Twenty-year-old Claire must deceive a vampire prince to infiltrate the monarchy and discover their secrets while resisting her desire for him.
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Nothing in my life has ever been easy. Including the mission my family has sent me on.
My sister and...
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Découvrir (verb) to discover
An unexpected gust of cold wind howled through the tent.
I closed my book and rose to my elbow, causing one of the heavy furs I was cuddled beneath to slip off my shoulder. I hadn't anticipated Bastien back this late from his council meeting.
"Bastien?" I called, anticipation tightening in my belly.
All week, I'd been doing my best to get closer to the vampire prince. Modeling my efforts after my sister, and how she would speak to potential suitors. Laughing and sharing stories.
So every night, after camp was made and he'd finished his council meetings, I'd engage him in conversation, and we'd stay up late talking about the types of plants he grew in the greenhouses at Chateau Rose.
My love of flowers and working in the dirt and his love of science intersected, and I found I could talk to him for hours about how he managed to grow anything that far north.
Last night, he'd sat beside me and sketched out his glass greenhouse, telling me how difficult it was to lay each massive pane of glass. I hung on each word, impressed with his dedication to growing food and herbs for the surrounding villages and his human staff, even though he ate none.
"It sounds like a lot of work," I'd said, meeting his ice blue eyes, which held a measure of warmth I hadn't seen before. Like the sky over an ocean on a clear summer day.
"It was," he replied. Canting his head to one side and ever so carefully pushing a stray strand of hair away from my face. My cheeks heated at his touch. "But," he said softly, "I'm not afraid of hard work. Especially when the result is something that could last forever."
His words opened a chasm in my chest, and I swore he wasn't talking about a greenhouse anymore, but about something else. Something that I didn't quite understand but that I felt in my bones.
The ghost of a kiss we only shared in my dreams warmed my lips, causing my breath to stutter.
"You want to say something," Bastien said. Leaning in an inch.
I ached to close the distance between his lips and mine. Was desperate to curl his long hair around my fingers and pull him closer against my body. To devour him. To let him devour me. Bite by bite until my eyes rolled back and my body shuddered, and he finally showed me what it meant to be wanted. To feel feminine in his arms—powerful and delicate at the same time.
Even though I'd decided to woo him into trusting me, I couldn't make the words come out of my mouth, or force my body to close that small distance between us. It was hard to reconcile what I'd grown up understanding about his kind with the things he said and did.
Bastien was forcing me to see him for who he was, day after day, and it was all confusing. Especially with the heady way his presence affected me. Maybe I could try again tomorrow, even though waiting felt impossible.
