Chapter 12

Every Inch

The kiss lasts forever, yet not nearly long enough. Too soon, Gregorio slackens his grip, and I slide down from him.

"Damn, damn, damn, damn," he groans.

Not exactly the response I was hoping for.

"Okay, so I'll try not to take that personally…" I say uncertainly, dropping my hands to his chest.

"No, of course it's not you. I have a damned meeting with Viktor regarding Siberia. I have to leave you, right now. Everyone will be there. I have to go."

"What? Now?" I complain in disbelief. "I thought we were going to disappear…get to know every inch of each other and all that."

Gregorio looks down at me and groans again.

His eyes flick back and forth in thought. "There's nothing for it. I have to go. But give me a few days to get things organized for the Siberian operation, and then we'll disappear."

"Really?" I ask hopefully.

"Really. Three days. I have to go," he says quickly and takes my hands from his chest and presses a soft kiss into each of my palms before releasing them. I can see that he's already preoccupied with all the work he's just cut out for himself in the next three days. He gives me a quick, firm kiss on the mouth and leaves.

The next three days are agony. I am suddenly in love, and he's all I can think about. I don't see him at all. He's working around the clock to organize everything that needs to be done for Siberia. My hair extensions drive me nuts. I tear them out.

I get a quickly scrawled note from Gregorio telling me to meet him along a road halfway down the hill outside of headquarters. I pack a few things and throw a wool cape over my simple skirt and blouse. I bought the cape as a joke – you know, vampire in a cape – but it's actually become one of my favorite pieces. It's cozy. It's kitschy. And I look adorable in it.

I grab a snack on the way down the mountain and wait for him. He pulls up in a non-descript, black sedan. I slide into the passenger seat, and he grabs my hand and holds it while he breaks speed limits through Europe. We're making our way to Amsterdam. We don't talk much during the drive. I mostly just watch him. He occasionally steals a glance at me and pulls my hand to his mouth and presses it to his lips. He runs his hand through my short hair, indicating that he approves. He smiles gently at me, but he's agitated. I can see that his mind still whirrs with the business he's hastily conducted these last few days. I don't clutter his brain with conversation.

There's something else bothering him. He has deep, dark purple circles under his eyes. He hasn't had time to eat. He's hungry.

We arrive in Amsterdam at dusk, and Gregorio rents a large speed boat at the harbor. We load our bags into it. Before we climb in, Gregorio stops me.

"This will be our last chance to have a real meal for a while. It's not very populated where we're going. Let's get something to eat in town before we leave."

"I'm okay," I say. "I ate right before you picked me up. I'll stay here with our stuff. You go ahead."

"You sure?" he asks.

"Positive."

He nods his head and then heads into town to kill somebody.

I try not to think about it.

How can I not think about it? The man I love, the man I'm prepared to spend the rest of eternity with has just stalked off into the darkening night to murder somebody.

I've got to stop being so dramatic. It's hardly murder; it's instinct, like Emmett said. Gregorio is simply doing what we vampires are built to do. I'm the one who's trying to buck nature.

If I'm going to be hanging out with Gregorio, I won't be able to hide the fact that I don't feed on humans. I don't want to hide it. I don't want to hide anything from Gregorio. I love him. I'm going to have to be careful about sharing certain information, though. Like my grand plan. The plan I've been working on since before I knew him. I've essentially been lying to Gregorio since the day I met him. He's not going to like that. He's also not going to like that I've been deceiving B.I.T.E., using them for my secret purpose. He may love me, but he is still the company's man. I have no doubt that he'll support me - I wouldn't be with him if I didn't believe that – but I'll have to ease him into it, take it slow, soften the blow.

I can't tell him everything on this trip. But maybe, if I see a good opportunity, I'll at least tell him about my diet. That's probably a good place to start.

Gregorio returns to the boat from dinner. He looks refreshed and relaxed. The purple circles are gone, and his eyes gleam. He regards me with a different kind of hunger. A more pleasant kind of hunger.

"Now, where were we before I had to take off to that blasted meeting?" he purrs, taking my arms and placing them around his neck. He wraps his arms around my waist and says in a low rumble, "I think this was about right."

He leans down and kisses me. Our mouths open, and Gregorio's breath is still heavy with his latest meal. I haven't tasted human blood for over fifty years. It's sweet and rich and smooth and absolutely divine. I taste it everywhere in his mouth. On his teeth, his tongue, the inside of his cheeks, the roof of his mouth. I am devouring him, running my tongue over every surface in his mouth. I pull him tighter. I want more, more blood, more rich, sweet divinity. I can't get enough. I want more. I pull him to me. I'm climbing onto him. I snarl. I growl.

