functioning again. I lay draped across Kristoff as he lounged on a plush red curved sofa, clad in one of the spa’s thick bathrobes. Kristoff was clad only in me, a fact I much appreciated as I traced the lines of muscles in his chest and upper arm. He was still too skinny for my taste, but I was happy to notice he was filling out nicely with regular meals.
He opened one eye. His hands were lazily tracing shapes on the outside of one of my thighs, the touch casual, but so sweetly intimate it made my eyes burn for a moment. “My parents?”
“Yes. You know, the people who gave birth to you and raised you?”
An odd sense of withdrawal touched my mind. I stopped stroking the muscle of his biceps and looked up at him. Both his eyes were open now, looking at me with suspicion.
“Why do you want to know about my parents?”
“Why shouldn’t I want to know about them? We’re bound together for the rest of time, Kristoff. I’d like to know more about you, that’s all. Is there something about your parents you don’t want to talk about?”
He sensed me sensing his emotional withdrawal, and stopped, but there was a wary edge to him, as if he were walking on the blade of a razor. “I’ve told you about my mother. My father was a tanner. He died when I was very young.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard for your mom. Were there any kids other than you and Andreas?”
He shook his head, and once again I felt a spike of awareness inside him. He was watching me closely as he spoke. “No. He was born later than me.”
“I gathered you were older than him,” I said lightly, continuing to stroke his arm with long, soothing touches, but wondering all the while what it was about his parents that had him so keyed up. “How much older are you?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“Really? Wow. That’s quite a difference.” I was silent for a moment, very aware of his now still fingers on my leg. “You said you were born human. How did you come to be a vampire?”
“I was cursed to it.”
“Cursed? Someone can do that?”
“It takes a demon lord, but yes, you can make a Dark One.” His voice was suddenly flinty hard. “Why are you questioning me about this?”
“All right,” I said, pushing myself up. I swung my leg over until I was straddling his thighs. “What is it that bothers you so much about me asking about your past?”
“Why do you care how I became a Dark One?” he countered, his eyes lightening a smidgen.
I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you dare lighten your eyes at me, Boo! I have no ulterior motive in asking you about your origins other than curiosity about you. It may have escaped your notice, but I just announced to you that I’m in love with you.”
“It didn’t escape my notice,” he said quickly.
Pain stung me. Of course he hadn’t missed what I said, but being an honest man, he hadn’t lied to me and told me the feeling was mutual. “I’m interested in people I love. I want to know things about them, what they like and what they don’t like, and how their childhood was, that sort of thing. And you’re just going to have to deal with a whole lot of curiosity about Dark Ones, because up until two months ago, I didn’t believe vampires really existed.”
Mollified, he released the grip he had on my legs. “I am interested in you, too.”
“Good. I’ll tell you all about my boring life and family another time. Right now I want to know what happened that had you ending up a vampire.”
He was silent for a moment, reluctance thick inside him. “It was an act of revenge. Someone I knew injured another person.”
“Someone you knew?” I asked, puzzled why he would be the victim of revenge.
“My wife.”
I sat up straighter at that, my mouth hanging open in astonishment for a moment. “Your wife? You were married before me? That is . . . we’re not really married, but you thought we were getting married, so it counts.”
“We are really married, and yes, I was married before. In 1640, so you can stop pretending you’re jealous. My first wife is long dead.”
There was no pretense about the quick spurt of jealousy that riddled me, but I ignored that comment just as I ignored the emotion, instead doing a quick calculation in my head. “You were married when you were seventeen?”
“Yes. It was a reasonable age for marriage then. I was apprenticed to a cobbler, and wed his daughter.”
A question rose up on my tongue. I tried to fight it, tried to keep my lips from forming the words, but my brain gave the go-ahead without my permission. “Did you love her?”
He looked somewhat startled by the question. “I wanted to bed her.”
“Lust and love aren’t the same thing,” I pointed out.
“No, they aren’t.” He was silent for a moment. “I suppose I loved her. She was pretty and we enjoyed each other in bed.”
“Oh, that really does my self-confidence a lot of good,” I said somewhat acidly.
The corner of his lip twitched. “I enjoy you in bed, too.”
“Not even remotely near as much reassurance as you’re going to have to provide in order to erase the memory of you hitting it off with another woman,” I told him. “But I am nothing if not magnanimous, and am willing to move past your lustful ways, so long as you provide the reassurances later, preferably in tangible form. So your wife hurt someone?”
The closed feeling was back in his mind. “Yes. A woman. Ruth said it was an accident, that an ox she was driving in a cart went mad and ran the woman down, but her companion would not listen. He killed Ruth, and because I was her husband, and thus must suffer as he suffered, invoked a demon lord to curse me forever.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, putting my hand over his heart at the sensation of pain deep inside him. “That was truly horrible. I can only imagine what you experienced trying to cope with your own tragedy as well as suddenly finding yourself soulless and a vampire.”
His lips tightened. “It was not pleasant. My mother was furious when she found out, and traveled all over the country looking for help, but she was shunned by the Dark Ones she met. After years of searching, she finally found one who would talk to her. He told her there was no hope for me other than a Beloved, but neither of us really believed I’d find one.” A wistful note entered his voice. “I would have liked my mother to know that I did, in fact, find you.”
“She knows,” I said, leaning forward to kiss him. “Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she’s not still with you.”
He said nothing, but his fingers were back to stroking patterns on my thighs.
“How did Andreas come about?”
“The Dark One who consented to speak with my mother is his father.” His lips twisted with a wry smile. “My mother was quite attractive, and he always had an eye for women. Something he shares with his son.”
“Andreas is a ladies’ man, eh?” I said, musing on the irony to be found in life. “I’ll remember that. Maybe he would stop being a bastard to you if we found his Beloved.”
“I doubt it.” Kristoff lifted me off him and set me on the couch, rising to pull on a pair of pants. “Most Dark Ones don’t find their Beloveds. It’s not as if you can order one up.”
I puzzled over Kristoff’s unease and reluctance to speak of his past during the subsequent hours, even onto the plane that sent us winging back to the United States. Part of it could be attributed to the mention of his previous wife; he was obviously astute enough to recognize that I was not yet comfortable enough with our relationship to discuss his past loves, which was one reason why he shunned the mention of his late girlfriend. But even given that, there was something else that he was keeping from me, something that mattered so much, he kept it locked up tight inside him.
Something that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like.
