Karen Chance - Hunt the Moon

Because I never had, other than in that one lousy photo. But now that I was here, seeing wasn’t enough. I wanted to get close. Wanted to find out if she still smelled like honey and lilac, with a hint of waxy lipstick.

Wanted her to see me, too.

But even more, I wanted to ask her things. Why she gave up a job most people would have killed for to marry a man most people would have liked to kill. Why she’d had me. Why she’d died and left me with fucking Tony.

If she’d ever loved me at all.

“Let me go,” I said unevenly. Mircea released me and I moved away, needing space, needing air.

I hugged my arms around myself and stared across the party, an almost physical ache gnawing at my insides. Her hair was dark, as I’d assumed from the photo, but it wasn’t brown. The lights were shining on it now, and it was a deep, rich, coppery bronze, as rare and striking as her sapphire eyes.

I wondered if that was where the red threads in my own hair came from, if maybe it ran in the family. I wondered if I had a family, distant cousins or something, floating around.... I’d never really thought about it before, maybe because I’d grown up surrounded by people who never mentioned theirs.

Vampires usually acted as if their lives started with the Change, instead of ending with it. And in a real sense, they were right. Most masters Changed an individual because they possessed a talent they needed, or strength or intellect or wealth they wanted, none of which included a human family. And few were willing to Change a bunch of hangers-on who could be of no real use and who might be a danger, since a master was responsible for the actions of his children.

As a result, most families got left behind when a baby vamp joined his or her new clan. And I guessed that, after a while, you must stop wondering about people long dead, whom you probably had nothing in common with anymore, anyway. After a while, you must stop missing them.

Only I didn’t think I was going to live that long.

“My mother was also quite beautiful.”

I’d been so lost in thought that it took me a moment to realize that Mircea had spoken.

And then another few seconds for what he’d said to sink in. “Your mother?”

He smiled slightly. “You look surprised.”

“I just . . . you never mention her.” In fact, I’d never thought about Mircea having a mother. Stupid; of course he had. But somehow I’d never imagined him as a boy.

It was surprisingly easy.

The mahogany hair had a faint wave to it that might once have been curls. The sculpted lips, so sensual in an adult, had probably been a cupid’s bow then. And the dark, liquid eyes must have been irresistible in a child’s face.

“I bet you got away with murder,” I said, and he laughed.

“Not at all. My parents were quite strict.”

“I don’t believe it.” I tried to be strict with Mircea, I really did, but somehow it never worked. And I doubted that anybody else had better luck.

“It’s true,” he insisted, settling us into chairs by the wall. I didn’t stay in mine more than a few seconds. I felt too antsy, too oddly keyed up.

Mircea started to get up when I did, but I pushed him back down. “A gentleman doesn’t sit while a lady is standing,” he admonished.

I put a knee on his leg to keep him in place. “And if the lady insists?”

“Hm. A quandary.” A strong hand clasped my thigh through the silk. “Since a gentleman always accedes to a lady’s wishes.”

“Always?” That could come in handy.

He laughed and kissed my hand. “Unfortunately, I am not always a gentleman.”

“Close enough,” I told him honestly, and slipped the clip out of his hair.

A dusky wave fell over his shoulders. He looked up at me, dark eyes amused. I’d always had this weird fetish about his hair, which we didn’t talk about. But he knew.

It felt like cool brown silk flowing over my fingers. And, as always, touching him felt more than good. It felt right, steadying. And right now, I could really use some of that.

“You were talking about when you were a boy.”

“Ah yes. The trials of childhood,” he mused, that hand slowly stroking my thigh. “One of my first memories is of being thrown out to play in the snow, completely naked.”

“Naked?”

“Hm. It was not too bad when the sun shone, but after dark—”

“After dark?”

“—it became somewhat . . . frigid.”

I stared at him. “How old were you?”

He shrugged. “Three, perhaps four.”

“But . . . but why would anyone do that?”

“To demonstrate my fitness to the people. I was my father’s heir, and although he had no throne at that time to leave to me, he had absolute confidence that it would one day be his.”

“Yes, but to risk a child —”

“Life was about risk then. And there was no childhood, in the modern sense, when I was young. Not for peasant children, who started work in the fields by age seven. And certainly not for those of us in the nobility.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“Some of it was. There were puppet shows on feast days and sledding in the winter. And I could ride an unsaddled horse at age five at a full gallop, as could my brothers. Well, except for Radu,” he said, talking about his youngest brother. “He was deathly afraid of the creatures and took rather longer to come to terms with them. I should know; I taught them to ride.”

“Them?”

“He and Vlad,” Mircea said, his smile fading. I didn’t say anything, but inwardly I cursed. It was rare enough for Mircea to talk about his family, and that particular topic was almost certain to make him shut down. But to my surprise, this time it didn’t.

“Radu had absolutely no seat at all,” he said, after a moment.

“Neither do I,” I admitted. Rafe had tried to teach me, but had finally given up in despair.

“But you do not need to lead charges in battle, dulceață . He did! My father finally solved the problem by tying him onto the largest horse in the stable, and promising that he should remain there until he could ride it properly.”

“And did he?”

Mircea looked up at me, baring the long line of his throat as he leaned back against the chair. It exposed a vulnerable area, a traditional vampire sign of trust. “With amazing alacrity.”

I stared down into those velvety dark eyes, fascinated by the pleased humor on the handsome face, by the crinkle of the eyes, by the white, even teeth and the glimpse of tongue behind them. Without thinking, my hand stopped combing through the thick silk of his hair and dropped to his nape, before sliding forward to curve around his throat.

Most vampires would have moved away or at least flinched. Mircea just looked up at me, eyes bright, but no longer with amusement. There was something dark in those depths, something fierce and possessive that made my breath come faster and my hand tighten over the pulse that beat strong and steady under my fingertips.

His heart didn’t need to beat, of course, but he knew I liked it, so he rarely forgot. Like he always remembered to breathe when I was around, to blink, to do all the things that made him seem human, even though he hadn’t technically held that title for five hundred years. But he was human to me.

He would always be human to me.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that when we are in public, dulceață,” he murmured, stroking his hand up and down my leg. “It makes me wish to cut the evening short.”

“How short?”

Those fingers suddenly tightened. “Very.”

And for a moment, that sounded like a really good idea. Really, really good. But if I left with Mircea now, I knew how the rest of the evening would go. And it wouldn’t involve a lot of talking.