Reluctant Partnerships (34 page)

Martin wanted to protest, but he recognized the tone of Denis’s voice. He might not know the vampire all that well yet, but he had already learned to recognize the stubborn stance. He doubted he could want Denis any more strongly than he already did, but he would wait if that was what Denis insisted on. In the meantime, though, he fully intended to make Denis as needy for other things as he was.

Denis was only marginally surprised when Martin did not insist on being bitten. The wizard thought he wanted it, but he had not yet passed the point of no return, and until he did, Denis would keep his fangs to himself. His cock, on the other hand….

He hissed as Martin unbuckled his pants and slid a hand inside, encircling Denis’s erection with a firm, cool grip. Lying back this way, letting someone else take the lead, went counter to every instinct Denis possessed, but Denis did not press for the upper hand. He had taken charge the night before, to their mutual pleasure, so tonight he would give that control to Martin. His partner might have accepted his attentions last night, but he had already realized it was not in Martin’s nature to passively accept a lover’s demands any more than it was in Denis’s own nature. They would have to navigate those shoals carefully if they intended to make a relationship work. This was Denis’s olive branch. Next time it would be Martin’s turn to give.

Denis’s fingers dug into the sheets as he lifted his hips, a silent offer for Martin to undress him. Martin tugged at his pants and underwear, pushing them down to Denis’s knees without bothering to pull them the rest of the way off. The feeling of being trapped added to Denis’s restlessness, but the hot tug of Martin’s hand stilled his protest. He could do this. He could lie here and let Martin touch him without rolling the wizard beneath him and burying his cock or his fangs in the other man’s body. He could give Martin this time, even if it cost him to stay in control.

The fingers providing a channel for him to fuck were too tempting to ignore, especially when Martin lowered his head and licked across the tip of Denis’s cock as he thrust through Martin’s grip. Denis groaned, his body already demanding release, but he fought it back, not wanting the moment to end.

He could feel Martin’s pulse pounding against his cock, could see it beating in his throat. The need for blood nearly overwhelmed him as he struggled to contain himself, but he refused to give into it. Not yet. Not until he was sure that binding them together magically and permanently was the right choice to make. His body convulsed, his release spurting out of him as if holding back his desire to feed robbed him of his physical control.

Determined to regain the upper hand, he pushed Martin to his back, rising over the wizard and starting to undress him. Martin’s hand returned to his head, playing over his hair before tugging his head down toward Martin’s neck.

“I said no,” Denis reminded him sharply, pulling away.

“You said not until I needed it as badly as you do,” Martin countered, reaching for Denis again. “I need it.”

Trembling with the desire to take what Martin offered, Denis rose to his feet, straightening his clothes. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Martin shouted. “I can see your fangs. You’re a tease, that’s what you are. A bloody fucking tease. You flirt and hint and even offer, but when it comes time to follow through, you back out.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!” Denis shouted back. “You’re asking for things you don’t understand because you think it might be fun or arousing or I don’t know what. You’re playing with fire and don’t have the good sense to realize how badly you could get burned. You talk about making an unbreakable commitment with the same ease you talk about falling into bed. Having made a commitment to a lover once, let me tell you there’s a world of difference, and that isn’t something to do lightly. It isn’t something to get over lightly.”

“Get out,” Martin said softly, his voice tight. “When you’re done hiding behind the ghost of your dead lover, you know where to find me.”

Denis looked like he wanted to argue, but after a moment, he nodded and turned, leaving Martin alone.

Slumping back against the pillows, Martin cursed under his breath. He was caught in a battle he could never win, because how could he fight a ghost, a man Denis had loved and lost?

Merde.

He would have to wait and hope Denis came back to him.

D
ENIS
snuck through the corridors of the Hostellerie, not wanting anyone to see his disheveled state. He would have to let at least one wizard see him so he could get home, but he hoped to minimize the number of people who noticed him. He had nearly reached the door to the courtyard when it opened and Sebastien came in. “Oh, hello, Denis. I didn’t realize you were here,” Sebastien said.

“I’m not,” Denis muttered. “I was just leaving.”

