I was ushered into the master suite, where I stopped dead at the sight of the designer’s pièce de résistance. A full-sized cream leather Indian teepee, complete with brown, hand-painted buffalos and beaded fringe, was serving as a canopy for the bed. “Oh, my God.”

“I’m beginning to sense a theme,” Mircea said, tossing his suit coat over a buckskin-covered chair. A moose head with huge, outspread antlers loomed over it, its bright glass eyes looking oddly lifelike in the low light. Mircea took in the room, his expression slightly repulsed yet fascinated. “I believe there is only one thing to say at this point.”

“What’s that?”

“Yee haw,” he said gravely, and took me down like a rodeo calf. Before I entirely figured out what was happening, I was on my back in the teepee with a vampire crawling on top of me.

It was completely unfair, I thought, that when I was tired and disheveled I looked a mess, and when it happened to Mircea he looked like a particularly elegant porn star. His hair was artfully mussed, his shirt was unbuttoned enough to show a glimpse of lean-muscled chest, and his dress slacks clung lovingly to muscular thighs. In contrast, I was wearing the rumpled sweats I’d slept in, which had also acquired a pizza sauce stain. And that was despite the fact that I had never actually had any pizza.

Not that it mattered much what my clothes looked like considering how fast I was losing them. My sweatpants went flying, ending up atop the leering moose head, while warm hands slid along my sides, pushing up my T-shirt. I sucked in a breath at the unexpected speed of it all and at the electric tingle that spread up my body.

“You’re supposed to be tired!”

“I am. Which is why I am not berating you for almost giving me a heart attack.” My T-shirt followed the sweatpants, and at least the eerie fake eyeballs on the moose were now covered up. Which was more than I could say for me.

“Vampires don’t get heart attacks.”

Mircea gave me a playful flick of his eyebrow and tugged my panties off. “Good thing.”

I opened my mouth to reply when his palms bracketed my face, swiftly followed by his mouth hard and demanding on mine. And somehow my witty riposte turned into a pathetic whimpering noise in the back of my throat. Unlike his usual habit, there was no slow seduction this time; Mircea kissed me hot and wet and dirty.

“We knew you were at MAGIC,” he told me a few moments later as I tried to remember how to breathe. “But with the interference from the breach, there was no way to know where you were or if you would get out in time.”

“I wasn’t in there very long,” I said, trying to focus.

“Dulceaƫă, you were in there for two hours.” And for a moment, the mask slipped. For an instant he looked . . . hungry, in some way I couldn’t quite define. Not the predatory desire I’d seen on a few occasions, but more like need. Like some huge, gaping hole had opened up inside him since this morning.

His hair was mussed from having my hands all over it. I reached out and smoothed the worst of the snarls. I wondered if he’d lost friends today, if some of the people who didn’t make it out of MAGIC were family. And then I remembered that Radu had been in trouble. And it had been bad enough to drag Mircea away in the middle of delicate negotiations.

“Mircea . . . is Radu—”

“He is well. He sends his regards.” I felt a wash of relief. “He suffered some damage to the house, but it has given him the excuse to redecorate. I believe the term ‘rococo’ was used.” He glanced at the moose head and his lips quirked. “Of course, he hasn’t seen this place yet.”

“You actually think he’d like it?”

“He has a fine-tuned appreciation for irony and the absurd,” he told me, stripping off his shirt. “He would love it.”

“You should tell Casanova not to bulldoze it, then.”

“I’ll do that,” Mircea murmured. Fine cloth hissed, a zipper jangled and a leg slid between mine in a heady rush of skin on skin. Teeth grazed the soft skin of my neck and a tongue flickered over the vein. “Dulceaƫă, are you familiar with the concept of a quickie?”

I laughed. There were about a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t be here right now, but none of them seemed to matter next to the one overwhelming reason why I should. We were alive, we were both alive, along with the people we loved. It seemed like a miracle.

“Yes, but I didn’t think you were.” Mircea preferred long and slow and sensual, or so I’d assumed based on limited past experience.

“I am familiar with a great many things, as I will be happy to—” He suddenly went still.

His face had the distant look it got when he was communicating with other vampires long-distance. I didn’t particularly understand how they did it; maybe it was merely better hearing, but I didn’t think so. Like I didn’t think I’d imagined his voice in my head in the clinic.

