His heart melted. A single tear tracked down her cheek, and he brushed it away with his thumb.
“Silly girl,” he said gently, “you’re not supposed to cry at the start of a date. Cry at the end, like I do.”
“You, cry?” she scoffed, sniffling and wiping away the moisture around her eyes. She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. “I find that very hard to believe, Mr. Kick Ass.”
D stared down at her in mock indignation. “Mr. Kick Ass? I’ll have you know I’m very tenderhearted, Ms. High and Mighty.”
It was her turn to feign affront. “High and Mighty? I’ll have
you
know I’m very humble and meek.”
He stepped closer, smiling. “Really?
Meek
, are you?”
She tilted her head and gazed up at him through her lashes, playful. “Well. Meek for a princess, anyway.”
“Hmmm. That’s what I thought.”
He trailed his fingers over the side of her face and jaw, because he wanted to, because he could, because he loved seeing the effect his touch had on her. Even in the dark he saw her flush.
“And I’m sure you don’t
date
, in any traditional sense of the word,” she said, less steady than before.
His hand slipped around the back of her neck, and he drew her against him. Her hands lifted to rest lightly against his chest.
“Now why would you think that?” he murmured, lowering his head to hers.
Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt as his lips brushed her temple, slid barely touching down to her jaw. He paused at the corner of her mouth.
“Because there are too many women throwing themselves at your feet to bother with dating,” she breathed, her lips barely brushing his. “You can just take them to bed and dispense with all the formalities.”
He fisted his hand in the hair at the nape of her neck and gently pulled her head back so she was forced to look up, into his eyes. “There is only one woman I want to take to bed,” he said, his voice husky, all teasing gone, “and I’m ready and willing to provide any kind of formality she requires, for however long she requires, in order to do so.”
She stared at him with dark intensity, all bedroom eyes and Mona Lisa lips, moonlight weaving blue magic in her hair.
“No snappy answer for that,
Principessa
?”
“Well,” she murmured, bemused, “I can’t quite figure out if that’s incredibly offensive or incredibly hot.”
A low chuckle rumbled through his chest. “Don’t over-think it. Just go with your gut.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips. Her cheeks heated. “Incredibly hot, then,” she whispered, and rose up on her toes to softly press her mouth against his.
It slew him. She was so sweet, so beautiful, so good—and she wanted him.
Him.
He moaned into her mouth, hardening instantly when her tongue slid against his. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him and kissed him with an ardor that took his breath away. He’d wanted to kiss her like this for years, but now that he had her in his arms, her mouth on his, he felt light-headed and woozy and was suddenly afraid he might do something to hurt her, afraid he might be too rough and scare her away.
He broke the kiss, panting, and set her away from him with both hands.
She blinked at him, her expression that of a scolded puppy. In a small voice she said, “What is it? Did I do something wrong?”
“Jesus,
no
,” he groaned, wincing, “you did everything right.”
Her puppy-dog frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”
His voice came out whiskey-rough, aching. “Eliana. Do you have
any clue
what I want to do to you? How much I want you? How much self-control it takes not to peel those pants off your perfect, delectable body and fuck you right here? Now?”
“Oh,” she said, paling. Her eyes grew huge. “Oh, my. We’re back to incredibly offensive or incredibly hot territory.”
“It’s just the truth! I’ve wanted you every second of every day for
years
, and now that you’re here, alone with me, I’m finding it very hard not to—”
“Fuck me?” she interrupted, staring him dead in the eye.
The barest hint of a rakish smile lifted her cheek, and his mouth dropped open.
“Are you
smirking
at me, Ms. High and Mighty?” he growled. He tightened his hands around her arms and pulled her closer.
“I wouldn’t dare, Mr. Kick Ass,” she said innocently. “Knowing what a twitchy hand you have.
I’m afraid I’d get such a spanking I couldn’t sit for a week.”
