Pet stared at them silently for a minute, but then stiffened as she recalled that she was immortal now, they’d just had unprotected sex, and he was very fertile.
“What is it?” Santo asked, apparently awake and feeling her sudden tension.
“We didn’t use protection,” she said, pushing herself up to peer at him with alarm. “And I’m immortal now, and you’re fertile, and it only took one try for Dardi.”
“It is fine,” he assured her, rubbing his hands up and down her back soothingly. “You are not likely to get pregnant now. The nanos are using up the blood we gave you to finish your turn. They will not allow you to get pregnant, or at least not to stay pregnant. They would see the fetus as a parasite using up blood they need for you, and would not let it grow.”
Oh,” she murmured, but thought that sounded a little . . .
“When an immortal wishes to have a child, she must take in extra blood to support the child or she will not keep it,” he continued. “That is the only form of protection we need, and the only way we have managed to stick to the one-child-every-hundred-years rule.”
“What?” Pet gasped. “One child every hundred years?”
“Sì. It is to ensure we do not outgrow our food source,” he explained.
“You mean people,” she said dryly.
Santo shrugged, jostling her a bit on his chest. “It is a fact of life that we need extra blood to survive, tesoro mio. But it would be risky to allow our numbers to flourish too high. Aside from outstripping our blood source, there is the increased risk of exposure.”
“Right,” Pet sighed and laid her head down again, then ran one finger lightly over his rings. “Why do you have two exactly the same?”
“I have three exactly the same. One is on my other hand.” He held up his other hand in front of her face so she could see the third ring. “They are my sons’ rings. The only things left of them after their death.”
“The ones on your pinkies match too,” she pointed out. “They look like women’s rings.”
“My daughters’ rings. I had to have them enlarged to fit.”
“And the one on your ring finger?” she asked.
“My family ring, given to me when I became a man,” he explained. “The one on my right hand is my father’s ring. And the last ring on my right hand belonged to the mother of my children.”
“She wasn’t a life mate, though,” Pet murmured. “And they all died in the same house fire?”
“It was not a house fire,” he admitted, his voice rough.
Pet knew he planned to explain, or he wouldn’t have admitted the truth. So, she simply waited.
“Back at that time, there was a thing called vindicta. It later became vendetta in Italy,” he said, his voice a soft rumble.
“If a member of a family was insulted, harmed, or killed, the victim’s family would seek revenge on the other family, which would then seek revenge for this new hurt and so on,” she said, shifting off of him to sit cross-legged on the bed facing him. When his eyebrows rose slightly at her words, Pet said, “History professor, remember?”
“Oh, sì.” Santo smiled and then shook his head. “Well, Honorata, the mother of my children, was from the Bruni family, who had a blood feud with the Vilani family. It started quite small, with some sort of perceived insult. I cannot even remember what it was, if I was ever told. But it was not important, a small thing when Honorata and I first decided to have a child together.”
“How did you decide to have a child together?” Pet asked with curiosity.
“Her brother, Anselmus, and I were friends, and I was visiting with him in 1035 a.d., shortly before my two thousandth birthday. We got to talking and . . .” Pausing, Santo rubbed a hand over his head. “I was about to turn two thousand years old. I was also without a life mate and in a bad place.” He shrugged. “It is not unusual for immortals to go rogue after so long without a life mate. There have even been immortals who broke and went rogue after just three or four centuries, so . . .”
“So making it to two thousand without going rogue was doing well,” Pet suggested solemnly.
“Sì.” He smiled wryly and nodded. “Anyway, I was no doubt very morose and perhaps even moaning about such things. Honorata overheard and commented that having a child might reinvigorate me and make life more bearable.” Santo smiled faintly at the memory, and then admitted, “Of course, Anselmus and I laughed at the suggestion. He said something about children being a woman’s answer to everything, and we left to go hunting. But—” He ran his hand over his skull again, the rings on his fingers catching the light, and finally admitted, “But the idea stuck with me. At first it just niggled at me, and then it intrigued me, and then it plagued me, and finally I could not get it out of my head. A child, a son or daughter of my own to love and care for. To raise and protect.” He said the words with wonder even now, but then sighed. “It is not the right reason to have a child, but I needed something to live for.”
