Immortals After Dark 12 - Lothaire

Old fucking sighed .
    Dear gods, it’d finally happened to him.
    Happiness.
    Then his own fangs sharpened. I will kill anyone who tries to take this feeling away from me.

51
    A t twilight, Ellie woke with no grogginess. One second she was asleep, the next awake. Weird.
    She found Lothaire gazing down at her with a disconcerting tenderness, his tousled hair hanging over one of his eyes.
    If he’d been gorgeous before . . . Lothaire looking well loved was breathtaking .
    In a gravelly voice, he said, “Good gloaming.”
    A vampire version of good morning? “Uh, you too.”
    “How do you feel?”
    Mentally? The jury’s still out. Body-wise? Amazingly good . Though she refused to admit it.
    Ellie didn’t want him thinking he could continue to get away with this high-handedness where she was concerned. If she was going to make a vampiric life— oh, dear Lord —with him, she needed to nip this behavior in the bud.
    She shrugged. “I feel okay. It’s definitely different.” She had no twinges, despite their aggressive sex.
    But I also have no craving for my usual waffles.
    “What are you thinking about?”
    “I miss food.” With a pang of sadness, she rose, feeling his eyes on her body as she never had before.
    Palpable. Possessive .
    “I’ll be your breakfast. I’ve replenished out of the refrigerator. Come, Lizvetta, you love the way I taste. And I know just how you prefer to tap my . . . font.”
    So smug. She gazed at him in the bed—it looked like a murder scene. The mattress was shredded. By her claws? Blood was everywhere.
    She flushed to realize she’d never offered him her own blood. Did that make her a selfish lover?
    He followed her gaze, seeming proud of the destruction. He cast her a self-satisfied smile as if he’d just won an argument. And for some reason his fangs were so . . . incredibly . . . sexy.
    Her mind seemed to blank. Lick them, feel them in me. She rubbed her tongue over one of her own.
    That sinful vampire could make her a mindless sex slave if she let him.
    She shook her head hard, then strode into her bedroom to throw on some clothes. She didn’t trust herself to be naked around him.
    When she opened her closet, she broke the knob clean off the door.
    “You’ll get used to the strength,” he said, suddenly behind her. As she gaped at the doorknob, he added, “It’s not a bad thing to be strong.”
    With a swallow, she set the knob on a shelf and painstakingly began to dress, careful not to destroy fabrics that felt as flimsy as cobwebs.
    Lothaire gazed on with an enthralled expression, as if he’d never seen her naked before—or maybe he just didn’t want to let her out of his sight. “Admit it. Vampire sex is better.”
    Atomic blast. “Doesn’t matter. Lothaire, we need to talk.”
    “We will.” He reached for her, drawing her close, until she could feel his erection like a steel rod against her. “After we spend again, and you feed from me once more. Dorada will return at midnight, but afterward, I have a surprise for you—”
    “ Now . Please get dressed.”
    Seeing she was serious, he shrugged. “I’m feeling very magnanimous right now.”
    The victor. If he’d been arrogant before, now he was insufferable. It chafed as never before.
    He traced away. When she returned to his bedroom, he emerged from his closet fully dressed. Just as they had so many times before, he sat at his desk, she on the settee.
    “Tell me, Elizabeth. What can’t wait until later?”
    “Lothaire, you can’t make decisions for me again.”
    “Of course I can.”
    “No, we start this thing as equals. Say it.”
    “I can’t say that. Whereas you, my love, retain the ability to lie, I do not.”
    “What was that?” She’d misunderstood him.
    “We are not equals, Elizabeth. I have thousands of years of knowledge over you. The bloody wisdom of ages.”
    The room seemed to rock.
    “You are my Bride, my most cherished possession, and I am your mate and technically your sire. I will make decisions for us, and you will trust me to know what’s best.”
    “How can you say that?”
    “You didn’t want to be a vampire, but you ended up loving it.”
    “Loving one night of it. The rest remains to be seen!” She tried to tell herself that he just didn’t know better than to say these things. As Balery had explained, Lothaire was emotionally insensitive because he’d never learned how to—or why he might—behave differently. Be patient, Ellie. . . . “Lothaire, promise