by Tina Folsom
“I’m not hungry. Besides, I can always snack on you later.” God, she hadn’t wanted to say that, but it was too late to take it back now. Maybe she should simply keep her mouth shut when clearly nothing civil was coming out of it at present.
He tossed her a get-real look before concentrating on traffic again. “Try it and you’ll regret it.”
Portia frowned. “You’re bluffing.” Not that she’d even for a moment contemplated making good on her threat. Truth was she’d never bitten anybody in her life. When she needed blood to supplement her human diet, she drank it from the bottles her father ordered from a vampire-owned medical supply company. She didn’t particularly like the stuff, but luckily her hybrid body required blood just twice a week to maintain its superior strength. She’d realized during exam stress the year before that if she increased her intake of blood, she had more energy and could pull all-nighters if she needed to. It had come in handy once or twice.
“Just because I look unarmed doesn’t mean I am.”
“Whatever.” Portia looked outside, not particularly in the mood for a chat. It was still January, and the sun was setting fast. In half an hour it would be dark. But even with her eyes closed, she would have known when sunset occurred. It was in her bones. For full-blooded vampires, this instinct was a survival mechanism, but for her as a hybrid it wasn’t essential. She was lucky: she could be out in the sunlight whenever she wanted to. However, she preferred the dark. Even as a young child, she’d gotten up in the middle of the night to stare at the stars in the dark night sky.
“Why do you work for them?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but her mother had taught her to make polite conversation, mostly to blend in. And she felt bad for having behaved so bitchy with Oliver so far.
Oliver shrugged lightly. “It’s a good job. It pays well.”
“Aren’t you afraid of them? What if one of them bites you?”
Oliver suddenly chuckled. “You think I’ve never been bitten?”
Portia whirled her head to stare at him. “You just told me I’d regret if I bit you!”
“And that’s still the case!”
“But you let others bite you? What’s wrong with me then?” Was she some sort of outcast? Granted, she didn’t know a lot about how vampire society functioned, but did that make her undesirable?
“Nothing’s wrong with you. But I only let a vampire bite me when there’s an emergency.”
Her heartbeat accelerated by a notch. “What kind of emergency?”
“When one of the guys is wounded so severely that he instantly needs blood, I let him have mine.”
“Wounded? Why the hell would they get wounded? They’re just working as security guards, probably sitting in some office building all night.” How dangerous could that be?
“You’d better not let them hear that. They’ll take your head off. They’re warriors, all of them. Their jobs are dangerous, and occasionally one of them gets injured. I’ve been on some missions with them. We were attacked many times. There were casualties.”
Portia shook her head. Oliver was probably embellishing to make himself and Scanguards look more important. “You’re trying to tell me that vampires are assigned as bodyguards to your human clients and will take a bullet for them?”
Oliver nodded, his expression serious. “We guard all our clients with our lives. And that goes even more so for the vampires. They will fight to the death.”
She snorted. “Easily said when they’re practically indestructible.”
“Believe what you want to believe, but I warn you not to underestimate any of us.”
“No need to be rude! I guess protecting a client and being polite at the same time is too much to ask.” Not that she could really blame Oliver. He was probably just paying her back for her own rudeness earlier.
Oliver bent toward her, never taking his eyes off the traffic in front of him. “Your father is our client. You, my dear Portia, are what we call a charge. We’ll take care of the charge, but we only take orders from the client.”
At the mention of her father, Portia expelled an angry huff. Like she wanted to be reminded of him right now! She spun her head to the passenger window, making it clear that she was done talking to him. Well, maybe just one more word. “You’re just a human, I could take you anytime I wanted to.”
Oliver didn’t oblige her with a comeback, so she kept quiet until they reached the little house in Noe Valley her father was renting for them. It was a two story home with a garage underneath and a flat yard out the back. Upstairs were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and downstairs was a large open-plan living and dining area with an adjacent kitchen with a small laundry room and a half bath. Portia had liked the house the moment she’d set foot in it for the first time, but at the same time she tried not to get too attached to the place. For all she knew, her father would be moving them again in a few months. He always did. And she would have to—hell no! She was going to be twenty-one, and soon her father would have no power over her anymore. Next time he wanted to move somewhere else, she could simply refuse and stay where she wanted to stay.
Portia jumped out of the car as soon as it came to a halt in the driveway. Her sudden epiphany lightened her steps as she sauntered to the entrance door and turned her key in the lock. Now all she needed to do was trick Oliver into thinking she was going to sleep early and then sneak out the back when he wasn’t looking.
With Lauren’s help, she’d made a date with Michael, the guy who’d thrown the party the other night. She didn’t want to give Eric another try. He’d suffered enough, even though she’d made sure to wipe his memory so he didn’t actually remember any of it. But she was sure he was still in pain from the injuries her father had inflicted by tossing him against the wall, and was probably scratching his head about how he’d obtained them.
Portia tossed her bag on the floor in the foyer. There would be no studying tonight. She marched into the kitchen and opened the fridge.
Oliver followed her and leaned against the kitchen island. “I thought you said you weren’t hungry.”
