by Chloe Hart
She rolled onto her side, frowning, and caught a glimpse of her right wrist. Then she looked at both her wrists. There were red marks on them, where—
Oh, God.
She sat bolt upright in bed, looking down at herself. There were finger-shaped bruises on her hips, where Evan had gripped her while he—
Oh, God.
In the first flood of realization, she retreated like a little girl, diving under the covers and curling up into a ball.
If only she could hide there forever.
But she couldn’t. She wasn’t a little girl, she was a grown woman. Which meant that she had to get up, get dressed, and deal with the absolute mess that her life had become in just seventy-two hours.
She took a shower and put on some of the clothes Shank had bought for her. She chose jeans and a green cotton sweater, practical and nondescript. She was tying the laces of her sneakers when Shank tapped on the door and came in with a breakfast tray.
He kept her company while she ate her toast and cereal and drank her coffee, and the fact that Shank didn’t seem to realize that she’d had mind-blowing sex with his boss the night before gave her some much-needed confidence. Her body had been so imprinted by the event that she felt it must show to other people somehow, like a neon light.
She was relieved to find out that it didn’t.
Unfortunately, there was one person in the world who did know what had happened. And in spite of his oddly chivalrous offer to forget that fact, Celia didn’t know how she could ever look him in the face again.
As Shank was leaving with her empty tray, she asked him to let her know when Evan was up and in his office for the day. As the door closed behind him, she sank down into the overstuffed armchair by the brick fireplace and closed her eyes.
There were a hundred questions spinning in her head right now, and while the ones involving Evan Grant should have been at the very bottom of her priority list, they were the ones that kept floating to the top.
Why had he made love to her like that? Was it just automatic for him to take a woman up on an offer of sex?
But if that were the case, then why hadn’t he bitten her? She’d been more than willing—she’d practically begged him. Why had he said it might make a bond between them?
And then, when he’d realized she thought it was a dream…why had he taken off so fast? And why had he offered her that out—the out of pretending it had never happened?
She dropped her head into her hands and massaged her temples with her thumbs. In the end, none of these questions mattered—not when you held them up against the ones that did, like how she was going to convince the entire Fae nation to do away with a central part of their culture…not to mention save her own life.
Which was why she was going to do exactly as Evan had suggested, and forget last night had ever happened. She wasn’t ready to deal with it, or what it might mean…and, obviously, neither was he.
But one thing she had to do, and right now. She had to call Danny and break up with him.
And she’d better give up on the idea of ever having great sex again. Because there was no way, absolutely none, that any man could ever make her feel the way Evan had last night.
Which just went to show exactly how screwed up her life was right now.
***
Celia took a deep breath as she raised her hand to knock on Evan’s office door. She had a moment’s déjà vu as she remembered standing in this exact spot two nights ago, just as nervous as she was now—but for a completely different reason.
She braced herself as she had that night, and knocked.
“Come in.”
After another deep breath, she opened the door.
Evan was there, behind his desk, but she was aware of him more as a looming shape than a person, because she couldn’t look directly at him. She looked a little to his left, at the bookshelves behind his desk, while the feverish heat of extreme embarrassment turned her face red.
“Agatha Christie,” she blurted.
“What?”
She kept her eyes on his bookshelves. “Agatha Christie novels. It looks like you have all of them.”
“Yeah. She was a friend of my mother’s. They met during the first World War, when they worked together in hospital. They stayed friends all their lives. Those are all signed first editions.”
His voice was cool and unembarrassed. He obviously wasn’t feeling any of the awkwardness that she was.
It was strange to think about Evan’s mother—to remember that he’d once been a little boy, and then a young man. Her eyes flickered back to him briefly. “Did she ever know…what you are? Your mother, I mean.”
He shook his head. “She believed I died in 1940, when my plane was shot down in the Battle of Britain.”
Something clicked in her mind. “That’s who you remind me of,” she said, half to herself. This time when her eyes went to him she was able to keep them there.
“I remind you of someone, do I?” He was sitting back in his chair, apparently completely at ease.
“A cousin of mine. He’s in the Air Force. You don’t look alike, not really, but you carry yourself like he does. Maybe it’s a pilot thing.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t been a pilot for a long time.”
“‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,’” Celia quoted softly.
Evan’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything.
“That’s what Winston Churchill said about the Battle of Britain. Isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Sounds like him.”
“You were a hero.”
