Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
She walked alongside him to the primary bedroom, her eyes on her feet. “Still…”
“Take your mind off it,” he gently commanded. “How about you tell me what you thought of my family.”
“Your parents seem…”
“They’re a lot, I know,” Luis chuckled. “I’m sorry about them. I would’ve waited if it weren’t an emergency.”
Francesca watched him closely as he set their bags down in the bedroom. “It’s all right. Your mothers are really lovely. Even if Isabelle scares the shit out of me. Your dad’s a harder read, though.”
Luis untied the knot at his wrist and gently piled silk rope in her palm. “He’s a hard man. He came up during the rebuilding of the city after the war, and then had to survive the shit heels that were his cousins. It made him pretty closed off.”
She watched his face closely as he curled her fingers around the rope. There was something there — a sadness that wasn’t just for his father. “He seems pretty content, though. With his family, I mean.”
A small smile pulled at his mouth. “He got lucky. Well, not at first. Him and my mom, Isabelle, they were an arranged match. She’s venom neutral and was from a family looking to make connections, while my father was trying to move up in the ranks.
It was a good fit — except that they hated each other. ”
“Really?” she asked incredulously.
Francesca found that hard to picture. After she’d showered, dressed in a sundress from her suitcase, and sat in Albert’s office with a tray of soup, she’d observed them all closely. The triad were a perfect solar system, each of them orbiting the others with seamless choreography.
Albert, a stern-faced man of few words who’d very clearly given his looks to both his sons, watched both his wives with a quiet admiration that was hard to miss.
He seemed to prefer letting them speak for him and regularly stopped the conversation to ask what they thought of the situation.
His love for both women wasn’t flashy or full of smiles but a steady, silent kind that filled the room — much as her own parents’ love was.
Strong. Dependable. A little reserved, maybe, but there whenever one went looking for it.
Luis sat heavily on the bed. It was nearing dawn and she could see the stress of the day wearing on him — not to mention what had to be considerable pain from the beatings he took the previous night.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he explained, “They didn’t fit right until Mama came along. Dad says it gave them something to bond over. Their love for the same woman, I guess.”
Sitting beside him, she noted, “Most relationships would’ve dissolved under those circumstances. Says a lot that it didn’t.”
He gave her a tired but curious look. “Do your parents love each other?”
“Yes, but they’ve been together a really long time, so it’s a very… mellow kind of love. They’re best friends.” Eyeing the tension in his shoulders, she laid a hand on his chest. “Are you hurting?”
“My stitches aren’t happy with me,” he admitted. Flashing her a smile that was absolutely aimed to distract her, he added, “Too much strenuous exercise today.”
She rolled her eyes, but it didn’t stop the blush from creeping up her neck. Giving his chest a pat, she urged, “Lay down, then, Casanova. It’s almost your bed time anyway.”
“Yours too,” he grunted, kicking off his boots.
Teasing him, she complained, “Oh, but I thought I’d stay up a while and explore the beach. You know, I’ve never been in the o—”
Luis wrapped his arm around her waist and dragged her backward onto he bed. She hit the pillows with a laugh.
“You never go anywhere without me again,” he mumbled into her hair.
After the night they’d had, she couldn’t exactly argue. Francesca turned on her side. Wrapping her arm around his sturdy waist, she tucked his head under her chin — holding him for once.
“Thank you,” she whispered, rubbing small circles on his back with her thumb. “You’ve saved me a lot in the past forty-eight hours and taken a beating because of it.”
A warm puff of air tickled her throat when he sighed. “Worth it to finally have you in my arms. Even if we’ve been fucking banished.”
“Not a bad place to be banished to,” she pointed out.
Luis let out a short, frustrated sigh. “I had plans, Frankie. I had things I wanted to do with you. I was going to take you to dinner. Buy you a bunch of ridiculous shit. Take you swimming in the rooftop pool. You gave me thirty days to woo you, so I was gonna fucking woo you.”
Surprised, she asked, “So you weren’t just upset that you wouldn’t be the one taking care of Malachi?”
“I want the fucker dead,” he promised her, “but I don’t actually care who does it. I just want to know he’s not a threat to you anymore.”
Oh.
Warmth gathered in her chest, filling it until there didn’t seem to be enough room for her lungs.
He hadn’t worn that surly, upset look the entire debate because he had some macho idea about being the one to take out Malachi. It was because he was disappointed he couldn’t give her what he’d planned.