Pet nodded in understanding.
“Finally, I decided to do it,” he continued. “But I did not know how to go about it.”
“You didn’t?” she asked teasingly, her gaze dropping down over his body. “You seem to know what you’re doing with me.”
“Not the sex, Pet,” Santo said with exasperated amusement. “I was not even interested in that part, really, other than that I would have to perform to impregnate a woman. I was more concerned with how to find an immortal woman who would be interested in such a thing. Having a child with a man not her life mate.”
“Ah,” she murmured.
“After thinking about it for a while, I went back to see Honorata. It had been her suggestion, after all. So I thought perhaps she would have some idea of how I would find a mother for my children.”
“And she volunteered?” Pet guessed.
Santo nodded. “Honorata was eight hundred years old herself, and tiring of life. She wanted to have a child. It seems that was why she had suggested it to me in the first place. We were friends, she trusted me, and had hoped I would be interested. Fortunately, while she had been looking, she had not settled on another man while I dallied.”
“How long did you dally?” she asked with curiosity.
Santo frowned, apparently doing the math, and then said, “Seventy-two, maybe seventy-three years.”
“What?” Pet gasped with amazement. “And she couldn’t find a man to get her pregnant in that time? Not likely! Good Lord. She just wanted you to be her baby-daddy. Maybe she just wanted you, period. I mean, you are a big sexy beau hunk of a guy. She probably had a huge old immortal crush on you and wanted to get you into her bed and this was a way to do it.”
Santo waited patiently until she ended her rant, and then arched one eyebrow. “Bohunk? Is that not an insult?”
“No,” she assured him solemnly. “B-o-h-u-n-k is an insult. I’m calling you beau hunk, spelled b-e-a-u h-u-n-k. ’Cause you’re my beau, and you’re hunky. It’s a completely different thing.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t look convinced.
“Anyway,” she said, prodding him past that subject. “So she jumped your bones and nine months later a baby was born?”
Santo winced at her words. “She did not jump my bones. We . . . performed sexual congress.”
“Oh, wow,” Pet breathed. “There’s a term that takes the sexy out of sex.”
“You are hopeless,” Santo said on a chuckle, but caught her hand, tugged her against his chest, and hugged her close as he did. After a moment, though, he said, “And the baby was not born until ten months later. The first time did not take, so a month later we tried again, and nine months after that our twins were born.”
“Ah,” Pet murmured. “Cataldo and Romaso.”
“You remember their names,” he said with surprise.
“They’re your sons. It’s important,” she said quietly, and he squeezed her again. Pet hugged him back, and then as they relaxed once more, asked, “So, did having them help? And how did this work? Did you move in together?”
“Sì, having them helped a great deal. They were wonderful boys. But, no, we did not move in together. I visited often over the first three years, and then the twins would come and stay with me for a while, and then return to her for a while and so on.”
“Shared custody,” Pet murmured, running her finger absently over his chest. “Like a divorced couple.”
“Sì. Only without the acrimonious relationship. We were still good friends. Just without sex.”
“Until you decided to have another son with her about a century later,” she pointed out. “Dardi?”
“Sì. Honorata wanted to try for a little girl,” he said solemnly.
“Ah, which explains the twin baby girls after that, Claricia and—” Pausing, she frowned, trying to remember the name.
“Fenicia,” Santo said for her. “Sì. They were beautiful little babies. So sweet.”
“Wait.” She tilted her head up to look at him. “Didn’t you tell me there was a one-child-every-hundred-years rule or something?”
“Sì, but they do not punish you for having twins.”
“So, you had two beautiful little girls.”
“Sì.” Santo smiled softly. “While Honorata was the one most interested in having girls, they ended up being my little tesoros. I loved them dearly.”
“What is a tesoro? You call me that sometimes.”
“Treasure,” he explained, his voice a gentle rumble.
“Oh.” She smiled. “Well, I think you’re a tesoro too.”
Pet felt him kiss the top of her head, but he was silent for several minutes before continuing.
“My baby girls were my treasures, but they had very short lives.”