“That sucks,” Rose said, wondering where he was headed.
“Yep,” Jack said. “You’ve been giving me clues to the truth for two whole days now, but I didn’t see them until Titania was vamping me like crazy, and all I could think was that she reminded me of porn.”
Rose sputtered. “Porn?”
“Sure. It arouses you, but it’s not real. Like you said, it’s just sex.” He smiled faintly. “ ‘Just sex’ feels good while you’re doing it, but afterward…it doesn’t mean anything.”
Rose might have protested. She’d tried like hell to make ‘just sex’ not mean anything with quite a few guys, but most of the time it had—meant something to her at least. With Jack, sex meant a lot, far more than ever before. Still, she knew from long experience that this just-sex construct was a guy thing, so she held her peace.
“Like Miles,” he continued, “who didn’t come on to you until after his wife was dead. He must have found you attractive, but he loved his wife. That made you relatively easy to resist. And like Biff, who didn’t take you up on your offer, much as he wanted to, because he was committed, at least for the short term, to Titania.”
Maybe he was just scared, Rose thought, but she didn’t say so.
“And did Walt the trucker come on to you? Not at all, and when he had his wallet out, he showed me pictures of his wife and kids.”
Jack was right, more or less. Guys in solid relationships didn’t usually come on to vamps. But what was he getting at?
“Even my father,” Jack said. “My mother’s love and patience eventually paid off. They became good friends over the years, and gradually he lost interest in the vamps, because they were just sex.” He paused. “He even told me so once, in those very words. But I couldn’t separate the two. I was pretty ticked at him still.”
Deep inside, Rose began to smile. She finally saw where he was going.
Jack spread his hands. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I noticed Titania—who wouldn’t?—but even if we hadn’t been in a life-and-death situation, and even if I didn’t already know better, I wasn’t interested. Not really. And my protection didn’t come from something learned, but something inside.”
Rose sighed happily and waited for what she knew would come next.
“You’re so much more than just sex, Rose,” Jack said. “You’re you, and I love you, and if I’d really understood what would protect me, I would have wanted to lose control with you earlier. I would want to lose control with you again and again.” He took her face between his hands and kissed her, first hard, then tenderly.
He did love her. He really did.
“Well,” he said, “I know now. I intend to lose control, and I want to be with you forever.” He grinned, dimples and all. “I think you owe me that.”
It took her a second to figure it out. “You just made a joke?” She gave him a little shove. “About owing?” He grinned wider. God, he was cute.
She got him into bed pretty quickly after that. For once, she did everything she’d ever wanted, and he seemed to love it. He didn’t try to control anything, and he surprised her with his creativity. The situation was a first.
Near dawn they lay twined together, sleepy after talking for hours about everything from Shakespeare to the Super Bowl and making slow, sweet love. Thinking about Juma—they had agreed to take her in, if that was what she wanted—Jack asked, “Do you suppose we’ll have vampire children?”
A touch of uneasiness seeped into Rose’s drowsy brain. “Maybe.” Would he mind? She really wanted kids, vampires or not.
He grinned down at her, dimples and all. “What if we produce camouflaging vamps? Imagine that!”
“I am, and they’ll be positively dangerous! We’ll have to bring them up really well, so they grow up to be the good kind.”
“We’ll do fine,” he said. “Remember, we’re a perfect team.”
She laughed and snuggled close. They were a perfect team. Whatever they did together would work out well, because they had love, and love was more powerful than evil.
Acknowledgments
As always, thanks to my husband and daughters. Special mention goes to Sheila Connolly for slogging through the first draft and pointing out how many, many threads I needed to tie together, and to Shamsi Monajem for reading and commenting on variations of the same story over and over again. Thanks also to the many friends, critiquers, and contest judges who were so helpful with the opening chapters.
Thanks go to Dee Deringer Piquette and Christine Merrill for sharing their expertise on costume construction, and to Kathy Payne for brainstorming university names. Much appreciation goes to Dale Rollerson of Australia for inspiring Rose’s gorgeous homemade-fabric dress, and to Drew Reeves of the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern for his splendid rendering of Iachimo in Cymbeline. Jack’s mother impulsively named her son Iachimo because of a performance she just couldn’t forget.
And thanks of course to my editor, Chris Keeslar, for being almost always right.
Other Love Spell books by Barbara Monajem:
SUNRISE IN A GARDEN OF LOVE & EVIL
Copyright
LOVE SPELL®
September 2010
Published by
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Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Monajem
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