“No. I was a bloke doing a job, just like everyone else in the war. Now, if you don’t mind—”
“How did you become a vampire?”
He stared at her. “Why all the questions, Celia?”
Unspoken things hung in the air. The Big Thing they weren’t talking about—that they’d tacitly agreed never to talk about. Now that she was looking at him, and not at a spot to his left, she could read small signs of tension in him. Tension in his jaw, and in the muscles of his face. Tension in the hand that rested on his desk, curled into a fist.
Was it possible that he was as affected by what had happened last night as she was?
Doubtful. But it had affected him a little bit. Of that she was sure.
She didn’t have the courage to bring up the Big Thing. But she could answer his question honestly.
“I want to know more about you.”
“No. You don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
He kept his eyes on her as he sat back in his chair, opening his fisted hand and drumming his fingers on the desk. “You want to know about me? Fine. I flew with the RAF in World War II. I got shot down, and when I lay dying in a field, my maker found me. He turned me, and a week later I was drinking from prostitutes in the East End.”
Well, she’d asked for it. “Did you kill them?”
His fingers stilled, and he slid both hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Some, yeah, until I figured out how to control myself. My maker didn’t teach me that. He enjoyed killing. He spent his time in the Underground, drinking from folk taking shelter during the Blitz. He killed every time, and that’s why the Green Fae tracked him down.”
“They…killed him?”
“Executed him, was what they called it. They were ready to do me, too, but Jack stopped them. He’d come over to Europe at the beginning of the war, to work with the Fae against the Nazis. He’d been watching me, he told them, and saw that I had tried on my own not to kill. He asked them to spare my life, and they did.”
“That’s how you know Jack.”
“Yeah. I haven’t killed a human since that day, but I’m no boy scout like Jack. Don’t go thinking I’m something I’m not, Faery girl. I’m not allied with your people. I learned how to drink without killing because it kept the Fae from killing me. But I don’t live on butcher blood like Jack. I drink from humans.”
&nb
sp; “Shank says you haven’t drunk from your girls since the night you saved my life.”
That was coming a little closer to the Big Thing.
For a second Evan looked at her, his eyes narrowing. Then he shook his head abruptly. “We’re done talking about me. It’s time to talk about you. I had a little chat with Hawk yesterday. He’s the bloke who was hired to kill you, in case you’ve forgotten. He offered you a deal, and you’re going to take it.”
She frowned. “A deal? What kind of deal?”
As Evan relayed the substance of the conversation to Celia, he prayed that she wouldn’t be able to tell how close he was to vaulting over the desk and taking her. Taking her blood, taking her body.
Taking.
That was the problem, right there. He could take from Celia, but he had nothing to give back to her. She deserved a hero, like Jack. Not a selfish bastard like him.
He hoped he’d made it clear to her that he was no hero, no matter how much she wanted to make him one.
He thought he knew why she was so eager to paint him in that light. Some part of her—her subconscious, like she’d said last night—obviously wanted him. And now she was trying to whitewash him, so she wouldn’t have to feel dirty for fucking him.
He hadn’t slept after he left her room last night. Images of Celia had tortured him. It had been bad enough when he thought she just wanted one night with him. But when he finally figured out she thought she was having a dream…
That was when he knew he was in way too deep. It shouldn’t have mattered to him—but it did.
He’d replayed last night over and over in his head. Her sweetness, her softness—her incredible responsiveness. His last lover had been a vampire, turned the year Queen Victoria ascended the throne. The sex had been decent but it had taken something close to brutality to satisfy the lady’s jaded senses and blunted desires.
But Celia…
His slightest touch had been enough to raise her heart rate. Hell, he’d raised goose bumps on her skin just by looking at her.
And what she’d done to him…
Fuck.
“No way,” Celia said decisively.
He forced himself to focus on the task at hand—convincing Celia to go along with Hawk’s proposal.
“This will save your life, pet. You need to take this deal.”
That look of stubbornness was back on her face—a look he was starting to know all too well.
“What would have happened to England in World War II if people had thought that way? If they’d put their own safety first? If they told themselves it didn’t matter what happened to anyone else, as long as they were all right?”
He wished they’d never started on about the war. He didn’t need a reminder that his countrymen—and women—had truly been heroes during that horrific time. They ‘did their part’, as the saying went in those days—whether by signing up as soldiers or fighting on the home front.
