the master suite, where I stopped dead at the sight of the designer's pièce de résistance. A full-sized cream leather Indian teepee, complete with brown, hand-painted buffalos and beaded fringe, was serving as a canopy for the bed. "Oh, my God."
"I'm beginning to sense a theme," Mircea said, tossing his suit coat over a buckskin-covered chair. A moose head with huge, outspread antlers loomed over it, its bright glass eyes looking oddly lifelike in the low light. Mircea took in the room, his expression slightly repulsed yet fascinated. "I believe there is only one thing to say at this point."
"What's that?"
"Yee haw," he said gravely, and took me down like a rodeo calf. Before I entirely figured out what was happening, I was on my back in the teepee with a vampire crawling on top of me.
It was completely unfair, I thought, that when I was tired and disheveled I looked a mess, and when it happened to Mircea he looked like a particularly elegant porn star. His hair was artfully mussed, his shirt was unbuttoned enough to show a glimpse of lean-muscled chest, and his dress slacks clung lovingly to muscular thighs. In contrast, I was wearing the rumpled sweats I'd slept in, which had also acquired a pizza sauce stain. And that was despite the fact that I had never actually had any pizza.
Not that it mattered much what my clothes looked like considering how fast I was losing them. My sweatpants went flying, ending up atop the leering moose head, while warm hands slid along my sides, pushing up my T-shirt. I sucked in a breath at the unexpected speed of it all and at the electric tingle that spread up my body.
"You're supposed to be tired!"
"I am. Which is why I am not berating you for almost giving me a heart attack." My T-shirt followed the sweatpants, and at least the eerie fake eyeballs on the moose were now covered up. Which was more than I could say for me.
"Vampires don't get heart attacks."
Mircea gave me a playful flick of his eyebrow and tugged my panties off. "Good thing."
I opened my mouth to reply when his palms bracketed my face, swiftly followed by his mouth hard and demanding on mine. And somehow my witty riposte turned into a pathetic whimpering noise in the back of my throat. Unlike his usual habit, there was no slow seduction this time; Mircea kissed me hot and wet and dirty.
"We knew you were at MAGIC," he told me a few moments later as I tried to remember how to breathe. "But with the interference from the breach, there was no way to know where you were or if you would get out in time."
"I wasn't in there very long," I said, trying to focus.
"Dulceaƫă, you were in there for two hours." And for a moment, the mask slipped. For an instant he looked. . hungry, in some way I couldn't quite define. Not the predatory desire I'd seen on a few occasions, but more like need. Like some huge, gaping hole had opened up inside him since this morning.
His hair was mussed from having my hands all over it. I reached out and smoothed the worst of the snarls. I wondered if he'd lost friends today, if some of the people who didn't make it out of MAGIC were family. And then I remembered that Radu had been in trouble. And it had been bad enough to drag Mircea away in the middle of delicate negotiations.
"Mircea. . is Radu—"
"He is well. He sends his regards." I felt a wash of relief. "He suffered some damage to the house, but it has given him the excuse to redecorate. I believe the term 'rococo' was used." He glanced at the moose head and his lips quirked. "Of course, he hasn't seen this place yet."
"You actually think he'd like it?"
"He has a fine-tuned appreciation for irony and the absurd," he told me, stripping off his shirt. "He would love it."
"You should tell Casanova not to bulldoze it, then."
"I'll do that," Mircea murmured. Fine cloth hissed, a zipper jangled and a leg slid between mine in a heady rush of skin on skin. Teeth grazed the soft skin of my neck and a tongue flickered over the vein. "Dulceaƫă, are you familiar with the concept of a quickie?"
I laughed. There were about a hundred reasons why I shouldn't be here right now, but none of them seemed to matter next to the one overwhelming reason why I should. We were alive, we were both alive, along with the people we loved. It seemed like a miracle.
"Yes, but I didn't think you were." Mircea preferred long and slow and sensual, or so I'd assumed based on limited past experience.
"I am familiar with a great many things, as I will be happy to—" He suddenly went still.
His face had the distant look it got when he was communicating with other vampires long-distance. I didn't particularly understand how they did it; maybe it was merely better hearing, but I didn't think so. Like I didn't think I'd imagined his voice in my head in the clinic.
Mircea closed his eyes, his breath coming out in an irritated sigh. "This war is becoming very. . inconvenient," he said, and rolled off the bed.
"What is it?"
"I am being summoned," he told me, shedding his last item of clothing on the way to the bathroom. His voice had been light, but his muscles looked tense as he walked away.
He stepped into the shower but it was glass sided and he didn't bother to shut the bathroom door. The water turned his hair to black silk and molded it to the shape of his skull. More moisture collected on his high arched brows and dark lashes, before cascading down his cheekbones to wet his lips. Other tiny streams poured over his shoulders and chest in fascinating rivulets, before running down the hard muscles of his stomach and thighs to splash around his feet.
The steam started to obscure the view after a minute, but by then I'd ended up beside the shower door with a sheet wrapped around me. I wiped a hand across the glass so I could see his eyes. "When was the last time you had a day off?"
"Today. I was away from my duties on family business—until the disaster caused me to return early."