“Tell the truth.” Her dimple peeked out. “Do you love me just for this house?”
“I mean…” He looked around. “It’s not the only reason, but it helps to remember how loaded you are when you drive me crazy.”
She laughed, and it echoed down the hallway, filling the house with music, laughter, and the quiet lapping of waves at the dock. The air was cool and dry, a perfect spring night in Venice, and the orange tree perfumed the air.
Here. Ben danced with Tenzin in the darkness. Here right now.
This moment.
He wanted to live in it forever. And now he could.
40
“You better have just escaped certain death,” Chloe said. “Five days, Benjamin. Five. Days.”
He frowned. “Wait, so you want us to have faced certain death?”
“I’m saying if anything less than facing certain death kept you from answering the nine thousand calls and messages I sent you… Plus I had to try to reassure your uncle and put up with Fabia freaking out. You really need to get to Rome because I swear that woman is paranoid about you after Shanghai.”
Ben winced. “Well, if anyone has a right to be paranoid, it’s probably Fabi. I’m fine. We’re fine.”
“We?”
Ben didn’t know what to say.
Tenzin and I made up.
We still have issues. We’ll probably always have issues.
But…
I can’t live without her. I don’t even want to try.
“We figured things out,” he said quietly. “We’re good, Chloe.”
She was quiet on the other end of the phone.
“Chloe?”
She sniffed. “Really?”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Yeah. We’re good. We’re more than good.”
“Are you happy?”
Was he happy? He looked over at Tenzin, who was lying on her belly on one of the Persian rugs, her legs kicked up as she scowled at the screen of her portable gaming device.
“Thieving raccoons,” she muttered. “Tiny, devious demons, both of you.”
Ben smiled. “Yeah. I’m happy.”
“I’m glad.”
Tenzin threw her gaming device across the room. “Usurers end up in the seventh circle of hell, raccoons!”
“Yep.” Ben watched the console bounce off the carpet. “Everything seems pretty much back to normal.”
* * *
They spent four nights in Venice, sending texts to everyone who’d been panicking about them and catching up on emails while they enjoyed the solitary quiet of the city at night.
They didn’t video call anyone. They didn’t go out other than to fly over the lagoon at night and enjoy the evening air. They rested and enjoyed the quiet.
Unlike the bustle of daytime Venice, the nighttime city was calm and quiet, a perfect retreat from the intrigue and immortal machinations they’d been juggling for weeks. For the first time in two years, Ben felt refreshed.
He woke most evenings to Tenzin teasing him awake, kissing his neck or running her fingers across his chest.
She was far more tactile than he’d imagined she’d be. Maybe she was making up for lost time. She told him she hadn’t taken a lover in the time they’d been apart, but even before then, it was rare for Tenzin to trust anyone enough to let them touch her, even in a nonsexual way. She was jealous of her personal space and didn’t allow many others to intrude.
They were lying on the mattress Ben had dragged up from the first floor, and Tenzin was intent on tracing the muscles of his abdomen.
“Tenzin?”
She looked up, and her hair brushed the sensitive skin along his hip. Ben shuddered and grew hard again.
Tenzin looked down. “Your appetite is remarkable.”
“I feel like I’m about sixteen again.” It was true. He felt like he was going through puberty for a second time.
“Trust me” —she trailed a finger up his erection— “nothing about you reminds me of a boy.”
“No, if anything, people are going to think I’m the cradle robber.” It was true. To human eyes, Tenzin looked far younger than Ben did. Luckily, most vampires knew that looks were deceiving.
“Cradle robber.” Her dimple peeked out. “That is an amusing idea.”
He pulled her up and she floated over him, coming to rest on his chest.
“Hello.” Ben slid his hands over her shoulders, down her back, and over her bottom before he reversed course and did it all over again.
She melted into him.
“I know you didn’t take another lover,” he said. “But did you have anyone who just hugged you? Chloe? Even Cheng?” Ben didn’t like the pirate, but he did care about Tenzin, and Ben was starting to think she’d been completely touch-starved.
“Chloe forced a few hugs on me, but Cheng and I aren’t currently speaking.”
His hand paused. “Because of me?”
“In a sense. He is not jealous—he knows our relationship was not comparable to what you and I share—but he did not approve.”
“Of what?”
“Of my taking you to my father.”
Ben frowned. “Really?”
“He thought I overstepped the limits of friendship.” She looked up and into his eyes. “He could understand the impulse of the moment, but then I refused to leave you alone.”
So Cheng was offended on Ben’s behalf? That was… oddly honorable of him.
“I will say the following thing was kind of annoying,” he said. “But I have to admit that if you hadn’t followed me, I probably would have been worried about you.”
Ben took a deep breath and tasted the air. He could smell the water in the canal, the scent of wool warmed in the sun, and above everything, Tenzin’s blood.
The constant, comforting scent of her had quickly become the reason he took his next breath. He did not need to fill his lungs, but he did need her. It was a little frightening how much.
Tenzin laid her ear over his heart. “He did not understand what we are.”
“Sometimes I don’t understand what we are.”
She didn’t speak for a long time. “I think we don’t have to be one thing. Humans try to classify everything because it makes life less confusing for them. But you are not human anymore.”
“No.” And Ben was learning to be okay with that. “Giovanni told me years ago that whatever we were, we were more alive together than we were separately.”
“Hmm.” Tenzin looked
