Free Phoenix Fallen by Heather R. Blair

never hurt a woman in his entire life. He'd always loved women, treasured them all the more perhaps, due to losing his mother as such a young age.
    Knowing Rissa was too weak to sit up on her own was the only thing stopped him from yanking away. He shouldn't even be touching her. He wasn't safe.
    She nodded slowly, "I thought not. It's okay, Jules."
    "No. It's fucking not. How can you say that?" His jaw clenched as he bit out the words.
    "You. Were. Starving. It was understandable under the circumstances. And you did stop. You stopped on your own. Do you have any idea how few of us could have done that in your condition? Maybe one in a thousand, Jules.” Rissa took a deep breath and closed her eyes, leaning back into his hands for a moment.
    "I was the stupid one, I should have realized the danger. I was so concerned about you, I didn't think. It had never occurred to me you would, or could, go that long without feeding or that..," her eyes opened again. Cool blue ice on his fevered gaze, "…that you could possibly be strong enough to overpower me. How long have you been a vamp again?"
    "A little less than a month."
    She laughed incredulously, pushing her tangled hair back with a trembling hand. "Well, that definitely confirms the stories about Rousseau. Christ."
    "I don't understand, why does he being—, "Jules couldn't make him say the words, 'my sire', "—why does what Miles is make any difference in my strength?"
    "You mean with all your Cleaners training you never knew ...?" Rissa sighed, leaning into the graceful curve of the arm rest tiredly. "But I suppose, it is a rather closely guarded secret outside of vamp circles. More like a legend even to some of us. There are so few really old ones left anymore, and those that are still around sire rarely, if at all.
    "Hell, I have never met anyone sired by someone even half as old as Rousseau is rumored to be." She blinked at him, folding her hands under her wan cheek. "You do know how ancient he is, right?"
    Jules nodded. "Of course."
    Kelsey might have been the one drilled by the Cleaners on Miles and his history, but Jules knew as much as she did, if not more. He'd been worried about her when she'd been given that assignment. Absolutely terrified, more like.
    So Jules had drilled himself on everything to do with the man, even though it wasn't his mission. What he had found out hadn't done a damn thing to ease his fear.
    Miles had been born in the end of the fourteenth century, into one of the bluest-blooded families in France. His father, and Miles with him, had been an ardent supporter of King Charles VII, while the future king had been merely a prince whose future was far from assured.
    Miles had actually fought in the Battle of Orléans, led by Joan of Arc herself. They had been close friends, according to the dossier on Miles. He'd been one of the few men the eventual saint had trusted with impunity.
    Joan lived to see Charles gain the throne but was captured when she fell from her horse retreating from one of the final skirmishes. Miles had been at her side and though witnesses asserted that he could've escaped, he'd refused to leave her and so had been captured, too.
    After a year of captivity, Miles was to have been burned at the stake, just as Joan was, if without as much ceremony.
    That very same night, in fact. But instead he'd been turned by the mistress of the prince in whose castle he and Joan had been held prisoner. Miles had been turned into a vamp while his friend—and some said lover—had burned.
    He'd escaped the Burgundian forces sometime after and returned home, immortal and sick at heart. It was rumored that he never got over the guilt, not in the hundreds of years since that night. Speculation was that Joan was the reason behind Miles' numerous charitable organizations today, particularly his hospital that treated shades, Pour Les Autres, which translated meant For the Others. Joan had called her voices 'the Others.'
    But between Joan's death and