Glancing over his shoulder, he raised an eyebrow. “Sleep or you’ll fall down when you lumber about. You haven’t mastered creeping yet.”
She threw a pillow at him.
Catching it, he laughed in unhidden delight, his claws apparent on the softness of the pillow. His unrepentant badness made her lips twitch as she fell back onto the bed and pulled up the sheet, programming her mind to wake in a few hours so Naasir, too, could rest. He was older and stronger than her, but he still needed rest. As he needed blood.
Her mood sank again as she thought of him feeding from another woman.
But that, too, was the natural order of things. Naasir was a sexual creature and women were drawn to him. There was no room in his life for a scholar who’d taken a vow of celibacy before she’d ever understood what it was to need, to so desperately want . . . to look into eyes of molten silver and see a future far more extraordinary than the one written in her blood.
* * *
Andromeda and Naasir left the cottage after nightfall, fully dressed in their dry clothes. Naasir had ordered her to cut up a sheet and use the strips to wrap up her feet, since her slippers had fallen apart during the final hours before dawn. She’d used the oldest sheet she could find, the one that looked as if it had been forgotten in the cupboard.
Rejuvenated by sleep and food, with her feet protected enough that stones didn’t cut into her soles, she was able to trek for hours without flagging.
“Why did you rescue me?” she asked Naasir partway. “I gave Jessamy a copy of the details of my research for safekeeping.”
Silver eyes glinted at her. “Stop insulting me.”
Scowling when he turned back around and kept on walking, she poked at his shoulder with the tip of her sword, being very careful not to break his gorgeous, strokable . . . pettable skin. “It was a perfectly reasonable question. I’m an apprentice, and I’m not part of any court.” A lie, but it was a lie she’d chosen to live . . . would live for the days of freedom that remained.
“Jessamy belongs to no court and to every court and so do all who work for her.” He snarled when she went to poke him again. “I’ll bite you if you’re not careful.”
Thighs clenching, she tried to think cold, nonsensual thoughts. Except her discipline seemed to have deserted her. When she strode past him in an effort to outrun the desire crawling over her skin, he came up next to her, drew in a long, deep breath and smirked. She held up the sword before he could open his mouth. “Say a single word and I’ll put this right through you.”
“You’d hurt me?”
“You’re a six-hundred-year-old vampire. You’d recover.”
He flashed his fangs at her and they carried on walking. It took her what felt like an eon to get her body back under control, and even then, it was a shaky control at best. Every time she saw him move, every time his scent came to her nose, every time he said something in that low, growly voice that felt like a rough caress, the sensual part of her nature sat up in quivering attention.
She stepped up the pace, pushing herself to the edge.
Naasir spotted a vehicle three hours later, but there was no way her wings would fit in it, so they continued walking till dawn began to shimmer through the sky again. Hunkering down in the shadow of a mountain, they rested in turns while the sun burned overhead.
The search squadrons appeared to have turned back, but she and Naasir couldn’t afford to lower their guard. Should they be spotted by villagers who reported it to their goddess, a citadel squadron would come at them from one side, while border squadrons would angle in from the other. They’d be caught in between with no way out.
Watching Naasir sleep while she sat guard, on watch for any other signs of life, Andromeda couldn’t help herself. She bit her lower lip and reached out very, very, very carefully to touch his hair. It was cool silk and far softer than she’d imagined it might be. She wanted to—
He snapped up a hand to capture her wrist, his eyes still closed. “Andi, what are you doing?”
19
Andi?
It wasn’t an angelic name, not at all . . . but she liked it. “Touching your hair,” she admitted, since she’d been caught red-handed.
Yawning, he released her hand. “You can.” Then he seemed to fall right back to sleep.
Not quite believing it, she reached out and wove her fingers through the lusciously soft strands. He didn’t wake, didn’t even stir, though she had the awareness that he was like a great big cat who slept with one eye figuratively open. He was even striped like a tiger.
What?
Blinking, she looked again at his arms and face. The illusion held. She glanced up, wondering if it was a particular combination of tree branches that was causing it, but saw nothing that could explain the shadowy pattern beneath the gold-stroked deep brown of his skin. “What are you?” she whispered, but he didn’t wake this time—or if he heard her, he chose to keep his secrets.
She stroked his hair for a long time, her pleasure in the act bone-deep. It felt exactly like petting a wild animal who had decided to permit her close. He wasn’t tame and anyone who made that mistake would regret it, but for now, he’d decided he liked her. She knew that would change the second she took up her enforced position in an enemy court, and that, too, was inevitable.
Her heart felt as if it was being crushed in a giant metal fist.
* * *
Naasir had to feed that night. Leaving Andromeda to wait in the thick stand of trees next to a small village, he walked in, found his prey, fed, and walked back out. The entire exercise took him six minutes at most, but even that felt too long. He knew Andromeda could defend herself, also knew that if he didn’t feed, he’d no longer be able to protect her, but it still felt wrong to feed from another when she was in his life.
Andromeda wasn’t where he’d left her when he returned. Not that it took him long to track her to a small stream nearby. Her body was stiff, pretty wings patterned like a bird’s held off the ground. “Done?” she asked without turning around.
“Yes.”
She fell in beside him to continue their journey, but he could feel the wrongness in the air. As he’d demonstrated to her, he could put on a civilized skin when necessary. Most of the women he’d taken to his bed had never once seen him in anything close to his real skin. They had seen only the cool, cultured avatar who made them shiver with a primal fear that heightened their sexual pleasure.
It was a game that wasn’t a game but a kind of a lie, and it didn’t come instinctively to him. He’d learned how to pull it off only after realizing women wouldn’t otherwise allow him near their soft bodies and delicate skin.
Don’t act with me.