"Whoa!" Gregorio shouts, gripping my shoulders and tearing me off of him. He holds me down and demands, "What the hell was that about, Elisabeta?"

It takes me a minute to bring my mind about to less animal-like thoughts. I'm sure my eyes are flashing. I'm not capable of telling him the truth at the moment. My mind can't even wrap around any type of comprehensible explanation. Gregorio's staring at me with defensive perplexity. I have to say something.

"I…uh…I really missed you," I offer weakly in explanation.

His eyebrows raise, and he says ironically, "I guess so." His thick eyebrows come down and he looks half overly pleased with himself and half frightened of me.

"Well, we'd better get going," he says doubtfully. He's doesn't know whether heading out alone with me in such an excited state will make for one of the best nights of his life or one of the most terrifying. Either way, it's sure to be one of the most memorable.

"Perhaps you should sit down for a while until you've calmed down," he suggests.

"Good idea," I mumble and go directly to the back of the boat, glad for a piece of solitude while he starts the engine and takes the wheel.

I am so ashamed of myself. How could I have lost control like that? If Gregorio hadn't been as strong as he is, it could have easily been another Kristoph situation. Oh, Kristoph, Kristoph, Kristoph…

This isn't going to work, is it? I'm not going to be able to be this close with a human-feeder without jumping right back into that lifestyle. I'm obviously not strong enough to deal with it. I'll be ravaging human throats and drinking them by the dozen within weeks of starting up with Gregorio. I can't do this. I can't put everything I've worked for at risk for one man. Even if I am desperately in love with him.

I look across the boat at Gregorio. He's effortlessly navigating the boat through Amsterdam's canals on our way to the North Sea. He's beautiful. I watch his chiseled, ivory profile stay completely still for a long while. He's like a perfect, Roman statue. In an Armani suit. It's strange. I don't feel sad when I look at this wonderful man that I'm going to have to give up. I feel…strong. Gregorio makes me feel strong.

I get up and walk over to him and slip under his arm as he stands at the wheel. He looks down at me with a soft smile.

"Feeling better?" he asks.

"Uh huh," I say and return his smile.

With exaggerated hesitancy, he leans down and kisses me. It's a long, slow, normal kiss during which neither one of us tries to devour the other. I can handle this. It's going to be okay. Gregorio makes me strong.

"That's more like it," he says, still teasing me about earlier.

"Gregorio," I say flirtatiously, feeling more like myself. "Is that how you got that scar? You were too delicious and a voluptuous vampiress tried to eat you?"

"No, my dear; you've been the first to try that," he chuckles.

It was a stupid thing for me to say. It makes me think of what I did to Kristoph. It hurts. I turn away from Gregorio before he can see the pain flash through my eyes. I'm standing with my back to him, watching the waves that we're now ripping through. We've reached the North Sea.

Gregorio steers with one hand and wraps his other arm all the way around my waist and holds me to him. I lean back, and we stand silently. Just like I let him be quiet in the car, he's letting me be quiet now. He makes me stronger. I feel him press a soft kiss into my hair. It's going to be okay. It has to be, because there's not a bloody fricking chance in hell that I'm walking away from him.

Now that we're in the open sea, we're cutting across the black waters at inhuman speed. I'm elated by the thrill of it. Gregorio senses my change in mood and twists the boat in a few daredevil maneuvers that make me shriek. We laugh as the salty water splatters us in the face, and we zoom on and on.

After a while, the thrill wanes and we cut an easy, straight path through the water, continuing to move at a good clip. I still stand with my back to Gregorio. I'm gripping the arm he's kept wrapped around me. There's nothing to see but choppy water with each of its tiny peaks illuminated by a crescent moon. Despite our speed, the setting is peaceful. I lean back on Gregorio and he nestles the side of his face into my hair.

"Elisabeta?" he asks. His tone is almost delicate. "When did you first start to love me?"

"Are we playing truth or dare?" I respond illusively.

"Just truth. Tell me. I want to know."

"When you told me you were moving to Siberia. I suddenly couldn't imagine my life without you," I tell him in a very straight forward, non-gushy way.

"That's when you realized it. But you must have started loving me some time before that, or you wouldn't have felt that way. When do you think it was?"

"You're awfully nosy aren't you?" I say playfully.

He bends his mouth to my ear and says in a soft, irresistible voice, "Please tell me. I want to know."

