“I would say you’re welcome, but I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for her,” she nodded her head toward Kalin. “And for her.” She nodded down toward the box. “And for them.” She pointed down to the cemetery.
“As you should.”
He never once looked up from the box, only reached out a hand to grab Kalin before she pulled her coat tight around her and walked down the hill to the warmth of the house. When he let her go, he replaced his hand on the stone.
Sarah grabbed her empty coffee cup from the moist ground beside the stone and began to follow Kalin. She stopped beside Taris and looked down at her slipper-clad feet, which were beginning to grow cold from the misty night air. They sat there for a few minutes, silent, Taris not moving, Sarah on the verge of not even breathing. She felt that heat again, that rush that came to her the minute the length of his body was on hers. She remembered the feel of his hands around her waist as he lifted her up off the floor and pinned her to the wall. She watched his hair catch the wind, and she could still feel its softness against her skin. Pissed off was not the correct term to describe how she felt. Violated, abused, and used all came to mind.
But wanted, desired, and needed stomped them down into a puddle of mud, and it infuriated her that from the whole experience, that’s what she took away from it. As much as it pained her, she had to admit it to herself. She wanted Taris. In the worst possible way, she wanted him.
But hell would freeze over and she would go ice skating with Ted Bundy before she admitting that. It was best to keep the steely reserve he was expecting. She couldn’t exactly tell him that while she was there, if he needed anything, she would be more than happy to oblige. She needed to get the work done, and fast. She had to say something to diffuse the tension, to let him know that she was “mad” at him.
“So are we going to talk about what happened?” His voice was a low whisper, the deep notes of it floating on the air and hitting her square between the legs.
Sarah cleared her throat and shifted her eyes to see him staring right at her, at the spot on her coat that covered the tender skin his mouth had assaulted just a few hours earlier. “I suppose we can.”
“Good,” Taris removed his hand from the stone and stood upright. He lifted the edge of his black hoodie and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Let’s do this over something to eat. I’m starving.”
“How can you be starving? You all but drained me dry! I’m still a little woozy.”
Taris shook his head and began to walk down the hill. “It’s not like that. You aren’t food.”
“Then why—”
He stopped suddenly, whirling around just as she barreled straight into his chest. He pushed her away as if she had burned him. “I will explain when we get inside, okay?”
“Geez, fine.” Sarah sneered as he turned and used his long legs and his gigantic stride to lead them into the house and to the kitchen.
Once inside she plopped down onto a bar stool while she watched him fling his trench over the kitchen table. Taris pushed his hair back from his eyes as he jerked open the fridge and hunched down to look inside. The soft light flooded over the planes of his face. His long hair was tucked behind his ears, and the visual combination was nothing short of the finest-quality eye candy. His black fleece hoodie stretched over a strong, wide back, his jeans hugged his thighs and ass just right, and then there was that piercing, smoldering, amber gaze. Rummaging through the fridge with reckless abandon, he looked kind of like a frat boy searching for munchies after an all-night booze bender.
A tall, muscled, slightly broody, older-than-his-time, take-me-anywhere-you-want-me frat boy.
“What do you want?” he asked with his head still inside the door.
“Um, whatever you are having would be fine,” she said.
Taris snorted. “Aha,” he said. “I was hoping this was still in here.” He pulled out a large platter with a huge mound covered in aluminum foil on it. He held it with two hands as he shut the door to the fridge with his booted foot and then set the plate down onto the counter.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He jerked the foil off to reveal a large beef roast. Even cold, it smelled like heaven. Half of it was gone, and she could see that the inside was red, almost completely rare.
“I love it when Kalin makes this ’cause we get awesome sandwiches for a week afterward. Would you like one?” Sarah nodded while he fumbled in a drawer and took out a carving knife. “It’s always best if you cut it off and then heat it. Otherwise, you get that weird temperature thing with one side of it being hot, the other side cold, and it throws the whole flavor off.”
