“I love how passionate you are,” he muttered as his mouth burned a path down to my neck. Then fangs pressed against the spot where my pulse used to be. He licked it before sinking those sharp points into my flesh and thrusting forward again, leaving me shuddering at the double impact of pleasure. He continued in that devastating rhythm, his hard strokes matched by deep, sensual suctions, until my mind was wiped of everything except the overwhelming pleasure and the urgent need for more.

My hands started to race around his body, alternatively gripping his head or his hips. I couldn’t stop trying to get closer to him despite there being no air between us. Yet soon, even that wasn’t enough. Lost in the primal sensations, I sank my fangs into his neck, wanting to fill myself with him that way, too. From the spike of pleasure that cascaded through our connection, he liked that, and I dug my fangs deeper into him in response, moaning as I swallowed his blood.

That rich liquid awakened a new hunger in me. His blood wasn’t food, but it was still heady, intoxicating, and most of all, part of him. I drew deeper on the punctures, sliding my fangs in again when they closed as he healed with supernatural quickness, then felt his low, rasping laughter against my neck.

“Don’t be gentle. Bite me harder.”

I did, a gasp escaping me as he increased his pace and his teeth sank with rapturous roughness into my throat. Soon, my neck throbbed as much as my loins and I was rocking against him with a reckless disregard for anything except the ecstasy that straddled a knife’s edge between too much pleasure and a dash of pain. It consumed me, until I didn’t care that the sparks beading from me had the sheets smoking, or that the headboard banged hard enough against the wall to rattle the windowpanes.

Need more, yes, more, so good, please, yes, yes, yes!

My shout coincided with that incredible pleasure cresting within me. Then I shouted again at the additional, instant wave of ecstasy as Vlad shuddered against me, his grip turning to iron. My fangs slipped out of him as my head fell back, that sizzle replaced by a bone-deep languorousness that made my limbs feel heavy with satiation.

Moments later, Vlad’s fangs left my neck and he pulled out of me. Then he shifted until I lay next to him instead of beneath him. His hands, only slightly less heated than before, began brushing back the wild tangle of hair from my face as he stared at me, the faintest smile curling his mouth.

“Seems you were right. We both needed that to forget for a little while.”

I let out a breathy laugh. “You should listen without arguing next time.”

He chuckled, continuing to tuck those errant black strands back from my face, but I mourned as I watched that former tenseness start to fill his features again. I didn’t want to give up on our moment of peace this soon, yet neither of us could hide from reality. Ready or not, it was here, about to pounce.

Still, I wasn’t without good news that I could share to help keep those dark thoughts at bay a little longer. “I figured out how to link to Mircea.”

He sat up so abruptly that it startled me. “Do you know where he is?”

“No,” I said with a small, frustrated sigh. “And he doesn’t, either. His captors have him in an underground cave, so there are no landmarks or identifying structures. I could talk to him, though, like he’s been able to talk to me, and he’s willing to tell us how to find people who do know where he is.”

Now Vlad’s face was all stony again. Inwardly, I sighed. So much for our peaceful interlude. “Why should we believe a word he tells you?”

“He knows his captors will kill him anyway once they’re done giving you grisly tasks to perform,” I replied. “He also knows that with the spell linking us together, you can’t kill him, so he realizes you’re his best chance to survive.”

“For now,” Vlad muttered darkly. “He must know that I’ll kill him the moment we find a way to break your spell.”

I left that alone and chose my next words carefully, not wanting to blast him for sins he’d committed more than five hundred years ago, but also not wanting to leave him unaware of Mircea’s other motivations.

“He also still longs for your respect, Vlad, even if he knows your approval is out of the question.”

“My approval?” he repeated in disbelief. “Is he insane?”

“Maybe a bit,” I replied, shrugging. “But he was a little boy who loved and idolized you once, and part of that little boy is still buried inside the hateful man he’s become. He knows you despise cowardice more than anything else, so by giving you a chance to find him, he’s showing you he’s man enough to fight for his life even though the odds are very much against him.”

He stared at me, an expression of disbelief overtaking his features. “You believe that ridiculous manipulation? Leila, he’s lying in order to lure us into a trap.”

How could I explain the awful, soul-scarring rejection Mircea had forced me to relive without slapping Vlad in the face with it? There was no way, and without my explaining it, Vlad wouldn’t believe that Mircea’s offer was real. I couldn’t lose our best chance to find him by sparing Vlad’s feelings, so I’d have to settle for the metaphoric face slap.

“You were a terrible father to him,” I said bluntly. “Mircea didn’t know he wasn’t your son, so all he knew was that he loved you completely and you couldn’t tolerate being near him. That broke something in him that’s never healed, and I know he’s not faking that because my father’s continued rejections broke something in me, too. But just like a never-grown-up part of me still longs for my father’s respect, Mircea still longs for yours, and this is his last chance to earn it.”