Authors: Susan Squires
Tags: #Regency, #Erotica, #Historical, #Romance, #Fiction
The Companion (49 page)
She sighed. “Companion. Well, it has its good points then. I’m glad we will have a very long time to do more of this.”
He lifted up his head, so he could look at her. He would be able to see her in the darkness as well as she could see him. “You . . . you accept it so much better than I ever did.”
“Your only experience was of Asharti. My only experience is of you.”
“People will call us monsters.” His anxiety was ramping up again. “Are we damned?”
She smiled. “Could the Companion not be a gift from God instead of a curse?”
“I don’t think God contemplated vampires.”
“No? I’m not sure what God contemplates. Maybe he contemplates everything.”
“We are an aberration.” His voice was bitter.
“Wherever the Old One comes from, he is not an aberration. Is God not there? There are others of our kind, like the Countess, even here. I liked her.” She lifted herself up on one elbow. “I don’t pretend to know much about God. But I feel in my heart that he counts on us to make choices. And if I’m wrong, if there is no God, then we must make choices on our own. Either way, we can but try to make good choices, even with his most mysterious gifts.”
“It’s going to be difficult, Beth,” Ian said, a note of sternness in his voice.
“Maybe good and easy don’t go together. But I feel alive. I love you. Isn’t that good?”
He kissed her and crushed her to him. She could feel the growing effect her body was having on his, just as she felt her humming blood begin to sing again. “I love you, Beth. I want to be with you in Africa, where you are most at home, or wandering the world, or in a drawing room in England, or in Casablanca fighting the remainder of Asharti’s army. It doesn’t matter. I guess I’m glad to be alive.” He seemed in awe of that fact.
“The blood is the life.” She believed it. He might come to believe it, too. The future beckoned. She ran her hand over his hip. His vibrations hummed up the scale. He bent to kiss her. His breath smelt like cinnamon. Cinnamon and ambergris.
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