“Jean-Pierre, the first time we made love you had to enthrall me because I couldn’t bear the weight of you on me. And these last two times, well, first I rode you, then this last time you took me from behind. I know, I know, that if we tried to do it the regular way”—she looked up at him and gestured first to his chest, then to hers—“I’d freak out again.”

Of course bringing up sex was a mistake, because a heavy roll of his delicious coffee scent poured over her. “Would you stop that?”

“Désolé, chérie. Though I understand the reason behind the reference, the images caught me by surprise.”

“But you know what I mean, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

She moved to sit down in the chair she’d used the afternoon before when she had worked with Alison. She bent over and shaded her eyes with her hands. This was too much. All too much, but it had been from the first anyway, from having been taken from the streets of Boston in 1886, used as a blood slave, rescued by one of the hunkiest men she had ever seen, until right now with her vampire breh standing in the center of the room, waiting for her to calm down so that they could continue the training. All too much.

Absently, she fingered the gold locket that she wore around her neck, trying to find an anchor. Her husband had warned her repeatedly not to go shopping by herself, that a woman on the streets alone would always invite danger. And so it had, but not in a way that Terence could have ever predicted. Was there a lesson here for her, then? And just how right was Jean-Pierre?

The trouble was, she wasn’t sure she could do it period. Not just because she resisted the idea; she also thought it possible she would really struggle to learn the skill in the first place.

She looked up at him. He waited so patiently, a slight furrow on his brow, solemn. He was a good teacher; he had skills, because here she was ready to do what she had pretty much vowed never to do. “All right, Obi-Wan, let’s do this thing.”

Then he smiled, all those big beautiful teeth.

“You know, you could have been a model or something.”

He chuckled. “I think I would rather make war.”

At that she laughed but his expression grew serious. “You are so beautiful, Fiona. Sometimes looking at you makes my heart ache.”

She rose to her feet and her breathing seemed to stall in her chest. He always gave her the most wonderful compliments because he tied them to his heart. Did he know he did that?

He closed his eyes and his nostrils flared. “I wish you could smell what it is that I smell. There is nothing like a bakery first thing in the morning when the aroma of all that goodness fills the dawn air. That is what I smell when you are near me like this. All that goodness.” He opened his eyes. “And that is who you are, Fiona. When I see you with your daughter, Carolyn, and her children, I think, Oui, all that goodness.”

He crossed to her and she let him take her in his arms, let his lips find hers, let his tongue pierce her mouth. She slid her arms around his neck and he wrapped his arms around her so that she was pressed front-to-front against him; his heavy muscled pecs to her breasts, his rippled abdomen to hers, his now very firm cock tempting her very low, his strong thighs pushing into her thighs, making demands they couldn’t possibly follow up on, not here in this room at Militia Warrior HQ.

Does this make you feel trapped? he sent.

No.

She didn’t say the rest: that what he was doing made her feel loved. Oh, God, how deep could this well get?

He held her for a long time, the seconds dragging into a minute, then two. She breathed against him and he breathed against her, his body, hers, living, alive, here and present.

Finally, he pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Can you trust me and try? Can you trust that in my two hundred years of living as an ascended vampire I know what I am speaking of when I say that each power must be taken to its greatest breadth of expression, that this is necessary? That when we do this, as individuals, we make our world, our society stronger?”

“You want me to think of the whole?”

He nodded. “To some degree, yes, but mostly I want you to think of yourself and trust me that this will be the very best for you as well, that place where you will find the greatest joy as well as the greatest strength.”

She looked into his eyes and for a moment thought that he could sell her swampland in Florida. She smiled. “I’ll try.”

“Good. Let’s begin with preternatural speed, something I know you do not hold as a power.”

The truth was, she didn’t have a great number of powers like any of the extremely powerful ascenders she knew. Alison, for instance, had all of the Second Earth preternatural powers and a few that were at Third Earth level, like her ability to capture pockets of time and reverse them. Fiona could fold herself from place to place, but she wasn’t powerful enough to take anyone else with her.

Still, she was the gold variety of obsidian flame, which for her apparently meant that she could channel the powers of others, even though she didn’t have the powers herself. However, this was early in the process. Who knew what would emerge as the days and weeks progressed?

