by Dee Carney
“What are those?”
Alice returned to the bed, picking up the bottle of Coke he’d added to the food order. “I told you, my medication.”
“What is it for?”
“Nothing. Just prophylaxis.”
“Like birth control?” A surprising wave of dismay rushed him.
She looked up sharply, her eyes wide. “What? No. Nothing like that. Just...forget it, okay?”
His emotions settled, but not altogether a good feeling. The tightening in his stomach didn’t have to do with his illness this time. Pulsing in his teeth made him sharpen his focus. “This is a mistake. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Because I won’t tell you about my medication? It’s just lamotrigine and I have to take it daily. There. Happy?”
The name was unfamiliar to him, but he didn’t care. He leaned forward, making sure he had her full attention. “No, this isn’t about your meds. I shouldn’t have said yes earlier. I was desperate and hurting and—”
“It’s the middle of the night, Bast. Are you really kicking me out now?”
Fuck. Of course not. “Not now, but in the morning.”
“But what if you get sick again?”
Alice rose to kneeling. The shirt she’d chosen was loose and big on her small frame, barely covering her thighs, reminding him that she wore nothing underneath. His gaze dropped to the subtle sway of unfettered breasts, and Bast had to pull his attention to safer areas. The haphazard curls of her hair had tightened into ringlets, emphasizing her youth. Her cheeks were flushed, and the lighting made her eyes brighter.
He tightened his jaw, feeling the beginning stirrings of hunger that had no right to life. “Why aren’t you afraid of me? Street savvy will only take you so far.”
“If you were going to do something to me, you would have tried it by now,” she replied softly.
“I don’t know if that statement is merely arrogant or just plain naïve.”
She paled, just a fraction, enough to let him know he might be getting through to her. This was too dangerous. For both of them. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“And what makes you so sure of that?”
She shrugged a single shoulder. “Just the way you look at me.”
“How do I look at you?”
Alice met his gaze. “Like that.”
He didn’t have to question her response. He knew what she saw. The desire. The heat. The want. No matter how he concentrated on something else or how he’d thought it had been tamed, it still remained. Forcing her away was the only way to keep her safe from him. From his world.
“I just need a place to sleep, Sebastian. Let me stay the night and I swear I won’t be any trouble. I won’t get in your way. I’m a simple person who’s having a hard time.”
Twenty different reasons for why she should leave, along with another twenty alternatives for her sleeping arrangements, flittered through his mind. For every one he almost gave voice to, his gut clenched, something inside of him tightening until his vision went hazy.
At least he could physically remove himself from her presence. The sun wouldn’t rise for a few more hours, but he had to separate himself from this woman. Maybe do a little research on illnesses known to affect vampires. If the affliction was the result of the other part of his genealogy, there would be nothing for him to do but wait for it to pass. Although not a praying man usually, he gave a silent word of pleading to his god that vampirism explained everything and not his unknown heritage.
Alice must have mistaken his silence for indecision. “If you get sick again, I’ll be able to help. You shouldn’t be alone.” Her gaze went to her hand, where she still held a slice of uneaten pizza. Quietly, she added, “Even if it’s not me, it should be someone.”
Bast stopped trying to argue with himself. If somehow he found the strength of will to turn her away, there was no way he would let her walk out now, alone and in the middle of the night. Even he wasn’t callous enough to do that to a defenseless woman. “I keep odd hours and will be asleep most of the day tomorrow. You should leave during that time.” He held her up a hand when she started to protest, rising to his feet at the same time. “Or you can stay until I’m awake and we’ll talk again then. Go or stay. The choice is up to you.”
* * *
Despite what he said, she had no choice. Sebastian didn’t want to understand her plight, but she had nowhere else to go. For some reason he was willing to let her stay, and in her old life, she would have stormed out at the first sign he didn’t want her there.
Alice sighed.
In her old life, she wouldn’t have allowed a stranger to bring her home. Most definitely she would have never let a single kiss make her feel...
Her face flushed. What had he done when he’d kissed her? She’d never had such a strong reaction to anyone or anything in her life. God, she’d had lovers who’d failed to bring her to that level of pleasure during intercourse. For Sebastian, it had taken a single kiss. What would have happened if they’d gone further?
She shook off the thought. That didn’t matter. What did matter were those last words of warning he’d given her. He’d been so serious. So ominous. And silly, desperate her forced herself into making light of the matter.
What she needed to do was come up with an escape plan. Just in case. For all she knew, morning would come without a hitch, but if she needed to make a break for it before then, then she needed a plan B, one that included procuring a baseball bat or at least a knife. She didn’t have anything like that on her, but if Sebastian had crooked plans for her, she wasn’t about to make it easy.
