Page 76 of Tempted By the Vampire Prince

My hand dropped, but her chin remained lifted. She stared hard at me for a beat, then slapped me across the cheek. The same cheek she’d slapped in the harbor.

“Never do that again.”

The sting forced me to reckon with the fact I’d wanted her to hit me. I had to fight the urge to grab her by the chin so that she’d hit me again. I needed the reminder that she did not want me, no matter what her pheromones indicated. And I liked that neither one of us wanted to be treated like fragile, broken people.

“Understood,” I said, rubbing my cheek. “But I need to see your fingers to ensure there isn’t any infection. I don’t mind the spice. I would mind the rot.”

I held out my palm and waited.

“You should’ve just said that.”

I had to bite back a grin. “I’ll remember that next time.”

I swore she had to hold back a grin too as she began unfastening the buttons at her other wrist, mumbling about her Gran’s salve and how ridiculously uptight this was, and I watched with tortured pleasure. After a half-second’s hesitation, she set her hand in mine. Her skin soft and warm. Her pulse thrumming. I lifted it and examined the injury. She’d claimed she’d taken a fall, but that’s not what these injuries looked like they were from. It looked like she’d tried to pry something apart. A stone lid perhaps.

“Well?” she prompted.

“I’m being thorough.”

“You’re stalling.”

“And you’re in a hurry for no reason. You heard Duval. No one is going to bother us.”

I lifted her fingers to my mouth and drew in a breath. The scent of her blood and the proximity of her fingertips to my lips had me curling my toes in my shoes to keep from sucking one of her long fingers into my mouth.

“There is no infection,” she said. “Take what you need and be done with it.”

As though I were a farrier with a hoof in my lap.

“Is that how you think I operate? That I simply take what I need without a thought?”

“I don’t worry about the chicken when I eat supper.”

Silence pooled between us. I understood we were doing the same thing, she and I. She turned tenderness into a joke. I turned it into my duty. So I didn’t respond.

I set her injured hand down on her knee, then leaned down to retrieve a damp towel from the warming chest at my feet. It had been steeped in chamomile tea and calendula. I opened the towel and waited for her to place her hand into it. When she did, I wrapped the towel around her hand and wrist.

“The heat will make the blood flow faster,” I informed her. “And for the record, I have never done this for a chicken.”

She pursed her lips. I couldn’t tell if she found the joke funny or annoying. Either way, it made me grin.

“Duval told me you never bite your sanguine partners.” She tilted her head. “Why?”

Why indeed.

“Nearly all my brothers have special gifts. Talents we received when the blood magick turned us from witch to vampire.” I ran my tongue along the seam of my lips, wetting them. “Mine happens to be related to my bite.”

“In what way?”

“It’s ungentlemanly to speak about.”

“Now you have to tell me.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

My gift was a closely held secret. I’d rather lie to most of my brothers than admit the truth. When I told Marius, he had laughed so hard I thought he would die for a second time. Then he asked if we could borrow mine for a night or two.

Needless to say, only he and Bastien knew I had any talent at all.