A knock on the window beside her was the last thing she expected.
No, the last thing she expected was that it would be him.
Freaking seriously? The same guy who, despite her best intentions, she couldn’t seem to get out of her head all day.
She’d turned the car off, so Charlotte couldn’t roll the window down. Instead, she opened the door as Torr Derrickson took a step back.
She swallowed. “Hi.”
Had he seen her crawling across the front seat?
“Hi,” he said back. The deep baritone of his voice made her want to hear more of it, even as she chastised herself for such an insidiously silly thought. Even Toni, who was dating his brother, for God’s sake, thought it was a terrible idea for her to be interested in him.
“So,” she said, hating herself for feeling so nervous around him. He towered over her, sure, and his subtle yet spicy cologne made her want to suck in a big gulp of air, but so what? Plenty of men were tall and smelled fantastic, right? “Fancy meeting you here.”
He raised his brows, but said nothing.
Charlotte hated people who did that. It made her really uncomfortable. But she’d learned not to fill the silence with words either, so instead of blabbering on, she simply smiled as if being parked haphazardly on the side of the highway were an everyday occurrence for her.
“The school is that way,” he said, pointing back toward town.
Charlotte looked down at her outfit—which, sure, looked a little schoolmarmish with its slacks and navy blazer—and then back up at Torr.
“Funny.”
Jerk.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” she added, “but I’m not going anywhere at the moment. Work . . . or otherwise.”
His tongue peeked out of his lips, but instead of licking his lip from side to side, it rubbed his top lip and then lower lip. A quick gesture to be sure, it was nonetheless long enough for her imagination to take over. She’d seen him do that same thing the night they’d met. On anyone else she’d chalk it up to a nervous habit, but Charlotte was pretty sure Torr didn’t have any nervous habits. Which meant it was deliberate. And when someone licked their lips, it usually meant . . .
“I noticed,” he said.
The way he looked at her as he said that, drawing the words out long and slow, made it sound like more than an answer to her question. It felt like he was saying he’d noticed her.
“I’m waiting for the tow truck. They should be here any minute, so you don’t have to—”
“I’m not leaving you alone by the side of the road,” he said with such finality that Charlotte didn’t think to argue.
Although she wasn’t normally one for the macho “I can protect you” routine, her heart skipped a beat nonetheless.
He’s not the man for you. This guy is the quintessential playboy. Love ’em and leave ’em. Besides, he’s not staying long in Stone Haven anyway.
“So what happened?”
Slamming the car door behind her, Charlotte shrugged. “It wouldn’t go. I stopped at a red light and—”
“When is the last time you had your oil changed?”
She neither liked being interrupted nor his insinuation this was her fault. That women didn’t know enough to get their oil changed. So instead of answering, she glowered at him instead. And tried not to notice that his lips and eyebrows were both full. And ridiculously perfect.
“Charlotte?”
Her body clenched in response to hearing him say her name.
“Yes, Torr?”
She purred it out, giving as good as she’d gotten.
He cleared his throat.
“How long did they say they’d be?”
She looked at her wrist, forgetting she no longer wore a watch. “I’d have thought they’d be here by now—”
“Come on,” he said, walking around to the driver side of her car.
“What are you—”
Opening it, he reached in and took her keys from the ignition. He leaned further into the car, grabbed something, then stood back up. Without saying anything, he clicked the doors locked and started walking back to his own car, pulled up behind hers.
Lawrence’s car, rather. And it was so not a Volkswagen. She’d always wondered what it would be like to ride in a bloodred Maserati. They certainly didn’t sell such fancy cars in Stone Haven.
“What the heck are you—”
He carried her purse, which looked so small in the hands of someone that large. So that’s what he’d reached into the car to retrieve.
“Torr Derrickson—”
“They can tow the car without you here. Get in.”
Ugh. Talk about high-handed.
But he had her purse, and besides, he wasn’t wrong—she had no great desire to sit there alone in the dark. And so Charlotte found herself following him to the passenger side of the bloodred car. At least he held the door open for her.
What a contradiction. He wouldn’t leave her here alone, but he was totally fine with ordering her around. He held the door open but looked at her as if she were a piece of meat.
Well, to be fair, she’d probably been looking at him the same way.
Most of her screamed to run in the other direction, but she slid onto the tan and black leather seat.
She watched as Torr walked around the car, got in, and handed her the purse as if this were a familiar dance for them.
“Buckle up,” he said. “And you might want to call the towing company to tell them you got tired of waiting.”
As if she would say it quite like that.
“And take off your blazer.”
Her head whipped toward him so fast it was a wonder it didn’t pop right off.
“Where we’re going, I’m afraid you’ll stick out in the crowd. Even without it.”
Of all the . . .
She’d thought he was offering to bring her home, not to places unknown. Who did he think he was? But she didn’t have time to say any of those things before he peeled out of their spot behind her poor, lonely car. Unlike her, Torr did not drive slowly.
