“I have been in here for hours, tending my administrative duties, taking a few calls, approving orders, payment on other orders, and—”
“I don’t see any paperwork.” His desk was empty except for decorative items and a closed laptop sitting on an unmarked blotter.
“I completed it just before you arrived all lovely in that robe and smelling of wolf.” The look in his eyes made me truly understand the meaning of “devour.” “Your cheeks are flushed. I might think I’d embarrassed you but your hands have risen to perch defiantly on your shapely hips, so”—he steepled his fingers—“I conclude the flush is more anger.”
“We both know I can force answers from you, Menessos. Don’t make me.”
“You are not attempting to threaten me, are you, my dear?”
He’d just turned my anger switch from “almost” to “on.” I fought to rotate it back. “Must everything be a struggle?”
“Life is a struggle.”
“I’ve been here a little more than twenty-four hours, and already I am sick of the damned games you play. Every time things appear clearly established, you pull some new stunt. I may walk away from it having learned something, but it’s wearying nonetheless. Is there never a moment of contentment for you?”
The predatory, masculine countenance returned, and his eyes became glistening pools of gray. He rose and came around his desk as he spoke. “We all fight for what we achieve and what we want, don’t we?” He settled into a lean against the front of his desk, then lifted a tendril of my damp hair, admired the bandage, and reached toward my neck. In the next instant, he ripped the wide Band-Aid free.
“Ow!” I tried to slap him. He restrained my wrist.
“I know how this works, Persephone.” He dropped the bandage into a waste basket. I tried to pull my wrist free; he held on. “I know how you work . . . and then you ‘pull some new stunt’ and I find that truly, I don’t.”
The skin on my neck was burning from the rough bandage removal. When he didn’t continue, I muttered, “Glad to know the feeling’s mutual.”
“But that’s just it, the ‘feeling’ isn’t.” The tone of his voice was laced with a despondency that touched my heart.
Enough of this. Every time he ignited my rage, he followed it with stirring my heart, or vice versa, shifting until my resistance was gone and my anger was fully triggered. Let’s skip ahead this time. Intending to invoke the power pull, I visualized it and felt the charge of energy materialize—
Menessos jerked on my arm, yanking me easily into his embrace, and sank his teeth into me.
I screamed and, my concentration lost, dropped the attempt.
He raised his mouth from my neck and stood straight, but his grip stayed vise-tight. He hadn’t fed, just reopened the wounds or made new ones. Drops of my blood stained his lips, ran into his beard. “You may have the means to drain my energy, but I can drain yours, as well.”
A trickle of blood slowly rolled down my neck.
Menessos came at me again. I feared he would bite me again, but he smeared blood from his lips across my cheek and whispered into my ear, “There’s much more to mastery than simply holding the upper hand.” He jerked the collar of my robe open, exposing my neck and breasts, and bent, licking where the blood had run.
I hadn’t dressed fearing that doing so would wake Johnny, but now I was wishing I’d taken that risk and put on more than the robe. I growled, “I still want answers.”
“And I still want what Johnny has.” Menessos fondled my breasts. He licked at my neck as a lover would, though the blood flow was fading.
My body was well satisfied, but even so, his touch was filling me with renewed yearning. I stepped backward to be out of his reach. It took more of an effort than it should have. “He doesn’t get my blood. You do.”
The vampire leaned once more against his desk. “He doesn’t want your blood!”
“But you do. You need blood to survive.”
“Ah, but I have Beholders and Offerlings to feed me. I wouldn’t starve because you denied me blood, nor will I survive only because you gave it.”
But you do need mine because I’m your master. I didn’t want to flaunt that tidbit unless he pushed. “You’re comparing sex to blood?”
“Both feed certain hungers.”
“Menessos. I think what you get should be more valuable to you.”
“Why? Because it doesn’t require such vigorous interaction?”
I refused to let that comment sting. “You said you weren’t sex starved. So what is this truly about?”
“Johnny gets more than sex.”
Aha. The sorrow in his voice beckoned my pity. I couldn’t deny it, but I could fight it with reason. I went forward and put my hands on his cheeks and tried not to think about the fact that my blood was yet on his chin. Earnestly, I said, “Menessos. I am not Una.”
That statement had an effect.
I felt the stirring within him cease and he stilled to his core. He sidestepped away from me and strolled to the suit of armor. His back remained to me. “You said you wanted to know about the bond between the two of you, of the imprint. I thought you would figure it out for yourself with my nudge.”
“So you admit you did something.”
“Through the hex, I used your passion like a ritual.”
“You can’t mark him through me.” Could he?
“No.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the blood on his mouth and chin.
“You can’t make me hex someone else.” I wiped blood from my cheek with an unseen part inside the robe’s sleeve.
“No.”
“Then what ritual?”
“It is a link, but without a master. As if the two of you have bonded on equal terms.” He crumpled the hanky and shoved it into his pocket. “As mates.”
“Like a m-marriage?” I stammered.
“You sound bewildered by that notion. You love him, don’t you?”
My mouth was open. I clamped it shut.
Over his shoulder, he said, “You’re not an intemperate woman, Persephone. There are emotions between the two of you, or you would not have imprinted in the first place.”
All my warning flags were snapping in storm-brewing winds. “Basic rule of magic: you don’t perform magic for another unless they have asked you to. It’s wrong.”
Menessos chuckled softly. “That is your religion talking.”
I needed to get myself and this conversation back on track, but he’d opened another door and, while he’d likely done it on purpose, I couldn’t resist peeking through. “Are you suggesting my religion is not yours, as well, vampire-wizard? At the Eximium, I saw Hecate reach for you. I heard her tell you to be forgiven. What was that all about?”
Menessos twisted around. “What did you say?” Rushing back to me, he didn’t wait for an answer. “Say that again.”
I backed up, bumping into the desk. Menessos gripped my arms. “What did you say?” he demanded.
Obviously, I had information he badly wanted. This was an opportunity to make that work for me. “Answer all my questions completely, and I’ll answer yours in kind.” As an afterthought, I added, “How forthcoming you are will directly dictate how forthcoming I will be.”
“No energy threats, just questions and answers?”
“If these are rules both sides will keep, then certainly.”
“Agreed.” He pressed his body to mine, nuzzled my ear, and licked again at the blood drying around the wound he’d reopened. “Ask away.”
My body’s yearning renewed. I struggled to form my lucid question.
“And no manipulative foreplay.”
“As you wish.” The vampire returned to his desk and seated himself behind it.
He gave in too easily. Or, perhaps not. Mentioning I wasn’t his ancient inamorata seemed to have—at least temporarily—dampened his passion. I’d take what I could get. I sank into one of the guest chairs. “What ritual did you work over us without our permission?”
“As I said, you are more fully bonded.”