“I’d offer to fly you back to your apartment, but I can’t carry you both,” Reginald said. He added, smirking, “I’d also rather not be around the two of you lovebirds right now anyway.”
Frederick glared at him and was about to say something in response when I put a hand on his arm.
“It’s fine,” I said, very quickly. “I’ll call us an Uber. It shouldn’t take long for one to get here at this hour.”
I programmed the pickup spot for a few blocks away from the vampire house, just in case. No need to tempt fate so soon after getting him back.
“Thank you for saving me, Cassie,” Frederick murmured, his voice low and awed. “How did I ever get so lucky?”
I kissed him, unable to help myself.
“We can talk about that later,” I whispered against his lips. “For now, let’s get you home.”
* * *
We mostly kept our hands to ourselves during the forty-five-minute Uber ride back to the apartment. Frederick’s eyes kept closing, and the fact that I could easily see his fangs whenever he was fully awake told me he was too exhausted to glamour us invisible to the driver. I brushed his hair back and away from his forehead as he dozed, trying hard not to imagine what he must have gone through over the past few days to make him this tired after sundown.
By the time we made it back inside the apartment, though, he seemed to have mostly come back to himself. He maneuvered me through the open doorway and into the living room, as though now that we were here he didn’t want to waste any more time.
“Wait,” I said, when he moved to enfold me in his arms. I wanted to move closer to him, to let him kiss and touch me. To kiss and touch him back. But I had questions first. “You’ve just been held somewhere against your will for three days, and before we do . . . anything else, I have to know. Are you truly all right?”
He nodded and closed the distance between us again. “I am now.” His voice was full of so much heat and promise my knees nearly buckled. When his arms came around me and pulled me to him again, it was easy enough to tell myself this conversation could still happen while we were touching.
I rested my head against his chest again, in an approximation of how we stood when we reunited in front of the Naperville house. He started rocking me gently, back and forth. I had never been full of such utter relief, and such thorough contentment.
“Reginald filled me in on parts of what happened,” I murmured, my voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “But I need to hear it from you. It’s the only way I’ll believe you’re actually okay.”
Frederick’s arms tightened around me. He sighed, letting his head droop forward until it rested on my shoulder.
“It’s just as Reggie said,” he murmured. “Esmeralda’s family didn’t take my ending the engagement well.” He stepped back and held up his wrists, which bore angry red marks I hadn’t noticed earlier. “In my absence I became very well acquainted with their dungeon.”
My breath caught. “They hurt you.”
“A little,” he admitted. “Not much. We’re immortal, but because our hearts don’t beat, our blood doesn’t flow the way yours does. Which, in turn, means it takes an irritatingly long time for wounds to heal.” He gifted me with a wry half smile. God, how I missed his smiles. “My wrists were only tightly bound for part of one day. I promise this injury looks a lot worse than it is.”
He moved forward and wrapped me in his arms again. I closed my eyes, burying my face in his shoulder, breathing him in.
Somehow, I found the courage to ask the question I most badly needed answered. “So the engagement is definitely over now?”
“Yes.” His deep voice was as forceful as I’d ever heard it. “I ended the engagement definitively. Ironically enough, Esmeralda helped with that. She wasn’t very keen on marrying someone who would rather rot in a suburban dungeon than be her husband. She intervened on my behalf with her parents at the same time you concocted your brilliant TikTok strategy.” He drew back and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “She’s a reasonable woman, at least insofar as any of the Jamesons are reasonable people. She’s just not the right woman for me.”
The heat in his gaze was unmistakable. I blushed at the obvious implication of what he was saying and looked at the floor.
“I missed you,” I admitted. It felt foolish to miss someone I’d only known for a few weeks as much as this. But it was the truth.