“Are we going to talk, or are we just going to make old lady chatter all night?”
Taris stopped mid slice and looked up at her. Her eyes were fixed on the knife and full of something he didn’t even want to think about.
“I am not talking about anything until I have something to eat.”
“Well, how about you talk while you make your sandwich. I’m a little tired and would like some rest.”
“I doubt that,” he mumbled.
“Excuse me?” Her eyes snapped up to look at him.
Taris continued to slice into the roast, placing large chunks of the pink meat on a plate. The pieces landed on top of one another with soft plops. “I said, I doubt that you are tired.”
“Why? Because you say so?”
“No. Because you’ve slept twenty-three and a half of the last twenty-four hours. Besides, you can’t go back to bed. When we are done eating, I am taking you somewhere.”
“Somewhere away from you, I hope,” she mumbled to herself. It wasn’t quite low enough to where he couldn’t hear her. His eyebrows raised a little, and he shook his head as he focused on slicing the meat.
“God, I wish,” he mumbled right back.
Sarah pushed her stool back and threw her still-empty coffee cup into the sink. She was amazed it didn’t shatter.
“What the hell do you mean, you wish? Look, I know you see me as nothing but snack time, but damn it, you don’t have to be mean!”
Taris stared at her for a minute, knife in one hand, a bloody piece of roast in the other. He watched her chest heave, watched the anger bloom on her face in a crimson rush. Damn, she was royally pissed off. But wasn’t that what he wanted? He wanted her to be a royal pain-in-the-ass bitch to him. That way, he would have every reason to stay away from her. It wouldn’t do him any good to tell her the truth—that if he had his way about things, they would have already been playing a rousing game of naked Twister right there in the kitchen. Yeah, her being angry at him was the best tactic.
But damn him if watching her lash out and show that temper didn’t somehow shred any ounce of control he had over his libido to confetti.
Play it cool, Taris. Play it cool. Push her away. For everyone’s sake.
Screw that.
“I would love to sit here and pretend like I don’t want you to hang out here because I find you repulsive, but the fact of the matter is that I find you to be quite the opposite. Now you can be a bitch and put on that whole stonewall act with me, but I know better. So zip it, and let’s do this thing.” His temper was flaring, and without thinking, he flicked his wrist and buried the carving knife into the countertop. The granite countertop. Sarah’s eyes went wide, and the anger in them melted into something else.
“Oh, look at you, big man, trying to scare a little girl.” She pushed her stool back up to the counter and sat down. “You gonna make me a sandwich, or do I have to do that for you, too?”
“Okay, that shit is not gonna fly. You’re not playing that card with me.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“My ass!” Taris pulled the knife out of the stone as if it were no more solid than butter. “You aren’t going to make me feel guilty about keeping you here to help us. We need you. Kalin needs you.”
Taris finished filling a plate with slices of b
eef, simultaneously throwing the plate in the microwave and nudging the fridge door open with his boot. He put the remainder of the roast back in and took out some cheese and other sandwich accoutrements. He held them all in one arm, reaching for a loaf of bread that was twisted shut.
“I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”
Sarah raised her head. “What was that?”
He threw four slices of bread on the counter and twisted the lid off of the mayonnaise jar. With the same knife he had used to cut the beef, he spread a thin layer on two pieces of bread before looking up at Sarah. “You want?” She nodded her head in agreement, and he went back to fixing the sandwich. Once he had loaded them both down with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise, he grabbed the plate out of the microwave and piled both sandwiches high. He topped them with a few slices of cheese and placed the other piece of bread on top. He threw hers on a plate and handed it to her, grabbing his with one large hand and taking a huge bite as he loaded the condiments back into the fridge. When the door was shut, he leaned against the counter next to it, crossing his legs at the ankles.
“I said,” he swallowed, “I said I was sorry about earlier. I lost my cool, and I shouldn’t have. You would have come around, and I forced the issue.”
