It didn’t help that it all felt so real, so exactly like the man I knew: the strength of his arms as they encircled me from behind, hardened from swinging swords and flails and carrying iron banded shields around; the steady heartbeat against my back, something vampires didn’t need but that Mircea never forgot; the cool, soft glide of his hair over my bare shoulders, like a silken river; and the scent of pine, practically his signature, heady and rich and so familiar in my nostrils.

I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. Could trace the pattern of calluses on his hands as they gripped my arms, so different from Pritkin’s, which had been formed by medieval quills and modern guns. I didn’t need to see the two men to tell the difference between them; I could read their skin like braille…

And, suddenly, I had a new volume, when the sheets on the opposite side of me started to rise up as well. For a moment, all I could see was flapping white cotton and my hair, which the air they disturbed was tossing around. Then I froze, and not just because Zeus was forcing me to brace against the footboard with my legs to avoid being thrown around the room again.

But because I immediately recognized the new arrival.

And, okay, maybe this wasn’t one of Zeus’s tricks, after all. Maybe this… was one of ours. Because I’d know that shape anywhere.

It was in the muscular thickness of a thigh, pushing up from the mattress. It was in the powerful chest and shoulders that followed, the result of regular workouts and even more regular fights. It was in the features on the head that fought its way out of the confining sheets: the stubborn jaw, the slightly too-large nose, and the thin lips that I’d once disliked, but had come to think balanced out the face.

Pritkin wasn’t classically handsome, being more rugged, more rough around the edges, more careless of his appearance than Mircea. Good looks weren’t part of his job description as they had been for the Senate’s chief diplomat, and he wasn’t a vain man. But I’d learned to appreciate the bad haircuts and the stubbled jaw, the rumpled t-shirts stretched over hardened pecs, and the way the soft old jeans he wore sometimes dipped down to show me a glimpse of an Adonis belt, or to hug that shapely backside.