“I didn’t see your car. Do I need to find Thierry? He’d be glad to send you home,” Sebastien offered. “Or you can come in for a chat, which it looks to me like you need even more than a displacement spell.”

“I’m fine,” Denis said.

“You don’t look fine,” Sebastien pressed. “You look halfway between ravished and miserable, and since Martin’s rooms are upstairs, I’m guessing it’s a little of both.”

Denis flushed. “We, euh, we might have had a bit of a disagreement.”

Sebastien chuckled. “And out of order with the sex,” he surmised. “Come have a drink with me. Thierry will be a few more minutes at least. You can tell me what happened and maybe I can help. Thierry and I have had our share of arguments.”

“He doesn’t understand what it means to a vampire to feed from someone,” Denis blurted out, giving in to the need to talk to someone. “He thinks it’s the same as falling into bed with a lover.”

Sebastien nodded. “He’s equating it to the most intimate act he knows. It’s not his fault he’s never known anything more than sex. That’s his problem. What’s yours?”

“I had a lover,” Denis said. “I met him the night I was turned. I tasted his blood that night and never wanted anyone else’s until he died and I had no choice. He wouldn’t let me turn him and he wouldn’t let me make him my Avoué, insisting he didn’t need that kind of promise between us, that he trusted me not to feed from anyone else even without the magical bond.”

“How long ago did he die?” Sebastien asked, his heart aching a little even now when he thought about Thibaut, dead four hundred years ago. Thierry’s unfailing presence at his side had eased the constant emptiness he had lived with since then, but nothing could erase it completely.

“Thirty years,” Denis said.

Sebastien nodded. “You have to remember they’re mortal. For them, thirty years is half a lifetime, certainly half their adult lifetime. Okay, perhaps not for the wizards who live somewhat longer than the average mortal, but even so, it’s a large chunk of time to them. Even Thierry, who is as close to me as anyone has been besides my Avoué, doesn’t see our relationship the same way I do. He loves me. I know he does, and I trust that love, but it’s not the same for him. Our relationship may be the foundation he builds his life on, but he
is
my life. His blood sustains me. Nothing in his experience comes even close to that. If something were to happen to me, like happened to Adèle’s partner, he would grieve—I have no doubt of that—but he would reach a point where he could move on. It’s not that easy for vampires, and there’s no way to make a mortal understand that.”

“So what do I do?” Denis asked.

“You have to decide that for yourself,” Sebastien replied, “but the simple answer is you grieve until you’re ready to move on. Their timetable, Martin’s timetable, for that happening doesn’t matter. When you’re ready to move on, you’ll know it.”

“How did you know?”

“When the lure of Thierry’s blood grew stronger than my longing for the one I’d lost,” Sebastien replied honestly. “Maybe it’s the magic in his blood. Maybe it’s just the strength of the man himself. I don’t really know, but there came a point when I asked myself what I had to lose by being with him, and the answer was nothing. Suddenly, holding onto a ghost wasn’t worth it anymore. But it took me four hundred years and thousands of anonymous feedings to reach that point. Martin may not understand if you choose to let this opportunity pass you by, but no vampire who has ever lost a lover will question it. You have to do what’s right for you, because once you’ve formed a partnership, it can’t be undone.”

Chapter 21

M
ORE
than a little nervous at what she was about to do, Adèle knocked on the door to Pascale’s house. The wizard had spent the past two days mulling over her conversation with Thierry, trying to decide on a course of action. She hated feeling uncertain this way, and that had finally pushed her past her fears. Maybe it would be as big a disaster as her relationship with Jude had been, but maybe, just maybe, she would get lucky this time and find a partnership that could sustain her rather than drain her.

She summoned a smile when Pascale opened the door, a plain cotton robe wrapped tightly around her. “Hi,” Adèle said, feeling unaccountably shy. “Would you like some company?”

“Adèle,” Pascale said, her surprise clear in her voice. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow night.”

“I know,” Adèle said, “but I owe you an apology, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said and what Thierry said, and I’m hoping you’ll give me another chance.”

