“Ow,” I said, my ribs protesting vocally.
“I told you.”
I opened my eyes to find a curtain of auburn hair falling on either side of my face, my favorite blue eyes looking down at me in concern, and my hands caught above my head to keep them out of trouble.
Damn, he knew I liked that.
It made for a challenge.
The blue eyes took on a rueful gleam, and the delicious chest moved back, just out of reach.
“I’m serious,” he informed me. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Dhampir,” I reminded him. “Don’t need a doctor. Unless he’s doctor luuuv.”
That got me a burst of laughter and an eye roll. Because Louis-Cesare seemed to like it when I was silly. Especially when I was naked and silly.
I slid along underneath him, and watched those gorgeous eyes catch fire. I’d never known blue could burn before I met him, I thought, right before warm lips caught mine. And, yes, they were very nice lips. And a very nice tongue. And very nice teeth, nipping at me gently.
I wrapped my legs around him, because that was more like it.
And suddenly found myself vertical, with hard hands under my butt and strong legs carting me off somewhere, which turned out to be the bathroom.
I can work with this, I decided, as my backside came to rest on the countertop.
He leaned over to start the shower, and I enjoyed a view of the world’s greatest ass for a moment. And then the world’s greatest chest, when he stood back up. Which was nice to look at but even nicer to rest my head against, the skin-to-skin contact just so . . . damned . . . good. Warm like the bed had been, and the shower would be—in half an age, because the ancient water heater took its time. Not that I minded, I thought drowsily, my hands sliding over intriguing dips and valleys . . .
And then spazzing out, when I was suddenly drenched by a warm waterfall.
“W-what?” I choked, staring around wildly—
At the inside of my bath.
It looked the way it always did: cracked blue and white tile on the walls, fat old porcelain fixtures on the claw-foot tub, eyelet shower curtain billowing out because my roommate had decorated the place and she’s a girlie girl.
And because of the steam.
The shower was hot.
“How . . . how did you do that?” I asked Louis-Cesare, who had turned me around to soap up my back.
“Do what?” he murmured, as I braced my hands on the tile and wondered, What the hell?
“The water.” I struggled to think past the rhythmic soothing of those callused hands. “It’s hot.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be?”
“Yes, but not now. It takes forever—”
“Almost fifteen minutes,” he agreed. “You need a new—what do they call it? The device that heats the water.”
“A water heater, and no, I don’t. I need to know what’s going on.” I twisted around, because all the stroking was making my brain fuzzy, and I needed to be sharp right now.
Louis-Cesare’s forehead wrinkled slightly. “I am helping you to bathe. The doctor said it would relieve some of your stiffness—”
“Not about that! About the time.”
“What time?” The wrinkle was starting to deepen.
“You just said we’ve been in here fifteen minutes—”
He nodded. “About that, why?”
“Because I don’t remember them. I don’t remember any of them!”
I stared around, suddenly feeling trapped. It felt like the curtains were closing in. Only it wasn’t the curtains, it was me, and how do you feel claustrophobic in your own skin?
I was finding out.
“Dorina—”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Dory, then,” Louis-Cesare said, his voice deliberately soothing. Like I didn’t know what that was. Like I wouldn’t pick up on a vampire suggestion after half a lifetime of them!
Exactly half a life, I thought, my skin going cold despite the hot water pattering down.
I had to get out of here!
“Dory!”
The sharpness of the tone suddenly snapped me back, and I looked dizzily up at a wet master vampire, water dripping off his now dark brown hair, and more drops trembling on his brows and lashes. Louis-Cesare clothed and dry was stunning. Louis-Cesare naked and wet could have stopped traffic for a forty-mile stretch. But my panic didn’t seem to care.
“What is wrong?” he demanded, somehow holding on to me, despite my current, soapy state.
“I told you! I don’t remember, and Dorina—” I stopped to stare around some more, like I expected to find her hanging off the ceiling or something. Like a bat.
I was losing it.
“She isn’t here,” Louis-Cesare told me, the wrinkle a full-on frown now.
“Well, she was a minute ago!”
“She wasn’t—”
“And how would you know?” I snarled, because he didn’t get it. I’d been told I was mad my whole life, but most of the time, it hadn’t felt like it. Most of the time, I’d moved through society—a lot of them—perfectly fine. I talked to people, I contracted work, I handled my shit.
Except when she showed up.
But even that hadn’t been so bad—okay, that was a lie; it had been fucking terrifying—but at least there were rules. Ones I’d learned to understand, to respect, to keep the scary thing inside me pacified and absent. It hadn’t been a perfect system, but it had worked.
Until now.
Because this wasn’t the rule, this wasn’t even close to the rule. I didn’t go around just losing fifteen minutes! Not with no threat in sight and when I wasn’t stressed, when I was the opposite of stressed—happy and warm and clueless, because of course the rules had changed.
Ever since that barrier in my brain went down, everything had.
I didn’t know how to control her anymore.
I don’t know what my face looked like, but Louis-Cesare’s suddenly altered. And then he was hugging me, carefully because of the damned ribs, which shouldn’t have helped. Which should have made the whole claustrophobic-in-my-own-skin thing even worse, but somehow didn’t. And I was holding on to him when I should have been getting out of here, but I somehow wasn’t.
“She was not here,” he murmured, after a moment.
“You can’t know that—”
“I can.” He pulled back, so that I could see his face. “I can feel when she’s here, instead of you. I don’t know how to explain it,” he added, when I started to say something. “But it’s unmistakable, the difference between a sunny day and a dark night. If she’d been here, I would know.”
“Then how do you explain those fifteen minutes? I don’t remember—” Anything, I realized. And not just from today. “What happened last night?” I asked, my voice suddenly soft and frightened. But I couldn’t help it. I was getting flashes, strange and skewed, that didn’t make sense. That wasn’t how it went!
Was it?
“You fell,” Louis-Cesare said, his mouth tightening like he wanted to say more, but was holding back.
I nodded. That much had been memorable. The dizzying fall into nothing, from a height that could turn even a dhampir into hamburger, but hadn’t because— “Those things caught me.”
“The spriggans, yes. But not out of altruism. If you hadn’t had that gold, and been clever enough to use it—” He cut off, and then his arms tightened again, as memories whirled about my screwed-up brain. Memories of bouncing around on a sea of fey, like bodysurfing at a concert, only bodysurfers don’t usually get thrown about that much.
“And then a troll fell on us.”
“Two trolls,” he said, scowling. “They were fighting and fell together. I managed to brace somewhat, but I didn’t reach you in time to do a proper job. Your head still hit the floor. It’s likely why you’re having trouble remembering things.”
I shook the area in question.