“Oh, you really have no idea,” he breathed, closing the final distance between them. He pinned her arms around her back again, pressed himself against her, and took her chin in his hand. He stared down into her eyes and said, “I’d love to turn that beautiful ass of yours the perfect shade of pink, and be inside you and make you moan my name and promise to belong to me forever. Make no mistake, Eliana, I want to make you mine.
All
mine. I want to do very bad things to you, things no one has ever done to you before or ever will again. And what’s more, I want you to learn what pleases me and do it because you want to, because it makes you happy. Because
I
make you happy.”
She stared at him with her mouth hanging open, her eyes popped wide.
“But we’re not going to do any of that until I’ve shown you this city you’ve lived beneath your entire life and we’ve had a very honest talk about what exactly it is you’re after here, because I’ll tell you right now I’m not interested in just one night and I’m not going to share you with anyone else.
Including your father. Do we understand one another?”
She swallowed and nodded her head.
“Good.” He leaned in and kissed her very softly, first taking her lower lip between his teeth, then sliding his tongue into her mouth, careful to hold back when she arched into him and made a sound in her throat that sounded perilously close to surrender.
“First things first, sweet girl,” he whispered, then pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead and released her. “Let’s go see Rome, shall we?” He held out his hand.
A little unsteady on her feet, she reached for his hand and closed her cool fingers around his own. She swallowed again and sent him an amused, slightly disoriented look. “Are you always this bossy?”
He grinned. “Someone’s got to stand up to you. Your ego is completely out of control.”
“
My
ego!” She laughed, following as he led her away down the sloping grassy hill.
“And yes, I’m always this bossy,” he said over his shoulder. “In fact, I’m just getting started.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that, Mr. Kick Ass,” she scoffed. “You’re not the only one who’s used to giving orders. If you can dish it out, you better be able to take it.”
D heard her sweet, low laugh from behind him and was glad she couldn’t see the huge grin that split his face.
Yes, he was going to take it. He was going to take it
all
.
“What the hell do you mean,” breathed Xander, cold with shock, “you
don’t know
where she is?”
He’d just returned from a full day wandering the streets of Rome, trying to distract himself from thoughts of Morgan, only to see her face on every brunette in the city. After he’d left her in the morning he’d been so strung out it had taken him all day just to calm down enough to return to the safe house, and when he had, she’d been nowhere to be found. In mounting panic, he’d combed every foot of the house and had finally found Bartleby and Tomás—back in human form, healed from the shallow cuts on his face—sitting at the kitchen table.
“We—we thought Morgan was with
you
!” Bartleby stammered, blinking. “I didn’t see either of you since we came back from...Julian...this morning...I assumed you were together! I was with Mateo and Tomás all day in the gym!”
In a quietly hostile voice, Tomás said, “Mateo will be fine in a day or two. If you care.”
Xander sucked in a breath and stared at Tomás. He deserved that, he supposed, but still it felt like someone had just twisted a hot dagger deep inside his gut. “Of
course
I care!”
“Funny way of showing it, her over us and all,” Tomás said, still with that blade-edged tone.
Xander couldn’t deny it. Everyone in the room knew it was true. He sank down into the nearest chair, rested his elbows on the table, bowed his head, and wrapped his hands around it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, fighting panic and the urge to jump up and flee into the gathering dusk outside, screaming her name.
Into the tense silence he said, “I’m sorry. You’re right. But...” he swallowed and closed his eyes, “...but I love her. I love her, Tomás, with every fucked-up atom of my being. She resurrected me, understood me, gave me a reason to live. I never thought...I never thought I could feel anything like this again, and this time it’s even...
more
. It’s everything. I just couldn’t leave her here alone.”
He heard Tomás’s hissed exhalation of breath, but he
felt
Bartleby’s smile.
“God
dammit
, Alexander,” snarled Tomás through clenched teeth; then he fell silent.
“Well,” said Bartleby, chipper all of a sudden, “I for one think you make a lovely couple.”
