Sex, Lies, and Vampires

Dark One, Hasi. I am a Dark One, not a vampire. I have explained this to you time and time again, and yet you insist on referring to me in the popular vernacular. Besides, it is honest sweat. You cannot scorn it.

I opened my eyes and smiled at Adrian, pulling my arm up from where it had been pinned when he collapsed on me after making the sweetest love possible. I trailed my fingers over the lovely contours of his bicep before skimming my hand down his side to pinch the very firm flesh of his behind. 'Even wet with the honest sweat of a job well done—and it was a job very well done, not that you need me to praise your sexual prowess anymore—I adore you.'

'As is right,' he said smugly, his head dipping to nip the skin of my shoulder.

'Ow! The dining car is closed! You had three courses already, you can't still be hungry.'

He growled into my neck. I am always hungry for you, Hasi.

I grinned and trailed my fingers across the back of his neck, one of his particularly ticklish spots. 'You just like flaunting that soul around, that's what it is. I have nothing to do with it—you'd probably be just as happy making love to a hole in a tree so long as you could do it with your soul enhancing all the feelings.'

'A hole in a tree!' he yelled in mock outrage, flashing his fangs at me. 'You forget who you are speaking to! I am powerful! I am feared! I am—'

'—sexy as hell, and you know it.'

His lips curled into a self-satisfied smile. 'Woman, you will be punished for such abuse!'

He rolled over, pulling me with him as he prepared to render his version of punishment, which always ended up in wild bunny sex.

'Are you done yet? It's been three hours!' Came a peevish voice from the doorway.

I eeked and scooted down Adrian's body until the blankets hid most of me. Adrian glared over my head at the boy standing in the open doorway. 'I have told you before—now that Nell is with us, you must knock before entering our bedroom.'

I slithered off Adrian, shimmying over to the far side of the bed, reaching out from under the blankets to feel for the bathrobe Allie had lent me. I had been wearing it when Adrian ripped it from my body. Maybe it had slipped under the bed.

'I did knock. You didn't hear me. She was laughing.'

'Nell has a name. She is my Beloved. You will treat her with respect, and not refer to her as she.'

My hand, scrabbling around under the bed, closed around a dry, round object. I froze.

'You like her better than me!' Damian shouted. 'She smells funny! How can you stand to be around her?'

Adrian rolled his eyes and sat up in bed. 'We have had this discussion before. You are my son. I love you. I will always love you. But I also love Nell, and if you give her the chance and stop rejecting her advances, she will take you into her heart as well.'

'Oh, yeah, like he's going to allow me to do that,' I muttered as I pulled the object out from under the bed.

'Are we going to the museum or not?' Damian demanded, ignoring his father's request. 'She said we could go. I want to see the mummies.'

I stared down at Ginger's head. His jaw cracked open in a grin. I slapped a hand over his mummified lips to stop the coo of pleasure I knew he was about to make.

' Who said you could go to the museum?' Adrian asked.

Damian sighed a sigh of such martyrdom that only a ten-year-old could produce it. 'Nell.'

'Thank you. We'll be out in ten minutes. I suggest you comb your hair and change into clean clothing,' Adrian said.

I carefully shoved Ginger's head back under the bed. Adrian's arm snaked around my waist, pulling me back until I rested on his chest. 'I am not sad that you returned the mummies to their inanimate state, Hasi, but I must admit that it was more convenient when Damian could look at them without requiring us to escort him to the museum.'

'Uh…' I said, gnawing on my lip, wondering how I was going to tell him that in the confused two days that followed the charming of his curse—my recovery from going one-on-one with Asmodeus taking most of that time—I might have given him the impression that I had actually performed a curse returning the mummies to their previous state, rather than just thinking about it, which was as far as I'd gone what with the whole joyous reunion with Adrian after finding out I hadn't really died.

Adrian's arms tightened around me. 'Do not worry about Damian, Hasi. He will come to love you as much as I do. It will just take time for him to adapt to the change in our circumstances.'

I smiled into his chest, kissing a pert little nipple that taunted me. 'Yeah? Well, until then, I have four words for you.'

His breath sucked in as my teeth grazed the tender morsel of nippleness, his hands sweeping down my back to wrap around my behind. 'And those words are?'

'Dark One boarding school.'

His laughter filled my heart, filled my soul, filled the night with more happiness than the world could contain.