Page 46 of Loved to Death

Shen put both of his hands on Thomas’ face. “Everyone deserves kindness, and I deserve freedom from my anger. Forgiveness isn’t just for you. It’s for both of us.”

Thomas leaned down and gently kissed Shen on the lips.

For the first time since becoming undead, Shen had a stir of lust without the taste of blood in his mouth. When Thomas pulled away, Shen stood on his toes to make the kiss last a few seconds more.

Smiling gently, Thomas said, “The night is half over. We have to keep moving if we want to reach my men tomorrow night.”

“Your men?” Shen asked.

“Five men and six horses. They’re at a little homestead we found about thirty miles south of here. I’ve paid them well to wait two weeks for my return. They know what I am and they’ve kept me sustained while I’ve tracked you down. I’ll show you how to feed without killing as soon as we reach them.”

Shen’s eyes opened wide. “Do they know about me? About us?”

“They know you’re a vampire, and they know you’re Chinese, but they don’t know that we’ve been…” Thomas searched for the right word. “Intimate. That part of our relationship will have to wait until we’re able to get a bit more privacy.”

Unable to believe what he was hearing, Shen just stared at Thomas.

“Come on,” Thomas said, wrapping his good arm around Shen’s shoulders and nudging him forward as he started walking again. “We need to keep moving.”

***

Half an hour later, Thomas smiled when big flakes of snow began falling. “If this keeps up, we can easily bury ourselves in the new snow tonight. Digging up old packed snow is difficult with a broken wrist.”

“Has she hurt you like that before?” Shen asked.

“Several times. It’s usually worse than this. If you hadn’t stopped her, I probably wouldn’t be able to walk on my own.”

“I’m sorry.”

Thomas shrugged and then winced again. “Polly needs to control the people around her, and I refused to be controlled.”

“How long will you take to heal?” Shen asked.

“Depends. If I don’t feed at all, it will take three or four days. If I have animal blood, one or two days. If I have human blood, I’ll heal that same day.”

“Fascinating,” Shen said.

“Fascinating?”

Shen nodded. “I’ve spent the past couple of years sharing information with an old doctor in San Francisco, and learning everything I can about vampires.”

“I’m amazed Polly let you stay in contact with anyone,” Thomas said.

“She didn’t. I contacted him behind her back and lied about it.” Shen smirked. “I also refuse to be controlled, but I kept that to myself rather than arguing about it.”

Thomas’ eyebrows went up. He needed to stop underestimating his submissive lovers. Between Sarah’s scheming to have his child, and Shen’s scheming to keep in touch with someone behind Polly’s back, Thomas was starting to think he was a fool for expecting obedience from anyone.

“I see.” Thomas stopped walking and Shen stopped as well. “Will you lie to me and go behind my back if you don’t like my orders?”

Shen raised one eyebrow. “Day-to-day orders, no. I’ll just follow them whether I like them or not. But big, life-changing decisions are different. Will you hurt me if I respectfully disagree with the big decisions?”

Thomas was hit with the memory of Jeffrey and Sarah looking at him with pain in their eyes when he told them never to mention marriage to him again. Ashamed of his past behavior while looking at it from the perspective of someone who’d been stuck under Polly’s thumb for years with no say in the big decisions, he shook his head. “No. I’d hear you out, and we’d come to a compromise.”

“Then I won’t lie to you or go behind your back.”

“Fair enough,” Thomas agreed, satisfied with that answer.

“You should know that I plan to continue learning everything I can about vampires. If you don’t approve, you should tell me now.”

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