'Between us, I think we can handle any nuisance callers.' He shrugged, smiling a little. The mesh T-shirt he wore showed off his chest and arms. He had hard, practical muscles, the physique of the pre-industrial age. It made the shrug a fine thing to watch.

She sat down. The crisis was over and with it the need to act. I'm so tired. She sipped her tea, feeling its warmth sliding down her throat like an elixir.

The moment of ease was treacherous. Just like after the battle with the Flanders house, the backwash of fear and magic took an emotional toll. Tears started to slip down her face before she even noticed them. Hastily she put her cup on the coffee table and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

This is ridiculous. There had to be a box of tissues nearby.

'Holly?' Alessandro rose. She could hear the confusion in his voice.

'Sorry.' She jumped up, but he grasped her hand. For a moment she could not bring herself to raise her eyes, but stared at the holes in his mesh shirt instead. His flesh looked ivory white where it peeked through the threads. Twisting away slowly, she tried to turn her back without making the gesture seem angry.

Instead he put his hands on her shoulders, holding her still with a grip gentle but unyielding as rebar. When a vampire wanted a person to stay, they stayed.

'What is it?'

'It's been a long day,' she said, blinking the wetness from her eyes. The storm of tears slowed but left her queasy. 'It's no one thing. It's everything. Mac. The demon. School. Everything.'

'How can I make it right?' Alessandro asked, his hands sliding from her shoulders to her arms.

'It's nothing you can fix. I'm just tired.' She leaned into him, feeling the honeycomb of his shirt on her cheek. All those long, lean muscles were beneath her fingertips.

'Holly,' he whispered, putting his hand on her hair, stroking it. 'I am sorry. I wish everything were easier.'

Resting there for a long moment, she drank in the feel of him. A single heartbeat thumped under her ear, just audible over the quiet music he had put on the stereo. She raised one hand, playing her fingers over his biceps. The knot in her chest was easing as courage flowed from the mere act of touching skin to skin.

'What are we going to do?' she asked.

'About what?' He traced the curve of her ear with one finger.

'What about Mac? And the changelings? What you said about their history was incredible.' She raised her head to look at him. 'You know, you've never said a word about your history.'

His mouth twitched. 'Never ask a vampire who they were.'

'Why not?'

Alessandro closed his eyes. His lashes were a light brown, long and thick enough to make a cover model jealous. 'They do not always wish to remember.'

Holly froze for a long moment. Having no answer, she kissed him. His eyes were still closed. She could feel his body respond to the touch of her lips, the inhalation at the unexpected contact, a flinch that was at once self- protection and unabashed need.

'You know I am a bad bargain,' he said.

'Why?' Her voice was a whisper.

Alessandro put his hand on her arm, squeezing lightly. 'You already know the answer. Vampirism is not just a matter of peculiar eating habits.'

Holly pulled away, feeling inhuman strength even in the gentleness of his grip. 'But that is only half of you…'

His eyes drifted open. 'Don't make that mistake. There is no separation of the two. I lost myself when Kalil took me. I left your world.'

'Kalil?' she asked.

Alessandro stared into her eyes, and for a moment she saw nothing more than another soul. 'Kalil,' he repeated, as though the name held countless associations. 'You want to know who I was? I was a gift to him. He made me what I am. He was my sire.'

'A gift?'

He hesitated, then nodded once, slowly. 'It may sound strange to you, but absolute control over another person was natural enough in my time. You and I are separated not just by our species, but by centuries of custom and culture. The world I was born into was very different.'

Holly remained silent, digesting what he had just said.

He frowned, as if unsure where to begin. 'In my time as a human the Medici were a rising family of bankers, ambitious to achieve political power in Florence. They had money beyond imagining. I worked for them as a household servant, one of their many musicians. In every way that mattered I was theirs to give.'

Holly squinted, struggling to envision people who would give a man away like a case of beer. 'Did they know Kalil was a vampire?' Did they know he would eat you?

'Yes. He was an honored guest at their home.' Alessandro paused. 'That was why their gift had to be special. They wanted to impress him, for he had great influence with the merchant traders from the eastern lands.'

'So they gave him you?'

'They gave him many gifts. I was but one. I was a curiosity, like an exotic pet. The people from my village were descended from the northern hordes—the great warriors from Germania who had brought Rome to its knees hundreds of years before. We were physically impressive, fair-haired and tall, a novelty. Besides that, I played many instruments. I sang in seven languages. I was an exquisite token, the way a fine horse is a prized gift.'

Okay, not man as case of beer, but man as entertainment unit. The situation still mystified her. She groped for something, anything she could relate to. 'I met you at a musical concert.'

'Yes. I still enjoy listening to it, and I still play. That, at least, Kalil did not take.'

'He decided you were a gift that ought to keep on giving? Forever?'

Alessandro smiled, but it was sour. 'Perhaps he wanted to preserve my ornamental value the same way one might preserve a flower by dipping it in wax.'

'Ornamental?'

He shrugged. 'I was pretty and made nice sounds. I didn't learn to fight as a warrior until after I was Turned. I had no real taste for battle before that. Kalil's curse brought a hunger for the sword.'

'What happened to him?'

His face grew shadowed. 'Human hunters. They came in the day, while my clan slept, and killed them all. I survived by pure chance. I was away on a trip to buy horses.'

'Thank the Goddess,' Holly murmured.

'Thank an argumentative and hard-dealing trader. Now you know all there is to know about me,' he said, touching her cheek with the back of his fingers. 'Nothing more happened that was good or kind until the night you and I met.'

'I think you're editing history to suit the moment.'

He gave a smile that answered nothing, his eyes searching her face. 'I remember that coffeehouse concert. You walked over and handed me a listing of who was playing there that month.'

'You looked like you were enjoying the music.'

'Still, it's rare for someone to make such a gesture, a casual kindness, to one of my species. And for good reason.'

Holly blinked, trying to follow what he was saying and not making it. She was falling into his gold-shot gaze.

His voice dropped to a whisper. 'You looked at me and responded to what was there, just as I was at that moment. Everyone else in the room saw a hunter, a danger, but you saw me.'

She waited as he kept stroking her face, and all she wanted was that touch. The words were incidental.

'Holly, you deserve as much from your lovers. You deserve someone who will look at you, your house, your work, and adore all of it. Ben could never have seen you, or he would be here laying his heart at your feet.'

Oh. Her own heart drifted in her breast, a giddy, sideways ache of sweet pain. Holly could feel the blood creeping under her skin, rising under his touch. Oh.

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