“Couple of what?” Tomás muttered under his breath, but the doctor ignored that.
“Where do you think she went, Xander? Where are you going to look for her?”
Xander lifted his head and stared at Bartleby in desolation. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know how I’m going to find her.”
And after the way I treated her this morning, she most likely never wants to see me again.
Tomás snorted loudly. Xander looked at him, and he crossed his muscled arms over his chest and glared back at him. After a moment he huffed out a breath as if he’d come to some kind of unspoken decision. “For a smart guy, you can be colossally stupid, you know that?” he snapped.
“I’m sorry, Tomás. I’ll do anything to make it right between us—”
“Oh, shut up, for fuck’s sake. I’m not talking about us anymore!”
Xander blinked at him, confused, and Tomás rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
“Give me patience, God,” he said between stiff lips.
Bartleby sat looking back and forth between the two of them, chewing on the inside of his lip.
Tomás uncrossed his arms, laid his hands flat on the table, and leaned forward. “You have her Blood inside you,” he said very slowly, as if speaking to someone exceptionally dense. “You. Can.
Find. Her.
Anywhere.
”
Fire erupted on Xander’s skin and ran scorching over every muscle, nerve, and bone in his body. “Blood follows Blood,” he whispered, breathless.
It was a saying as old as their race, with a dozen different meanings. For parents who passed Gifts to their off-spring, for tribe members who swore fealty to their Alpha, for positions such as Matchmaker and Keeper of the Bloodlines that were held in perpetuity by a single family, handed down from father to son through every successive generation.
For the binding tie created when one
Ikati
shared the fluid in their veins with another.
Xander leapt to his feet, and his chair crashed to the tile floor behind him. “Tomás, I have to go —I’m sorry—tell Mateo—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tomás muttered drily, waving his hand. “I know all about it, lover boy. And don’t worry, we’ll be fine. Go find your pain-in-the-ass princess and bring her back in one piece, will you?”
And with that, Xander knew he was forgiven. He launched himself at Tomás, dragged him from his chair, and crushed his arms around his brother’s back. Tomás hugged him back briefly, then disentangled himself from Xander’s arms with a disgusted look.
“Go on, fuckface,” he growled, fighting a smile, and pushed Xander toward the door.
He went willingly, shouting over his shoulder, “When I get back we’re going to talk about hiding you and Mateo from the Assembly!”
“Hiding, shmiding,” he heard Tomás mutter from behind him as he barged like a freight train through the back door. “I was planning on retiring anyway.”
Xander knelt on the grass in the backyard, staring up into the purple-blue twilight. The strength in his legs had deserted him, and he didn’t know how exactly this was going to work anyway, so he figured he might as well get close to the ground in case he was inclined to fall flat on his face.
He spread his hands over his flexed thighs, closed his eyes, and breathed.
“Morgan,” he murmured. “Love. Where are you?”
Distant traffic murmured. Leaves rustled in the trees. Cool, soft air brushed his skin.
Nothing else happened.
He shifted his weight and tried again, focusing on her name, repeating it silently like a mantra, clearing his mind of all else. After several minutes of this his left foot began to tingle; it was falling asleep.
He ground his teeth in frustration. How the hell was this supposed to work? He had a random thought to go back inside and ask Tomás, but instantly thought better of it. He had to be the one to do this, and he had to do it alone.
A wet snuffling at the back fence caught his attention. There lurked the beagle, staring at him wide-eyed through the knot in the painted white wood. It froze when he let a low, rumbling growl build in his chest, then took off yelping when he sat forward on his haunches and snarled like an animal, like the animal he was.
Stupid dog. He remembered the first time he’d seen it, when he and Bartleby had sat here together and the doctor had so pointedly asked Xander if he was in love with Morgan. He chuckled, remembering it, how in denial he’d been just moments before he’d gone downstairs and surrendered himself to the first emotion he’d felt in two decades.
And God, what emotion it was. Sweet and fierce and beautiful, just like her. Passionate.