“Every day of my life is a battle for control. I fight my anger and the sickness that follows in its wake. I struggle with hunger and thirst, because I don’t believe it is right for me to take blood from other creatures—not even the animals, though I can bear that better than taking it from someone I might see again on the street.” His eyes rose to mine. “And I am at war with myself over this unspeakable urge to possess you body and soul in ways that no warmblood can fathom.”
“You want my blood,” I whispered in sudden understanding. “You lied to me.”
“I lied to myself.”
“I told you—repeatedly—that you can have it,” I said. I grabbed at the smock and tore it further, bending my head to the side and exposing my jugular. “Take it. I don’t care. I just want you back.” I bit back a sob.
“You’re my mate. I would never voluntarily take blood from your neck.” Matthew’s fingers were cool on my flesh as he drew the smock back into place. “When I did so in Madison, it was because I was too weak to stop myself.”
“What’s wrong with my neck?” I said, confused.
“Vampires only bite strangers and subordinates on the neck. Not lovers. Certainly not mates.”
“Dominance,” I said, thinking back to our previous conversations about vampires, blood, and sex, “and feeding. So it’s mostly humans who get bitten there. There’s the kernel of truth in that vampire legend.”
“Vampires bite their mates here,” Matthew said, “near the heart.” His lips pressed against the bare flesh above the edge of my smock. It was where he had kissed me on our wedding night, when his emotions had overwhelmed him.
“I thought your wanting to kiss me there was just ordinary lust,” I said.
“There is nothing ordinary about a vampire’s desire to take blood from this vein.” He moved his mouth a centimeter lower along the blue line and pressed his lips again.
“But if it’s not about feeding or dominance, what is it about?”
“Honesty.” When Matthew met my eyes, they were still more black than green. “Vampires keep too many secrets to ever be completely honest. We could never share them all verbally, and most are too complex to make sense, even when you try. And there are prohibitions against sharing secrets in my world.”
“‘It’s not your tale to tell,’” I said. “I’ve heard that a few times.”
“To drink from your lover is to know that nothing is hidden.” Matthew stared down at my breast, touched the vein again with his fingertip. “We call this the heart vein. The blood tastes sweeter here. There is a sense of complete possession and belonging—but it requires complete control, too, not to be swept up in the strong emotions that result.” His voice was sad.
“And you don’t trust your control because of the blood rage.”
“You’ve seen me in its grip. It’s sparked by protectiveness. And who poses a greater danger to you than I do?”
I shrugged the smock off my shoulders, pulling my arms out of the sleeves until I was bare from the waist up. I felt for the lacings on my skirt and yanked them free.
“Don’t.” Matthew’s eyes had blackened further. “There is no one here in case—”
“You drain me?” I stepped out of my skirt. “If you couldn’t trust yourself to do this when Philippe was within earshot, you’re not likely to do it with Gallowglass and Pierre standing by to help.”
“This isn’t a matter for jokes.”
“No.” I took his hands in mine. “It’s a matter for husbands and wives. It’s a matter of honesty and trust. I have nothing to hide from you. If taking blood from my vein is going to put an end to your incessant need to hunt down what you imagine to be my secrets, then that is what you’re going to do.”
“It isn’t something a vampire does just once,” Matthew warned, trying to pull away.
“I didn’t think it was.” I threaded my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “Take my blood. Take my secrets. Do what your instincts are screaming for you to do. There are no hoods or jesses here. In my arms you should be free, even if nowhere else.”
I drew his mouth to mine. He responded tentatively at first, his fingers wrapped around my wrists as if he hoped to break away at the earliest opportunity. But his instincts were strong and his yearning palpable. The threads that bound the world shifted and adjusted around me as if to make room for such powerful feelings. I drew gently away, my breasts lifting with each breath.
He looked so frightened that it hurt my heart. But there was desire, too. Fear and desire. No wonder they’d featured in his All Souls essay back when he’d won his fellowship. Who could understand the war between them better than a vampire?
“I love you,” I whispered, dropping my hands so that they hung by my sides. He had to do this himself. I couldn’t play any role in bringing his mouth to my vein.
The wait was excruciating, but at last he lowered his head. My heart was beating fast, and I heard him draw in a deep, long breath.
“Honey. You always smell like honey,” he murmured in amazement, just before his sharp teeth broke the skin.
When he’d taken my blood before, Matthew had been careful to anesthetize the site with a touch of his own blood so that I felt no pain. Not so this time, but soon the skin went numb from the pressure of Matthew’s mouth on my flesh. His hands cradled me as he angled me back toward the surface of the bed. I hung in midair waiting for him to be satisfied that there was nothing between us but love.
About thirty seconds after he started, Matthew stopped. He looked up at me in surprise, as if he’d discovered something unexpected. His eyes went full black, and for one fleeting moment I though that the blood rage was surfacing.
“It’s all right, my love,” I whispered.
Matthew lowered his head, drinking in more of my blood and thoughts until he discovered what he needed. It took little more than a minute. He kissed the place over my heart with the same expression of gentle reverence he had worn on our wedding night at Sept-Tours and looked up at me shyly.
“And what did you find?” I asked.
“You. Only you,” Matthew murmured.
His shyness quickly turned to hunger as he kissed me, and before long we were twined together. Except for our brief encounter standing against the wall, we had not made love for weeks, and our rhythm was awkward at first as we remembered how to move together. My body coiled tighter and tighter. Another fast glide, a deep kiss, was all it would take to set me flying.
Matthew slowed instead. Our eyes met and locked. I had never seen him look the way he did at that moment—vulnerable, hopeful, beautiful, free. There were no secrets between us now, no emotions guarded in case disaster struck and we were swept along into the dark places where hope couldn’t survive.
“Can you feel me?” Matthew was now a point of stillness at my core. I nodded again. He smiled and moved with deliberate care. “I’m inside you, Diana, giving you life.”
I’d said the same words to him as he drank my blood and pulled himself from the edge of death back into the world. I didn’t think he’d been aware of them at the time.
He moved within me again, repeating the words like an incantation. It was the simplest, purest form of magic in the world. Matthew was already woven into my soul. He was now woven into my body, just as I was woven into his. My heart, which had broken and broken again in the past months with every sad touch and regretful look, began to knit together once more.
When the sun crept over the horizon, I reached up and touched him between the eyes.
“I wonder if I could read your thoughts, too.”
“You already have,” Matthew said, lowering my fingers and kissing their tips. “Back in Oxford, when you received the picture of your parents. You weren’t conscious of what you were doing. But you kept answering questions I wasn’t able to ask aloud.”