It wasn’t sex, I thought irritably. It wasn’t anything like sex. It was nothing more than he’d done in Amsterdam—giving me energy when I was all but out. It was his bastard of a father who had decided to count it as something more.
Because it was something more, wasn’t it? In the demon world—
We weren’t in the demon world! And I counted it as what it was—an energy donation. Like I’d done for him a couple of—
You’re not helping your case.
Damn it! I set the cold cream jar down harder than necessary. There were only so many ways to save an incubus’ life, and I hadn’t been about to let Pritkin die on me! Not when most of the time he ended up half dead because of me. So I’d donated energy a few times to help him heal. It was no different from feeding a vampire, and I did that all the time!
You used to do that all the time, my inner critic corrected. You don’t do it now. Because feeding had a sexual undertone in the vampire world, too, and Mircea prohibited anyone else from biting you. How would he react if he knew—
He didn’t know! There was nothing to know. Pritkin never so much as touched me if he could help it. It was like being trained by a freaking ninja monk—
Was until recently, my little voice said. But wasn’t he different when you found him in hell?
I picked up the comb and started attacking the bird’s nest on my head. No, I thought angrily. He hadn’t been. He hadn’t even been glad to see me. He’d been . . . Pritkin. Just like on that damned hillside that night.
I’d been dying, injured in a fight I’d expected to lose but had somehow won, if winning meant that I was going to die later than the other guy. But Pritkin had reached me just in time and basically did the same thing he’d done in Amsterdam. And gave me some of his energy, thereby saving my life—and losing his own in the process.
At least the meaningful parts of it. Because Rosier had a damned loose definition of what constituted sex, and by the impossible standards he’d imposed on Pritkin, a mutual feeding was close enough. Pritkin had broken the taboo, and been abruptly snatched away to hell, and I’d been left screaming on a hillside with only one thought in mind: go get him.
And I had. I’d had no idea how to get into hell, or what to do once I got there. And my power didn’t work well outside of earth, if at all. But I’d gone anyway. And then, when I finally found him, when I tracked him down across entire worlds, what had he done?
Yelled at me and threw me off a balcony!
And that was after reading me the riot act for daring to come after him in the first place. I’d ruined his selfless gesture, and he’d been pissed, although not half as much as I had been. Damned infernal mage. Didn’t know why I bothered sometimes—
But after that, my little voice reminded me. After you two escaped Rosier’s court and ended up in front of the demon council. After all the drama was over and you were awaiting the verdict that would either free him or condemn him, hadn’t he acted differently? Hadn’t he acted like he wanted to say something?
I scowled. He’d been under a massive amount of stress. He knew the council better than I did, knew the odds. He’d tried to tell me, but I hadn’t listened. I’d been so sure they’d see reason. Didn’t they know we were fighting the same enemies? Didn’t they see that I needed him?
But no. They’d spent centuries with their heads so far up their own asses that they couldn’t see anything. They’d killed him. They’d killed him right there in front of me, and then acted like it was no big deal, like I should have expected it. But I hadn’t expected it, and if Adra hadn’t decided he might need me, and given me that counterspell—
Yes, yes, that’s very nice. Very scary, my inner voice mocked. I’m sure you’d have taken
on the big, bad demon council all by your little self. But that isn’t the point, is it? Pritkin wanted to tell you something, and it had almost sounded like—
He hadn’t wanted to tell me shit! He’d known there was a better-than-average chance they were going to kill him. He hadn’t known what he was saying!
Or maybe he hadn’t cared, my little voice insisted slyly. Maybe he’d decided it didn’t matter anymore. That if he was going to be killed anyway, he might as well—
Goddamnit! There was nothing going on between us!
And yet you dreamed about him tonight.
I glared at my reflection, and it glared back. Defiantly. Even a little smug. Like it thought it had made some kind of irrefutable point, and honestly, sometimes I thought this job was driving me crazy.
I put down the comb before I ended up bald.
So what if I dreamed about him? I couldn’t be held responsible for what I dreamed. And anyway, Mircea didn’t know. And even if he did—
If he did? My inner voice prompted. Because my inner voice doesn’t know when to call it a freaking night.
My fingers dropped to the two small bumps on my neck, vestiges of the evening that had started with a spell gone wrong and ended with a half-crazed master vampire. Who did what half-crazed vamps tend to do and bit me. Only it hadn’t been a normal bite.
I swallowed, and felt the tiny bumps move under my fingertips. They weren’t the blood-dripping gashes of the movies. They might easily have been mistaken for pimples by a human, if anybody noticed them at all. Which was unlikely since they weren’t even red anymore. Just two bits of raised skin, hardly anything . . .
Unless you were a vampire.