A Mermaid's Ransom (Daughters of Arianne 3)

The warmth of a living body. Yes. That was what she needed. It permeated her flesh where the blanket had been unable to do so, and her shivering became a jerking that seemed worse but wasn't. The warmth stealing in seemed to activate nerves that had become numb.

"I don't think . . . I handled b-being in the Dark One world . . . as well as I thought. I was so . . . s-scared we were going b-back there. That we were b-back there."

"It was the magic." He had his jaw pressed against the side of her head. She realized he was rubbing her back with both hands, soothing and yet probing at once, and wondered if he was checking for broken bones. She thought she was fine. The slam against the tree and Terence's punch in the face had been the worst, but thank goodness she wasn't human, not beneath the skin. She was far more resilient. And now she was a human servant as well, and Dante had said they were hard to kill.

"More primate than human," she mumbled. "Did you know monkeys can fall out of trees thirty feet high and their skulls won't crack? Not usually."

"That explains why you are so hardheaded. I told you to stay by the tree."

"I didn't want him to hurt you."

"He was not going to hurt me." The derision in the tone, the arrogance, eased something in her chest further.

"Ten feet tall and bulletproof, hmm?" She felt logy all of a sudden, the warmth making her tongue thick, no energy left in her body. "Well, I didn't know. Didn't get the memo." She let out a little snort. "Bet you don't know what any of that means."

"No, I don't." His lips touched her temple and she jerked again. Her throat hurt, with smoke or unshed tears, she didn't know. Oh, God, don't let me fly apart.

His arms tightened, teetering her on the edge of hysteria. "You are safe." But there was something bubbling beneath the surface and it disturbed her, told her everything wasn't all right.

"You are all right." He tipped her chin so she would meet his eyes. But when she did, the emotion she was sensing erupted from him. "I am still . . . angry. I told you to stay put."

His snarl would have sent her skittering from the bed if she had the energy, but the expostulation knocked her receptors back into active mode. Of course, she didn't really need them. From a wealth of childhood mischief, she'd seen this reaction from her father plenty of times. Another kind of warmth stole into her chest, helping her even more than the blankets.

"I'm all right. Nothing a bath, a bottle of wine and a half gallon of ice cream won't fix. Really." She attempted a smile, but instead her eyes filled with tears and she started to shake again. "I'm sorry. Can you please just keep holding me?"

Putting her head down on his chest, she let herself cry. Though she wasn't sure what his reaction would be, he embraced her uncertainly, then with more confidence as she clung harder. He began to rub her back in circles again, slowly fondle her nape. Stroking the side of her wet face with his knuckles, he held her so close to his warm body she felt almost like he'd pull her inside of him if he could.

Her hands crept up his chest, her fingers whispering along the silver band around his throat. The way he'd accepted her putting that collar on him had felt like a declaration that he was hers. He would give her his trust. As misguided as she knew that belief was, she held on to it as a comfort for right now.

Time passed, for when her eyes opened next she saw it was just past midnight. He was still holding and stroking her, murmuring to her, fragments of sentences. Amazed, she realized he was trying to sing to her, broken pieces of a lullaby. Something revived from his memories of his mother?

Tilting back her head, she looked into his face. He'd loosed his hair from the braid she'd made, and it brushed her hand as she raised it to twine in the strands. He watched her, eyes like embers of starlight in the waning dark, his sensual lips firm. The light showed him as beautiful, but it was in shadows that his face became too mesmerizing to look away, everything perfect about it etched by the mysteries of the darkness. It made her wonder if the truth of what Dante truly wanted lay somewhere between Mina's cynicism and Alexis's optimism.

"Everyone keeps asking me this question: 'What do I want to do here?'" Dante took his gaze to the window. "I know the answer to the question, but I will not give it to them."

"Will you give it to me?"

He looked down at her. "Perhaps. But for right now . . . I've never had anything I wanted to take care of. I want to take care of you, keep you safe. Touch your face, know you are well." When he furrowed his brow, examining his own thoughts, she closed her hand over his, her throat thick from more than smoke. "I like that humming noise," he added.