I'm not comfortable openly talking about my feelings like this. But I know how persistent Gregorio can be and realize that he's going to stay on it until he finds out what he wants to know. Still, I make one last attempt at a diversion.

"Gregorio, with all this talk of feelings, are you sure you're not a girl?"

He murmurs suggestively into my ear, "You'll know the answer to that soon enough."

The vibration of his words ripples through me, and I press back into him. He dips his face down to plant his mouth on my neck. I think my distraction tactics have worked, but he suddenly jerks his head up and says expectantly, "I'm still waiting."

"Fine," I tell him. "I would guess that I first started falling for you in Madagascar."

"The kiss," he murmurs knowingly, as if it's the answer he expected.

"Yes, the kiss. But there was more. You by the fire, so relaxed, so casual, so…natural. I liked it. I think about you like that a lot."

"Really?" he says. He didn't expect that part of the answer.

"Uh huh. Now, what about you?" I say, turning around and wrapping both of my arms around his narrow waist. "When did you start loving me? That's the great mystery."

He keeps his eyes trained on the water ahead of him, but I can see that his mind is one hundred percent on the topic at hand.

"The day we met," he says in complete seriousness.

"Come on," I say disbelievingly.

"It's true. I didn't know it yet, but I received my first clue that day."

He takes his eyes from the water and looks down at me. With the black, liquid blanket beneath us and the velvet expanse of black and silver above, Gregorio's eyes shine like onyx gems. They don't carry their usual softness and are almost fierce. The glow of the moon cuts sharp shadows below his defined cheekbones all the way to the square of his jaw. He's deadly handsome in the moonlight, but if I weren't a vampire myself, I'd be terrified of him.

"Do you remember when you asked me about my scar that day?" he asks. The roll of his deep voice is as smooth and soft as cashmere.

I nod.

"We were in the middle of a very tense moment with Viktor, and you asked me how I got my scar. I was suddenly flooded with an unreasonable thrill that you were curious about me personally. It was such a trivial thing, but I was absolutely elated by it. It didn't make any sense to me.

"Then there was the day with the werewolf. I watched you walk into the arena, and all my senses became charged with the need to save you. I snatched the gun from Felix and nearly shot the werewolf the second he looked at you, before he had even transformed. I kept control of myself until the beast slashed you. You know that Viktor stopped me from shooting him right then, but I kept the gun pointed at a spot just in front of you, waiting for the monster to cross it, so I could end him.

"But you surprised us all by lunging forward, and suddenly everything was thrown helter skelter. You were on top of him, and I couldn't get a clear shot without endangering you. I barely got off the bullet that killed him. I thought I'd been too late, that he'd bitten you. I didn't know until I walked into the arena and saw Felix holding you that you'd survived.

"The entire torturous walk down the steps, I'd thought you were dead. I couldn't imagine it. Couldn't accept it. I was a zombie. But when I saw that you were okay, I started to feel like I wanted to live again. It was then that I knew you were going to be very dangerous to me."

I'm staring up at Gregorio. I remember the scene with perfect clarity, but it all looks so different from this angle. I tell him, "You know, that would have been a very romantic story if it hadn't ended with you inappropriately offering to rub me down in ointment."

He smiles and touches his forehead on mine. "Offer's still good," he growls.

I laugh and rub my nose against his.

"So, you realized that you were madly in love with me, and it took you forty years to do anything about it? Doesn't sound like the Gregorio I know," I say.

"I wasn't a willing participant in my emotions. Note that I said dangerous. I stifled them and hoped that they would go away – as they usually did for me. But every time I saw you, I found something new to intrigue me, and my feelings only grew stronger. Then you started whispering in my ear. I knew you were only playing at improving your position within B.I.T.E., but I wouldn't have turned you away for the world. Thus our game of cat and mouse began. Or in our case, cat and tiger.

"I knew you wouldn't go for the foolish professions of a love-besotted fool, so I played along. You needed to come around to me on your own. I had no doubt that you would. I convinced myself that the connection was so strong that it must include both of us, that it wasn't one sided. I simply needed to give you the opportunity to recognize it. And I gave you every opportunity I could; all those random visits to you in the field--"

I gasp. "Is that what those were about," I say, smacking him in his rock hard chest. "I thought you didn't trust me."

"Well, quite frankly, I didn't, but that was only a small part of it. Mostly I just wanted to see you. Plus, I had to keep tabs on any competition for your affections. Lucky for me, you're not very affectionate," he says, earning himself another smack in the chest.

