Half in Love [Willie Krenshaw] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Lea Barrymire

  They made it to her house without incident. She unlocked her front door and entered the dark house with palpable trepidation. Her entire body had tensed when they crossed her tiny yard. He tried not to smile, but he couldn’t stop a mischievous grin from settling on his face. He could feel the draw of his body to hers, and if what she’d admitted earlier about her shifter side was true, she was going to be in a world of lust with him under her roof. He didn’t want to cause her any pain, but to know that she was going to be in just as much discomfort as he was made him want to laugh at the situation.

  “I’ll give you the quick tour, and then if you want to shower before you head down to the lockroom, you can.” Willie’s voice shook just a tiny bit, and he could see the tension riding her shoulders. She was tense and her movements were choppy. She turned abruptly and stalked through the house. She briskly pointed out the location of her kitchen as they walked through the dining room. She walked into a short hallway and pointed out the bathroom. She stepped into it and quickly collected a towel and extra toothbrush for his use and handed them to Nick without making eye contact.

  “Look, Willie. Why don’t I just clean up and you can show me the house tomorrow. I don’t want to impose on your hospitality any more than I already have,” he whispered softly. The weight of her discomfort was starting to make him feel downright horrible. She was so stiff and so obviously upset by their kiss, and he didn’t know what he could do to make it better.

  She glanced up at him, and he watched a flicker of fear in her eyes before a cool mask of indifference closed off her emotions. She nodded mutely and stepped out of the bathroom to allow him to enter. She quietly closed the door behind her, and he listened to her walk to the kitchen. Soft sobs echoed down the hallway and twisted his heart. He’d never hurt someone with intimacy before. He wanted to go to her and hold her. Tell her that there wasn’t anything to be upset over, but he knew that she would probably attack him if he left the bathroom. With a sigh, he climbed into the small shower stall and washed the day’s events off his skin.

  * * * *

  Willie couldn’t believe that she’d completely lost control twice in the same night. Tears streamed down her face as she cried. She’d been wrapped around Nick like a freaking leech. What had she been thinking? Her shifter side was still very close to escaping. It made her skin tight and hot over bones that wanted to change shape. Her cougar was prowling and pushing so hard against her mind that she didn’t know if she would be able to control it much longer. Never before in her life had she felt so out of control. Even when she shifted the first time and she’d feared that she would lose her mind to her animal form. She closed her eyes tightly and breathed deeply, trying to soothe the beast within.

  Stop crying, you big baby. It was one fucking kiss. You have done far more with other guys on a first date. You aren’t a prude. You’ve had sex with guys you barely knew before. This is not different. She knew that was a big fat lie, though. This had been different. This man, no, this vampire who was showering in her bathroom wasn’t just a man that she could fuck to scratch an itch. He was a strong, overpowering, uberpowerful male that had captivated a part of her that she didn’t even know she had. Every single cell in her body craved his touch. She sobbed harder and bit her fist to stifle the sounds she was making. Her fangs bit into her skin, and she realized that she hadn’t even been able to retract them completely yet.

  Anger finally started to help burn off the need and lust. She was angry at herself, at Nick, at the fucking vampire that trashed his house, and everyone else that screwed up her evening. She slammed her fist onto her cupboard with enough power to crack the countertop. The pain washed the rest of the emotions from her body. She hissed as the pain registered, but it did clear her head. She closed her eyes and ordered her cougar to back down and sleep so she could be free of the yowling for a little while. Tonight had been the longest she’d ever battled the cat. Usually it slept or remained dormant unless Willie intended to shift or the full moon pulled it awake. She’d never had her cat react to a male before, and definitely not to the extent that it had tonight. The constant mental fight made her weak and bone tired.

  She took a deep breath and finally got the tears to stop streaming down her face. With practiced movements, she started relaxing the tension from her muscles. Slowly Willie got control again. She walked to the sink and ran cold water on a dishrag to wipe her eyes. She knew that her face was red and puffy from the force of her crying jag. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the sink, playing through the evening. She shook her head at what one little decision led to. Not only did she help a vampire, which she would never have done before, but she made out with said vamp, and just about jumped his bones.

