“I can read a gas gauge.”
“I was just checking. You don’t have to get angry about it.”
“I’m not angry,” he said, beginning to feel a little angry.
She set the phone aside and stared out the windshield for a time. He didn’t like the sudden silence between them, would rather she yelled at him.
“Here’s the thing,” she said finally. “We need to establish some boundaries. This is a temporary arrangement. You don’t get to decide how I dress.” Porcelain skin darkened to rose. “Or anything else for that matter.”
“Boundaries?” As in stone walls, or even barbed wire? He was a vampire. No walls could survive him.
“Habibti, we’ve been together for nearly twenty-four hours. I have tasted you once, kissed you twice, and very nearly bedded you. So far, we seem to be heading down an entirely different path.”
“And it needs to stop.”
“You’re not safe,” he reminded her.
“Which is why I’m with you.” She made a face. “Not that you’re safe, but it sure beats the alternative.”
“Me, or my son bent on revenge. It must be a hard decision for you.”
“I’m still considering.”
“That’s not what I meant, anyway. Mortals do not belong with werewolves and vampires. This time, I got to you before they did. What happens the next time? You can’t live alone anymore. You can’t fight them. Your association with immortals makes you vulnerable.”
He felt her stare before he turned his head to see it. “What are you suggesting?” she asked. “We drive around for the rest of my life?”
“Of course not.”
“What? Share a house? Be roomies?”
He took a breath before he lost his temper and snapped at her. “Rome, Paris, Hong Kong. Wherever you want to go. But we are both better off moving.”
“If not for the same reasons.”
“No, not for the same reasons.” He ran because he needed to steal for blood. Staying in any place too long would only bring unwanted attention his way. “I can take you anywhere in the world. You’ll see things you only dreamed of.”
It took her a moment. “I sense there’s more to this offer.” Her voice was softer now, more intuitive, and while he liked the softer side of her, this made him uncomfortable, like she was the vampire reading him, and he the vulnerable mortal.
“You are young,” he told her. “Did you plan to sleep alone for the rest of your life?”
“And when I’m not young?”
“If you reach the point where you no longer need me in that way, I will continue to serve as your friend and protector.”
“I need you? What about when you’re not attracted to me?”
She thought… but yes she would, because she had no clear understanding of what it was to be with another for their essence. “Is that what bothers you?”
“Among a dozen other things, but yes, that bothers me.”
“You have no idea what it’s like.”
She frowned. “Then tell me.”
“Once with me, you are mine. It isn’t about your age, but your soul.”
She smoothed her hand over her leg. “What did your mom call you?”
That was the last thing he’d expected to hear. “What?”
“After three thousand years, you must have changed your name,” she said.
“Many times. But why do you want to know?”
“Because I need to see the man behind the monster.”
He would tell her what he could without frightening her. “I was born, Re’Hotep.”
She was completely still, hardly even breathing. His words seemed to hang in the air between them.
“Wow,” she said. “Sounds like you should be a mummy, not a vampire.” She cringed. “Bad joke. Was that what your mother called you?”
“No, it wasn’t.” The memories were like tormenting spirits. Bringing them purposefully to hand was something he’d rather not do.
Kendra was quiet again, her face intent as she waited for him.
“She called me, Merwet,” he said.
“What does it mean?”
The words came with effort, and even once he’d forced them past his lips he wondered if she would be able to hear him. “My love.”
No more than three seconds passed before he heard a choked gasp, like the sound of a woman trying hard not to cry and being unsuccessful at it. He reached over, touching her face, finding the warm moisture he’d expected.
“Why are you crying?” he asked.
She brushed his hand away. “I’m not crying.”
“And yet, you are.” He caught a tear on the end of his forefinger, holding it up to her.
“Oh, just forget it.” She sniffed, then started searching around the car. “Don’t you have any tissues in here?”
“Not something I considered.”
“Great.” She wiped her eyes, wincing. “My nose still hurts.”
“Why are you crying?” He looked at the tear on his finger, watching the road secondarily, knowing he could keep them on it without much effort.
She blew out an annoyed breath. “Seriously? You are a little dense, Alessandro, Re’men... Whatever you are.”
“Re’Hotep,” he answered absently, then sucked the single tear off his finger. It wasn’t blood, but it was hers, and he’d take what he could. “I think you get angry when you have to cry.”
“No one has to cry. Did you just eat that?”
He showed his fangs.
“Sick.”
He glanced at her, following only part of the conversation now. “You are female. Of course you have to cry.”
She shook her head and sighed. “It’s sad, okay. Everything. I mean, you were a human being, a man. You had a mom who loved you, and a woman, and everything was taken away from you.”
Yes, he had been, and yes it was. He spoke smoothly. Kendra was under a lot of stress and clearly reaching the breaking point. He figured any little thing could set her off. “It was a long time ago. Re’Hotep died a long time ago. He is history.” He smiled, making sure it was a charming one. “Ancient history.”
