Up From the Grave: A Night Huntress Novel by Jeaniene Frost Page B

empty glass on a passing waiter’s tray without once looking away.
    “You make me ache with how beautiful you are, Kitten.”
    The formal strapless dress Kira had loaned me was a bit tight, but from the way Bones’s eyes swept over me, he approved of how my breasts bulged a little too much over the bodice and how the black velvet draped me as though it were painted on. My hair was loose since stopping to get it styled was out of the question, but its deep crimson color matched my wedding ring. It was the only jewelry I wore, yet its magnificence made more than one of the bejeweled female guests pause and stare. Red diamonds were the rarest in the world, and the only other one close to this size was in a museum somewhere.
    I slipped my arms around him, breathing in his scent and reveling in the hard feel of his body as he pressed me close.
    “You’ll ache with something else as soon as we’re alone,” I whispered.
    His arms tightened around me. “As will you.”
    That low, gravelly tone made sensual shivers dance over me, but then behind us, someone cleared their throat. Since we were in a house filled with vampires, that wasn’t an accident.
    Kira smiled shyly when I turned around.
    “Sorry to interrupt, but Mencheres left to see Vlad, and I don’t know anyone else here.”
    “Don’t be silly, you’re not interrupting,” I said, though my body protested when I pulled away from Bones. Then I grabbed a fresh crystal glass from the attentive waitstaff.
    “Besides, you have to try the bubbly. It’s to die for.”
    T he wedding ceremony took place in the ballroom, which, aside from the grounds around Vlad’s estate, was the only place large enough to fit his many guests since it took up over half of the third floor. At a rough estimate, there were two thousand people here, yet I’d only need both hands to count the number of humans.
    The bride, Leila, and the older man I supposed was her father were among the rare mortal exceptions. She gasped when she entered the ballroom, but that might not have been from the thousands of people who stood up when she appeared. It could have been from the gigantic pillars made of white roses that lined her path to the altar, or the ancient chandeliers blazing with more candles than I could count. That wasn’t Vlad’s best decoration, though. When Leila started her descent down the aisle, the iron canopy Vlad stood under erupted into flames that burned so hotly, by the time she reached him, it looked like he was haloed by a covering of gold.
    “Wow,” I whispered.
    “Showhound,” Bones muttered in reply.
    Once Vlad took Leila’s hand, the ceremony started. It turned out to be surprisingly traditional. Mencheres handed over the rings when the time came, and a brunette who resembled Leila accepted her bouquet. Aside from Vlad’s giving his responses in both English and Romanian and the roar his people let out after he declared that he would love, honor, and cherish Leila as his wife, it was a textbook-normal wedding.
    And a dose of normal was apparently what I’d needed. I already knew I’d missed our far quieter life in the mountains, but I hadn’t realized how much until now. Something tightly clenched inside me unwound a little as I listened to two people swear to take on all of life’s challenges together in the name of love.
    In my thirty years on this earth, I’d already seen and done more than many people would in a lifetime, but I wouldn’t have made it this far if not for love. That had been the solid ground beneath my feet when everything else around me had crumpled, and despite the danger and uncertainty of what lay ahead, I knew it would be again.
    For a split second, I pitied Madigan. He only had ambition and ruthlessness holding him up. How great his fall would be from such a tenuous, unreliable perch.
    Silently, I slipped my hand into Bones’s. At once, he brought it to his lips, brushing a whisper soft kiss over my knuckles. Another hidden knot inside