Ignoring the way her body protested leaving the comfort of the first real bed she’d slept in in weeks, Alice lowered her feet to the plush rug. Padding to the door took a small reserve of courage, but after several minutes of pressing her ear to the wood yielded not a peep from the other side, she turned the knob.
His scent was everywhere, as if he’d marked every foot of the palatial house inch by painstaking inch. Or maybe she’d just become hung up on how good he smelled. It almost distracted her from choosing a window near her guest room to unlatch. Almost.
Instead, she turned the lock slowly, breath held, praying it didn’t make a sound when unbolted. He’d stopped her before she’d located his room, and if Bast hadn’t gone there immediately after leaving her, he could be anywhere. Her nerves were on screaming alert, but when the tiny click did little more than puff out the sound, she released a breath.
This plan B was a little rudimentary, but in a pinch, would do nicely. Besides, there was no way in hell she was walking out of here without something she could hock for a fifty. There wasn’t a whole lot she could walk away with on the sly, but everything she’d seen so far screamed opulence. It was taste and Better Homes and Gardens and shit-you-can’t-afford all rolled into one. If he’d offered her more than a hot and cot, maybe she’d reconsider lifting something. But tomorrow, when her ass was parked on a bench somewhere, one eye open while she slept, she’d be kicking herself for being too nice.
Nice didn’t keep her fed. Burying her conscience did.
Testing her luck, Alice trailed her hand along the wall as she edged further into the house, toward the direction of the kitchen to grab a knife for protection, at least.
After only a few feet, Alice stopped suddenly and took a moment to get her bearings. The hall seemed to stretch in both directions for a mile. Where was the kitchen again? To the left or... Shit
. Damn this place for being larger than any single guy could ever need!
Glowing ahead caught her attention, and Alice inched closer to it. A muted sliver of light fell into the hallway, a beacon if ever she saw one. Venturing toward its source, she realized it was a computer monitor that lit up an office almost as well as daytime. If only it affected the corners of the room, which remained in inky blackness.
Deeper inside, her shoulder brushed against some artwork as she hugged the wall, the blunt pain a reminder she shouldn’t be here. A little nagging voice directed her to exit the room, exit the house and go back to her own world. But another little voice, one more demanding and a hell of a lot more curious, insisted a quick look at the screen would ease her suspicions about Sebastian. For instance, if she just found run-of-the-mill software programs running, even just a simple Internet site for porn, she could dismiss him as just another red-blooded male. If, however, she discovered something a little more nefarious, her next decision—namely, leaving—would be justified.
It almost physically pained her to abandon her search for a weapon, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that it was only temporary. One quick look, and she’d get back on task.
Swallowing past a dry throat, she moved toward the computer, putting an unsteady hand on the mouse as soon as she nudged the desk.
“Wow,” she said softly before she could recall the sound. She knew diagrams like this, learning them almost before she’d learned to read. But the extent of detail which had gone into the family tree diagram on the screen before her would have made any museum curator proud. His lineage went on for generations. Nothing like she’d ever seen before. Her mother’s research had been impressive, but what was before her made their family line look like what they taught children in elementary school biology.
Back when things were good, when they’d been a whole, functional family, she and Mom spent hours on the weekends working on their own tree. Even after she’d died, Alice had been loath to stop the research. Ultimately, her homelessness forced it to end. She missed it.
She continued to study the display, only then noticing the missing information. “What about over here?” she mused aloud, noting that merely one half of Sebastian’s tree had been completed. He sat as a lone box in a sea of wiggles, dashes and lines.
“It’s still a work in progress.”
Swinging her body in the direction of his low voice, Alice shrieked. “Fuck!”
A dark shadow moved, and it took her eyes a second to adjust. Sebastian stood from a wing-backed chair placed in one of the corners, a half-empty glass dangling from his fingers. His movement was slow, yet at the same time reminded her of a predator. “Is that a request?”
“Wh-what?” She racked her brain, trying to understand, before her own last remark came back to her. “Oh.”
The same little voice she should have listened to earlier gave her a triumphant told you so, but Alice stood her ground as he approached. Her fingers folded around the computer mouse, intent on using it to her advantage if he stepped too close. Not quite the baseball bat she longed for, but that was the price she paid for morbid curiosity.
He came closer than she would have liked but didn’t act threatening. Not yet, anyway. The scent of liquor hovered around him, although nothing in his manner suggested he was inebriated. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
The subtle aroma of liquor coming from his breath sent a shiver through her spine. “It’s hard to sleep in a new place sometimes.”
“So you decided to pass the night by snooping? Or perhaps stealing?” There was a slight hint of amusement in his voice.
Her face went hot. Did he know? “I’m not a thief.”
