by Tessa Bailey
Unfortunately, that meant Larissa was good and trapped. Unless Ginny could buy out her half of the business—and that wasn’t happening any time soon.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t thought more about selling,” Ginny finally responded. “This place is really all I know—”
“But you could change that! Maybe get out of Coney Island and start somewhere fresh?”
“I don’t know,” Ginny hedged, not wanting to give an outright no to a friendly suggestion. “If the job is wearing you out, Larissa, maybe you’d like to take some time off? Clear your head—”
“No, no. No. It’s fine. I’ll be on time tomorrow.” She clutched the sides of her robe, bunching the material at the hollow of her neck. “Besides, who would I visit? My parents in Florida? Those retirees in their complex scatter when they see me coming now. They think I’ve brought death along in my suitcase.” She was getting worked up. “I don’t know how you’ve done this your whole life.”
Ginny shrugged and reached for the pearl earrings on her dresser, putting them on without looking in the mirror. “It’s all I know,” she said simply, a pang catching her in the sternum. “People don’t want to need us. No one’s ever ready. But deep down, they’re comforted knowing we’re here.”
“You sound like your father.”
“Thank you.”
Larissa’s smile was tight. “Well. Since I already missed my shift, might as well rest up for the next one.” Her stepmother yawned loudly and turned, stretching her arms above her head as she padded down the hallway. “Please give some more thought to unloading this place. The greater good and all that. G’night.”
A second later, Ginny heard Larissa’s door close, followed by the distinct sound of a bottle cap being twisted off and liquor filling a glass. Ginny idled for a while in the dark corridor, considering her stepmother’s repeated requests. Was she being selfish keeping P. Lynn up and running? This was her home. The only one she’d ever known. Where would she go without it? What would she do?
The barest scraping sound turned Ginny around with a gasp.
Jonas stood just inside her window.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jonas looked different tonight.
And night had fallen while she’d been speaking to Larissa, but the sun must have only just gone down. Had he been waiting for the moment it sank behind the horizon to come see her?
Don’t be ridiculous.
Ginny’s palms grew damp at the sight of him and she tried to be inconspicuous about wiping them on the hips of her blush-colored A-line dress. His unreadable eyes tracked the motion, however, so she stopped and dropped her hands, no idea what to do with them.
Last time she’d seen Jonas, he’d been in jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt. While he’d looked handsome in the clothes, they’d seemed out of place on his robust blacksmith body. They’d almost seemed too modern on a man whose energy reminded her of the Golden Era films she watched. Movies that celebrated a time when men kissed women like they meant it and a glance across the room could speak volumes. Or spark a love affair.
If only she was in a silk robe, brushing her hair and looking glamorous when the vampire climbed in her window. She’d give him a cool glance over her shoulder à la Grace Kelly and tell him to come back when he’d brought flowers.
You are not Grace Kelly.
Right.
Ginny trundled back to reality.
No, jeans and a shirt scrawled with Sharpie didn’t do Jonas an ounce of justice, maybe nothing would, but the gray wool pants and black button-down shirt he wore…they were definitely a fantastic start. Here was the prince Roksana had spoken about. A royal decree would roll right off his tongue.
Jonas’s hands were in fists at his sides. “Hello, Ginny.”
The way he said Ginny reminded her of the lowest note on a piano and made her toes curl into the rug. “Hello,” she managed.
He gave a slow headshake. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“Yes.” His jaw flexed. “Roksana, would you please come out from under the bed? I’d like a report before you go.”
“Oh, I simply live to do your bidding, bloodsucker,” she said with a snort, rolling out from under her apparent hiding place, before hopping to her feet and sending Jonas a mocking salute. “It’s the stepmother who threatens her life.”
“What?” Ginny frowned, still absorbing the fact that Roksana had been hiding under her bed for the last twenty minutes. “What about my stepmother?”
Roksana ignored her, pacing in front of Jonas—who still watched Ginny like a hawk. “Stepmother wants to sell this place, Ginny does not. Perhaps she plans to murder Ginny, sell this heap and take the full profit for herself. It’s a tale as old as time. Family, greed, yada yada yada.”
“No,” she breathed. “No, Larissa wouldn’t do that. If she were planning to kill me, why would she bother asking me to sell? Why not just act? And anyway, she doesn’t have the body strength to…”
“To what?” Jonas prompted, eyes narrowing.
Knowing she couldn’t give away too much or she’d risk having her memory wiped, she zipped her lips. “Never mind.”
A good ten seconds ticked by. “Just so I understand, whoever is threatening you has considerable body strength. You are aware of this because they’ve used it against you? Is that what you’re telling me, Ginny?”
“No. I’m not telling you. On purpose.”
Jonas made a sound in his throat. “You’ll have my protection regardless—”
“Regardless of whether or not you fiddle with my head? That’s a huge regardless.” She crossed her arms over her middle and asked what she really wanted to know. A question had been prodding her all day long. “Jonas. Why are you so determined to protect me?”
His cool mask remained in place. “Maybe I’m not telling you. On purpose.”
Ginny gasped over having her words thrown back in her face.
Jonas raised an eyebrow, as if to say, your move.