“Sitting right next to me. How about Merwet? Is he dead too?”
That wasn’t as easy to answer. He wished he could say yes. Not to lose the memory in itself, but to lose the homesickness.
He had extra water on hand and reached behind the seat to grab the bottle, handing it to her. “To replenish your supply of tears with.”
She laughed. It was done with tears having collected somehow in her throat.
“Um, thanks,” she said.
She opened it and took a sip. He recalled having watched her eating earlier. He had no desire for human food, but he knew just how soft her mouth was and had been distracted by it. He wanted to kiss her now. He was getting a little thirsty too. Tomorrow would complicate things. He would need to steel for his food, but he couldn’t leave her alone, unprotected. She would have to go with him, as he drank. Her blood in him would fade, especially when he replenished himself from a stale bag. It would not be easy to resist her. Hard to go back. Like an alcoholic after his first drink in years.
Alessandro touched the crucifix around his neck. He was drifting further from his center with every passing moment. Even though he knew the monastery life was not for him, at least not permanently, he feared what being away from it might make him become.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
He had to think back and remember exactly what the question had been in the first place.
“I think I know the answer,” she said. “None of those people are dead, really, are they? You’re still Rehamen. You’re still Merwet.”
“Re’Hotep,” he corrected again. “You are different,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“You refuse to feel for yourself, yet you cry for me. For the monster.”
“Feel for myself?” It took her a moment. When she spoke again her voice was sm
all, like someone whispering a confession. “It’s easier to feel for you.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t let it take me.”
He glanced at her, then reached for her hand. She latched onto it.
“Because you miss your mate?”
“I miss my life. Everything is upside-down now.”
“How did you get involved in all of this in the first place?”
She pulled her hand away. She was closing him out. It seemed there was something she didn’t want him to know.
“Habibti, I am trying to keep you alive.”
“Yes, let’s not forget why we’re here.”
“To hell with that.”
She straightened, eyes widening.
“Was I too loud?”
She laughed, wiping her eyes. “Just a little, but it’s not that.”
Alessandro brushed her hair aside to see her throat. He wanted to ease her pain. He couldn’t make it go away completely, but he could make her feel really good.
“What?” she asked, eyeing him.
“My offer still stands. All of my offers.”
“Sex isn’t the answer.”
“I wasn’t referring to sex, at least not specifically.”
“Ah,” she sounded, leaning her head back on the seat. Lights from cars coming down the other side of the highway bathed her intermittently. “I understand,” she said, and he knew that she did. She yawned. She was diurnal. That would change with time. He took her hand again and she let him, their hands both on her lap.
“You’re not as warm now,” she said.
“I’ll need to find a food source tomorrow.”
Her body flushed hot; he felt it.
He tried to talk himself into being bothered by her desire. Tried to talk himself into warning her not to want him to drink from her ever again.
But he didn’t.
Because he wanted her to invite him, to feel not only her skin under his lips and her warm lifeblood, but knowing that she’d wanted to give it.
Chapter Six
Kendra had fallen asleep. With a vampire. In the car next to her. Exhaustion must have done it. It had to have been the exhaustion, not that she was in any way, shape, or form okay being with him.
She’d woken up to floodlights and country music. Blurry-eyed, she turned her head and saw the driver side door close quietly behind Alessandro. They were at a gas station. She stretched stiff muscles. This driving all night and sleeping all day routine was going to get old fast.
She opened the door and got out, feeling his gaze on her. A chill wind made her tighten her coat in self-defense. Kendra looked up at those eyes on her. He somehow managed to stuff the nozzle into the gas tank without looking at it. In his leather jacket, dark hair, and perfect beard that she realized he probably never had to trim, he looked pretty normal. If normal is an exotic, rich foreigner, maybe the son of an oil dealer.
I look as I did then, he had said. Was it that way for all vampires, forever trapped in one state? Or was it his preference to look like this?
He was wrong though, when he’d said Re’Hotep
was dead. The man was very much alive in there, beneath the tough, eternal hide of the monster. Kendra could tangibly feel it. She shivered, more from the strangeness of this with him than the chill in the air.
Alessandro’s brow furrowed as he looked her over, concern, not lust, passing over his expressive face. Lust she could deal with. It was him caring about her well-being that made him harder to ignore.
“Hungry?” he asked.
She forced her gaze away from his face. “A little, yes.”
Now that he’d mentioned it, she was hungry. She also realized she had to use the facilities.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, aware of how ridiculously true that was. Thoughts of running away from him had left her. She closed the car door but by the time she’d made it three steps she found herself swept all the way around to his side, standing next to him as he continued to pump gas with one hand like he’d never moved from his position in the first place.
“How did you do that?”
“I’m very fast.”
“Yes, I noticed.” His scent, exotic and old world assaulted her. His hand was on the small of her back, the other casually filling the tank with gas. She didn’t even smell the fumes over him.
