Cerulean Sins   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

His hands trapped my face between them, and in some part of me I knew they felt like old leather and sticks with things underneath them, but for the first time when dealing with vampire trickery, I didn't fight it. I let Asher's power turn what might have been horror into something erotic and beautiful.

I opened myself wide and let Asher roll through me like a stream, long dammed, flowing, flooding, filling up a land that has been too long without water. I did not ride his power, his power engulfed me, rolled me under with a weight of a thousand waves, pressed me to the bottom of the sand and held me at the bottom of the ocean. It wasn't that I didn't drown, it was that I didn't care that I drowned.

I woke, if waking was the term, with his body pressing me to the hard stone floor. I was staring up at a waving cloud of his hair, the lights sparkled through it like a golden veil. I ran my fingers through it, and it was soft, and alive again. The edge of his cheek was full and rough with scars again. I touched those familiar marks, and he turned to face me fully, and the sight of him caught my breath in my throat.

From the curve of his forehead, to the line of his cheek, the fullness of his lips, he was perfect once more. His eyes sat in that face like icy sapphires set among pearls and gold.

I laughed when I saw him, a joyous burst of sound. He cupped my face in his hand, and I turned to lay a kiss against his palm. The weight of his body against mine was one of the best feelings I'd ever had, because it was proof that he was back, that he was well, and that he was whole.

He half-rolled, and half-raised me to a sitting position in his lap, with his back to the wall. He turned with me held in his arms, to look across the room at Belle Morte. I didn't have to see the look on his face to know that it was not an entirely friendly one.

"Impressive, wouldn't you say?" Jean-Claude said.

"No, I would not. He can only feed on the energy of those whom he has taken blood from, and rolled their poor minds. You know as well as I do, Jean-Claude, that you can't allow Asher to roll the mind of every victim. It would be a parade of love-besotted fools following him everywhere."

I resented the love-besotted fool part, but I let it go. We were winning tonight. Never argue when you're winning.

"Be that as it may, Belle, Asher is restored to his glorious self. We have no more need of you tonight, so you, and yours, must be gone from our territory before tomorrow night."

"You would truly slay all of us?" She made it a question.

" Oui. »

"My vengeance would be terrible.