by AJ Myers
“How so?” I asked, settling back and watching his expression as he talked. If my parents had taught me anything while using me as their lab monkey, it was that you can learn a lot about people from reading their expressions. Sometimes body language says a lot more than words.
“Well, while my brothers were being tutored in how to run an empire, I spent my days running wild with the children in our village,” he said, a wistful smile making him look younger, more innocent. “Bastian, my oldest and dearest friend, and I were practically inseparable. We spent our entire childhood terrorizing the villagers with all manner of pranks. Then, when we were older and even less mature, we spent our evenings drinking and fighting and doing terribly wicked things with the tavern wenches.”
He waggled his eyebrows at me and I laughed. That was a lot more information than I’d wanted—the part about the tavern wenches, that is—but I had to admit that it gave a little…color…to the story. It also took some of the shock value out of the fact that he was more than four centuries old.
“What was it like, growing up in seventeenth century France?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, you were like royalty, right? What was it like being a snotty aristocrat?”
One of my dreams in life is to travel and one of my greatest loves is History. Listening to Nathan tell me about his childhood was kind of like getting both at the same time. I listened, enthralled, as he told me about growing up as a member of the French aristocracy. I could almost see the balls he described. I could imagine in detail the women of the court, hear the flowery speech of the men.
It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that none of that had made Nathan happy. The only time he lit up was when he talked about his best friend, Bastian, and the wild times they had together. He didn’t mind shocking me, and in the end I found myself laughing at the messes they had gotten into. Somehow, though, they had always managed to charm themselves out of real trouble. I didn’t doubt that at all. Nathan could probably charm his way out of Hell if he wanted to—and if Satan was a woman.
His family was also a sore subject. I pretty much had to drag the information out of him bit by tantalizing bit. He didn’t care to talk about his father or brothers at all, but he spoke of his mother and sisters with a great deal of love in his voice.
“My mother was a truly amazing woman,” he said quietly, looking so sad that I wanted to reach out and hug him, when I asked him to tell me more about his mom. “She was the gentlest woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to know, but she could be ferocious when it came to her children. I can’t tell you how many battles she entered into with my father about the way we were raised. Keep in mind that this was in the age when a man was perfectly within his rights to beat his wife if she defied him in any way. That never stopped Maman, though. It used to drive the old man crazy.”
“Did he beat her?” I asked, trying to imagine a time when a woman was her husband’s property.
“Hell no!” Nathan snorted, laughing. “My brothers and I probably would have killed him if he’d tried, but he never did. I might not have liked the old bastard, but I respected him for the way he treated my mother. He never lifted a finger to her in anger. He loved her. In fact, I would go as far as to say that she was the only person he loved his whole miserable life.”
I caught my first real glimpse of the real Nathan then. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with parent issues to deal with. Judging by the almost violent look on Nathan’s face, he had his fair share of Daddy issues, too.
“Did your mother love him, too?” I asked, hoping talking about his mother would wipe that look off of his face. He looked different when he was angry, less…human. Besides, he was harder to read when he was angry, and I was only getting started on my ‘What Makes Nathan Tick’ list.
“Yes, she loved him,” Nathan said, shaking his head like he couldn’t understand it. “She loved him madly, in fact. He was the center of her world. I never understood their relationship. They were just so…different. He was cold almost to the point of being cruel, but she was like a ray of sunlight, warming everyone she touched. It was hard to see the attraction.”
I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. I had never been able to see the connection between my parents, either. My mother was a total control freak who had to have everything her way. My father, on the other hand, was very laid back. As long as he had total quiet to write, he was happy. The only time he really wanted to be the one in charge was when he was in a session with one of his patients. Other than that, he just let my mother handle everything.
Including me.
“A wise man once said you come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly,” I offered. When he shot me a surprised look, I blushed and shrugged. “Maybe that’s why she loved him beyond your comprehension. It’s the same reason my father loves my mother. They see something in that person we can’t see. Then again, I guess we don’t always get to choose who we love, either, do we?”
“No, I guess not,” Nathan said thoughtfully, giving me a strained smile. “But Fate always knows what’s best…even if we don’t always agree with it.”
I snorted in disdain at that. Fate, indeed. I wrote my own story, not some imaginary Fate. Nathan gave me a questioning look and I waved my hand, too tired to get into a philosophical debate on the matter.
By the time we stopped for lunch, I was starting to see a different Nathan. There was a lot more to him than the sexy smile and great body—and the sharp, pointy teeth. And, despite him branding me like a cow, I liked him. I liked him as a person. He was strong and capable and smart. He was also funny and sweet and kind of sentimental. He showed me who he really was as he talked and I really liked him. If he hadn’t been my kidnapper, we might have actually been friends. And, in a perfect world, we might have even been more.
We spent the time between lunch and dinner arguing about the best music and the worst books. Where I liked all music—and I do mean all music—Nathan couldn’t stand Hip-Hop or Country. He laughed uproariously when I told him that romance novels tended to be unrealistic because a guy would have to be an octopus to have his hands in all the different places described at once—then made me blush again with an offer to demonstrate how it could be done.