The gas nozzle clicked and he returned it to the pump, nudging her along to follow his movements. “You can’t go in without me,” he said.
It spat out the receipt and he nudged her back around again.
“It’s just across the parking lot, and stop that,” she said, pushing his hand away. He let her go but she knew by the look on his face that she wouldn’t be going anywhere without his express permission.
Old men were annoying. He’d come from a time and place where women were possessions to be bartered with. Well, they’d just have to nip that one in the bud.
She scowled up, and up, at his determined face. His handsome, ridiculously perfect face. Her breath hitched and her heart did some weird dance in her ribcage, but she held her ground.
“You can’t just pick me up and toss me around like some kind of doll. I’m a living, breathing human being with rights of her own. We have the vote now you know.”
“So I heard,” he murmured, smiling a little. He reached out, chucking her chin lightly. “Go and get your food, habibti. However, you do it with me.”
“Fine. You order me a chicken salad sandwich while I...” Was she blushing? Really? How old was she? Oh, now this would add no credence at all to her emancipation pleas. “Um, get me an iced tea too.”
He caught her wrist as she tried to walk away, stopping her in her tracks. “We go together.”
“And you wondered why I didn’t leap for joy when you offered to follow me around for the rest of my life.”
“Not follow you around. I offered to go with you.”
Yeah, do life together. Life with a vampire guard. Life with a vampire lover. She knew that if she stayed anywhere in his vicinity it would only be a matter of time before they were just that.
This wasn’t even like her. She’d first met Jason when they were children, made him wait to kiss her, and had made him wait even longer to sleep with her. Did that make her a prude? Maybe. Probably. She just didn’t share her inner-self all that well, and if she couldn’t share her hopes, her fears, her dreams, how was she supposed to share her body for goodness sake?
Kendra was an island.
She loved feeling useful. She loved her diner because she was a good cook and organizer, and she made people happy by taking care of them. Now Alessandro wanted to take care of her. To let him into her essence.
Damn.
It was hard to believe he hadn’t somehow forced her into this, but he gave her no reason not to. Kendra felt the raised scars on her throat with her fingertips. He’d tried to use mind control on her several times, and it hadn’t worked.
She found herself standing numbly before a touchscreen that was asking her to make a selection even though she couldn’t recall having crossed the parking lot or having entered the building. She punched in a chicken salad sandwich and a large drink, hyperaware of her guardian towering next to her. She wondered how she was supposed to escape him long enough to go to the bathroom.
No time like the present to set the appropriate boundaries, she figured. Kendra turned, stood up straight, and stated in a mostly-authoritarian voice, “Wait here.”
Dark brows narrowed over tawny brown eyes.
“I mean it.”
No change in his expression.
“I’ll be right over there.” She pointed.
His eyes scanned the minimart, then he took her hand and led her toward the bathrooms.
“You are not going in the ladies’ room.”
“I can’t let you walk in there alone.”
She tried to pull her hand free but he had a really good grip on it. The place was empty save the lady at the food
counter making her sandwich and a young man at the register who was watching them like they were the most interesting thing he’d seen all night.
“Do you want to get arrested or something?” she whispered. “I don’t think you would like that kind of attention.” She planted her feet and he finally stopped, probably only because dragging her would have been inconvenient.
“Better than you being dead,” he told her.
Not dead, at least not technically. She’d be undead.
It would be justifiable at this point to remind him that this whole arrangement was really about him needing her as his hostage against Theron, but she couldn’t, because she understood his true nature now. Made her wonder what had forced him into the monastery. A woman maybe? Wouldn’t surprise her any.
He’d spent the last hundred years trying to fight what he’d been created for in the first place.
And then there she was.
She looked at him again, this time with far too much compassion and not nearly enough bluster. “How are you going to watch me once the police come and separate us? Around here, men don’t go in the ladies’ room.”
His brows lifted in challenge.
She looked him over. “At least not dressed like you are, they don’t.”
He ducked his head to hers, Kendra lifting her chin in automatic response. “Getting away from them really won’t be a problem,” he said.
She glanced at the young man up front. He looked away as if pretending he hadn’t been watching them.
“If I see anything in there, I’ll scream,” she told him. “You’re fast. It’ll be okay.”
He ducked his head closer. One arm slid around her waist. His hand pressed her firmly into him. Kendra let out a drawn breath at the contact. “Do you know how long it takes to snap someone’s neck?” he asked quietly.
“Not very long?”
He took her by the back of the head with his other hand, still holding her against him, tipped her head back exposing her throat. Her heart thudded hard in her chest. “A fraction of a second.”
“Good thing we’re on the same side here, huh?” she breathed, aware he kinda had her by the neck and could’ve broken it himself if he’d wanted to. “Lesson learned, now let me go. They don’t plan to kill me anyway.”
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