“S’okay,” she mumbled, placing a hand over her mouth. “This is really good.”
“Kalin is the best chef on the planet, if you ask me. Always has been, though.” He took a huge bite of his sandwich, and Sarah had to force herself to look away as he absently licked some mayonnaise off his palm.
“I didn’t think vampires ate regular food.”
“Hmm,” he let out a grunt and shook his head as he chewed. “See,” he swallowed the bite, “common misconception. There seem to be a lot of those floating around about us, which is cool. I mean, I don’t get bent out of shape about it like a lot of people do. But, yeah, we eat regular food.”
Sarah leaned over and accepted the napkin that he held out to her. “If you eat regular food, then why do you have to…you know?” She didn’t finish the sentence but pointed to her canines and then to his.
“Oh, these.” He touched the tip of one white pointy fang and sucked at his finger when the touch drew blood. “We have to feed.”
“I get that, but why? I mean…from a physiological standpoint?”
“You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”
“I’m a doctor. That’s my job.” She paused for a moment.
Taris finished his sandwich in one enormous bite and turned to the fridge for a beer. For reasons even his own brain couldn’t comprehend, instead of twisting the cap off, he hooked the metal lip with one fang and popped it loose into his mouth. He then spit the cap across the room.
“That how you pick up chicks?” Sarah smirked.
“It’s been known to turn a head or two.”
“Yeah, I didn’t really need to see that.”
He took a huge gulp from the bottle. “Can we get back to this explanation?”
Sarah narrowed her eyes as he leaned forward against the island. “You drink a lot?”
Another gulp. “Lately, I do. Now can we get back to business, please?”
She sat back and crossed her arms. “Fine.”
“Thank you.” Taris tipped the bottle up and finished it off, pulling the empty glass away from his lips with a pop. Instead of throwing it away, he held onto it. “Now, you asked me about the blood feeding, and then you interrupted me because you think you know everything. Simple explanation is, our blood cells need to eat other blood cells to survive. Plain as that. It wasn’t evolution that made us what we are, we just…are. Born to this earth, just like you, and just like you, we have a right to be here. Technically speaking, we are higher than you on the food chain because we need human blood to survive. Because of His divine wisdom, God saw fit to give us certain, shall we say, talents to mask our activities. People don’t usually know they have been bitten.”
“Oh, please.” Sarah sat straight up, unaware that her gaze had been fixed on his long fingers, which had been toying with the edges of the label on the bottle. “That’s such bullshit. You mean to tell me you can manipulate the mind? How gullible do you—”
Think about it, Doctor. There are many wonders of the universe. Do you think people are so highly developed that they have figured it all out?
“Oh my God!” That voice, in her head. It was Taris. She watched the smirk bloom across his face. Holy shit, they can read minds.
Which was really, really bad. If they could read minds, then he knew every dirty thought she’d had about him, and if that was the case, then maybe that was why he wanted her to leave.
“And before your brain starts going haywire, don’t worry—we can’t read your thoughts.”
“But you were just in my head,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“I put a thought into your head. It’s what we do. We feed, and then we kind of overpower the mind to make it think something else happened. Look at your finger.”
Sarah looked down at her finger and saw it was bleeding. How did that happen? She didn’t remember cutting it or bumping into anything.
“You don’t remember that happening, do you?” Taris leaned over and took her hand in his. “You just spent your last few thoughts thinking about how and where this happened, right?”
She nodded her head.
“While you were listening to me chitchat in that incredibly intelligent brain of yours, I bit your finger.” Before she could protest, he lifted the finger and stuck it into his mouth. She stared wide-eyed as she felt his tongue play on her skin. Abruptly, he pulled it out again. “See? All better.”
Her chest was heaving. All she could do was stare at him. And he stared back, those amber eyes of his beating down every ounce of reason she had. She was angry with him, despised the methods he’d used to get her there and to prove his point, but every glance, every interaction, every fleeting nip he’d taken was dissolving the barrier she’d built. He was gorgeous, and there was no denying it, but her admiration of his manifold attractions were turning more and more into a kick-start for her sex drive.