“Another chance at what?” Pascale asked, picking nervously at the collar of her robe.

Adèle reached out and captured the wandering fingers with her own. “A chance at a real partnership instead of the business relationship we both pretended to want.”

“Pascale?”

Adèle peered over Pascale’s shoulder into the house. A woman she had never seen before stood in the doorway that led down the hall to Pascale’s bedroom. Adèle had never been down the hall, but the woman draped artfully against the doorjamb radiated familiar ease. Adèle’s eyes narrowed as the strap of the woman’s negligee slid off her shoulder, revealing a bite mark on the top of her breast.

“Deux secondes, Nicole,” Pascale said. “I’ll be right there.” She turned back to Adèle. “This obviously isn’t a good time. I’ll see you tomorrow evening and we can talk then.” She started to close the door, but Adèle wedged her foot against it.

“No,” she said, magic sparking around her dangerously, “you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to go in there and be with someone else and pretend we don’t matter.”

“You made it abundantly clear there is no ‘we’,” Pascale reminded her sharply. “You’re the one who told me how many times that you had no interest in women.”

“I don’t,” Adèle said, “but I seem to have developed quite a bit of interest in you. Get rid of your trick, and I’ll show you.”

“You really are something,” Pascale said with a disbelieving laugh. “You barge in here uninvited, interrupt my evening, and then expect me to just drop everything in gratitude because you’ve deigned to change your mind about our relationship. Forget that. I don’t need the heartache.”

“No heartache, I promise,” Adèle said, taking a step closer and touching Pascale’s cheek. “I’m not playing, and I’m not saying this because I’m jealous as hell that someone else is in my place in your bed or has your fang marks in far more intimate places than I do. I was stupid and blind and narrow-minded, none of which you deserve, but it was a little unsettling, suddenly finding everything I believed about myself turned on its ear. I’m a temperamental bitch at the best of times. That was more than I could handle, and I took it out on you.”

“So what are you saying?” Pascale asked, eyes still narrowed distrustfully.

“I’m saying I want a partnership with you,” Adèle replied. “A real one, however that develops. I want a chance at the happiness everyone else has found, and I’m sorry it took you finding someone else to make me see that.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Pascale demanded.

Adèle wanted to shout no, to pull Pascale into her arms and never let her go, but she would not do to the other woman what Jude had done to her. “Yes. You can tell me to leave right now and I will. You can tell me not to come back until tomorrow or the day after or next week. Just don’t tell me to never come back, because I’m not sure I can do that.”

Pascale nodded slowly. “You can come in. I have to talk to Nicole. Wait in the living room, and if you say one nasty word to her, I’ll send you home instead of her.”

“What are you going to tell her?” Adèle asked, heart pounding as she came inside.

“I’m going to tell her the truth,” Pascale said. “She works for Angelique at Sang Froid. She knows about l’Institut and has some idea of what the partnerships entail. She won’t be happy, but I didn’t make any promises. Once she’s gone, we’ll talk.”

That sounded ominous to Adèle, but she already knew she was here on sufferance. She reined in her temper and prepared to wait out the other woman’s departure. Once the interloper was gone, she would show Pascale how sincere she was and how good they could be together.

The sound of a loud crash in the bedroom had her on her feet and halfway down the hall before she remembered Pascale’s edict that she stay in the living room. “Pascale, is everything all right?”

The door at the end of the hall opened, and the woman Adèle had seen before, fully dressed now, came storming down the corridor. “She’s all yours, the lying bitch.”

Adèle’s hand tightened around her wand as she fought the urge to cast something unpleasant in the other woman’s direction, but a muffled sound, nearly a sob, drew her attention back to the bedroom. Knowing Pascale would probably yell at her for not listening, she walked to the doorway anyway. Pascale knelt on the floor, shards of glass on the floor around her.

“Wait,” Adèle said, “don’t cut yourself.”

“She broke my grandmother’s vase,” Pascale said, looking up at Adèle helplessly. “I understand that she was angry, but why did she have to choose that?”

Adèle took another step into the room. “Maybe I can help,” she offered. “If you trust me not to make a bigger mess of it.”