Without turning, she continued perusing the contents of her nearly empty fridge and chuckled, making sure Oliver understood that her next comment wasn’t malicious. “I also said I could always snack on you.”
A strange tingling at her nape signaled danger, but before she had a chance to turn, she received a reply to her remark, a remark that was merely meant to needle Oliver.
“I don’t think that would be wise.” The deep voice of a stranger sliced through her body as she spun around to face the intruder.
Before she even laid eyes on him, she knew he was a vampire, and she felt waves of power rolling off him.
When she lifted her eyes, the stranger standing calmly next to Oliver took her breath away. She’d never seen a vampire like him. His head was bald. Not a single hair graced his nicely shaped skull except for the thin eyebrows and the dark lashes that framed his eyes. Brown eyes; not ordinary brown though. There seemed to be a rim of gold around the irises and flecks of the same gold sprinkled all over.
His lips looked hard and unyielding, and there were no laugh lines around his mouth. His nose was long and straight. He was over six feet tall and lean, extremely lean. The stranger was dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeve black shirt, and he made the simple outfit look like a million bucks. The top two buttons of his shirt were open, revealing a glimpse of his chest. Apparently hairless too, just like his head.
Portia allowed her eyes to travel lower to his narrow hips and strong thighs. Her stomach flipped, and her knees suddenly felt weak. Looking at a man had never before made her feel like this, so … so feminine. She suddenly regretted that she hadn’t taken better care of herself this morning, not bothering to apply makeup. Why hadn’t she at least moistened her lips with lip gloss before she’d left campus?
“You done?” the vampire asked, catapulting her head first into a wave of embarrassment at being caught checking him out. And unlike a full-blo
oded vampire who couldn’t blush, the cheeks of her hybrid body burned, and she knew she was flushing the shade of a bottle of blood.
“Who are you?” she fired back. “And what the hell are you doing in my house?”
The vampire gave Oliver a sideways glance. “I take it she’s the brat I’m supposed to guard?”
Portia’s heart sank. Figured! The first man she felt the slightest bit of excitement for had to be the enemy. Right now she was ready to throttle her father. “Oh, this sucks,” she muttered.
***
Zane forced himself to remain calm when inside he was anything but. Years of practicing his stony expression helped him keep his cool. Samson was messing with him. Why the fuck had he assigned him to guard this … this vixen? How else could he describe her?
Her green-brown almond shaped eyes had traveled over his body while she’d licked her red lips, making them appear even plumper. He’d noticed her heartbeat accelerate and her breaths turn irregular, drawing his attention to her shapely breasts. She wore a bra under her casual tight sweater, something he shouldn’t even notice. But he did, just like he noticed her slim waist and those long, toned legs that were hidden in her jeans. She was tall for a woman, but that fact didn’t detract from her femininity.
Zane had expected to find a teenager; instead, he was faced with a grown woman. While that in itself shouldn’t bother him, his reaction to her did.
He was tempted to step closer to allow her tantalizing scent to wrap around him. He wanted to bury his face in her long black hair while his hands explored her body, peeling her out of her clothes. The thought of what he would do next made his pants feel tighter instantly. The teeth of his zipper dug into his aroused flesh, threatening imminent release. He’d heard of spontaneous orgasms, but he’d never imagined being so close to having one. Shit, he had more control than letting a beautiful face and an enticing scent screw him over like that!
“Zane!” Oliver was trying to get his attention.
He jerked his gaze away from Portia. “Yeah?”
“I’ll be back a half hour before sunrise. Will that give you enough time to get home or shall I get you a blackout van?”
It gave him way too much time in the presence of this walking sin called Portia for starters. Zane cleared his throat. “That’s plenty of time.”
He barely noticed Oliver leaving as his eyes moved back to his charge who still gripped the fridge door as if her life depended on it, her knuckles white as if she were riding a rollercoaster.
“I thought Oliver was my bodyguard.”
Zane shrugged, shaking off the feeling her melodic voice conjured up as it sank deep into his chest. “Even a bodyguard has to sleep, and your father doesn’t pay us for sleeping.” Had she really thought that they would make it easy for her to go against her father’s wishes?
“Nothing is going to happen to me while I’m at home. You might as well save yourself the trouble and take off.” She slammed the fridge door shut, signaling her contempt for him.
“Nice try, baby girl, but I’m staying.” Hell, what had he just called her? Baby girl? Was he losing it? He wasn’t one to toss out endearments like beads during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Her eyes flared, a red glint appearing in them as she planted her hands on the kitchen island. “My name is Portia. Use it if you must, but call me anything else and I’ll have you fired.” Then she turned and marched to the door, the clicking of her heels in synch with his rapid heartbeat. “And now I’m going upstairs to be alone.”
“Suit yourself,” he grumbled under his breath, his eyes glued to that backside she moved as if wanting to enthrall him.
Great, it had taken him under thirty seconds to get her to hate him. That had to be a record, even for him. Unfortunately, while he normally couldn’t care less who hated his guts and why, in this instance he had a sliver of regret. This time, his subconscious had done all the work for him, pushing her away with the ridiculous endearment he’d used, making sure she’d never look at him the way she’d done during the first ten seconds of their meeting. There’d been desire in her eyes, and that was the last thing he needed if he wanted to survive this assignment.
