Masquerade (Blue Bloods 2)

"What is it you're looking for?" he had asked, com- pletely exasperated. "You're pickier than a bride."

Mimi inhaled sharply. "Exactly." She closed her eyes and saw herself and Jack together--during their first bonding. The dress she'd worn then was simple, white, merely a sheet, like a toga, and they had walked barefoot down the streets of Venice together, hand in hand, for the ceremony.

"White, the dress has to be white," she murmured. "White like snow. Transparent like tears."

Now, there it was, nestled in deepest tissues. The dress of her dreams.

It was made of the thinnest white silk satin, and when she picked it up, it felt like a whisper between her fingers, it was so fragile. Just as she had ordered, it was severe in its simplicity. It looked like nothing on the hanger--like a plain white piece of cloth. It was corded with a heavy silver chain at the hips, and had a sexy, unexpected keyhole cut out at the hip bone--the one concession to modern fashion she had allowed.

Mimi shrugged off her bathrobe, tossing it to the floor. She stood in the middle of the room, completely nude as her maid held the dress aloft. Mimi stepped into it, feeling the light, gossamer fabric fluttering about her like mist, settling against her slim form.

"Go," she said curtly to her maid. The frightened servant almost tripped on the bathrobe in her haste to leave.

She tied the cord around her waist and assessed the tanned skin that peeked through the cutout. When she stood in front of the light, her form would be shown in complete blackened silhouette; every curve of her body, every line from neck to breast, from waist to hips to her endless legs, she would be at once covered and yet exposed, clothed and unclothed, garbed and yet nude.

No underwear necessary.

It was spectacular.

"Wow."

She smiled. That didn't take long.

She turned around to face her brother.

Jack was standing in the doorway to her room, leaning a hand on the doorknob. Charles had sent him to collect his sister. His fine, platinum hair was brushed back from his forehead, and there was a tender look on his face.

You look...He sent.

I know....

They had gone back to their old habits of talking without speaking Jack letting his sister into his every thought, his every memory.

His eyes glazed over. She could see what he saw through his eyes, and she knew he was remembering that first night as well. She could see the cloudless Venetian sky, their footsteps light and quick over the bridge. She could see herself through his eyes, an eternity younger--how young they had been then at the dawn of the world, before the wars, before the dark.

How did you find...is it the same one?

No, sadly that dress is gone to the Tiber river....Silk does not keep a thousand years, my darling. This is a new one, for a new bonding.

"But not yet," Jack blurted. Their shared vision disappeared, and Mimi was annoyed to find herself wrenched out of a very pleasant memory.

"No, not yet," Mimi allowed. They would not be bonded officially until their twenty-first birthday. According to vampire law, the bond--the holy matrimony between vampires was an immortal vow, but the ceremony could not be performed until they were of age. The two of them were obligated to renew their bond in every cycle, although this was the first time that they had been born as twins to the same family, confusing matters due to pesky human laws. But no matter. They were vampire twins, which had a different meaning among their kind. It meant their souls had twinned in heaven, where they had pledged their love.

The bond could not be performed until they had both come into their full memories and mastered their powers. Vampire twins sometimes spent cycles looking for each other, and bonded couples had to be old enough to be able to rec- ognize the latest reincarnation of their spouse in a new phys- ical shell.

She knew that in the entire history of the vampires, there was only one couple that had forsaken their bond. Gabrielle as Allegra Van Alen had forsaken Michael, Charles Van Alen Force, in this cycle. She had married--married--in a church, a holy sanctuary, had said the words, had pledged her troth to a human! To her human familiar! And look what happened...Gabrielle trapped in a coma forever, caught between life and non-death. Condemned to eternal silence. "But why wait?" Mimi asked. "I've known who you were ever since I could see. And you know who I am now."

Mimi was referring to the night in her father's study when Jack's memories had finally rushed back, allowing him to finally see what was right in front of him all along. They were two who were one. She was his. For eternity.

"I love you, you know," Mimi said. "You make me crazy, but God help me, Jack, I do."

Jack bent his head so that his nose was buried in Mimi's hair. It smelled of honeysuckle and jasmine, and he inhaled deeply.

"I love you too," he replied.

"My God." Trinity said, with a sharp intake of breath.

Mimi and Jack slowly parted from their embrace and looked to see their mother standing at the open doorway.