After dinner, we moved on to politics and religion, neither of which, I was quick to learn, he had a lot of respect for. According to him, politicians were a bunch of greedy idiots who couldn’t see further than their own pocketbooks, and most religions taught hate rather than love. Never having been a particularly religious person, I wasn’t sure he was right about that. I was totally with him about the politicians, though.
By the time we stopped for the night at another generic hotel, I wasn’t thinking of him as my kidnapper anymore. He was just Nathan, full of his own issues and just as messed up as the rest of us. And, heaven help me, despite the fact that he had kidnapped me, nearly killed some poor guy for doing nothing more than trying to help me, and then branded me so he could keep me on a leash, I was starting to think I might be one head-long dive away from falling crazy in love with him.
He didn’t have to try to strangle me to get me to play along with the whole newlywed thing when we checked in that night. I didn’t even blink an eyelash when he compelled the clerk—mostly due to the fact that she was really pretty and she was looking at him like she was considering the best way to slip her number into his hand along with the room key. I mean, really! She was flirting with a married man! Okay, a man pretending to be married, but still! She had it coming!
“Is this room better for you?” Nathan asked, looking a little guilty, when he threw open the door and the only scent that greeted our arrival was the smell of clean sheets and Lysol. “I’m sorry about last night, Em. I didn’t think about the smoke.”
“Yeah, this is much better, thanks.” I looked away from him, feeling strangely shy. “Do you want to check the bathroom before I take my shower?”
“No, I trust
you,” he said, taking me by surprise. I looked up at him, confused, but he just winked and tapped my nose playfully.
“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself.
But then I remembered why. He trusted me because I had a locator chip on my neck like some kind of criminal on house arrest. Only, mine was permanent.
“Never mind,” I said sadly, already headed for the bathroom. Before I could reach the door, though, he stopped me with his hands on my shoulders.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, Em,” he whispered against my hair. “I don’t even expect you to understand, but I did it to protect you. I know it seems harsh and a little extreme, but I swear I will never use it unless you’re in danger.”
“We’ll be in Washington tomorrow, then you’ll be gone, so I guess it doesn’t really matter does it?” I asked him, pulling away and walking toward the bathroom again. I paused with my hand on the doorknob and blinked back the tears in my eyes before I turned to look at him again. The look on his face was so unbearably sad that they just sprang right back up, though. “Think of it this way, I’ll always have something to remember you by.”
“Is that all you’ll remember?” he asked with a sad smile.
“No,” I breathed, letting myself into the bathroom. “No, it’s not all I’ll remember.”
I would remember everything about him for the rest of my life—and he would forget about me as soon as I was out of sight.
I took a shower and changed into another one of Nathan’s shirts with that truth tearing me apart. When I walked out of the bathroom to find him gracefully sprawled across the bed, channel surfing in true guy fashion, I just smiled sadly and told him to scoot over.
Climbing into that bed with him, though, was even harder than it had been the night before. The new, more intense, awareness I had of him had my nerves humming like I was standing on a power line with a couple hundred thousand volts running through it and nothing to keep me from frying except a flimsy coat of rubber.
“Monster movie?” he asked with a smile and a wink as he came across a horror movie marathon and let the remote drop back to the bed.
“Sure.” I shrugged, trying to play off the fact that I was gauging the distance from me to him and wondering how I could make the space between us disappear. “What’s playing?”
“Fright Night,” he said, making me laugh. “What? You can’t beat a good vampire flick, right?”
We spent the next hour and a half rooting for the vampire to eat the main character together and making fun of how cheesy Hollywood made vampires out to be. By the end of the movie, I was fighting to keep my eyes open. When he pulled me close as I was dozing off and wrapped his arms around me again, I didn’t protest. I just turned over and curled against his chest and let the sound of his breathing sing me to sleep. I was honest enough to admit, at least to myself, that that was where I wanted to be, anyway.
“Sweet dreams, Em,” he breathed against my hair. “I’m so sorry my dreams are all I can give you.”
The heartache those words caused followed me into my sleep. And when the real world faded away and the dream world kicked in, I didn’t care whose dreams I had as long as he was in them with me. If that was all I was ever going to have, I wanted them to last forever.
Confessions
When I woke up the next morning, the guy I had been so charmed by the day before was gone. In his place was a grumpy, monosyllable-growling bear. He growled at me. He growled at the desk clerk when he turned the room key in. We stopped for coffee on the way out of town, and he growled at the girl behind the counter because she didn’t make my coffee exactly like he told her to. Then, he growled at me again when I apologized because he was being an ass and told her I would take it like it was.
By the time we got back in the car, I was sucking in seething breaths through my teeth to keep from screaming at him. Seriously, what was his deal? Where had the sweet, funny guy from the day before gone?
“When will we be at your friend’s house?” I asked, forcing myself to sound pleasant, when we were back on the road and speeding toward our destination.
“This afternoon,” he snapped, not looking at me.
