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My fingertips were cold as if I’d been outside without gloves. I stared up at him for a second or two. “If I can’t touch you with my hands, what do you suggest I use?”

Padma suggested something explicit enough to make me point a finger at him. “You stay out of this.”

He laughed at me. “She is truly embarrassed. How terribly precious. Asher said she was a virgin before you. I did not believe him, until now.”

I let my head drop to my chest. I was not going to say it. I did not owe the vampire council a rundown on my love life.

Jean-Claude’s hand moved into view. He never touched me, but just the movement of his hand brought my face up to meet his gaze. “I would not ask this of you here and now, if it were not necessary. You must believe that.”

Looking into his blue, blue eyes, I did believe him. Stupid, but true. “What do you want me to do?”

He raised his fingers and put them just above my lips, so close that if I breathed in, he’d have had to touch me. “Use your lovely mouth over my heart. If our bond is as strong as I believe it to be, there are shortcuts, ma petite.”

I sighed and pulled his shirt up, baring his chest. In private I loved running my tongue over the cross-shaped burn scar on his chest. But this wasn’t private. Hell with it.

I laid my lips against the cool skin of his stomach, and licked a quick, wet line up his chest.

He drew in a sharp hiss of breath. How could he be breathing and not have a heartbeat? No answer to that, but I’d seen it before. Vampires that breathed but did not have a pulse.

I ran my tongue over the smoothness of the cross-shaped burn scar, ending with a kiss over his heart. I felt my lips grow cold. It wasn’t the tingling cold of winter, though. It was just as he’d said. His body stealing my warmth. My life seeping away into him.

I knelt back away from him, licking my lips, trying to feel them. “How’s that?”

He laughed, and the sound slid down my back like an ice cube, rubbed purposefully and long to the base of my spine.

I shuddered. “You’re feeling better.”

He lifted me suddenly, hands on my thighs. I let out a surprised yip, putting my hands on his shoulders for balance. He wrapped his arms around my legs and stared up at me. The pupil in his eyes had bled away to a shining blue fire.

I felt his heartbeat in my throat. His pulse raced through my body. He let me slide slowly through his arms. “Kiss me, ma petite, as we are meant to kiss. I am warm and safe to touch.”

“Warm but never safe,” I said. I started to kiss him when I was inches above his forehead and continued the kiss as I slid down his body. He kissed me like he would eat me from the mouth down. Fangs pressed hard and sharp, and he had to draw away or draw blood. The kiss left me breathless, tingling, but not with cold.

I realized that he’d gotten a buzz from drinking in my warmth. That it had felt good in a more than practical way. Trust him to make a virtue out of necessity.

“Now that you have your full powers once again,” the Traveler said, “I will be leaving you. You drove Padma out without my aid. Surely you can defend yourself again.”

“He bested you, as well,” Padma said.

Hannah’s face looked at us. “Yes, he did. I would expect nothing less from the master that slew the Earthmover.” Hannah turned back to Padma. “And he did what you cannot. He regained his warmth with his human servant without drawing her blood. A trick that any true master can accomplish.”

“Enough of this,” Padma said. He sounded angry. Having to share blood with your human servant seemed to be a real faux pas. “The night wanes. Now that you are at full strength, Jean-Claude, search for your people. See who does not answer your call.”

“I will leave you now, Jean-Claude. I will await you beyond.” Hannah suddenly sagged. Willie caught her and lowered her gently to the floor.

“Search, Jean-Claude, search for your people,” Padma said.

Jean-Claude stood, drawing me with him. His pupils swam through the shining blue of his eyes. His eyes settled into their normal color. He stared past me, past Padma. I didn’t think he was seeing