Quickly buckling her seat belt after not taking off her blazer, she asked, “Where are we going?” She reminded herself to text her date to tell him she’d be a no-show. “I’d really like to just head back—”
He laughed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m no knight in shining armor, and this isn’t a white horse. If you’re getting rescued, you’re coming with me.”
Oh, this was just grand.
“I’ll have you know—”
Her words were cut off by a scream.
Her scream as he careened around not one but two cars in front of them. Which would have been fine if they were on a road with more than two lanes.
They weren’t.
She was going to die.
* * *
Torr had taken some pleasure in scandalizing Charlotte—her expression had become increasingly more appalled, starting with his order to take off her blazer. Now, as he pulled into the parking lot of Stage West, her face had settled into a decided frown. She was right, of course. Why had he decided it was a good idea to take her, of all people, here?
Then again, Torr had centuries of bad decisions under his belt. Why stop now?
“I am not going in there.”
From the outside, it was a fairly nondescript building. Two stories. Brick. A sign out front. No big deal. He doubted that the temporary black and white banner hung outside the building bothered her either. Noir Nights could mean any number of things, after all.
Judging from her wide-eyed expression, it was the abundance of black leather and scantily clad women in the parking lot that troubled her.
“Suit yourself.”
He tossed her the keys.
Good reflexes.
“Wait, are you seriously—”
He got out of the car, wondering if she would follow him in.
Torr was pretty sure he heard the word asshole as he closed the door behind him. Looks l
ike she was going to hold out—for now—but he suspected she’d meet him inside later, once she knew he was serious about staying. He thought briefly about keeping the keys, but Charlotte Harris was too much of a rule follower to ever consider taking his car.
As he walked up to the front door, Torr explained to the bouncer that his companion would be joining him, and he’d recognize her from her lack of black clothing. And leather. He paid the cover charge for both of them, then stepped into an alternate reality that instantly brought back memories. Pleasant ones.
Paris, France. Early nineteenth century. The Palais-Royal had been much more than a royal palace by then—it had been a spectacle, filled with elaborately dressed women and candles in so many places the air glowed with their seduction. He had never paid for a woman’s company—he’d never had the need—but he’d enjoyed the atmosphere all the same.
Of course, this was no Palais-Royal. But it was a definite improvement on the questionable pleasures of Stone Haven. Women clad in black lingerie played on swings arranged in front of an exposed brick wall. Both floors were a storm of black, interrupted by creamy white flesh and red uplighting on each column and a small stage, which was currently empty. Although he wasn’t wearing black himself, Torr somewhat blended in with his dark brown vest over a white tee. Which was currently nearly glowing.
He would have stood out anyway. Nearly every female in the bar was currently watching him order a drink.
Torr wasn’t being cocky. It happened to be a fact.
Unfortunately, his thoughts were stuck on the one female who was thankfully off-limits. Pretentious. Uptight. Stunning, maybe. But not for him.
“Death in the Afternoon?”
He blinked.
“The special. Do you want the special?” the bartender repeated over the pulsating, dreamy music coming from every direction. The man reminded him of his brother in the white shirt and black suspenders.
He pointed to the sign behind the bar—red writing against a black background, backlit enough to be read. Death in the Afternoon. Absinthe and champagne.
Torr was about to say no when he spotted her in the doorway, her posture hesitant.
“Sure,” he said instead. “Two of them.”
He gave her credit for venturing in alone. While he didn’t intimidate easily, or at all, coming in here alone must have taken guts for her. This wasn’t her scene, after all, not even a little.
“Seriously?” she asked, her tone leaving nothing to the imagination. She wasn’t pleased.
Charlotte had ditched the blazer even though the weather was crisp. Fall arrived early in Pennsylvania, always had, even when he’d last visited nearly two centuries ago. His gaze lingered on her creamy shoulders, taking in the lack of bra straps under her pale peach camisole.
Her satin pale peach camisole.
And yet her breasts would fill his hands easily. Strapless bra?
“No blazer, Miss Harris?”
Charlotte was fuming, but she didn’t look away from him, likely because there was nowhere else she could look without seeing a bare or nearly bare body part. A woman clad in nothing more than a red leather leotard paired with a thong bent over directly in front of them.
“Oh, come on,” Charlotte muttered.
When the woman in the leotard stood back up and looked his way, Torr nearly laughed aloud at Charlotte’s expression. The drinks had arrived, so he ignored the actress—it seemed the bar had hired at least a few of them to mingle with regular customers—and held out one of the champagne glasses to Charlotte.
“What?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“She didn’t even pretend to have dropped something. Could she possibly have been more obvious?”
The woman in question had crossed the room. She now stood in front of one of the swings with another woman who was clearly here on the bar’s dime, this one decked out in black lingerie. They were both looking his way as they teased and taunted the crowd.
“I don’t believe so, although I imagine they might surprise us.” He felt a brush of fingers against his own as Charlotte took the glass from him.
He had no right to react to such a slight touch, but it seared him as surely as if he’d been licked by flames. His eyes shot to her face, holding her gaze.