Celia thought he was part of that grand national heroism, but the truth was, he hadn’t been. He hadn’t joined the RAF because he loved England, or because he wanted to do his part in the war. He’d joined up because he loved to fly, and because he was young and reckless and cocky as hell, and addicted to the adrenaline rush he got when he went up against the Luftwaffe. It had been a selfish act on his part, a fact that had come home to him when his father had spoken so proudly at his memorial service. He’d slipped in to the back of the church, wanting one more glimpse of his parents before he turned to his new existence.
Listening to that service had made him sure of one thing. He wasn’t worthy of the praise heaped on him, and he would never again let anyone believe he was something he wasn’t.
The vampire who’d turned him had merely revealed his true nature. A purely selfish creature, putting himself and his own desires before everything else. The fact that Celia—and before her, Jack—insisted that he was more than that was mere folly on their part.
“This isn’t a goddamned war, Celia.”
“A war is exactly what it will be. A war against the demons that will pour through the portals that my people are helping to open. Do you think I’m going to let that happen without a fight?”
“It’s not up to you to save the world. The world can take care of itself.”
She had that mulish look again, her jaw set and a frown on her face. “I’m not trying to save the world. I’m just trying to do my part, like you did during—”
“Stop bringing up the fucking war. This is about you, Celia. And I won’t see you throw your life away on a fool’s errand.”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about what has to be done. Believe me, I wish I didn’t know what I know. But I do know. And I have a job to do. A job no one else can do for me.”
He grabbed on to that idea. “Maybe someone can. Maybe I can. If you’re so hell bent on getting this message across, let me do it. I’ll go to your clan leaders. I’ll go to the Fae courts in Prague, Nigeria, Kyoto—I’ll go everywhere.”
“They’ll kill you. And even if they don’t, they won’t listen to you.”
“They won’t listen to you, either.”
“Maybe not. But I have to try. I’ve been thinking about it, and I think if I go before the clans next week, during the full moon meeting—I don’t think they would kill me then. Not on such a public stage. It would create outrage, and might draw more attention to what I have to say.”
Evan knew when he was beaten. Looking at her sitting there, her face so beautiful and so determined, he knew he’d never talk Celia into putting her own life first.
There was only one other argument that might convince her. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell her Hawk’s theory about the fate of the vampires if the demon portals closed.
No. If she wasn’t willing to consider her own life, he didn’t want her considering his—or any other vampire’s.
Which meant he had to resort to other means to stop her.
“I’m sorry to do this, Celia.”
She frowned. “Sorry to do what?”
“I can’t allow you to leave the safety of this club. I can protect you here, but not if you leave. We’ll find another way for you to communicate with the Fae. I’ve already sent messengers to Canada. Maybe when Liz and Jack get back, we can—”
She was staring at him like she couldn’t believe what he was saying. “What do you mean, you won’t allow me to leave? You’re keeping me here by force?”
“I’m not locking you in a dungeon, for Christ’s sake. I just think you shouldn’t rush out headlong into danger. If you’ll just wait until—”
“I can’t wait! I have to stop the solstice ritual from taking place. Hundreds of thousands of Fae taking absinthe on the same night—it’s what the Dark Fae have been waiting for. The veils between the worlds will weaken and they’ll send demons through the portals. It will be more than the Green Fae can handle. You can’t keep me here, Evan!”
“I can. And I will. At least until Jack and Liz get back from—”
“You think I wouldn’t love to let them handle this? To hide in the background and let them save me—or let you save me? But I can’t. For one thing, Jack and Liz might not be able to come back. They’re fighting demons that are here in our world because of absinthe. They’re doing their part in this war, and I have to do mine.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, love,” he told her gently. “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear before, but I’m not letting you leave.”
For a second she just stared at him. Then she leapt from her seat and ran for the door, only to find Evan there before her. She was no match for vampire speed and reflexes.
She didn’t scream or cry or try to fight him. She just looked at him, breathing hard, and Evan found that that was more effective than anything else she could have done. Because when she looked at him like that, her chin up and her eyes flashing fire, all he wanted to do was kiss her.
“If this is about money, don’t worry. I’ll still pay
you what I promised.”
That hurt, but of course he didn’t show it. He’d worked hard to convince her he was a mercenary bastard, so it would be pretty fucking hypocritical to resent her for thinking he was a mercenary bastard.
“I took on a job, and I’m going to see it through,” was all he said. “I said I’d keep you safe, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Why do you even care?” she asked, bitterly. “It’s not like I mean anything to you. Last night you…you wouldn’t even stay with me.”
