07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

He stood again, looking at the girl on the bed with all the fire and passion of which he
was capable—and felt that it wasn’t enough. Thinking about the real Bonnie, alone and unhappy,
was…well, passion-quenching. But what else could he do?
Suddenly he knew what he could do. Before, when he’d stopped himself from thinking of
Elena, he had cut off any genuine passion or desire. But he was doing this for Elena, as much as for
himself. Elena couldn’t be his Princess of Darkness if he couldn’t be her Prince.
This time, when he looked down at M. le Princess, it was differently. He could feel the
atmosphere change.
“Highness, I have no right even to speak to you,” he said, deliberately putting one booted
foot on the metal scrollwork that formed the frame of the bed. “You know as well as I that you can kill
me with a single blow…say, here”—pointing to a spot on his jaw—“but you have already slain me
—”
Jessalyn looked confused, but waited.
“—with love. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. You could break my neck, or
—as I would say if I were permitted to touch your perfumed white hand—you could curl those fingers
around my throat and strangle me. I beg you to do it.”
Jessalyn was beginning to look puzzled but excited. Blushing, she held out one small
hand to Damon, but clearly without any intention of strangling him.
“Please, you must,” Damon said earnestly, never taking his eyes off hers. “That is the
only thing I ask of you: that you kill me yourself instead of calling your guards so that the last sight I
see will be your beautiful face.”
“You’re ill,” Jessalyn decided, still looking flustered. “There have been other
unbalanced minds who have made their way past the first wall of my castle—although never to my
chambers. I’ll give you to the doctors so that they can make you well.”
“Please,” said Damon, who had forged his way through the last of the filmy black
hangings and was now looming over the sitting princess. “Grant me instant death, rather than leaving
me to die a little each day. You don’t know what I’ve done. I can’t stop dreaming of you. I’ve
followed you from shop to shop when you went out. I am already dying now as you ravish me with
your nobility and radiance, knowing that I am no more than the paving stones you walk on. No doctor
can change that.”
Jessalyn was clearly considering. Obviously, no one had ever talked to her like this.
Her green eyes fixed on his lips, the lower of which was still bleeding. Damon gave an
indifferent little laugh and said, “One of your guards caught me and very properly tried to kill me
before I could reach you and disturb your sleep. I’m afraid I had to kill him to get here,” he said,
standing between one pillar candle and the girl on the bed so that his shadow was thrown over her.
Jessalyn’s eyes widened in approval even as the rest of her seemed more fragile than
ever. “It’s still bleeding,” she whispered. “I could—”
“You can do anything you want,” Damon encouraged her with a wry quirk of a smile on
his lips. It was true. She could.
“Then come here.” She thumped a place by the nearest pillow on the bed. “What are you
called?”
“Damon,” he said as he stripped off his jacket and lay down, chin propped on one elbow,
with the air of one not unused to such things.
“Just that? Damon?”
“You can cut it still shorter. I am nothing but Shame now,” he replied, taking another