Fiona closed her eyes. As she drew near to Jean-Pierre in a preternatural sense, her being up against his being, this part of the process made complete sense to her. She didn’t know why exactly, but when she felt herself almost locked against him, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, she knew that this was the first part of the channeling gift … proximity.

But as she relaxed and thought about allowing the possession, she felt a strange vibration of new energy—not the hard sweep of gold power, but something cooler washing over her skin, which seemed to pull Jean-Pierre even closer to her.

But as the power increased, it began to feel suffocating. She drew back and back until she no longer rested beside him.

She opened her eyes, and he frowned down at her. “Why did you stop? I felt it, as though I was being drawn into you. Fiona, you have this power. I can feel it in you now.” His eyes held an almost wild light of excitement.

She whirled around and returned to her chair. She sat down and crossed her legs and folded her arms over her chest. She wagged her head. “No. I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I can’t do this, Jean-Pierre. I won’t do it.” She couldn’t meet his gaze. She didn’t want to see either the reprimand in his eyes or the disappointment. Besides, why did this have to be on her? Why?

There was no answer. Why did Jean-Pierre have to be a Warrior of the Blood and battle every night at the Borderlands in order to keep Second Earth and Mortal Earth from falling into the hands of a monster? Why had Endelle been essentially forced to a rule a world for so many millennia when clearly, clearly, she’d rather be doing a million other things, like starting her own roadkill fashion line accompanied by rattlesnake accessories.

But instead of shouting at her, as surely Endelle would have done, he moved to sit beside her. He slid his hand up beneath her long waterfall of hair and rubbed the back of her neck with his long beautiful fingers. She closed her eyes, but a couple of tears slipped from beneath her eyelids.

“I wish this was easier for me,” she said.

“I know. I understand. I got very excited, though, when I felt your power drawing me to you, into you. I was a little carried away by the possibilities, even by the pleasure of feeling connected to you in that manner.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

She still couldn’t look at him, but she heard his frustrated sigh. “I am angry that our world is built like this. I remember being this angry about a year ago when Alison, our wonderful Alison, was required by the rules of COPASS to submit to an arena battle, using a sword she had only had command of for a day or so. She was forced to battle the traitor Leto, a former Warrior of the Blood. I can remember thinking the same thing: that this was not just unfair, it was a great sin against Alison, against all ascenders that anyone should be treated so cruelly.

“After everything you have been through, all you have suffered, I think it cruel that you must now do something that is abhorrent to you. Beyond that, if we were not at war, there would be no rush to bring your powers to the fore. You could take centuries exploring your gifts. But no, you must hurry and do this thing or perhaps the world will fall because you did not. It is absurd and it is a sin.”

A chill went straight down her back and not because Jean-Pierre still touched her, still rubbed her neck.

Fiona rarely experienced anything close to prescience or clairvoyance but she had the worst feeling that what he had just said was true.

She suppressed the thought, however. If she honestly embraced the notion that the fate of the world depended on her, she thought she might just go insane. So instead she looked at him and said, “Then for now, why don’t we practice that part of the channeling skill that I can use, so that when I am next to you, in that strange way of mine, I can still make use of the powers you possess. Okay?”

He nodded. “I think it a good idea.”

But as she looked at him, she said. “You know, you reminded me of Alison just now. Are you empathic?”

He shook his head. “Not that I am aware.”

She laughed. “Maybe not. I guess you’re just a great guy.”

But he squeezed her neck then pushed against her playfully, side-to-side. “Well, that is very true. I am most definitely a great guy.”

A number of sudden unexpected thoughts flowed through her, images of what they had done so recently, and another image she wanted to explore, of Jean-Pierre in his bedroom and some bindings fashioned out of silk. Of course, being a woman from Boston so long ago, these new thoughts brought a flame to her cheek.

“Your scent is intoxicating, chérie.” His voice was a low whisper right against her neck. “What were you thinking? Tell me what you were thinking? Tell me in detail.”

She looked at him, met his gaze. She had never been so bold. “I saw the most beautiful gray-green-blue silk, the color of your eyes, only I wrapped it around your wrists and held you captive on your bed.”