“So you are allowed to risk your life to remain clan chief, but I am forbidden from rescuing a friend from potential death?”
He paused, his vast experience with women warning him this was a trap with no escape.
“I would not use the word ‘forbidden.’”
“Then what word would you use?”
“Strongly discouraged,” he suggested.
She snorted. “I do not consider a threat to tie me to the bed as strong discouragement.”
He growled, his fangs fully extended and aching with a hunger that would never be sated.
“Me either,” he husked, leaving his chair and rounding the table with a slow smile of anticipation. “I consider that an invitation to paradise.”
Juliet hastily rose to her feet, her expression stern although she could not disguise the heat simmering in her beautiful eyes as her gaze skimmed down his body, covered in nothing more than a loose pair of satin pants he had brought from his recent journey to China.
“Victor, you are not going to distract me.”
Easily scooping her off her feet, Victor headed directly for the nearby bed, tumbling them both onto the silken sheets. With a swift roll he managed to end up on top.
“I will admit that was my original intent,” he murmured, burying his face in the curve of her neck. “But I believe I have been hoisted on my own petard. You are delectable.”
Her arms circled his neck, her body instinctively arching beneath him.
“Victor.”
The intoxicating scent of peaches filled his senses. “Hmmm?”
“This changes nothing,” she muttered. “I am going with you to the docks.”
Victor pulled back at her stubborn insistence, an unfamiliar pang twisting his gut.
“Why does this Levet mean so much to you?”
She blinked. “Are you…jealous?”
“Of a stunted, outcast gargoyle? Do not be absurd.”
The emerald eyes narrowed. “Victor?”
“You belong here with me,” he said before he could halt the revealing words. “Not with Hawthorne and that creature.”
She studied him with an all too knowing gaze. “You believe if I rescue Levet I will return to Justin?”
Victor shied from the mere notion he was jealous of the mage, or the deformed gargoyle. He was a powerful vampire. A clan chief. The most honored creature in all the demon world.
“No, I believe it is a fool’s errand and I will not let you deliberately put yourself in danger.”
She smiled, not fooled for a moment.
“Justin has no claim on my affections,” she assured him softly, her fingers threading through his hair. “He offered me protection and that is all I ever desired from him.”
He studied her pale face, searching for…what?
Reassurance?
“You care for him?” he gritted.