Page 16 of Desperately Seeking Vampire
“I told you. I’m a cartomancer. Man. You have nice arms. I like nice arms on a man. That sounds stupid, because who doesn’t like nice arms? But yours are beyond nice. They are arms plus. They’re solid, but not bodybuilder beefy. Not like the thief taker twins. Your arms are good. Manly. Enticing, even.”
“You betrayed me. You abandoned me. You fed me, then left me to suffer untold torments. My arms don’t care what you think of them. You will cease lusting after them this instant,” he said with what I imagined he thought was a self-righteous mien. He ruined that completely by taking my hand in his and absently kissing my knuckles. “This is strange. Cartomancer? I have not heard of your kind.”
“We’re not super rare, but we’re not everywhere, either,” I said, scooting a bit closer to him, savoring the heat that seemed to exude from his body. I badly wanted to strip him naked, but reminded myself that he seemed to be under the delusion I’d done something cruel to him in the past, not to mention the fact that he had been wounded on the way to my room, and I had never been a “strip a near stranger naked the second I got him in my hotel room” sort of woman.
I was willing to make an exception for Ivo, however.
He was healing up very nicely, I couldn’t help but notice. Even the nail bed of his pinkie finger was looking much less gruesome.
“But you claim you were ill?” He looked so rumpled and out of sorts that I couldn’t help but brush back his dark hair that had fallen down over his brow, and straightened what remained of his shirt, allowing my fingers to trace down the now-uninjured length of his arm.
“Yes. I was poisoned by mustard gas. It turns out that even cartomancers are affected by that. I was recuperating at a nearby hospital when the call came in that there had been heavy action in our area, and all medical personnel were needed. So I went to help out, but I didn’t last more than about sixteen hours before I collapsed. They sent me to another hospital, thinking I had pneumonia, and then shipped me back to Canada. I didn’t leave you, Ivo. Not willingly, anyway. I didn’t realize that by feeding you I was doing ... something. I’m not quite sure what a Beloved is other than some sort of a romantic partner.”
“It is, as you said, more of a soul mate.” He considered me gravely, his eyes still shadowed by pain, but at least he was no longer looking at me as if I had done him wrong.
“That sounds like something people who believe in fate subscribe to,” I told him gently. “I’m not in that group, just so you know. I don’t let the universe boss me around. I may be a cartomancer, but I don’t necessarily do what the cards advise. What happened to you after I was taken off to another hospital?”
“I died,” he said.
My eyebrows rose as I made a show of inspecting his recumbent form. “You look pretty damned good for a corpse, Ivo.”
“In effect I died,” he said, making an abrupt gesture that ended with his hand on my bare thigh. We both looked at it for a moment. His fingers spasmed as he cleared his throat. “That is, when I realized that you had bound me to you, and I could no longer feed from others, I allowed myself to fall into a state referred to as noctambul. It allowed me to exist—barely—without going to the trouble of actually killing myself.”
“I’m glad you didn’t do that,” I said quickly, trying to assess if he was revealing any troubling ideations of self-harm. “Just so you know, I worked for a suicide prevention organization during the nineteen seventies and eighties, so I’m perfectly happy to talk to you if you are having any feelings of despair.”
“I did despair, because my Beloved abandoned me,” he said, blinking impossibly long black eyelashes. His eyes were a lovely mixture of soft green and pale gray, with a dark ring on the outside of the iris. “Although now I am willing to rethink those feelings. Do you wish to have sexual congress?”
“Huh?” I asked, wondering for a moment if he could read the particularly smutty thoughts I was having at that moment. “That was a fast turnaround. One minute you’re blaming me for dumping you—which I feel obligated to repeat that I did not do—and the next you want me to jump your bones?”
“I like how you speak,” he said. “I never quite know what you will say. That would annoy me in others, but in you, it is intriguing. You did not answer my question.”
“I know, and I like how you talk, too. You sound British, and you talk like something out of a Victorian etiquette book, but oddly enough, that’s kind of a turn-on.”
“Turn-on,” he repeated, his eyes narrowing on me.
“It means that yes, I do wish to have sex with you, but not if you are still hurt from your ride here, and also, we just met. I don’t normally hook up with men I’ve just met. Although I guess we’ve known each other for a pretty long time, but still. Do you?”
“Wish to make love to you?” He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a long shuddering breath. “I’ve wanted to since you fed me.”
“Dude,” I said on a laugh, moving his hand that was starting to quest again, this time heading up toward my party zone. “We didn’t even meet back then. You were lying in about a million pieces in a field hospital less than a mile from the front. How could you possibly want to get it on?”
“I’m male,” he said just as if that explained it. “Also, the act of feeding between a Dark One and his Beloved tends to be arousing to both parties.” He frowned for a moment. “Did you not feel that connection?”
“No, but to be honest, I had a fever, had difficulty breathing, and vomited frequently. It’s hard to feel like sexy times when your body is trying to purge itself of all your internal organs.”
“That would explain it sufficiently, yes,” he said, nodding to himself, and got up from the bed.
I remained where I was sitting, watching him, wondering if he was going to strip himself and pounce. “How do you feel?” I asked.
He looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Semi aroused. Hungry. Slightly hotter than normal, but I assume that is due to my wounds healing. Are you ready for the lines I have composed in your honor?”
“You’re going to read me a poem?” I asked, draping myself over the pillows that were still warm from his body heat. It seemed to sink into my blood, making me feel restless and needy. “Right now? I just told you that I was willing to forgo my usual objection to jumping into bed with a man I just met, and you want to recite poetry?”
“Yes,” he said, then with quick, efficient movements removed the remainder of his clothing, folding them neatly before placing them on the single chair the room offered.
I couldn’t help but ogle the sudden exposure of a whole lot of man standing buck naked in front of me, my brain staggering to a halt while it took in the full glory of his chest.
“‘Sweet bird whose song lightens my loins,’” he said, striking a pose that was similar to the one he had adopted when reading his emo poetry earlier.