“We, um,” Taris stood up straight, “we need to get going. We are expected elsewhere. I will make sure you have some clothes and personal items, but for right now, we need to go.”
He grabbed his trench and walked toward the hallway. He stuck his head into the room that she knew was Kalin’s and muttered something before he shut the door again and stormed down the hallway.
“Well. Come on.”
It took her a minute to feel her feet, but she was finally able to steady herself and follow him, the whole time looking at that broad back, creaking underneath yards of leather.
Vampires. Impossible, and yet it was sinking in. And there were two of them. One of them she couldn’t help but already be madly in love with. Kalin was a gentle soul, one who wanted to love and comfort, one who needed solace in her life.
The other one, she had to stop thinking about. Otherwise, anything she managed to accomplish would be nothing short of chaotic disaster.
Chapter 11
Taris lifted the large knocker and let it fall back into place. The thud of the metal hitting the door was so loud that it shook Sarah.
“Don’t say a word.”
“I didn’t.” Sarah cocked an eyebrow and looked up at him. His hazel eyes were heated, intense, and staring right through her.
“When we go in here, let me do all the talking. These are extremely old beings. They are more than willing to help, but they are also very private and incredibly territorial.” He turned his face back to the door. “They don’t like outsiders.”
“You mean they don’t like humans.”
He turned back to her, those eyes once again beating her down. “No, Dr. Bridgeman, I mean they don’t like outsiders.” He let out a sigh and looked away. “And they are just as human as you are.”
They both shot to attention when the pitch black suddenly turned as bright a
s the daylight when the floodlights that flanked either side of the monster mansion kicked on. Her heart began pounding in her chest like a racehorse, and for the first time since they had made that hike up the million-mile driveway, she realized where she was, what she was doing there, and what was lurking on the other side of that door.
The metallic sound of sliding locks echoed into the chilly evening air, and with every one that was pulled back, she felt her blood pump even faster.
The door creaked open, and on the other side stood a female being that defied every natural law known to God and man. She sat perfectly still for a minute, and then suddenly launched at Taris. Taris, in turn, grappled with her, taking the being into his arms, swinging her around in circles, lifting her feet off the ground. The more he spun, the more the noise coming from her filled the air. The sounds blended until Sarah could no longer even tell from whom they were coming. All she could do was hang back, in complete and utter shock and silence, and watch. It felt like ages before he set the female down onto the concrete walkway.
“You look…well, you’ve looked worse.” She smiled up at Taris, and as she did, her brilliant white fangs flashed in the floodlights. Great, more vampires. Her voice was husky, and the rich accent of it rolled in Sarah’s ears. It was different from the randomly touched words that both Kalin and Taris let out when they spoke. Occasionally, their speech was flavored with what she could only assume was once an incredibly pompous British accent, but this was different. She rolled her R’s. The accent sounded comfortable, like a brogue that lullabies were invented for.
“And you, Rhiannon, have never looked better.”
“Thank you, my darling, but why on earth did you knock? I knew you were coming.” She pointed to the nine-pointed maroon star tattooed on the inside of her wrist. The being, whose name was apparently Rhiannon, ran a hand through her mane of long red hair. The thick waves stopped at the middle of her back. She had piercing, almond shaped blue-green eyes that were framed by thick, dark lashes. Her skin was fair and smooth. Sarah could have sworn she was made out of porcelain. Her long body was trim and fit. In spite of her lithe form, she was very curvy and extremely well endowed. In addition to her ethereal face and gorgeous body, the woman also had some interesting ink. On her left hand was a black band tattooed where a wedding ring would normally be. In the center of her back, between her shoulder blades, she had some kind of foreign writing—similar to whatever Taris had on his arm. Sarah began analyzing it, wondering what it meant. Wondering what they meant, to each other, actually.
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