Mircea closed his eyes, his breath coming out in an irritated sigh. “This war is becoming very . . . inconvenient,” he said, and rolled off the bed.

“What is it?”

“I am being summoned,” he told me, shedding his last item of clothing on the way to the bathroom. His voice had been light, but his muscles looked tense as he walked away.

He stepped into the shower but it was glass sided and he didn’t bother to shut the bathroom door. The water turned his hair to black silk and molded it to the shape of his skull. More moisture collected on his high arched brows and dark lashes, before cascading down his cheekbones to wet his lips. Other tiny streams poured over his shoulders and chest in fascinating rivulets, before running down the hard muscles of his stomach and thighs to splash around his feet.

The steam started to obscure the view after a minute, but by then I’d ended up beside the shower door with a sheet wrapped around me. I wiped a hand across the glass so I could see his eyes. “When was the last time you had a day off?”

“Today. I was away from my duties on family business—until the disaster caused me to return early.”

“A day off, Mircea. Not a day doing another kind of work.”

“There are too few senators and too much business for any of us to enjoy much leisure these days, dulceaƫă.”

He stepped out of the direct spray in order to lather up, turning to retrieve a washcloth from a bench in the corner. The motion caused a small cascade down his spine and over the taut muscle further down. My mouth went a little dry.

He paused to grin at me over his shoulder. “Wash my back?” he offered innocently.

I licked my lips and stayed where I was. “Tell the Consul she’ll keep and maybe I will.”

A wet eyebrow quirked. “Would you like me to quote you?”

“Go ahead. She owes me a favor.”

He didn’t immediately respond, just added soap to the cloth and began to run it leisurely over his body. I knew what he was up to, but my eyes simply ignored my brain’s order for them to look elsewhere. Instead, they followed that lucky washcloth as it roamed over the fine chest and arms, moved on to the satiny skin of his inner legs, and glided along the jointure of his hip to areas more interesting still.

I had the door open and a foot across the sill before I even realized it. “I do not believe she views your assistance in quite that way,” he said, a slight smirk tugging at his lips.

I frowned at him and drew my foot back. “That’s the problem. She needs to understand that I’m not her little errand girl.”

“No one thinks of you in those terms,” he said soothingly, pausing to rinse off all those fascinating bubbles.

“Don’t patronize me, Mircea.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” And, okay, there was just no doubt about it. That was a definite smirk. He apparently thought his little game was cute.

I’d show him cute.

I dropped the sheet and got in beside him, pushing him down onto the bench. I stood in front of him, taking my time checking out the bewildering array of available toiletries. “What are you doing?” he asked, eyes lazily slitting.

“You washed my hair. It’s only fair I return the favor.” I managed to just brush his cheek with one breast as I reached up to get the shampoo. I put one knee on the bench as I lathered him up, nudging his legs apart to make room. I might have nudged a few other things, too, but he merely watched, although something wicked lurked behind his eyes, feral and amused and hungry.

“The Consul acts like I’m one of her vampires,” I said, massaging in the suds. “She orders me around and expects me to help with plans she doesn’t even bother to explain. I broke a guy out of jail for her today and I don’t even know his name!”

“You broke a great many people out of jail.” His hands settled on my hips, his thumbs stroking me slowly.

“That’s not the point! I’m her ally, not her servant. She needs to understand that.” I picked the shower head off the wall and leaned against him as I rinsed. “So do a few other people.”

“I do not consider you a servant, dulceaƫă.”

“But you don’t tell me anything.” I nudged him again, a little more firmly, and the smirk faded. I smiled.

“In the last month, you have had experiences that would have broken a weaker person. You have enough on your plate.”

“Don’t you think that’s for me to decide?”

“We obviously need to discuss this,” he said, but his breath hitched slightly.

“I thought you were out of time.”

“If you keep doing that, I soon will be.”

“Doing what?” I asked, rubbing against him in a soft, sweet tease.

A sharply indrawn breath was followed by a movement so quick I couldn’t track it with my eyes. But somehow I ended up against the wet shower wall, bubbles in the air and Mircea between my legs. His still soapy hands were slick and barely controlled as he slid them around my hips, pulling me against him. I had a moment to see amber eyes narrow, glittering and full of intent, before the weight of his body slid against me, in me, deep and hard and hot.