Undead and Unforgiven(22)

“Yeah. Good point.” But I wasn’t thinking about Hell just then. His mouth on my thumb reminded me of his mouth being everywhere just a few minutes ago. I’ve never seen this put quite so bluntly in any women’s magazine, but I loved fucking my husband. Loved it like cake. Loved it like shoes.

I loved him on me and in me and behind me. I loved getting on my knees for him. I loved when he knelt, too. I loved riding him. Sometimes no matter how good he was making me feel, I just had to shove his hands aside and climb on top of him. The different angle was delightful, and that was the least of it. I loved his hands on my hips, gripping so tightly I’d bruise for a week if I were alive. I loved swooping down for teasing kisses that steadily deepened.

But best of all I loved watching him shake apart beneath me. Seeing him lose his mind, unable to say clever, cutting things, and just groan my name. Watching his eyes roll back as he lost even that small verbal ability, feeling his brain essentially white out and go off-line

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

was as big a high as the blood.

“Elizabeth? Are you with me?”

“Kind of,” I muttered.

He snickered. “I’ll need at least ten minutes, my own.”

“Boo.”

“And while we wait, we can continue the discussion. Are you worried your new role essentially makes you a figurehead?”

“I wish,” I snorted. “I would love to be a figurehead. No, it’s that on one hand, I see lots of things that could be changed, but on the other, how do I know more than Satan? She was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. So I’m scared to make too many changes, y’know?”

“At least, not right away,” Sinclair suggested.

“But there are kids there! In Hell! I mean, some of them aren’t technically kids anymore, but they’re still running around in their old-timey braids and long dresses and saying things like ‘forsooth’ while some asshole whips them until their backs are all bloody. It freaks me right the fuck out.”

He looked at me, unblinking, for a few seconds, and I barely caught his stray thought

(but not my darling sister)

it was so quick and quiet and I’m not sure he was quite conscious of it. “She’s not there,” I said before I overthought it. Or underthought it. “Your sister. Of course she’s not there. She never did one thing to deserve Hell and if there was a terrible mistake and she was in Hell I’d save her. I would. I’d do that. Sure I’d do that.”

He’d started frowning halfway through my save-the-sister babble, then his expression lightened and his hand cupped my cheek. “Of course you would, my own. And my stray thought did not do her credit . . . or you.”

Being able to read the vampire king’s mind was pretty great . . . usually. Sometimes it was weird, often it was sexy, and occasionally it was really, really uncomfortable. Like the time I lost my damned mind and tried a whale tail with a red thong and jeans I should have tossed five years ago—whale tails had gone past trendy, past irony, past the backlash, and were now just hopelessly outdated; what had I been thinking? His reaction

(by all the saints in Heaven she looks ridiculous)

wasn’t at all what I was going for.

Wardrobe malfunctions aside, I wouldn’t give up our connection for anything. Another reason I cordially loathed Hell: I couldn’t hear Sinclair’s thoughts there, and he couldn’t hear mine. Thus, I allowed texting in Hell. And, weirdly, so did AT&T.

I knew, even though the thought wasn’t at the front of his mind, that he was wondering why I hadn’t invited him back to Hell since that first visit, so I kept talking about his family and the steps I’d taken to make sure they weren’t being tortured. Sure, I’m blocking you from this huge new part of my life, but I’ve kept an eye out for my in-laws, too!

“I asked my magical clipboard if your parents were there, and they aren’t, either. None of the people you asked about are there. So they’ve been reincarnated or they’re in Heaven or something.”

“Almost a pity,” he murmured, lying flat so I could snuggle my head into his shoulder. I could kiss the hollows in that man’s shoulder and collarbone all day and all night. “What a way to impress them!”

I giggled. “Hiya, Mom and Pop. So, in the decades you’ve been dead I’ve become the vampire king and I’m married to the HBIC in Hell.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I would never refer to them as Mom and Pop.”

“Whatever you say, honey-bunny.”

“And I forbid the use of that nickname.”