Roksana split a look between them and cackled. “Watching you two is better than pretending to be a lost virgin to bait vampires.”
“No way that works,” Jonas commented, sparing Roksana a brief glance before gluing his attention back on me. “You’re free to go, Roks. Please be back before sunrise to relieve me.”
“Dasvidaniya.” Roksana threw a leg out through the open window and vanished from sight. Gone. Just like that.
Leaving her and Jonas alone.
“I really don’t need round-the-clock bodyguard service,” she said into the charged stillness. “I must be keeping you from something important.”
Without confirming or denying, Jonas took a slow lap around the room, cataloguing her movie poster for The Big Sleep, the Singer sewing machine on top of her dresser, thimbles scattered at its base. He leaned toward one of her bottles of perfume, but seemed to catch himself before sniffing it, cutting her a slightly sheepish sideways glance.
Jonas continued in an arc around her bed, the fairy lights dangling from her canopy highlighting his rich, black hair. He was traveling closer to her and with each purposeful step, the fluttering in her middle intensified. She could practically taste sounds, his presence made everything around her so much more vibrant, from the hum of silence to the sharpness of colors.
“I don’t have any clients tonight,” she said, wetting her dry lips. “When I have an empty morgue, I usually go up to the roof for a while before doing paperwork.”
For the briefest of seconds when he turned, she swore his attention clung to the pulse at the bottom of her neck. Totally out of keeping with his polite nod. “The roof.” His exhale reached her skin and she shivered. “Take me there.”
She turned and walked slowly from the room, her back tingling with Jonas following behind her. Ginny’s room was located in the center of the upstairs hallway, with Larissa at one end near the bathroom. Near the third bedroom/closet sat a narrow staircase which led to the roof. “So, um…” Be c
ool. Be interesting. “I noticed you breathe.”
“Force of habit. Though I’m told the urge eventually goes away.”
“Isn’t it nice to have something to look forward to?” She turned just in time to catch his lips twitching. “Um.” She faced front in time to hide her delirious smile. “Won’t that be a dead giveaway that you’re not human?”
“Dead giveaway,” he chuckled quietly. “I don’t spend a lot of time around the living, so giving myself away isn’t really a concern of mine.”
Ginny opened the door leading to the staircase and flipped on the overhead light, remembering too late that the light bulb had burned out a year earlier. Right. Just an average, ordinary evening ascending a pitch black staircase with a vampire at her heels. Nothing to see here.
“So…” she began with a swallow, taking the groaning stairs one at a time. “Why don’t you spend a lot of time around the living?”
Jonas didn’t respond right away, but when he did, his smoky, touch of the south voice was close, so close, in the dark. “There are rules we live by, Ginny,” he said, gruffly. “None of them expressly forbid being around humans, but each of them was devised to make sure we’re never discovered. By allowing you to have an awareness of me, I might as well be breaking them.”
“What happens when you break them?”
“Excommunication. Death. Occasional mercy. It depends on the mood the High Order finds themselves in on a particular day.”
“Oh.” At the word death, Ginny stopped and turned so fast, she lost her footing, her heel sliding on the old, worn out carpeting. Her feet whooshed out from beneath her, but before she could even brace for her back to land hard, followed by the inevitable bumpy ride to the bottom, she found herself up on the roof in the moonlight, cradled to Jonas’s chest. “What just happened? How did we get up here so fast?”
“I caught you.” Emeralds flickered in his eyes. “It would be wise of you to remember how easily.”
Her pulse rattled in her ears. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” He trailed off with a frustrated sound, settling Ginny on her feet, but seeming reluctant to move away completely. “It means there are reasons we live by a set of rules. They’re written in stone because they keep people like you safe and prevent us from being discovered.”
She shook her head. “I’m safe with you, though, aren’t I?”
A pause ensued. “What brought you to that conclusion?”
“If you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it last night.”
Her response surprised him, but only momentarily. “Maybe I have stronger willpower than most.” He stepped farther into her space, giving Ginny a hit of his addictive scent. Cloves and mint. “Have you considered there might be a limit to it?”
No, she hadn’t considered that and frankly, she was beginning to question her conviction when it came to Jonas. Was she really so reckless as to put herself in dark, private places with a man who could clearly overpower and kill her? Or was there something almost…familiar about Jonas that made her so trusting of his intentions? “Why do you need so much willpower?” Ginny murmured. “What are you stopping yourself from doing?”
“Oh, Ginny.” He took her chin in his hand, studying her mouth with…fascination? Hunger? Before turning her head to the right and exposing her neck to the moonlight. “What am I not stopping myself from doing?”
The speed at which her nipples hardened caused Ginny to blink rapidly. She was already quite aware of her attraction to Jonas, but had he just implied he wanted her blood? She didn’t imagine it, right? And instead of recoiling like she ought to, a flame licked at her veins like a dragon’s tongue. Unexpected, that.
Very unexpected.
She’d liked members of the opposite sex before. She’d even let Gordon Collingsworth bring her to the movies once—an event he’d been eager to repeat ever since—but she’d only experienced a mild curiosity when it came to kissing Gordon. As in, would it be as clammy and moist as his palms? How long would it continue? If she let him French kiss her, would he stop begging her to come to Sunday dinner with his mother?
