Page 95 of Fortune's Blade

“But you’re her Second—”

“And yours.” His eyes searched my face. “You may as well just accept it. You’re not getting rid of me.”

I smiled tentatively at him, then broke into a grin after a few seconds. I couldn’t help myself. We were both crazy, but at least we could be crazy together.

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Ray whispered.

I relaxed back against the bed, a huge load off of my mind, even more than I’d expected. A wave of pure happiness coursed through me suddenly. Ray was staying!

“Did you really think I’d leave?” he asked, more seriously.

“Everybody leaves when you’re a dhampir.”

“I don’t.” He cupped my face again, which seemed to be a favorite move, and I leaned into it, enjoying the calluses on his palm, the warmth of his skin, and the concern in his eyes.

I put my hand over his, a question trembling on my lips. I almost swallowed it back down, but tonight was about telling the truth. And asking for it.

“What is it?” he said, his eyes darkening.

I looked at him seriously. “You’re not just saying that because I’m good at sex, are you?”

He stared at me, and then he pulled me close, rocking us together while his whole body shook. “Well, that might be part of it,” he said, his voice choked. “A man has needs, you know.”

I considered that, even though I was pretty sure that he was joking.

A thought occurred. “You’re a vampire.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“And vampires have perfect control over their blood pressure, do they not?”

Ray pulled back to look at me, and started to appear a little worried. “Uh. Yes?”

“So,” I smiled at him. “You don’t really need a refractory period. Do you?”

Chapter Thirty

Dory

“You need sleep,” Louis-Cesare murmured, pulling the gigantic brown fur we were using as a bedspread closer about my chin.

I wasn’t cold, even though my breath frosted the air whenever I exhaled. It probably would have at the castle, too, as open to the elements as that place was, but we weren’t back there. We were still in the war camp that Lord Rathen was assembling from a dozen clans.

We couldn’t go back to court because that wasn’t neutral ground and Rathen wasn’t leading this group—technically. Of course, he was in reality, but dragons were prickly so he couldn’t look like it. This was just a group of like-minded people, friends in the human term, teaming up in a forest to go crack a few skulls.

More and more had been flying in all day, and I had been paraded about to meet them over and over. I was apparently some kind of trump card for Rathen’s side, a human who could fight well enough to kill a dragon, even if it had left me looking half dead. But that very fact, and sight of my flimsy, battered body, seemed to shame creatures who were, without any doubt at all, far stronger and tougher than I was.

If I could fight, the implication was clear, why couldn’t they?

It had been exhausting and nerve wracking, and I had been relieved beyond measure when better tents arrived and I had had somewhere to escape to.

This one was much more spacious than the cloak-on-a-stick set up I’d had before, and was furnished with all the comforts of home. Including reed mats to cushion the somewhat rocky soil, a woolen mattress on top of that, and the fur. I didn’t know what animal it had been taken off of, and frankly was afraid to ask.

But it was huge.

Like my husband, who felt bigger than usual beside me, perhaps because I felt smaller.

No, I wasn’t cold, but I wasn’t sleeping, either.

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