capable and what would happen when you touched me. You did not listen.”
“Touché.”
“Regardless.” She was not certain where she found the gall to argue with the King of Vampires. She found it far more enjoyable than her terror. She would hold on to her indignity as much as she could. “I was not certain what it was that I saw. Merely flashes of places. A sense of time stretching on to the horizon. I had no knowledge of numbers.” She watched him, fascinated and horrified in the same moment. He was older than the church. Older than any civilization, living or otherwise. “You are the first of your kind,” she guessed.
“Yes.”
Neither of them said anything for a long moment. He seemed content to let her grapple with the magnitude of her situation in silence. She was the vague prisoner of the King of Vampires…and a creature older than she could possibly fathom. She reached for her wine and downed the glass in one go. She coughed. “I believe I will need more.”
He laughed again and gestured for the waiter to refill her glass. When the young man was gone again, she sat back in her chair. Tears pricked her eyes unexpectedly, and she fought hard to swallow them down.
This is hopeless.
She squeaked, startled, as he touched her face. His emotions rushed over her as he did. Regret. Hope. Amusement. Pleasure. Hunger. Sadness at her fear. His soul brushed against hers, but she felt it go no farther. A touch, but nothing more.
He had reached across the corner of the table and placed the crook of his finger underneath her chin, lifting it to look at him. His red eyes were boring into hers, staring deep through her, and for a moment she was afraid he might put her under a spell once more. “Do not despair.” His thumb trailed along her cheek. The touch was tepid, but it bothered her surprisingly little. The pad of his thumb was that of someone who had worked with their hands. He was a warrior, after all. “You are strong, Miss Parker.” He sat back again, removing his hand from her face, and watched her with a strange and eager expression. “That is such a unique sensation.”
She shivered and sat back. “I wish you wouldn’t do that so candidly. It is unnerving. Each time you do, I…”
“You what?”
“It will sound like nonsense.”
“Try me.” It came out as a low and hungry growl.
She swallowed. There was no point in hiding. “I feel the night sky itself. I feel…time. So much of it. It stretches on like the sky, and in it are a hundred million stars, a facet of every life you have ever known. I see a forest, I see a desert, and I see countless fields of bodies. I see an ocean of existence. It is…disconcerting.” She stared down into her wine. “I warned you, it is nonsense.”
“It is anything but.”
She looked up at him, and he had a strange expression on his face. It was as though he had been stabbed in the chest. She furrowed her brow. “Vlad? Are you well?”
The expression fled, and he was his aristocratic, arrogant self once more. It was a shield, she realized, armor that he wore, reflexive as a second skin. He watched her through lidded, crimson eyes. “I promised I would tell you a secret if you came here tonight, did I not? That I would speak to you of a truth I have not told anyone in all my years if you admitted you are drawn to me. Can you admit that you come here willingly, not simply for the fact that you believe you have no choice?”
They had made a promise not to lie to each other.
And his words were simple truth.
She nodded once, barely. To him, she could admit what she would not say to the hunters or to his vampires. And not simply for the reason that Zadok had insinuated, either. While she was overcome each time he touched her, it was not for that reason alone. The feeling of the night sky—of him—of crimson velvet and satin, of violence and passion…it was alluring to her. It seemed to take her by her own soul and pull her in. “I am.”
“Then I will tell you what it is I wish for. What I desire more than anything else in this world. It is the reason I undertake all that I do. All the death, all the wars, all the torment