"The refrigerator?"

He nodded. "It's . . ."

"Soothing?"

Dante's regard on her mouth and the line of her cheek was a physical stroke. His hand tightened against her back. "Yes. Exactly."

"Will there be other vampires, do you think?"

"Lady Lyssa told Mina she would notify the territory overlord I am here. He was to instruct the vampires in this territory that I am to be left alone for the next thirty days. There was likely not time to . . . send the memo?"

Her lips curved. "You learn fast."

"Your mind is a good teacher. If they obey her, I expect we should have no further problem. Not that he was much of one. You worry too much."

"Your confrontation management skills take some getting used to," she said, holding the smile with effort. "I think you're right though, that we won't have more trouble. After seeing her and Jacob, I can't imagine anyone going out of their way to piss them off."

"You have your own confrontation management skills." He studied her. "You avoided one by bringing up their child, even though you placed yourself at risk by drawing their attention."

"Sometimes people get caught up in defending their particular boundaries. Children don't care about boundaries." Her fingertips found his collarbone and caressed it, though she continued holding on to his hair, reluctant to let go. Her other hand gripped his waist.

Dante wondered if she realized how tightly she was holding him. Even after her sleep, he could feel the struggle within her to contain her nerves, the emotions disturbed by the vampire's attack. Sliding his fingers into her curls, he began to stroke through them, following the line of her skull. When he reached her throat under her ear, she tilted her head into his touch.

The lullaby had come from his mother. He hadn't remembered it for over two decades. It had not served him when he stopped being a scavenger and became the hunter, so he'd buried it. But wanting to ease Alexis's fears had unearthed the memory, a gentle, terrible gift waiting in his subconscious.

Though his mother's wrists had been manacled against rings embedded in the stone, they were placed low enough that when he pressed against her leg, her fingers could touch his head. Those few times he could be near her without Dark Ones, she'd stroked him, slow, unsteady. That

song had caught in her throat, a rough music disrupted by her pain. The notes had come through, though. After she was gone, sometimes he'd curl up in whatever hole he'd found for the night, pretend the hand stroking his head was hers instead of his own, and hum that tune.

Adjusting his back against the headboard so Alexis lay against his chest, he let her doze again. She would still want a bath, though the water was cooling. He could heat it again, using a more low level version of what she'd call his confrontation management skills. As his fingers drifted over her body, his gaze traveled her room. The stuffed animals and sheer curtains, the gleam of a parking lot light giving the panels a silken moonlight look. The softness of the mattress under him, the ticking of a clock.

His mother had tried to offer him comfort in a world that mocked it. This world overflowed in comforts in comparison, but to him that made its dangers even more hazardous, because it was harder to see them coming.

Hatred and rage, pain and darkness. They had those things here, but in a random dispersal, like a handful of sand thrown into the wind. Whereas they'd been the air of his world. He'd been suckled on them for over sixty years. It wasn't a new thought, but for the first time, he did wonder if his soul was still trapped there, on the other side of the portal. Alexis had pulled his body across, but he wasn't all the way in. She seemed determined to hold on to him, though, no matter what it cost her.

That feels good.

Something low in his gut tightened at the sleepy thought. He'd ask her what emotion he was feeling later, maybe after they washed off the ash and blood, the smell of the magic he'd unleashed. Or perhaps he'd do it, take the washcloth and soap to make her skin slick and fragrant, turn lingering shadows of fear in her gaze to desire.

At least he understood that feeling. Or he thought he had. In the Dark One world it hadn't been a feeling but a physical compulsion, a need no different from eating or relieving oneself. With her, it was a way to go beyond confusion and decision, something clean, simple, right. But he was finding she gave him that even when he wasn't inside her body.

She projected peace, safety, warmth, things he'd never had but somehow understood when he felt them from her. She'd helped him from the beginning. Not just with the painting and sculpture, but how she'd stood up to her father's will.