  “You look tired.” Nick’s voice was soft, but it made her jump. She hadn’t even heard him enter the room. Some highly sensitive halfie you are. With a sigh, she turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. She hoped the anger and pain would keep the emotional reactions to a minimum. Her self-control was in tatters, and she knew that she’d totally fold her hand and call it a night if he even crooked a finger at her.

  “I am. I’ve had one hell of a night, as you well know. Now, let’s get you settled so we both can get some rest.” She shooed him out of the doorway so she could escort him to the basement. She held her breath as she walked by him.

  “Willie?” His voice was so low she almost didn’t catch the question in his tone.

  “What?” She turned to see concern etched on every inch of his face. She blew out a breath. This isn’t his fault, but hell if she didn’t want to blame him.

  “I’m sorry for all of this. I know this isn’t want you had in mind for your evening,” he whispered roughly. He cleared his voice and pushed his shoulders back. She knew he was going to say something she didn’t want to hear.

  “Look, it’s not your fault. I’m sorry for my behavior as well. That’s not how I normally am with a guy I just met. For some reason my animal likes you a lot,” she said with a snicker. “So, let’s just forget it all happened and call it a night, okay?”

  “Well, thank you for not only taking the time to safely see me home, but for taking care of me while I was incapacitated. I was in mortal danger while in that alley, and if you hadn’t stayed to watch over me, I could easily be dead now. I owe you a great debt. Please allow me to pledge my assistance in any form you’re in need of until I feel my debt is paid.” He bowed in a sweeping move that looked practiced and elegant.

  Willie watched as the man in front of her lost all of his contemporary language and body movements. As he spoke, it was almost like watching time wind backward. His stance became more stoic and graceful. Words took on a rhythm that hadn’t been heard in the last century. She was in awe at the change. Would it look like that to someone chatting with her in a hundred years? For the first time it struck her that Nick could easily be thousands of years old and she didn’t even know it.

  “Um, Nick, you don’t owe me anything. It’s really nice for you to say so, but I was just being a good citizen and you happened to need more help than most,” she answered. She blushed at her stammering after the pledge he so easily spoke. “I just want to go to bed. Come on and I’ll show you the lockroom.”

  Willie shuffled down the hallway and opened the door to the basement. She didn’t turn to see if he followed and just ran down the stairs. She stopped at the metal door that she’d paid a fortune to have installed. Steel-reinforced walls had also been imbedded within the walls of the cell. The lockroom was her safe place. Nothing could get to her in there, and she couldn’t get out easily. Sometimes the moon-induced shifts were scary. The lockroom gave her a place to hide from herself. Now she could use it to keep a gorgeous vampire safe from her and her cougar self. Lifting the key off the nail on the wall, she unlocked the room and turned to see Nick leaning against the doorway.

  “You’ll be safe in here. I have the only key, and no one knows I even have this room. I’ll come down before sunset and unl
ock the door.” She stepped back to allow him to enter the room. With an afterthought, she asked, “Do you need anything? Books? I don’t have any blood in the house, so you’ll have to wait until tonight to feed. Sorry.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll take the time to rest. Thank you again.” Nick entered the room and sat on the single mattress, kicking off his shoes.

  Willie shut the door quietly and locked it. She felt bad locking him in, but it was safer for her and Nick if he was locked in. She stumbled up the stairs to her room and collapsed on the bed. She didn’t even take the time to get undressed before she allowed her body to sleep.

  Chapter 4

  Willie came out of her rest quickly. One moment she was in a sort of stasis, suspended and resting, and the next moment she was fully awake. The night’s events played through her mind. She groaned when she remembered that Nick was locked in her basement. She glanced at the clock and was happy to see that it was still early afternoon. She had the night off, so she could get Nick settled in a hotel someplace.