Things like that.
This was no awkward evening with Gordon. She was on a rooftop in the moonlight with Jonas towering above her and the implication that he wanted something from her still hung in the air. She pulsed head to toe, her lips and neck tingling under his rapt attention—and even in her state of hormonal excitement, there was a sense of finally. Finally, she was there with him.
Jonas gave a slight head tilt. “What are you thinking about?”
“Mostly that…this is nothing like my date with Gordon,” Ginny mumbled.
He was already so still by virtue of his nature, but he went even stiller somehow, his left eye twitching. “Gordon?”
She waved a hand. “He’s neither here nor there.”
“Oh? Then where is he?”
“Not here. Not there.”
“Well he has to be somewhere.”
“I was just thinking…well, I’ve never kissed him. But I’ve never wanted him to kiss me, the way…” Her blurted words lost steam as his expression shuttered. “The way I think you would kiss me.”
“I’m not going to kiss you,” he rasped, leaning down to speak inches from her face. “You won’t be finding out.”
His rejection embarrassed her. The fact that her nipples were still in tight buds didn’t help. Had she assumed too much? Had she been around so few men her age that she grasped onto the slightest sign of interest?
He’s not a man.
He’s a vampire.
Her body and heart clearly weren’t making that distinction, no matter how hard she tried to make them. However, her heart was sputtering like a five-day-old party balloon that someone had finally got around to popping and squeezing out the dull air. Ginny turned and walked to the other side of the roof, hoping for a few precious seconds to gather herself before asking more questions.
Jonas sighed as she walked away. “Ginny…”
“So what are the other rules?” she asked brightly, settling her forearms on the cool stone perimeter wall. Jonas came up beside her, leaning a hip against the barrier with his arms crossed, a healthy distance away. She ached to look at him, to see his gorgeous face surrounded by starlight and the glittering boardwalk amusement park in the distance. Instead, she tracked the silhouette of the buildings across the street and let the autumn wind cool her flushed face.
His answer came after a stretch of time, his voice more subdued than before. “There are three rules, although breaking one usually means you’ve broken all three.” In her periphery, she could see him count the items off on his fingers. “One, no relationships of any kind with humans. Two, no taking of human life. And three…”
Finally, she judged her face had lost enough pinkness to look at him. “Yes?”
“No drinking from humans.” He dropped a hand to the perimeter wall, seeming to hold it in a tight grip. “Not directly, at least.”
Her mind raced with the unusual knowledge. “What if you used a straw?”
Jonas’s tight expression gave way to astonishment. Slowly, he turned and looked out toward the coast. “How could I not want to protect you, Ginny? How could anyone?” His chin fell towards his chest. “You’re funny and brave and so fucking beautiful and God, I really should not be here.”
The organ in her chest swelled and danced so unexpectedly, she almost toppled over the wall. “But…I thought you didn’t want to kiss me.”
He moved faster than a blink, his image blurring until suddenly her back was pressed to the wall, Jonas’s nose an inch away from hers. “Did you hear what I said about the three rules? Breaking one leads to all three being broken.” Their lips grazed and both of them swayed, fingers twisting in one another’s clothing. “Think about it, Ginny. I can’t look at your trusting face and spell it out.”
“Okay…” She reached out with her mind, trying to grab onto the strings of information, but balloons were
floating off with them. How could she think when his eyes blazed down at her with a trifecta of fascination and pain and need? “You can’t be in a relationship with me because you’ll break rule number three. I think, right? D-drinking?”
“Yes,” he hissed, dropping his mouth to Ginny’s neck and inhaling deeply, those strong hands pulling her closer by the waist of her dress. “I meant what I said last night. There’s a difference between you and everyone else. It’s as if I already know what you’ll taste like. I recognize you.” His lips brushed across her pulse. “I recognize this like it’s welcoming me home.”
If her thoughts weren’t scattered bits of crumb, due to their blistering proximity and his body, oh Lord his body, she might have recalled her earlier sensation of déjà vu. Of trusting him without reason or cause because she knew, without a doubt, he’d never hurt her.
Jonas lifted his chin and pressed their foreheads together. “You’re forgetting the second rule, Ginny.”
“No killing humans,” she whispered. “I remember.”
Regret laced his tone when he spoke. “Break one, break three.”
“No. That sounds like something that was made up to control your behavior. Like, ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ Clearly an apple farmer thought of that. No one ever stops to think of the origin of…of…why are you laughing?”
“You.” His lips brushed over her hair. “You refuse to stop making me laugh. And—”
“And you shouldn’t be here.”
“That’s already getting old, isn’t it? It’s the truth.” His gaze mapped her face. “My strength would be a wildcard if I gave in to this. I can’t predict how I’d react to kissing you—or more, when I barely understand what you’re doing to me without throwing…more into the mix.” He paused. “This is unusual, Ginny.”
More.
That huskily spoken word made that made her thighs want to open. He would press against her hard and she’d wrap them—
“Stop,” he breathed. “You’re tempting disaster.”