What Her Heart Wanted

Vanya crawled toward him.

It was a wild, desperate movement. She dragged herself across the cold floor on her bare forearms toward Victor's feet. With every inch she moved, the thread of the Blood Bond squeezed her heart, urging her forward.

When her small, shaking, burning hand touched his ankle, Victor froze.

A neural shock exploded right at the point of contact.

Victor's last bit of will to resist snapped completely. He bent down, grabbed Vanya by the waist with one hand, and hauled her to her feet. He pinned her slight body hard against the old stone wall right beside the fireplace.

Vanya's back slammed into the rough granite. The pain in her spine made her let out a scalding breath, but before she could get her bearings, Victor's mouth came down on hers.

Calling it a kiss would be generous. It was a savage invasion.

Victor's mouth devoured hers, the cold of his skin colliding with the blazing heat of the fever in her body in a violent thermal reaction. He bit down hard on her lower lip. Vanya let out a small moan deep in her throat, but instead of pulling back, she reached up, wrapped both arms around his neck, and yanked hard on his black hair to drag the kiss deeper.

She was someone who had never been touched.

For 10 years in the forge of Siberian Shadow, her body had known only punches, knife cuts, cold metal, and the rough handling of enemies. She had never known a caress, never known the warmth or the coolness of human skin. So every touch from Victor now—rough or ruthless as it was—hit her nervous system like a high-voltage current.

Every time his fingers pressed into the small of her back, her skin tightened. Every time his chest pressed closer, her heart gave a wild lurch. It was a completely new shock of sensation that terrified her and dragged her down into the abyss at the same time.

Victor's eyes were streaked with red. He had worn the faces of many different people for 914 years. He had hidden behind immaculate suits, aristocratic language, and an air of standing apart from every upheaval of the human world. But right now, with his chest pressed to hers, feeling the frantic pounding of a mortal heart under Vanya's thin skin, his hands began to shake.

He was shaking—from nakedness, and fear had nothing to do with it. In that moment, he knew he was about to lose his mind.

RIIIP.

Victor tore open the white dress shirt Vanya was wearing with one hand. The plastic buttons scattered across the stone floor with a CLATTER. The shirt slid off her shoulders, baring her pale, smooth skin crisscrossed with faded scars—marks of the years she had lived in the assassin training camp.

The firelight fell across her body, catching lines that were graceful but hard with muscle.

Victor lowered his head and buried his face in the curve of her neck. He didn't hesitate. His demonic fangs lengthened, sharp and fine as two silver needles, and sank into Vanya's jugular.

"Ah...!"

Vanya's head fell back, her eyes rolling up. The pain of the bite lasted only an instant before it was replaced by a horrifying wave of pleasure crashing back through the Blood Bond. As he drew her blood and at the same time passed his ancient blood into her through the wound, a perfect exchange of energy took place.

The blood fever in her body eased at once, but another thirst took its place—a thirst of the flesh.

Victor lifted her off her feet. Vanya's legs wrapped tight around his hips on instinct. He carried her to the long cedar dining table and swept every dish, candle, and silver tray off it onto the floor. The crash of shattering china mixed with the clang of metal rang out, piercing, in the silence.

He laid her down on the cold wooden tabletop.

The contrast between the ice-cold cedar table and Vanya's burning body made her flinch and curl up. But Victor didn't give her time to think. He leaned over her and covered her completely with his darkness and his dominance.

His large hand gripped her thigh and pulled her closer. The last barrier between them was torn away, chaotic, rough, and without a moment's delay. There were no sweet whispers, no soft foreplay of human love—this was nothing more than a violent collision between two cursed creatures.

In the moment when his possession flooded every one of her senses, Vanya bit down hard on Victor's shoulder.

Her teeth sank deep into the hard muscle of his shoulder, and the bitter taste of his blood flooded her tongue. Pain and frenzied emotion merged into one and exploded into a storm that swept through both their minds.

The cedar tabletop began to shake in waves with the violent rhythm of his movements.

"Think... of me..." Victor said against her ear, his voice rough, full of animal possessiveness. "Look at me, Vanya..."

Vanya opened her pale gray eyes wide. Her vision had cleared, and in front of her now, in place of a vague dark shape, was Victor's face. That angular, pale face, with blazing red eyes looking at her with wild hunger.

She saw him. A Victor who was no longer perfect, no longer cold, a Victor growling deep in his throat as he lost all control over her.

Her arms locked around his back, her 10 fingers digging into the old scars on his back and leaving bright red scratch marks. Blood from the wound in her neck slid down to her chest and mixed with both their sweat, leaving dark streaks across their skin.

That night was as fierce and wild as a blizzard sweeping through Blackwood Castle. Ragged, frantic breathing and the groan of oak under a heavy weight filled the entire great dining room.

At the peak, when the Blood Bond exploded in a blinding neural light inside her brain, Vanya let out a choked gasp, her whole body clenching violently. Victor let out a deep, low roar and crushed her to him in an explosion of ancient life force and the utmost fury.

The bond between them hummed at its highest pitch, then settled, leaving behind an absolute silence.

The next morning.

The pale gray light of dawn fell through the arched window, casting cold streaks across the cedar tabletop and the stone floor strewn with broken pieces.

Vanya sat in the armchair beside the burned-out fireplace. She was wrapped in Victor's black fur cloak, both hands cupped around a mug of hot tea. Her skin had gone back to its normal color, the spasms in her hand had completely disappeared, and the bite on her neck had closed into a thin red scar.

Victor stood in front of the big window with his back to her. He had put his handmade charcoal suit back on, his black hair was neatly combed, and his cold aristocratic manner had completely returned, as if last night's frenzy had never happened.

