Dead After Dark (Companion #6.5)(77)

“I . . .” He was casting about for a lie. His shoulders slumped. He was deciding to tell her the truth. “I was just writing you a letter.”

“Perhaps you should say your message in person.”

He looked away. “It was mostly ‘thank you.’ ”

“Was it?” He had lied again. That had her curiosity up.

He nodded. He wasn’t going to tell her what it really said. She noted that there were several crumpled drafts around the carpet. Whatever it was, apparently it was not easy to say. Dread suffused her. You have to try, she reminded herself.

She stood behind him and rubbed his shoulders, kneading the knotted muscles there. It wasn’t just the shock of attraction that shot through her. Something deeper flashed inside her that she’d never felt with a man before. It warmed her heart as well as her loins. His shoulders relaxed and he rolled his head, giving a satisfied growl. She ran her hands under his shirt collar to the silken skin on the nape of his neck.

Then he was standing. He had her by the shoulders. “I’m so weak,” he whispered, angry.

“I . . . I am sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . You’ve been sick. I know that.”

“I mean I’m weak to want you so.” He took her in his arms and kissed her fiercely as she turned up her mouth to his. Kisses were so intimate. “I shouldn’t give in,” he said, between kisses. “You don’t even care enough to tell me what you are.” He was panting now. He dragged her to the bed by one arm. “But I want you, Freya, just once more.”

She ripped his shirt getting it off him. He popped buttons on his breeches as she unbuckled her girdle and let her dress drop in a pool at her feet. Naked, he picked her up and laid her on the bed. He was already erect. The lingering effects of influenza were not enough to cool his ardor, apparently. She stroked his cock as she sidled up beside him. One of his hands covered her breast as he held her to him and kissed her thoroughly. Her breasts felt swollen and tender. When he bent to suckle, she arched up into his mouth, moaning.

“Forgive me, my love, but I must feel you around me right now.”

She opened to him, nothing loath. She wanted him to plunge himself inside her, pry open her most secret parts and fill them with his strong cock. She wanted to be demanded of, not to demand. They took the simplest of positions, and somehow the most satisfying. She would not ask him to control himself. He had been sick, and probably had little stamina. And if they did not achieve the closeness of the first time, well, that was as it may be.

Wait. What had he called her?

He hung above her, and his eyes were hungry. “My love.” It was a figure of speech, no more. He wanted her skills at sex, and she would give them to him, as long as his strength held.



Drew lay back and drew Freya down with him to cradle her in his arms. Not bad for an invalid. He’d brought her to ecstasy three times, and even come twice himself. Now he should be lethargic, but he was consumed by a strange energy, vibrating in sympathy with her energy, as she lolled against his chest, her curtain of hair covering her face. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t played her Tantric games. He felt just as close to her as he had the first time they made love all night. That’s what it was. Making love. It wasn’t just sex. Just sex was what he’d had with every other woman.

The letter he’d written her told her that he loved her, though he knew she didn’t love him in return. She didn’t even trust him enough to tell him what she was. And she was something all right. He remembered her lifting him bodily into bed when he was fainting as he tried to use the chamber pot. She carried him as if he was a child. No ordinary woman could do that. He had told Henley that first night in the tavern that vampires drank blood, not ghosts. Perhaps that was what she was. It was an ugly word. His stomach churned. His head said vampires didn’t exist. His heart said it didn’t matter to him what she was. She had not hurt him. On the contrary. She had cared for him and set him free in a way he had never imagined possible.

He wouldn’t burden her with his presence. A partner who lingered on after he was no longer wanted was annoying. His eyes filled. He lay there, thinking about the emptiness ahead. His revenge on Melaphont was thwarted. But that didn’t matter any more. In the last days, Melaphont had seemed to shrink in importance. Drew had been consumed by his past, but now his eyes were on the future, a future without Freya in it.

He was a coward. He couldn’t face a future like that. All his resolve to go washed out of him. She didn’t love him. He would be rejected. But he had to try.

“Freya?”

She lifted her head. Her great dark eyes were soft. She smiled an inquiry, waiting.

He swallowed once. His mouth had gone dry. “Marry me.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “What?” It was a frightened whisper.

He was at least as frightened as she was. “I love you. I haven’t the courage to leave you. I know you don’t love me. But if . . . if you let me stay, I could . . . I could take care of everything for you. You wouldn’t have to deal with the servants, or . . .” He tried to think of how he could make himself useful to her.

“I can’t.” Her voice broke.

There it was. He gathered her into his arms. He wouldn’t let her know that something inside him had just shattered. “It’s all right. I knew it was a long shot. Had to try, though.”