Page 83 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

The man is as mad as a box of frogs.

Which is understandable, after a thousand years of this fucking torture.

But even so. “You can’t be serious. Get inside now,” I say, and I can see I’ve done the right thing immediately. The relief that rolls across his face is unreal. It’s like watching someone realize that their miserable life was all actually just a dream. Now they’re awake, and everything is okay.

Though he still goes about clambering in a little awkwardly.

Then he just stands there as I hammer away about finding who did this and what we’re going to do it about. He’s still standing there ten minutes later when I come to the conclusion that we need to batter them to death and then boil them in oil. “I might have to order it in bulk,” I say.

Then I finally look at his face, and see he’s just staring at me.

Like I’m a mirage, suddenly made flesh. He even seems to jerk and gather himself back together once I’ve caught him. It’s pretty amazing to see, and all the sweeter when he says, “I want to think about that, I do, but all I can think about is when you might kiss me again.”

It makes me smile, slow and teasing.

It makes me lean toward him, like I’m letting him in on a little secret.

“Well, you know, you could just kiss me,” I say, and my smile widens when he actually gets all flustered. Halsten, evil Halsten, fully-stacked-with-memories Halsten, waving his hand and rubbing the back of his neck and stuttering through a reply.

“Oh, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“It’s easy, you just come over here, and lean down, and…”

I circle my finger in the air, and for just a second think I’ll have to explain the gesture. Only then I remember: this guy knows all about the modern world. He doesn’t need explanations. And for just a moment, that makes my heart sink a little. I’ve gained so much, so much, but maybe lost something, too.

Though really, I should have known.

“But what if you hate it? What if you forget again, just as I do?” he asks, suddenly so open, so innocent sounding, that it blazes a trail of delight right through me. He’s still the same inside. He’s that man—the one who fell to his knees in my home at the edge of his swamp.

I just couldn’t see it.

Maybe he was too afraid to show it.

But he’s not afraid now. “Maybe we should just watch TV,” he says. “I still haven’t seen the last season of Frasier.” And oh god, the way he goes about it. His eyebrows raise, all hopeful and expectant. A little rusty still, but he’s doing it.

He’s my man, all my different men, all in one.

“We don’t have to do that. Even if I forget, somehow, I feel sure you can convince me a second time. Maybe while I’m strangling you,” I tell him, clearly joking of course. But oh, his face drops anyway. I have to reassure him, fast, before my heart dissolves. “Sten, that isn’t going to happen.”

“But how can you be so sure?”

“Because I can feel your body surrounding mine, in our home in the wilds. I can hear you saying in my head, Du är mitt livs glädje. I can see you cutting off the head of your brother when he came for me. I can feel the look in your eyes when I held you in the air over the North Sea. You said—”

“I will never believe a witch could be bad when you can make the world like this,” he finishes for me. Then he goes on, confidence growing as my words stir his memories. “You have always made the world that way. Even when you hated me, I would run to you just to see the way you unmade me with your magic. You struck me with lightning and I could have begged you for more.”

“Maybe I should make up for it with something a little gentler, then,” I tell him. Then I make a heart in the air, glowing blue, ghostly. I blow it, and watch it drift toward him and sink right in.

I think it has the effect I intend.

He looks like he’s dying of pleasure to feel it.

Though now I’m thinking about it, he often did in the past. It’s the same look on his face as when I riddled him with lightning, or ran him through with arrows that weren’t real. And it makes me consider something anew. “I wonder if this is all why you can undo what I do.”

“Because it knows I welcome it?” he asks as he drifts in bliss.

His eyes are still closed—though I think he’s with me.

“No. Because somewhere inside I knew. I never really wanted to hurt you.”