Neither of them looked at the other.

The silence between them had stopped being the solitude of two separate beings; now it was a suffocating closeness wrapped in a feeling neither of them dared admit right now.

"That was the Blood Bond," Victor said first. His voice was flat, without a single ripple, his deep tone ringing out like a medical verdict. "The buildup of neural reactions over the past nine days went past what your body could tolerate. It demanded a biological reset."

Vanya lifted the mug to her lips and took a sip. The warmth spread down her throat, but her heart was ice-cold.

"I know," she said, her voice rough but hard. "I couldn't let my body go completely paralyzed before I finished the contract. It was a mandatory survival procedure."

They both spoke up. They both used the most rational, coldest words they could find—"biological reset," "survival procedure"—to turn last night's frenzy into a technical procedure, nothing more and nothing less.

They said it out loud. They stared into empty space to insist on it.

But their own hearts knew they were lying, and did not dare cry out.

And the two people in the room—the 900-year-old vampire and the mortal assassin—knew very well that it was the most blatant lie either of them had ever told in their lives.

After about five minutes of silence that weighed down the whole room, Vanya set the mug down on its china saucer with a CLINK. She stood up, pulled the fur cloak tight around her, and looked straight at Victor's charcoal-gray back.

"My body's recovered," she said, getting back the usual coldness of a killer. "What happened between us last night broke the blood fever. That means I have no more reason to stay locked up in Blackwood Castle. I'm leaving this afternoon."

Victor didn't turn around right away. He stood still by the arched window, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the sycamore garden sunk in fog. One long breath went by—an unnecessary gesture for a vampire, except in the moments when he needed to hold down the undertow in his chest.

"You're not going anywhere, Vanya," he said, turning around, his face frighteningly calm. "The buildup of biological reactions has settled for now, yes. But the thread of the Blood Bond is still fully intact. The fact that you got better only proves one thing: we've only just found out how it really works; we haven't dissected it, let alone destroyed it."

He walked slowly toward the dining table, his leather shoes making steady footsteps on the stone floor.

"If you walk past the castle grounds right now and the physical distance stretches out, the Blood Bond will lash back at double the strength. Do you want that spinal cord seizure to come back in the middle of another job?" Victor narrowed his eyes, his voice full of a very reasonable threat.

"I need you to stay here. I'll keep searching what's left of the ancient texts in the underground library to find a way to destroy this bond completely—a way that doesn't require us to keep touching each other."

Vanya clenched all 10 fingers under the cloak.

What he said was a hard fact that the logical mind of a killer like her couldn't deny. Leaving now would be suicide, and she didn't want to die before she had finished her own contract.

More important, they both understood without saying it: staying to find a way to break the bond completely was the perfect excuse for them to cling to, to hide the truth that the thread binding them had dug in deeper than they thought.

"Two weeks," Vanya said with a nod, her eyes hardening. "I'll give you two more weeks to find a way to wipe it out completely. After that, even if the Blood Bond tears my spinal cord apart, I'll cut it myself."

"Fine," Victor said, without the slightest expression.

The negotiation closed as briskly and coldly as a business contract. But they both knew the promise to "find a way to break it" was only the last defensive wall they had built for themselves before every bit of control collapsed.

She went out to the courtyard afterward, alone, with the fur cloak pulled up to her chin. The fountain was still frozen in the act of falling, its hundred glass threads hanging in the gray air, and when the wind moved through them they rang faintly, like someone touching the rims of crystal glasses in another room.

She stood there a long time. She told herself she was studying the walls for weaknesses. The walls had none, and she knew it, and she stayed anyway.

Under the fur cloak, Vanya's skin still bore dark purple bruises from his hands; and under the expensive suit, the scratches Vanya had left after their night together covered the whole of Victor's back.

The following day,

Blackwood Castle sank into the darkest hour before dawn. The fog outside was so thick that it swallowed the whole sycamore garden and turned the stone walls outside into huge black shapes.

Vanya lay in the big bed on the second floor. She stared up at the plaster ceiling—where the broken-winged angels drifted in and out of the darkness.

She couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, the smell of cedarwood, the bitter taste of blood on her tongue, and the feeling of his skin pressed tight against hers flared up again and burned away any chance of sleep.

She sat up and set her bare feet on the wood floor. She needed water. A glass of cold water to put out the restlessness gnawing at her chest.

Vanya opened her door and walked unhurriedly down the stairs to the kitchen area on the ground floor. The castle was as silent as an ancient tomb. Her feather-light footsteps didn't make a single sound.

She passed the east hallway on her way down. At the end of it, under its single brass lamp, the little window in the painting was lit, as it always was. She didn't stop. She noticed that she wanted to.

When she reached the middle of the staircase—right on the 13th step—she stopped.

A strange sound rose up.

It wasn't the wind whistling through the cracks in the stone, or a sycamore leaf falling in the courtyard.

The sound came from deep beneath the castle's stone floor—from the underground vault that had been sealed for centuries.

Scrrr... drag... scrrr...

It was the sound of something extremely heavy, a block of metal or a huge slab of stone, being dragged slowly across rough stone. The sound was heavy, steady, and carried a brooding pressure that made every muscle in Vanya's back instantly tighten.

The assassin's killing instinct rose up in her. She gripped the stair railing hard, her eyes locked on the iron door that led down to the basement at the end of the pitch-dark hallway.

Through the thread under her breastbone, she reached for him without meaning to, the way a tongue goes to a sore tooth. He was somewhere far above her in the castle, very still. Whatever was moving down there in the dark, it wasn't him.

Something beneath Blackwood Castle... was moving.