“So you’ve told me.” Sebastian pulled the glass to his mouth, the ice cubes within tinkling as they collided with each other. He swallowed the remainder of liquid before setting the glass down. “Yet here you are, wandering the halls, after I’ve asked you to lock yourself in.”
Technically, she had locked herself in. It just hadn’t lasted that long. A not-so-smart decision in retrospect.
His height forced her to tilt her face up if she wanted to meet his gaze. His close proximity forced her to swallow again.
“I’m not afraid of you.” The trembling in her voice didn’t aid the lie. “I wouldn’t still be here if I was.”
In the dark, she couldn’t be certain, but she swore something flickered in Sebastian’s eyes. Before she had a chance to further scrutinize her finding, he leaned closer, planting his hands on either side of her. With the desk at her back, Alice had no place to turn. No direction to look for safe harbor, but at him.
Sebastian kept his face just above hers, his body heat conspiring to confuse her. She breathed in his scent, his air, and fought to keep previously dormant hormones under submission. Then he lowered his head before his lips brushed hers in a barely there caress, and all plans to act aloof went out the window.
“With a heart beating that fast,” he said, meeting her mouth again with a soft touch, “if it’s not fear, then it must be...excitement.”
Chapter Five
If anyone else would have discovered his pet project, he would have been enraged. Even now he wondered at why he was letting his dick do the talking instead of his brain. Then again, every time Alice came near him, blood went free-falling from his head to another area further south, in a rush.
Instead of working on one of a million things that required his attention, he’d chosen to sit in the dark, brooding over the woman who lured him as if a siren. At first glance, he’d thought she didn’t have what it took to capture his attention, but for every second he spent with her, the more that belief faded.
He wanted her so badly every bone in his body ached, every muscle tensed with fragile restraint. When he told her to be afraid of him, he meant it. Hundreds of years of discipline turned into a jumbled mess when he touched her. And when he kissed her, like now? Forget it.
These innocent, stolen meetings of his lips and hers were supposed to help him remember himself. To remember she was a stranger, a human, someone who shouldn’t stir his emotions. Instead, all they did was make him forget himself in her taste. Her feel. The way she clung to his shirt as if afraid he would disappear. God, how he understood that desperation.
Bast tore himself away from her mouth. “You truly are fearless.”
Heightened vision saw her face cloud over. “No, not really.” She sighed. “Things just couldn’t get much worse, is all.”
“What are you running from?”
She hesitated before replying, “Everything.”
“Except me, a complete stranger. Who others might caution you to run from.”
“Get over yourself. Since I’ve met you, you’ve been under the weather.” She released the mouse, as if forgetting she’d held it in the first place. Not like the little gadget would have done her any good should he have wanted to hurt her, but he liked seeing her grab it. She wasn’t as careless about her safety as he’d first thought. Alice widened her stance, putting both hands on her hips. The frown she gave him rivaled the best mother’s around the world. “Besides, if you were really going to do something, you would have done it by now.”
A fair point. Maybe his control was better than he gave it credit.
“Now,” she continued, turning away from him, “tell me about this genealogy chart and why one half is so bare. I’m pretty good with these things.”
Licking his
lips, removing the last trace of her taste, helped settle his roiling emotions. Moving his focus to the chart soothed the remainder.
He normally didn’t share this little project with anyone. Not even his men. For some reason, Alice’s reaction to it intrigued him. What could it hurt to show her?
The screen saver had kicked in, so Bast hit one of the keys. He turned his shoulder, blocking her view when he typed in the password, which allowed modifications to be made on the document. Together they stared at the complex diagram, which grieved him every time he tried to put it to rights.
“This side is my mother’s line,” he said carefully. “I can trace them back to the Middle Ages.”
“But your dates are wrong.”
He ignored her, pretending not to notice that some members of the family—specifically a handful close to his own generation—had unusually long lives. “In some places I worked from supposition and rumors passed through oral storytelling. I know the entire thing can’t be one hundred percent perfect, but I think it’s pretty damned close.”
“But your paternal line? You don’t have that?”
Bast shook his head, unclenching his jaw at the same time. “No. I only knew my mother. I’ve spent a long time going through documents and files trying to locate him, but I only come up blank.” Whoever the man was, he’d done a damned good job of covering his tracks. The only reason Sebastian suspected he might have been preternatural was because of the extent to which he’d disappeared from the face of the earth. He doubted any human could be that thorough.
She leaned in closer to the screen, tracing a finger along one of the lines. “You made a mistake here. This person’s on two different branches, unless...” Alice started muttering to herself. “No, not the same person. A mistake. I think if you...yeah. She needs to be on this line, not that one.”