It was bad enough that he was alone in the house with her, charged to protect her from herself. Who would protect her from him? The only thing standing between him and running after her now, throwing her onto the nearest flat surface and burying himself in her was his loyalty to Scanguards and the veiled threat Samson had issued. If he screwed this assignment up, he’d be out. Once more, he’d be without a family.
As he stalked into the living room and slunk into the soft couch, he tried to find more reasons why he shouldn’t go up to Portia’s room and make a play for her. He came up with plenty: the girl was unstable. According to her father, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and was acting out. Grief for her mother had made her emotionally unbalanced. No wonder she had first looked at him as if she wanted to devour him, and in the next instant hurled insults at him. Perhaps his endearment had triggered something. For all he knew, her mother had called her baby girl.
There was no way he would get involved with a volatile woman who would probably stake him if she was in one of her moods. He didn’t need shit like that. He was here to do a job: watch her and make sure she didn’t harm herself. Her father couldn’t come home fast enough to suit Zane. The sooner this assignment was over the better. And hopefully once he’d proven to Samson and Gabriel that he could be trusted and wouldn’t derail, they’d reinstate his class A status and assign him to a real job.
Zane snatched a magazine from the coffee table and paged through it while his senses remained on full alert. He heard Portia rummage in her closet upstairs. In the bathroom next to her, a faucet dripped. The occasional car drove by the house, and a neighbor walked his dog. That reminded him of the puppy.
He’d left Z at home and set out bowls with water and dog food on the kitchen floor. He couldn’t drop off the dog at Yvette’s—yet. Samson had made it clear that the puppy was part of the deal, like it or not. For now, he was stuck with the animal, but as soon as this was over, the dog would end up right where he belonged—with Yvette and Haven. No way was Zane gonna keep him.
Chapter Seven
Portia applied the finishing touches to her makeup and glanced at her watch. She didn’t have much time left to make it to her date on time. Sneaking down the stairs and past Zane would be a wasted effort since the vampire had installed himself on the couch in such a way that he could see anything happening on the first floor. Her only chance was getting out through the window on the second floor.
While she wasn’t one for climbing, she could jump. From the window in her room down to the back yard, the vertical distance was less than fifteen feet. No big deal for a hybrid. Portia pushed the sash window up as far as it went and peered outside into the dark. Beneath it, the grass came up to the wall, allowing for a soundless landing. She wouldn’t have to worry about Zane seeing her jump either since her room was over the garage and the laundry: there was no window where she was about to land.
Portia lifted one leg out the window and caught a glimpse of her shoes. Jumping with high heels was definitely not advisable. She swiftly took off her pumps and dropped them into the grass below. They made a soft thumping sound. Portia’s heart stopped. Had Zane heard it? She kept herself motionless and stopped breathing, listening for any sound in the house, but it remained quiet.
Relieved, she swung her legs out backwards and twisted her body under the window. She cursed the sash window, because unlike a regular window, it only opened halfway, forcing her to lower herself out of it facing the wall. Her hands still on the window sill, she pushed herself away from the wall and let go. She dropped into the cold and damp grass, her knees going soft to absorb the impact. Portia smiled to herself. In a gymnastics competition she would have received a perfect ten for her landing.
She brushed her hands on her skirt and turned to gather her shoes.
Shock wasn’t the only thing that catapulted her against the wall at her back.
“Going out?” Zane asked as his hands captured her shoulders and pressed her against the siding.
With her heart stopping and no oxygen reaching her brain, Portia’s ability to respond was severely impacted. Or was it the fact that Zane’s body was only inches from hers that turned her speechless? She felt his heat as if tiny flames jumped from his body to hers, igniting her cells like kindling in a fireplace. If she didn’t stop this from happening, her entire body would go up in flames. Already now, heat traveled to all her extremities, and even her naked feet felt warm as if she were wearing bunny slippers.
But the heat wasn’t the comforting heat she knew from a cashmere sweater or a woolen blanket. The heat she felt now was consuming, engulfing, destroying. Instinct told her to stay away from this fire or get burned, but everything feminine in her rebelled against the thought of pushing him away.
Oh, Zane was mean, she knew that. He’d proven that with the few words they’d exchanged in the kitchen. She also realized that he saw her as a necessary evil to perform his job, and the last thing he saw in her was a woman. To him she was a child; when he’d addressed her as baby girl, he’d made that abundantly clear. But despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the way he looked at her now said otherwise.
His gaze was heated, and she liked to imagine that it was desire rather than fury that blazed in his eyes. Zane’s fingernails dug into her flesh, and while she barely felt the pain, she noticed their sharpness, wondering how close his vampire side was to emerging. The cords in his neck bulged, and she saw the pulsing vein that ran along its side. She could fairly smell his blood, and for the first time she wondered what it would be like to bite somebody, to sink her fangs deep into his flesh and taste him. Furious at herself for the direction her mind was taking, she clenched her jaw, sending a clear signal to her fangs that they were not allowed to descend under any circumstances.
