and could be considered fluent.” He made a face. “Lovely people. Creative in their invectives.”
“You lived there for a time, you said?”
“Yes. Several hundred years ago now. I have traveled about since then. Italy, Germany, most recently London. I tired of the old world, though. I wished to experience youth. So, I came here.”
“This country is hardly new, and you have picked the oldest city within it.”
He shot her an incredulous look, one eyebrow raised.
She realized her foolishness, and she chuckled. “Two hundred years is not new to those of us who live sixty if we are lucky.”
“If I have my way, you will live to see a thousand and more.”
She looked up at him curiously. “Do you mean to turn me?”
“Only if you wish it. I will not force it upon you. That is a sin against nature not even I would wish to commit.” Vlad frowned. “But I do not like the idea of losing you so soon.”
She glanced away to watch a few others across the street, walking arm in arm as they were, enjoying the evening air after the opera. So similar, and so disparate, from her situation. The couple were young lovers. She and Vlad were…something very different from that.
“I could not possibly mean enough to you, that you would wish me to be at your side for—” She squeaked in surprise and bit back a scream as he picked her up around the waist with both hands and planted her feet on the edge of a stone railing that marked the front edge of someone’s property, a good twelve inches up from the brick sidewalk.
“Stop. Enough of this. I will have no more of it. It ends now.” He was pointing at her face, lecturing her like she was a child.
She was twelve inches off the bricks, and for the first time she could stand eye-to-eye with him. Mostly. He still managed to be an inch taller. She laughed.
“I am tired of your—what? What is funny?” He narrowed his eyes, frustrated at her laughter.
“By God, you’re tall.” She kept laughing. “You poor bastard.”
“You have only realized this now?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, not in the slightest. I have but now measured the specifics. No wonder you defy fashion and do not wear a top hat. You would be a monolith.” She rested her hands on his shoulders over the fabric of his dark peacoat. “You must spend your days with a sore neck.”
His stern expression flickered into amusement. “I am accustomed to it. I do find this arrangement more convenient; I will admit.” His hands rested on her waist. “You are so very small.”
“I am of perfectly average frame. You are the anomalous one.”
“Then everyone is simply too short.”
“Is that why you turned Walter? Do you only pick out the spindly creatures so that you do not get a crick in your neck from glowering down at everyone?”
“I do not glower.”
“Oh, yes, you do. I am quite convinced you invented the expression.” She slipped closer to him, sliding an arm along his shoulder until it draped casually behind his neck. His dark hair was held back in a simple red silk ribbon, and she toyed idly with the end of the fabric. She pulled the glove of her other hand off between her teeth, drawing a low growl out of his throat at the action. Something darkened in his expression.
She slipped her fingers along his neck, feeling the muscles and the tendons there. The strength in him. The power that burned beneath her hand, though it was chill. He had no heartbeat.
Yet.
She wondered how quickly she could change that.
He growled again, louder than the first, and his hands at her waist tightened. “Do not tease me, Maxine. You will regret it later. I have every intention on being quite delicate with you this night. Do not tempt my control.”
“I find it fascinating that you of all people can find the strength to handle anything fragile.”
“I do not think you are, but I will treat your first night with the respect it deserves. I do intend on testing your resilience soon enough.”
She trailed her touch up to his cheek and let herself explore his features. Let herself truly examine him, now that she had made her choice. His eyes slipped shut at her embrace, and he seemed to lose himself in the experience, same as she.
She ran her thumb along the line of his lower lip, and before she could second-guess her impulse, she tipped