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I laugh again, more loudly. “You forgot that I have two black eyes and look terrible? You must be in love.”

He doesn’t laugh with me. “I forgot that bruises . . . hurt. It is . . . hard to wound a vampire, to make them hurt, and we don’t bruise. And I haven’t cared about a warm-blooded creature in a very long time.” He grimaces. “I will have to do better if I want to earn your love.”

I don’t say anything to that. One can’t really earn love any more than one can make it appear. Love, at least my understanding of it, is that it just is. Constant, burning, bright. Unconditional. But what do I know? The closest I have ever felt to that kind of love is for Granny Jean or Jade. But I think that I understand it more than this ancient creature before me, who seems lost to his own feelings.

“I’ll be back with the potion momentarily,” Julian says, breaking into the silence when I don’t respond. Then he’s gone, the door swinging shut behind him before I can blink. Not knowing what else to do, I get out of bed and plod over to the bathroom. The reflection that greets me in the bathroom mirror is grim. Julian was right when he said that I looked like hell. There are the swollen, dark eyes and abrasions on my chin and cheeks, like small patches of road rash on my face. I splash some water on my face, delicately soothing the wounds with the cold water. Then I brush my teeth and comb my hair, and I feel a little more like a person.

I look up into the mirror and start a little when I see Julian over my shoulder, looking at me with inscrutable eyes, but I calm quickly. He has a vial in one hand that houses a glowing green liquid.

“You should have stayed in bed,” admonishes the vampire. “You need your rest.”

“I wanted to see for myself how bad the damage was,” I reply. “And put myself together a bit. I feel better after washing my face.”

“You’ll feel even better after drinking this,” he says, passing me the vial. “Drink it all in one gulp.”

I look at the vial a little dubiously. Glowing green stuff makes me think of radioactivity. But I trust Julian and know that he wouldn’t hurt me. I remove the stopper from the vial and drink down the liquid in one healthy swallow. It’s not too bad. Almost Christmas-y, with hints of evergreen and mint.

I immediately start feeling better, and gasp when I look back in the mirror. The bruises around my eyes fade, going from black to purple to red to green, and then are gone. The abrasions blur and disappear, like blemishes disappearing under a Photoshop tool. The pain is gone, a pleasant tingling in its wake.

Julian steps behind me, turning me around, and gently takes my chin in his hand, tilting my head this way and that. It reminds me of the first time we met, when he was a total weirdo looking at my eyes.

“That’s much better,” he remarks. “I can’t see any marks on you. How do you feel?”

“Much better,” I assure him. “No need to fuss over me.”

His hand stills, and he looks deeply in my eyes. I feel suddenly self-conscious at his intense gaze and bite my lip. His eyes flick down to my lips, and I can see the blatant desire to kiss me. A molten sort of feeling spreads from my belly to my limbs, and I’m surprised by the force of my own wanting.

“I want to make a fuss over you,” he frowns, responding to my earlier comment. “You deserve someone who fusses over you. You shouldn’t have to do things all alone.”

Before I can stop myself, I raise on my tiptoes and kiss him. I have taken him by surprise, I think, because he doesn’t move for a moment, and I have control of the kiss. My arms wrap around his neck, and I tease his lips with my tongue.

Then I am not in control anymore. His lips devour me, moving against mine with fierce need. He lifts me up and carries me, but I don’t care, so lost am I in his kiss. Soon, I’m pressed into the mattress in the other room, and I can feel him undressing me. The sundress I’m still wearing from last night is torn away, ripped clean down the middle, my bra soon following.

“You need to stop ripping my clothes,” I murmur against his lips, before tilting my head back to give him access to my neck.

“They need to stop getting in my way,” he returns, kissing down my neck, laving my collarbone before finding my breasts. I can’t stop my gasp and moan as he takes my first nipple in his mouth, sucking on it with ruthless force, almost too much and not enough at the same time. He rolls it with his tongue, his right hand coming up to my other breast, kneading it in his expert hands. He sucks and nips and licks, reading my needs before I even have them and tending to them. Then he switches, leaving my wet nipple cold in the air as he gives attention to the other one. I feel a tightness in my middle, arousal coiling in my pussy. Am I going to come just from him playing with my breasts?

“Another time, ma souris,” he says between kisses and licks, “I will feed from here, pull your blood from your breast, and it will feel like I’m sucking on your clit, the pleasure washing over you. It will be exquisite, a dance of pleasure and pain.”

“What don’t you do that now?” I gasp. My hands grasp the back of his head, pulling him tighter to me, my back arching to proffer my needy breasts to his masterful mouth.

“I want to be with you with clear feelings, ma jolie fille,” he purrs. “I want to know what it is to know you without your blood between us. To feel my love for you on my own.”

That sends a warning bell in my mind. This is wrong. I’m leading him on. I shouldn’t have sex with him while our feelings don’t match. I go to say so, when he sucks, hard, his fangs merely grazing my skin, and my back bows even harder off the bed as my orgasm crashes over my senses, surprising me. I cry out with the force of my pleasure before collapsing back on the bed.

But Julian isn’t done. He grins at me wickedly, then starts sliding down my naked body, still fully clothed, to my quivering heat, his intent obvious.

“Wait!” I cry out, and he immediately stops, looking at me with a question in his eyes.

“We shouldn’t do this,” I tell him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me, ma souris,” he replies, looking a touch amused. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Not physically,” I roll my eyes at him. Such a man to be thinking with his dick. “Emotionally. I told you I don’t feel as strongly for you as you do for me. If we have sex, that will just complicate things.”

Julian quirks a brow at me. “Is your only hesitation that you feel I will be wounded by you not loving me yet?”

Yet. I almost smile at his arrogant confidence. “Someone needs to be thinking rationally about this.”