“Okay, who the hell pissed in your blood bag this morning?” I snapped back, fed up with his attitude. He gave me an annoyed look, but didn’t answer. Rolling my eyes, I muttered, “Fine. Whatever. Let me know if the guy I met yesterday shows back up.”
An hour passed, then two, and I spent the time trying to figure out what had happened between him pulling me into his arms and me waking up that had turned him into a complete jerk. Then again, maybe the guy I had caught a glimpse of the day before had just been an act, just another play from the play book.
And I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
“Are you hungry?” Nathan growled around noon, still not bothering to look at me.
“No.” By that point, my mood was as bad as his and my tone had taken on the temperature of permafrost.
“Are you ever hungry?” he yelled, throwing up his hands like I was too frustrating to deal with. “We’ve been on the road for three days. You didn’t eat the first day, you barely ate anything yesterday, and now you’re not eating at all again!”
“I didn’t eat the first day because just being around you made me ill,” I shouted right back, beyond fed up with his shit. “I hardly ate anything yesterday because I thought I had met this really great guy who gave me butterflies, and I’m not eating today because being stuck in the car with a complete dick is not conducive to a healthy appetite!”
“I think I do like you better when you’re unconscious,” he grumbled in response.
“Yeah, well I think I liked you better when I thought you were a ghost,” I snapped.
He stared at me for a few seconds, then his lips started to twitch. A few seconds later, his eyes had lost that icy look and had started to sparkle.
“I swear, if you start laughing I’m going to stake you with your gear shift,” I muttered, throwing myself back in my seat and crossing my arms over my chest.
So, of course, just to tempt me, he started laughing. The entire time I was staring at the gear shift, wondering how hard it would really be to pull it off and stab him with it.
“I’m sorry,” he said when he finally managed to quit laughing at me. “I’m being an ass. It’s just, the closer we get to Shea…” he stiffened suddenly and went quiet.
“Shea?” I repeated, jerking upright in my seat. “Do you mean Shea O’Hare?”
No, surely not. He couldn’t mean he was taking me to my grandmother? But her name was Shea, an old Irish name that you didn’t really hear that much anymore, and she did live in Washington. But, he wouldn’t really be taking me to my Grams… Would he?
“Yeah,” he mumbled, looking kind of embarrassed. “Shea and I have been friends for a long time, ever since I helped her get rid of a coven of pretty nasty vampires that moved into her territory. It wasn’t the brightest move on their part, seeing as Shea is one of the most powerful bandraoithe I’ve ever known, but being immortal doesn’t guarantee intelligence. In return for my help, though, she promised to find someone for me.”
My Grams was a witch? Whatever. Grams baked cakes and made jelly and had taught me to make my own soap. No way was she a cackling old hag with a wart on her nose.
“She is,” Nathan said softly, giving me a sympathetic look. “She’s a blood witch, Ember. And so are you. The sooner you accept the truth, the better. Trust me, denying what you are doesn’t change a thing. It only makes it harder to accept it in the end.”
“I’m not a bandraoi or a witch, blood or otherwise,” I muttered. Okay, so I was weird. I would be the first one to admit that, but I wasn’t…
Damn, now why did I have a sudden urge to check for warts?
“Did she find who you were looking for?” I asked, preferring Nathan’s problems to my own. Yeah, it was kind of crazy, and I knew I would have to face reality in the end, but it was the best form of
evasion at the moment so I took it.
“Yes, she did,” he said woodenly, staring out the windshield. “Before she would give me any information, though, she asked me to check on her granddaughter for her. I thought it was a strange thing to ask, but she said she and your mother had had a falling out years ago and she couldn’t do it herself. The shameless, interfering old harpy even shed a tear as she fed me her lies. And, fool that I am I fell for them.”
“She didn’t lie,” I said shortly, irritated that he was talking about my sweet, gentle grandmother that way. “They did have a major blow up eight years ago. Over me. I haven’t even been allowed to call her since.”
“Really?” Nathan asked, looking unsure. “What happened?”
“I told Grams about my ghosts,” I told him, shrugging. “She then made the colossally stupid move of calling my mom. It didn’t go well.”
Actually, that was an understatement. ‘Not going well’ would have been my mother coming to get me and putting me in the car without a word and not looking back. Unfortunately it hadn’t gone quite that way. Instead, my normally calm and collected mother had screamed and yelled and acted like a nutcase. And when I had screamed to stay, she’d told me to grow up.
And that was exactly what I’d done. At the mature age of ten.
“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I didn’t know. Shea didn’t really explain it to me. But, Em, she knew what she was doing when she sent me to you. She knew, and I can’t forgive her for that. Not for what it’s going to do to me, but for what it’ll do to you.”
I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. Instead, he squeezed my hand, then pulled his away and placed it back on the steering wheel. I felt that loss of contact like he had ripped away part of me.
He was just as bad as the demon he said he was trying to save me from. No, he was worse than Jack. Way worse. Because he was more beautiful than Jack, inside and out, and I wanted him so much that I couldn’t see straight. And he used that against me every chance he got.