Francesca hugged him closer. In a soft voice, she told him, “As nice as all that sounds, I think I prefer this. Just you and me.”
“I guess the upside to this is that you’ll be forced to relax,” he allowed, fighting a yawn. “And I get to have you totally and completely to myself. Which wasn’t guaranteed, you know, because Marietta and Dahlia are obsessed with you now.”
They were quiet for a long time, but despite her own exhaustion, she couldn’t silence her mind long enough to fall asleep. But it wasn’t memories of her bloody mouth or bolt shots or even the chaos of the Games that kept her up.
“Luis,” she whispered, almost too softly to be heard.
“Hm?”
She hesitated. He was obviously desperately in need of rest and it went against something fundamental to disturb him. But no matter how hard she tried to stifle it, her mind kept jumping back to the same topic.
“What did Felix mean when he told you to just get on with it?”
Luis squeezed her a little tighter. In a rough voice he answered, “He meant that you need to become an Amauri. Officially. You have to take my bite.”
“Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.” She rubbed her cheek against his thick hair, her thoughts tumbling over each other.
Her friendship with Maxine had taught her a lot of the things they left out of public school sex ed, and the days of going over the contract had taught her more.
She knew what taking a vampire’s bite meant.
It wasn’t just another form of intimacy.
There was a reason it came with such a steep price tag in her contract — if she even consented to it at all.
To be bitten was to be tied to a vampire. It was to be chemically and physiologically changed. It was an agreement to stay with them or else suffer through the horrors of withdrawal, supporting them in the most foundational way a creature could.
That bond didn’t happen instantly, of course.
Maxine told her it took a few bites before the venom truly “settled” and began its work, but it wasn’t an act done casually.
For a vampire to give their bite was to mark their territory.
It was an exchange of something primordial, no matter how ephemeral the bond might prove.
She’d never truly considered letting the winner of the Games bite her. The risk and intimacy of it didn’t sound at all appealing to her, even with a two thousand dollar price tag attached.
The only person she’d ever imagined biting her was Luis.
Francesca’s arm drifted upward. She smoothed her fingers over the shell of his ear and back, feeling the fine sweep of hair that led to the base of his neck.
Dreams of touching him like this had haunted her for months.
It was a shock, almost, to feel him let his guard down so completely that he’d let her stroke him gently, with infinite care.
“You’ve never bitten someone before, have you?”
She wasn’t sure where the conviction in her voice came from. It was entirely possible that biting someone was a bit like losing one’s virginity to a vampire. Maybe you only did it once, but it was generally agreed upon that you ought to get it over and done with to truly enter adulthood.
But something in her sensed that wasn’t entirely the case.
At least not with Luis, a man who tried his hardest to know people without them ever truly knowing him.
Intimacy wasn’t his strong suit. Trust was given to him but never returned in kind.
That didn’t seem like ideal conditions for a man to explore the possibility of a lifelong bond.
“No,” he answered.
She traced the cord of his neck with her fingertips to find the jumping pulse beneath his skin. “But you want to bite me.”
It wasn’t a question, but he responded like it was. His voice came out almost guttural when he confessed, “Yes. More than anything in the world. I want it so bad it feels like my fangs are on fire. It’s always been like that when we’re together.”
“You never said anything.”
“I was scared of running you off. You were always so skittish, and I liked that you were getting comfortable with me. I thought I had time to figure out how to win you over like you deserved to be.” He huffed.
“I didn’t expect you to quit, let alone volunteer for the Blood Games. If I’d known you were that brave—”
“Wait, hold on.” She pulled back a little to give him an incensed look. “You didn’t make a move because you thought I was too shy? Or— or scared?”
Luis wisely took a second to consider his answer. “Well… You were always so sweet, and you were from a small town. It’s what I like about you.”
“Ugh!” Outraged, Francesca pushed on his shoulder until he rolled onto his back. She climbed on top of him.
Setting her fingers to unbuttoning his shirt, she tartly informed him. “I may like being told what to do in the bedroom, Mr. Amauri, but that doesn’t mean I’m a pushover or someone you have to coddle. I’m as brave as anyone else.”
Luis framed her bare thighs with his hands. Watching her from under heavy lids, he chuckled, “You don’t think I’ve learned that? You surprise me constantly, Frankie. It’s one of the things I love about you. Fuck, watching you spit out a bite of that vampire was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Working on his belt, she leaned over him to whisper, “What if I told you I want you to take a bite out of me?”