  A slight pressure in her chest caused her to stop for a moment. Oh, shit. She didn’t want to dump him off at a hotel. She sighed. She wasn’t going through this again today. She wasn’t going to take him as a mate. Fate was a freaking bitch and couldn’t make her do something so asinine. She cringed as a small voice whispered in the back of her mind that she couldn’t fight fate, and the longer she waited to take him as a mate, the harder it would be for her to keep her animal under wraps. At least at the moment her cougar was quiet, leaving her mind to herself.

  She rose from the bed and quickly took a shower, scrubbing the scents and feelings of the night off her skin. She caught a whiff or two of Nick’s essence on her skin, and it made her warm and achy inside. She ignored the feelings, though, and just scrubbed harder. She dressed in clothing that would allow her to battle if needed. Black jeans and tank were her preferred clothes. Both allowed full range of motion, and if she ended up bloody, well, black covered in blood was just blacker. If nothing else, last night reminded her why she carried her blade.

  She ran down to the kitchen and threw frozen waffles in the toaster, started coffee perking, and headed down to the basement. It was still a few hours before sunset, but she wanted to have the door unlocked so Nick could move freely once he felt up to coming out of the lockroom. If he was older, he would be able to come out soon. She made a mental note to ask him some questions that she’d always had about her vamp side but never really had a way to get the information. She shook her head again at the way her evening had gone. If Robert was still alive, he would’ve laughed at her predicament. Pain crushed her as she thought about the man she thought of as her father, and the pain of his loss. She missed him so much, especially in situations like this when his counsel was so needed.

  She trotted down the stairs and flipped the lights on. She unlocked the metal door and fought the urge to open it and check on him. Not like he could’ve gone anywhere. The room was as secure as Fort Knox. She forced her feet to turn and slumped upstairs to eat her breakfast.

  She stood at her kitchen counter, munching on her waffles, not tasting them. She thought through all of the implications of yesterday’s happenings. Nick obviously had been drugged, which she thought was impossible. The question there was why him, or why any vamp. What was the purpose of drugging him? Did he escape and end up in the alley, or was he dumped there? Did those same people trash his house? And, if so, why? Was he hiding something? There were so many questions in her head. She almost pulled out a notebook to jot them all down but thought better of it. It wasn’t really any of her business, and she didn’t want to get dragged further into his life. She needed to walk away from him today. If they ended up kissing again, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself and she’d end up doing something really stupid like sleeping with a vampire.

  She was pulled from her musing when she heard the basement door open. She glanced at the clock, surprised that Nick was up and around so early. He was lucky that she didn’t have any windows in the hallway, but the window in the kitchen would keep him out.

  The folktales of vampires burning up in the sun were completely false, but they did react very quickly to sunlight. The virus that turned humans into vampires destroyed their ability to make melanin, the pigment in the skin that protected the skin from damage. Without melanin, the skin burned quickly. He could enter the kitchen, but would be uncomfortable even with the UV protection from the glass. With age, though, came a reduction in the sensitivity. She didn’t know why, but that is one of the things Robert told her when they were unsure what traits she would inherit from her partial change.

  She waited for him to come find her, but she heard him walk into the bathroom instead. Well, maybe he would go back to the basement after using the facilities. She hadn’t even thought about that last night when she locked him in the room. She sure wasn’t a good hostess. Well, shit, he was a vampire. He shouldn’t have had to use the bathroom. She still felt guilty for locking him in a room when he obviously needed something.

  Another quirk in vampire bodies was their loss of digestive enzymes. They could consume regular food in normal quantities, but their bodies couldn’t digest it any longer once the change was complete. They could eat, but their systems just passed it through like fiber for a human. So, he’d obviously eaten food within the last day or so if he needed to use the bathroom. Disgusting habit, in her opinion, but she understood the reason behind it. How else to blend into the surroundings when your prey was human?

  She would have to get Nick a meal soon, especially after his body fought through the sedative last night. She could order pizza for herself. The delivery person would make a nice snack for Nick. She giggled at that thought. Take-out for two. Maybe they could order in Chinese food and a pizza. The smirk fell from her face when she turned to find a rumpled and sexy Nick standing in the doorway.