"And then there was Madagascar. Ah, Madagascar. I felt the earth shift during our kiss. You didn't expect it, and you'd inadvertently left yourself open. I felt it move in you, Elisabeta, and I knew it was only a matter of time," he says, looking wistfully down at me.

"But then we returned to Romania, and something had changed. Something somewhere inside of you closed to me, and when you kissed me again, it was completely different. It all turned physical for you; there was no more emotion. I was caught off guard by how much that hurt - to be so close to you, but to have you so far out of my reach. It was unbearable. I knew I couldn't play our games anymore. The time had come to lay it on the table. So I did. And I nearly lost you." I see a touch of sadness pull at the corners of Gregorio's eyes. "Who would have guessed that it was only when I finally gave up all hope that you'd come around."

I stare up at him and feel scared. It had come that close, hadn't it? If one tiny thing had been different – if he'd left for Siberia without saying goodbye, if I hadn't been able to croak out his name at the last second - it could all have been so different. Looking up at him now, I can't imagine ever not realizing that I loved him. I take my hands and place them on either side of his gorgeous face. I look directly into his sharp, black eyes.

"Thank God I came around, Gregorio. I will thank God every day that I came around," I tell him earnestly.

We penetrate each others' eyes a little longer, and it seems I can read every one of Gregorio's thoughts. He has some very interesting thoughts. I can't stand it any longer, and I jump up onto him and kiss him. He crushes his mouth onto mine, and I feel his hand slip past me to cut the engine. He presses me up against the steering wheel and we let the boat drift aimlessly while we get to know a few more inches of each other.

We've crossed into the Atlantic, and I've taken the wheel. I gladly hand it off to Gregorio's more experienced hands when we're faced with drifting ice chunks in the water. We're approaching Greenland.

Daylight is breaking. Everything glitters. Somehow Gregorio gets the boat through the ice-infested waters and docks it into a drift that juts out into the sea. He secures the boat to the drift, and we grasp hands as he leads me up, up, up into a snow covered mountain. We don't stop until we can see nothing but the sparkling white of the snow around us. Miles and miles of pure, umblemished, crystalline snow. The sun moves higher in the sky, sending up miniature flares everywhere.

"Do you know why I brought you here instead of anywhere else in the world?" he asks me.

We are knee deep in snow. I have no idea why he chose this place. I shrug my shoulders.

"I was here once many years ago and couldn't stop thinking about you," he tells me. "Everywhere I looked was Elisabeta. It was the snow. Look at it; it's so beautiful, so perfect. The way it shimmers and shines - it's your skin. I wanted to see you here. I wanted the snow to meet its match."

"All vampire skin shimmers and shines," I say.

He touches his fingertips to my face and says gently, "Not like yours." His eyes have changed again. They are back to his soft black, but they're not bold, not confident. They seem a little timid, a little unsure.

"Elisabeta," he says hesitantly. "I want to see you…I want to see all of you…here."

His hands have moved tentatively to the button that fastens my cape. He runs his fingertips along the button but stops at that. He's waiting for my permission. I cover his fingers with mine and bend them to undo the button. He slides the cape over my shoulders and it falls to the ground. We bring our hands to my blouse and together we slowly unbutton it. Gregorio flattens his palms against my chest and drags them to my shoulders and down my arms as he slides my shirt completely from me.

He looks at my newly-bared skin against the snow, and his look is one of wonder. Before we expose any more of my skin, I reach my hands out to him, and he lets me undo his buttons. Inch by inch we bare more shimmering skin. We are standing in front of each other, and he is taking all of me in with wide eyes. His mouth hangs slightly open. He still seems to be slightly unsure of himself. It's not a look I'm used to seeing on him.

"You okay there?" I ask more lightly than I feel.

"Elisabeta," he murmurs. He speaks almost as if he's in some kind of trance. "You're so beautiful."

His eyes come to mine and pull me in like a magnet. He grasps me at my elbows and pulls me down to kneel with him in the snow. The snow covers us to our waists like a warm, fuzzy blanket. He bends his mouth to the base of my throat and sucks on me in a sensual kiss. His kiss moves steadily downward, and I sigh. I sigh as I feel what I've daydreamed about hundreds of times – the bump of Gregorio's scar moving slowly over me. He's not timid or unsure of himself anymore. I cradle him to me, gripping his soft, black waves in my fingers. His hands and his mouth and my sighs become more urgent, and we tumble into the snow.

We are covered in glittering snow, and it's impossible to know where Gregorio ends and I begin, where the endless sweep of snow starts and our writhing, milky bodies stop. The glorious, sparkling whiteness stretches on and on, forever and forever and forever.