Vail closed his eyes as Victoria leaned into his chest, enjoying the feeling of her warm body pressed against his in the porcelain tub. That was something he could never have if he had chosen to be with another vampire. Humans may not have been as sturdy as his own kind, but the heat that Lady Crest’s slender frame produced made his cool skin tingle pleasantly. He was fond of holding her, and even though the intimacy that had been developing between them had been interrupted, he could still keep her close in a harmless embrace. The fragrance of the bathwater would mask her scent from his family as well. When he returned to the Hygrace manor, all he had to do was say that he had fed on a woman wearing a strong perfume if anyone asked about the floral scents that now clung to his bare flesh. Peter couldn’t accuse him of visiting his lover on mere feminine aromas alone.

The peck she placed on his cheek roused Vail from his thoughts, and he opened his eyes again to see her face. Her sultry words drew a smile to his lips that lingered as she leaned in to press her mouth against his. There was a mild disappointment inside of him now that he knew they would have to be mindful of the potential consequences of sleeping together in the future. However, as he was not a human with a powerful urge to reproduce, he wasn’t so attached to the prospect of intercourse that he would sulk about the loss. And she was right. There were other ways they could be with each other without risking the inception of a half-blood child. With that thought in mind, he arched his back to lean over her and pulled her in at the waist, deepening the kiss as he caressed her soft skin with his fingertips.

[hr]
Drying himself off with the towel he had borrowed from Victoria, Vail was careful to collect as many of the water droplets as he could. It was one thing to tell his family that he had fed on heavily perfumed prey, but it was quite another to convince them that he hadn’t been up to anything else if he came back wet on a cloudless night. While he had joined his human lover in her bathtub, he had taken care not to soak his ash brown hair with any stray splashes, since it would take longer to dry off, but he still had to mop up the water that glistened on his pale torso. Even though Peter had reluctantly backed down from trying to force him to keep his distance from her, the Hygrace heir knew he had pushed his luck with the clan leader more often than he should have recently. He didn’t want to start fighting again if he could avoid the conflict.

“I can’t take all the credit,” he glanced up at Victoria with a hint of amusement, wrapping his towel around his lean waist. “You make it easy to tell when you like what I’m doing.” It had been the same at The Shire and again in his bedroom. Every twist of her body and sound that escaped her lips cued him to her preferences. He had only needed to pay attention to her responses to know what she fancied, and the fact that he had kept to himself for the last century had little to do with his performance. “I should say that you know your way around a man’s body as well,” he commented as she approached. “At least, you know your way around mine.”

He rested his hands on her hips, his hazel eyes flicking toward the bathroom door as he heard the distinct turn of the knob at the front entrance. At the same time, he picked up the now-familiar scent of her mother. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he mused, turning back to Victoria and letting his gaze drift down to the fresh bite mark on her snow white neck. “But I’d like to see you every third night again if I can. Now that I know which room is yours, I can stop in through the window too, so no one has to know I’m here.”