Breaking Dawn

Chapter 7

Niall lowered his voice to say, "Wouldn't you want to bed a female once more? It isn't like you were a man of experience, glutted on women, Harry. If you're anything like me, you can count the number of times on one hand."

Harry didn't deny his brother's words, instead grinding his teeth, his jaws bulging. The number of times on one hand? How awful, Amber thought, floating to the foot of his bed to hover there in a sitting position.

Though she herself hadn't taken as many lovers as she would have liked - the specter of pregnancy for a working ballerina was too daunting - the ones she'd had, she'd enjoyed to the fullest.

Even with the filth covering Harry's face and the scars on his body, she could tell he had pleasing features. Women would find him attractive. At least enough that he could bed one when he wanted to. And Niall was handsome, yet he'd said they'd been forced to go without. She'd heard them talking about their small country having been decimated by plague, embattled for decades - were there no women to take succor from?

"Le dément... isn't a man of experience?" she murmured in her weird, ghostly voice. "Intéressant."

Though it was still difficult to speak, she marveled at how much more readily her words came with each try. The more she talked, the easier it was becoming, like training oneself to run through knee-high water. Too bad no one would answer, just when she was getting good at it.

Yet even if no one responded, talking made her feel more... real. Sometimes she felt like the proverbial falling tree in the forest. It could be argued that because no one had seen her or heard her since she'd died, she didn't exist.

She sighed and drew her legs to her chest. When the slit in her dress rode up, she had the strange impulse to cover her legs in front of the vampire. But why? She couldn't be seen, and she'd certainly never been modest when living. Indeed, she was just the opposite.

Any inhibitions had been drummed out of her when she'd been young. She'd been raised in tiny lodgings above a burlesque bar, with her dear mama eventually becoming one of its best draws.

From an early age, Amber had flitted in and out of the performers' dressing rooms, fascinated with the silks, makeup, and exotic perfumes, enthralled by the sensual strains of music that compelled her to sway to them...

Yet she could have sworn there had been a lustful aspect to the vampire's gaze.

No. It was time to face the facts. Either he found her spectral appearance beautiful, had mastered his blink reflex, and simply refused to acknowledge her - or he was just like every other person who'd set foot in this house over the last eight decades.

She gave a humorless laugh. "If I thought you could see me," she began slowly, "I'd show far more than a garter."

Besides, Harry wouldn't be interested in her like that. Never once in the past week had he grown erect. Was it impossible for him? Was that the "fire" that would be lit by his Bride?

Of all the subjects the men discussed, this Bride concept intrigued her most.

Earlier, she'd heard Niall on the phone with his, earnestly assuring her that she didn't need to be here, that she should keep working with her sisters, and that he would be home soon. Even the mere phone conversation with this Karen had seemed to consume him.

Liam had also phoned his Bride, another Valkyrie named Myst, and was equally attentive. But with her, he'd sounded less confident about Conrad's recovery than he'd been with his brothers. 

The two men's devotion to their wives brought on Amber's own longings, because nothing was sexier to her than a thoroughly smitten male.

She called her desire longings since it was different from the physical symptoms of lust she'd felt while living. She suffered from what she remembered of desire, still hungering to touch and be touched, but now the need was more akin to an electrical stimulation, a charge that built and built. It was like having pinpricks and itching all over her, but no way to scratch.