Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(47)

She wasn’t ready to stop touching him just because he had decided it was time to change forms. She fussed at his tousled shoulder-length hair, running her fingers through the length to smooth out the tangles.

“Don’t you ever comb this mess?” she grumbled. It was gorgeous. She refused to say that. It was bad enough she’d already slipped and called his gryphon form stunning. “Or wear jeans that don’t have holes in them?”

“I’ll buy new jeans when I get back to the city, just for you.” He turned his face into her hands and closed his eyes. She bit her lips and let her hands flow around him, her fingers framing those warm, lean features that were so handsome they made her chest ache.

“I’m scared,” she said. The words fell out of her mouth, and more tumbled out after. “Before I wasn’t letting myself feel anything. I’d gotten to a place where I accepted what was happening, and I was ready for it to be over with, but now I’m feeling everything again. I’m feeling too much, and I’m really, really scared.”

His arms came around her as she talked. He pulled her down and around, until she sat sprawled across his lap. Her head remembered the perfect fit in the hollow of his neck and shoulder, and she burrowed back into that place. He held her with his whole body, one hand cupping her head. She felt strange, surrounded by his strength. She felt breakable, and somehow cherished. One of her arms crept around his neck, and she found herself clinging to him.

“It’s all right,” he said, and for a moment she thought he was uttering stupid platitudes. “It’s all right to be scared. This is scary stuff.”

“I’d rather face monsters,” she muttered. She buried her face in the warm skin at his neck and inhaled his clean masculine scent. “Monsters are easy. This isn’t easy.”

“No, it isn’t,” he whispered. He rocked her a little.

There they were again, the strange new feelings he prompted in her, the sense of all her doors and barriers opening inside. Even though her caftan kept her covered down to her ankles, she felt naked and exposed. “I don’t know how to cope with the thought of my memories changing,” she breathed. “Even when I’ve lost everything and everyone, I always knew I could rely on myself. Now I don’t even have that. I don’t know what to rely on.”

“Rely on me,” said Rune. He pressed his lips to the fragile skin at her temple. “Listen to me. I am not sorry I saved you from that whipping or tried to make a horrible situation better for you, but I am profoundly sorry I did it without thinking through the real consequences of what might happen. Still, I do not believe that you—you at your essence—have changed. And you know that things must change if you are to survive, correct?”

She nodded.

“You could try to surrender to the experience and let change happen.”

“Change or die?” she said.

“Yes. Change or die.”

“You might have noticed, I don’t do surrender very well,” she told him in a dry voice.

“No, I don’t either.” He sighed and was silent a moment. Then he asked, “Did you choose to become a Vampyre, or were you turned against your will?”

She shivered. She did not know this person huddled against Rune’s chest. She said, “I chose it. In fact, I heard rumors and went in search of it.”

She felt him nod. He told her, “You embraced a change once that was so profound, it altered the definition of your existence. You can do it again if you have to.”

“I was a lot younger then,” she muttered.

His chest moved in a quiet chuckle. “Now you have experience to help guide you. Think back to that time and how you embraced the change. I have faith in you. I know you can do it.”

She soaked in his humor as she rested against his body’s support. When had his every move become important to her? How had she let that happen? She asked, “Why do you have that kind of faith in me? What did I do to deserve it?”

His chuckle turned into an outright laugh, the husky sound vibrating against her cheek. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that when everyone around you had a lifespan of perhaps forty years if they were lucky, you outlived them all by over four and a half thousand. You survived the rise and decline of the Egyptian, the Roman and the Islamic Empires. The gods only know what you did for shits and giggles during the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition. And you were one of the principal architects for how the Elder Races demesnes interact and coexist with the U.S. government.”

“You did all of that too,” she muttered. She plucked one of her long hairs off his black T-shirt. “The Spanish Inquisition, shits and giggles and whatever.”

He captured her hand and brought it to his mouth to kiss her fingers. He said, “Yes, but there is a fundamental difference between us. I only did what was already in my nature, and lived. You were human. You not only transcended your nature, you found ways to excel through some of the most misogynistic times in human history. It is incomprehensible to me how you can have such a sense of pride, but no real sense of self-worth.”

“Well,” she said with a frown. “I don’t think people like me very much.”

She hadn’t meant it as a joke, so she was startled when Rune clutched her tight and guffawed. He leaned back to look at her with dancing eyes. The impact of his handsome face laughing full bore into hers was a sucker punch she hadn’t seen coming. She struggled to find some sense of inner equilibrium and failed utterly. The sight of him filled her to the brim, and all she could do was cling to him and stare.