Lord of Misrule

“I think somebody restored the paper,” she said. “Like they do with really expensive old books and stuff. Comics, sometimes. They put chemicals on the paper to slow down the aging process, make the paper whiter again.”

“Fascinating,” Shane lied. “Gimme.” He plucked the book from her hands and put it aside, on the other side of the bed. When she grabbed for it, he got in her way; they tangled, and somehow, he was lying prone on the bed and she was stretched awkwardly on top of him. His hands steadied her when she started to slide off.

“Oh,” she murmured. “We shouldn’t—”

“Definitely not.”

“Then you should—”

“Yeah, I should.”

But he didn’t move, and neither did she. They just looked at each other, and then, very slowly, she lowered her lips to his.

It was a warm, sweet, wonderful kiss, and it seemed to go on forever. It also felt like it didn’t last nearly long enough. Shane’s hands skimmed up her sides, up her back, and cupped her damp hair as he kissed her more deeply. There were promises in that kiss.

“Okay, red flag,” he said. He hadn’t let her go, but there was about a half an inch of air between their lips. Claire’s whole body felt alive and tingling, pulse pounding in her wrists and temples, warmth pooling like light in the center of her body.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I swear. Trust me.”

“Hey, isn’t that my line?”

“Not now.”

Kissing Shane was the reward for surviving a long, hard, terrifying day. Being enfolded in his warmth felt like going to heaven on moonbeams. She kicked off her shoes, and, still fully dressed, crawled under the blankets. Shane hesitated.

“Trust me,” she said again. “And you can keep your clothes on if you don’t.”

They’d done this before, but somehow it hadn’t felt so . . . intimate. Claire pressed against him, back to front under the covers, and his arms went around her. Instant heat.

She swallowed and tried to remember all those good intentions she’d had as she felt Shane’s breath whisper on the back of her neck, and then his lips brushed her skin. “So wrong,” he murmured. “You’re killing me, you know.”

“Am not.”

“On this, you’ll have to trust me.” His sigh made her shiver all the way to her bones. “I can’t believe you brought Monica back here.”

“Oh, come on. You wouldn’t have left her out there, all alone. I know you better than that, Shane. Even as bad as she is—”

“The satanic incarnation of evil?”

“Maybe so, but I can’t see you letting them get her and . . . hurt her.” Claire turned around to face him, a squirming motion that made them wrestle for the covers. “What’s going to happen? Do you know?”

“What am I, Miranda the teen screwed-up psychic? No, I don’t know. All I know is that when we get up tomorrow, either the vampires will be back, or they won’t. And then we’ll have to make a choice about how we’re going to go forward.”

“Maybe we don’t go forward. Maybe we wait.”

“One thing I do know, Claire: you can’t stay in the same place, not even for a day. You keep on moving. Maybe it’s the right direction, maybe not, but you still move. Every second things change, like it or not.”

She studied his face intently. “Is your dad here? Now?”

He grimaced. “Truthfully? No idea. I wouldn’t be surprised. He’d know that it was time to move in and take command, if he could. And Manetti’s a ru

“But if he does take over, what happens to Michael? To Myrnin? To any other vampire out there?”

“Do you really need me to tell you?”

Claire shook her head. “He’ll tell people they have to kill all the vampires, and then, he’ll come after the Morrells, and anybody else he thinks is responsible for what happened to your family. Right?”

“Probably,” Shane sighed.

“And you’re going to let all that happen.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say you weren’t, either. Don’t tell me it’s complicated, because it isn’t. Either you stand up for something, or you lie down for it. You said that to me one time, and you were right.” Claire burrowed closer into his arms. “Shane, you were right then. Be right now.”

He touched her face. His fingers traced down her cheek, across her lips, and his eyes—she’d never seen that look in his eyes. In anyone’s, really.

“In this whole screwed-up town, you’re the only thing that’s always been right to me,” he whispered. “I love you, Claire.” She saw something that might have been just a flash of panic go across his expression, but then he steadied again. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I do. I love you.”

He said something else, but the world had narrowed around her. Shane’s lips kept moving, but all she heard were the same words echoing over and over inside her head like the tolling of a giant brass bell: I love you.

He sounded like it had taken him completely by surprise—not in a bad way, but more as if he hadn’t really understood what he was feeling until that instant.

She blinked. It was as if she’d never really seen him before, and he was beautiful. More beautiful than any man she’d ever seen in her entire life, ever.

Whatever he was saying, she stopped it by kissing him. A lot. And for a very long time. When he finally backed up, he didn’t go far, and this look in his eyes, this intense and overwhelming need—that was new, too.

And she liked it.

“I love you,” he said, and kissed her so hard he took her breath away. There was more to it than before—more passion, more urgency, more . . . everything. It was as if she were caught in a tide, carried away, and she thought that if she never touched the shore again, it would be good to drown like this, just swim forever in all this richness.

Red flag, some part of her screamed, come on, red flag. What are you doing?

She wished it would just shut up.

“I love you, too,” she whispered to him. Her voice was shaking, and so were her hands where they rested on his chest. Under the soft T-shirt, his muscles were tensed, and she could feel every deep breath he took. “I’d do anything for you.”

She meant it to be an invitation, but that was the thing that shocked sense back into him. He blinked. “Anything,” he repeated, and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Yeah. I’m getting that. Bad idea, Claire. Very, very bad.”

“Today?” She laughed a little wildly. “Everything’s crazy today. Why can’t we be? Just once?”

“Because I made promises,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, and she felt a groan shake his whole body. “To your parents, to myself, to Michael. To you, Claire. I can’t break my word. It’s pretty much all I’ve got these days.”

“But . . . what if—”

“Don’t,” he whispered in her ear. “Please don’t. This is tough enough already.”

He kissed her again, long and sweetly, and somehow, it tasted like tears this time. Like some kind of good-bye.

“I really do love you,” he said, and smoothed away the damp streaks on her cheeks. “But I can’t do this. Not now.”

Before she could stop him, he slid out of bed, put on his shoes, and walked quickly to the door. She sat up, holding the covers close as if she were naked underneath, instead of fully clothed, and he hesitated there, one hand gripping the doorknob.

“Please stay,” she said. “Shane—”

He shook his head. “If I stay, things are going to happen. You know it, and I know it, and we just can’t do this. I know things are falling apart, but—” He hitched in a deep, painful breath. “No.”

The sound of the door softly closing behind him went through her like a knife.

Claire rolled over, wretchedly hugging the pillow that smelled of his hair, sharing the warm place in the bed where his body had been, and thought about crying herself to sleep.

And then she thought of the dawning wonder in his eyes when he’d said, I love you.