Первородные: Восхождение

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

VIVIANNE HAD BEEN CRYING. She had cleaned her face and concealed the signs expertly, but Klaus could see a tightness around her mouth and faint traces of swelling below her eyes. He reached out to stroke her face, his hand lingering along the fine line of her jaw.

“Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter now,” he told her softly. “You know you have only to say the word and I will take you away from this pain. You don’t have to continue with this double life any longer than you choose to.”

Vivianne glanced back at the elegant mansion on the far side of the garden. Its windows were all dark, as they always were at this hour. And yet she seemed keenly aware of the witches within, of the family she was betraying by meeting him night after night.

“I had a fight with Armand,” she admitted, slipping herself into Klaus’s arms with the ease born of practice. “A terrible fight.”

“Terrible enough that the wedding is off?” he asked optimistically, nuzzling his face against her hair. It smelled of lilacs.

She pretended to shove him away reprovingly, but her heart wasn’t in it and he didn’t retreat an inch. “He has said all along that it was my choice if I want to become a full werewolf, that he would make his family respect my decision either way.”

“He has the face of a liar.” Klaus tugged her closer to him. “I assume he meant he would respect your decision either way as long as you made the one he really wants you to make, then.”

Vivianne bit her lip and looked away. He could see from her face that she didn’t know whether to cry again or laugh. He couldn’t imagine Armand had ever seen this side of her—there was no way she was ever so freely herself around anyone but him. Eventually, she would understand the benefits of that and agree to be only his, but would she do it before the werewolves bullied her into joining their ranks? He hoped so, but she was proving impressively stubborn.

“I thought as much,” he muttered, and she didn’t need to speak to confirm his guess. “He won’t make much of a husband at this rate. I understand that honoring one’s word is generally expected in a marriage.”

“You have no idea what a marriage requires,” she snapped. “How many hundreds of years have you lived as a bachelor, again?”

Klaus smiled indulgently. Over the course of their nights together he had come to learn that the harder she pushed him, the more she wanted him near. It was a surprisingly fetching habit. “Until I met you, my dear,” he reminded her. “I have not been a bachelor in my heart, at least, since the moment I first held you in my arms.”

“That tedious dance,” she muttered, but then she kissed him again, and he could think of nothing but her soft, supple lips until she pulled away.

“That boring party was the best night of my life,” he told her, his voice low and hoarse with emotion, “except for every night since.” He couldn’t hold back the full truth of his feelings anymore, and he realized he didn’t even want to. “Vivianne Lescheres, you must know that I love you.”

She smiled up at him, and for once there was no trace of sadness in her face. “I know,” she answered simply. For a moment he was taken aback—he had expected her to return his words. But that was classic Viv....Everything in her own time.

He knew how she felt, and he could wait as long as she needed to tell him. “I am yours, love,” he told her with utter conviction. “Command me and I will obey, except to leave you alone among the wolves. That I can’t do.”

“Leave me alone with you,” she whispered, running her fingers lightly up his chest. “Take me away from here—now. I want us to be the only two in the world tonight.”

He did not pause to clarify what she meant—he didn’t even wait long enough to answer her. Instead he climbed to the top of the wall, then turned to take her raised arms and lift her up beside him. He held her tightly as he jumped to the ground on the other side, and then ran hand in hand with her through the cobblestoned streets until they reached the Mikaelsons’ hotel.

Fortunately, the other two Originals were up to no good somewhere, and so Klaus was confident there would be none of the previous night’s interruptions. He locked the door to his room behind them nonetheless, then turned to find Vivianne, fresh tears wet on her cheeks, gazing sadly at his most recent painting, which still remained on its easel.

Its tone was lighter than most of his work, begun just in the last few days. His blues were warmer, the greens that intersected them more vibrant. The trees suggested at its edges were alive, and the vast ocean inviting. Vivianne stood and stared at the proof that she was his joy, and she wept.

“It’s something I do when I think of you,” he told her, and she smiled ruefully.

“You don’t just drink and carouse?” she asked, a slight edge in her voice. “I am not sure you live up to your reputation.”

He chuckled. “I did try that, my dear,” he argued pleasantly. Now that she was here, he felt giddy. There was nothing left to hide from her. She had made her choice and he could be exactly who he was. “It didn’t work. There is no antidote to you except more of you. And more again after that.”

He crossed the distance between them as quick as a strike of lightning, and then softly kissed the traces of her tears away. It must be frightening to choose the unknown over what she had expected to do her entire life, but he vowed that she would never regret it for a moment. His lips moved to her mouth, and she smiled, though her eyes remained serious.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t mean to be sad. I am so, so happy to be here with you, and would not choose to be anywhere else tonight. It is only difficult, to forget...everything. Everything else.”

“Nothing else matters,” he assured her, deftly untying her white silk dress as he spoke. “We are here tonight, you and I. In the morning we will—”

“Nothing,” she interrupted firmly. “In the morning nothing. Just be with me now, tonight.” In the morning everything, he knew, but if she was not ready to speak yet of their future, then he would not.

Her gown slipped to the floor, then all the layers beneath it, and she barely seemed to notice that it was gone. She looked slighter and yet somehow stronger without it. Standing just in her corset, her breath was steady and sure, and her bare arms gleamed in the moonlight. She already looked like the queen he would make of her.

Then she kissed him again, and her fingers worked among the fastenings of his clothes just as he tried to discover the secrets to hers. They raced silently, unhooking, unbuttoning, and untying, all while trying to keep their mouths connected, their bodies close.

His hand caught her raven hair and he tugged it gently, pulling her head back to expose her white throat. His tongue traveled from her collarbone to her jaw and then back again, and he felt the vibration against his lips as she laughed. “I’m not your meal tonight, vampire,” she reminded him tartly, and somehow she shifted her weight while tangling their ankles together so that he fell heavily onto the bed beneath her.

“You are my everything,” he agreed, and flipped her over so that her body was trapped under his own. “I will drink only you or anyone but you, as you command.” He kissed along her collarbone, then paused to whisper in her ear. “But command me quickly, my love, or else I am bound to get ideas of my own.”

Her laughter was a liquid ripple in her throat. “You think I would care what fool you drain, as long as your love belongs to me alone?”

“I do.” He grinned and moved himself down along the length of her, so that his mouth rested on her creamy thigh. He could feel the beat of her heart through the artery there, and it was intoxicating. “I think that you will come to wonder what it would be like, to have that bond as well as all of the others we will share.” He bit her playfully, not breaking the skin or even leaving a mark. She gasped all the same, her back arching up toward him. “I think you will be curious, and then you will beg me to try you, and then you will never want me to taste another.”

She laughed again, more brilliantly this time. Her fingers wound through his hair, keeping him near. “You will suffer so, in this imagination of yours.”

He ran his mouth up along her body, and she moaned softly. “Suffering is not my aim,” he assured her. His lips moved lightly, teasingly, only touching her enough to make her ache to be touched more. “It is not mine, either,” she whispered. Although the room was warm, goose bumps rose on the delicate skin of her abdomen. Klaus’s body hummed with the anticipation of hers.

With a wicked spark in her black eyes, she took hold of his hips and guided him into her. He knew she was still pure, and he had intended to be gentle, careful. But she was as game and as fearless as ever, and he could feel himself nearly drowning in her desire.

From then until dawn he made sure that she could not speak another clear word.