“What is this?” She looked more curious than disgusted.
“Absinthe and champagne.”
Charlotte raised her perfectly groomed eyebrows and took a sip. “Hmm. Good.”
And then she completely shocked him by taking another, longer sip. Finishing the rest of the glass and then licking the sugar-coated rim.
Damn.
Charlotte set the empty glass on the bar and looked around them as if seeing their surroundings for the first time. Her eyes widened at the display on the stage, which Torr had just noticed himself. A table had been set up, and a woman lay on it, stomach-down, as another brought a short whip down across her ass. Not hard, of course, but still . . .
“Is this kind of thing . . . legal? In a regular bar, I mean?”
He’d indicated to the bartender to refill Charlotte’s drink, which he had. Handing it to her, Torr touched his fingers to hers even longer this time.
Her eyes darted down to their hands as she accepted the drink.
Good.
It was time to see exactly what Charlotte Harris was made of.
A stupid idea, no doubt. She was still very much off-limits unless he wanted to get on Toni’s bad side, which he didn’t. He’d never hear the end of it from Lawrence, and never was an awfully long time for them.
“Thanks.” Pulling her purse back up over her shoulder, Charlotte took a regular sip this time.
As Torr watched, she shifted the purse again, and then again, enough for him to reach over and take it from her. He held it out to the bartender, along with a hundred-dollar bill.
“Keep it safe, and there’s another for you later,” he said, dropping it in front of him without waiting for a response.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“It was annoying you. He’ll watch it.”
“But how do you know?” she asked in an undertone as the bartender stowed her purse. “What if—”
“He’ll make more money watching your purse than he would stealing its contents,” he said as understanding dawned. An unlimited supply of money impressed most women. But not, apparently, Charlotte Harris.
“That’s just wasteful.”
He watched as she took another Charlotte-like sip of her drink.
“How very . . . predictable of you to say so.”
Giving him a look that would have established her dominance as the alpha in a pride of lions, despite the fact that she was very much female, Charlotte prepared to lecture him.
Torr could tell. He’d had enough of them throughout his life to spot them from a mile off.
“First, you kidnap me and abandon my car. Then you take me here, to a place I would never, ever have gone to willingly. My virgin eyes and ears will never be the same. And you keep ordering me about like some kind of caveman, paying off the bartender to babysit my purse just because it slipped off my shoulder. What is with you?”
He considered a variety of responses, tossed most of them out, and finally said, “Are you really a virgin?”
Charlotte opened her mouth to yell at him, closed it, and promptly burst into laughter instead.
“You are incorrigible.”
He’d been called worse, and at least she’d laughed.
Ordering himself another drink, a real one this time, Torr took the opportunity to watch his lovely companion without her noticing. She’d shifted her attention to the sights and sounds around them, including the couple at the end of the bar who were one step away from full-on intercourse.
Although Torr knew little about Toni’s friend, he suspected any woman who could waltz into a bar like this, on a night like this, and stand there as casually as you please hid a few secrets of her own. Her outwardly proper demean
or was, at least partially, an act.
Even though she wore more clothes than just about every other woman here tonight, Charlotte turned enough heads for Torr to feel the tiniest prick of jealousy each time he caught the longing in an admirer’s eye.
The same look of longing he was no doubt giving her right now.
Turning his attention to the drinks, Torr grabbed his whiskey and Charlotte’s new Death in the Afternoon and handed it to her.
“But I’m not finished with this one.”
He licked his lips, a habit he’d never quite broken. One that had a tendency to rear its head whenever he found himself staring into a beautiful woman’s eyes—just as he was now.
They said the eyes were windows to the soul. Just now, the pupils of Charlotte’s clear hazel eyes were not dilating in response to the light. She was aroused.
As was he.
Fuck.
Shrugging, she finished the dregs in her glass and took the new one.
“I guess I’m not driving.”
Torr smiled. He’d better slow down to keep up appearances. She had no way of knowing he could not get drunk. Hungry, yes. Thirsty, for water and whiskey and more. But drunk? Not if he tried. An odd side effect of his sister-in-law’s countercurse, he suspected—the one that had curbed their power. A drunk vampire would be more dangerous, after all. It was yet another unintended side effect.
It always stunned him to think of the power Isobel had commanded, without even intending it.
The end result of this particular quirk was that alcohol had a mild impact on them, much like it would on someone with an extremely high tolerance. It gave him the slightest of buzzes, nothing more. But Torr didn’t need absinthe and champagne or whiskey to know his body couldn’t give a shit that Charlotte was completely wrong for him.
“Do you dance?” she asked suddenly.
Torr looked from Charlotte to the dance floor. The sideshow was gone, replaced by pulsating lights that illuminated very clearly the lack of clothing on most of the Stage West patrons.
It was the exact kind of song he would never, ever expect someone like Charlotte to dance to. A mix between power noise and industrial techno, the beat was raw, erotic even. And definitely not Charlotte.
The Hunter's Affection (Bloodwite Book 3) Page 4