  His hair was still wet from the shower he obviously just took, but his clothes had seen better days. Still, rumpled and wrinkled looked good on him. His green eyes flashed with amusement at surprising her. He sauntered into the kitchen and took the coffee cup from next to the sink, and poured himself a cup. He turned and faced Willie and grinned.

  “So, how’d you sleep?” he asked her and watched her over the rim of the cup as he sipped the coffee. He was in full sun standing at the sink and didn’t even flinch. What the hell? How fucking old was he? As if hearing her questions, he tilted his head and laughed. “You have excellent windows in this house. The UV coming through them is almost completely eliminated. And, well, I can withstand more than most.”

  “Huh, I’ll have to remember that when I go to sell the place.” She humpfed as she placed her plate in the dishwasher. Then she remembered what she’d been thinking about when he interrupted her. She smiled. “So, I was just thinking about ordering some dinner in. Do you want pizza or Chinese?”

  “Um, you do realize that I can eat but can’t use real food, right? Someone along the way explained that part to you?” For a second he almost looked embarrassed, but it passed and his normal calm descended.

  “Yeah, I know that. So, the delivery person is a snack for you and the food is for me. I want you as strong as you can be when we leave here in case we run into your friends again.” She grabbed her phone book and flipped through to the restaurant section. Maybe Italian sounded better. She could go for a good chicken parm. She jumped when he chuckled right in her ear. How the hell did he keep sneaking up on her? Her hearing was fantastic, but he was like a ghost. She hastily moved away from him and glared when he chuckled again. “Stop doing that. I don’t like having you that close to me.”

  He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender and backed away a few steps. “Sorry. I keep forgetting you have a thing about vampires. You just smell so damn good that I can’t seem to help myself.”

  “Whatever. Did you want me to get you a snack, or do you want to feed out there?” She refused to look at him, staring intently into t
he phonebook. She could sense him standing next to her, and she was waging her own internal battle. Already her resolve was weakening. She wanted to step close to him and wrap herself around his body, or have him wrap her up. She wanted to swoon like some fucking girl from a Southern romance novel.

  “I could eat.” He snickered when she flicked her gaze up. She relaxed a little at his teasing. “I don’t care what flavor the delivery guy is, so you pick the food type.”

  “Okay, Italian it is. I’m going to call Mario’s because they make the best chicken parm in the city. If Mikey is on deliveries, you’ll enjoy him. He’s pretty tasty.” She laughed at the look of consternation that crossed Nick’s face. Was that jealousy that flashed through his eyes? She turned to the wall phone and placed her order. They had about twenty minutes to waste before her order was ready.

  “So, what do you want to do while we wait?” She knew as soon as the question was out of her mouth that she should’ve bit her tongue off. When his eyes turned molten under half-closed lids, she knew that she needed to backpedal quickly. “I mean, do you want to watch TV, maybe a movie? I have satellite so we could watch anything you want. Maybe there is a vampire movie on SyFy.”

  He chuckled at her attempt at levity and let the moment go. She felt almost sorry that he hadn’t pushed her or popped out a sexual innuendo. She was disgusted with herself for even thinking that. She berated herself as she led Nick to the living room. She plopped into her favorite chair and tossed him the remote. At least she could let him pick the channel. She just hoped that the delivery guy showed up soon. Hunger for more than food raised her temperature. She needed a distraction before she did something stupid like jump the vampire taking up residence on her sofa.

  Chapter 5

  “Mario’s was definitely a good pick.” Nick finished closing the wounds on Mikey’s neck with a quick lick and glanced up to find Willie staring, transfixed. Her eyes were glazed over, and she was breathing heavily. He laughed to himself. With that look in her eye, he was sure that she’d never seen a vampire feed before, and from the smell of her arousal, she liked watching. If he knew she would enjoy watching so much, he would’ve gone slower. Pity, but maybe he could feed again tonight and make a real show of it.