I held my tongue. I didn’t exactly believe they were barbarians, but something was going on; some negative emotion was running rampant through all of the vampires that hadn’t been there when we parted ways in Iceland. Why were the vampires upset with Kristoff? Why were his brother and cousin treating him this way?
Kristoff sank heavily into the chair next to me. I was very aware of his leg just a few scant inches away from me, aware of the heat of his body, of his scent that teased my nose and made me want to run my hands over his bare flesh. . . .
Kristoff glanced at me, his eyes strangely alight.
“To answer your questions, Pia, you and Kristoff have been brought here to answer a number of charges for crimes that have recently come to light, beginning with the disappearance of Alec Darwin,” Christian said, his voice carefully neutral.
I gawked at him. I outright gawked at him. “ What ?”
“In addition to that,” he continued, glancing at a piece of paper in front of him, “you are also charged with the death of the Zorya known as Anniki Belvoir, and lastly, Kristoff is charged with embezzlement of several million pounds of funds rightfully belonging to the heirs of the Dark Ones destroyed by the Brotherhood.”
My jaw sagged as I looked from Christian to Kristoff. The words spun around in my head in a horrible mixture of confusion and disbelief. We were charged with killing Anniki, the previous Zorya? With doing something to Alec? With stealing money?
Kristoff sat impassive, his face inscrutable, but I could sense anger and frustration rolling around inside him.
“How do you answer these charges?” Christian asked.
I shook my head, so stunned I found it hard to put words together in a coherent manner. “This is all obscenely wrong,” I said finally. “I haven’t killed anyone, certainly not Anniki. And as for Alec . . . you were there that night when he walked away from me. You said yourself that he and Kristoff had left Iceland without a word to me.”
“I was, and I did,” Christian said, and again his voice was carefully stripped of all emotion. “But proof has come to light that indicates you had subsequent . . . er . . . dealings with Alec, and that he disappeared shortly after his most recent visit to you.”
My brain had a hard time dealing with the astonishing things he was saying to me.
I glanced at Kristoff. He watched me with eyes that were several shades paler than normal. “It is no use to deny the charges,” Kristoff told me. “I have done so for two weeks, but they will not listen.”
“They think I was having an affair with Alec,” I said, unable to get past that point. “They think that even after we found out I was your Beloved, I’d continue on with Alec.”
Kristoff just looked at me. Horror crawled up my skin as I realized the truth. “You think so, too.”
“You’ve made it clear that you prefer him to me,” he said softly.
I opened my mouth to protest that I might be many things, but I was not the sort of woman who would have two lovers at the same time. Before I could, however, Christian stopped me.
“You deny all the charges, then?” he asked mildly, making a note on a piece of paper.
I looked from him to the faces of the others in the room. Allie looked sympathetic. The vampires regarded us with expressions ranging from Christian’s apparent mild indifference to Sebastian’s outright hostility, Rowan’s uneasiness at meeting my eye, and Andreas’s stony countenance that gave nothing away.
My eyes moved to Kristoff, sitting so still next to me, obviously having gone through great personal torment in the last few months, and just as obviously too pigheaded and stubborn to bother asking me for help.
Anger boiled up inside me, anger at the stupidity of men, anger at the vampires who were either gullible or fools, and anger at myself for trying to hide away for the last two months. I’d wanted to give Kristoff the space he needed to come to grips with our situation, but all I’d done was leave him believing I was coldly indifferent to him.
Well, that time was over. “I most certainly do deny them!” I said, getting to my feet, slamming my hand down on the table to emphasize my outrage. “I don’t know what this proof is that you claim you have showing we’ve done anything wrong, but I can assure you that I will not sit here and let you railroad me! Kristoff might be content playing at being a martyr, but I’m sure as hell not!”
“I am not playing at being a martyr,” Kristoff objected, leaping up to glare at me.
“No? What do you call letting yourself starve nearly to death, huh?”
His jaw worked for a moment. “I told you-once we were Joined, if I took any of your blood, we would be bound together for the rest of our lives.”
“And that’s so awful you just couldn’t stand the thought of it?”
“The matter really isn’t-” Christian started to say.
“No!” Kristoff shouted back at me. “I was thinking of you, dammit! You wanted Alec.”
“Oh, really?” I took a step closer to him until we were almost touching. “What about you?” I asked, poking him in the chest.
“If we could please stick to the point at hand,” Christian said.
We both ignored him. Kristoff grabbed my fingers as they poked him again. “What about me?”
“You’re the one so madly in love with your dead girlfriend that you can barely stand to be around me. Oh, yes, the incredibly hot sex is fine and well to take the edge off now and again, but when it comes to a little thing like being grateful to me for saving your soul, not to mention your life, then it’s a whole other story, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I, for one, don’t underestimate the value of incredibly hot sex,” Allie said mildly.
“You’re not helping,” Christian growled.
Kristoff’s eyes all but spit blue sparks at me. “You told me you disliked me.”
“You told me you wanted to kill me!” I countered.
“You made it very obvious it was Alec’s attentions you wanted.”
“That is so patently false!” I said, outraged and incredibly aroused at the same time. I just wanted to grab his head and kiss the breath right out of him.
Christian took another stab at regaining control. “Your relationship questions aside-”
“You let him touch you, right there in front of me!” Kristoff yelled, his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke. His Italian accent became more pronounced, which for some reason just aroused me all that much more.
“I what ?” I asked, momentarily taken aback by his accusation.
Silence followed. Everyone in the room turned a speculative eye on me.
“Well, now,” Allie said. “That’s rather interesting.”
“When did I let him touch me?” I asked Kristoff.
“That morning when we were in the restaurant, he touched you, touched your hand and your knee, and pulled you close to him, and you said nothing!”
My own hands did a little waving about. “Trust you to remember that and ignore the important stuff!”
“What important stuff?”
“Important things like the fact that I told him we had just slept together! I thought that was a pretty definitive statement!” I shot back.
His eyes burned, his breath hot on my face as he leaned in to me. Once again, the scent of him made a heady aphrodisiac. “You said that just so I couldn’t!”
“I said it so he’d know he wasn’t the man I was interested in!” I yelled.
An odd look crossed Kristoff’s face. “You didn’t want him?”
“No!”
“Then who . . .” His eyes narrowed suddenly, his words coming out with a hiss. “The sacristan . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” I gave in to my desires and twined my fingers through the soft, silky curls on his head and pulled his mouth down to mine. I was well aware we had an audience, but at that moment, nothing mattered but showing Kristoff that he occupied a place in my heart, not Alec.
“Awww. That really is sweet, in an odd sort of way,” I heard Allie say over the wild beating of my heart. I didn’t pay much attention to her words, my mind and body wholly focused on the man who was kissing me with a fever that left my brain reeling and my heart soaring.
“Much as I regret interrupting this fascinating, if somewhat confusing scene, we do have a hearing to conduct.” Christian’s voice cut across my thoughts.
