by Amy Boyles
Thorne wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “You think it should. You think it should bother me that you’re human. That our relationship will only go so far. That I’ll want to drink your blood.”
I dipped my chin down to hide my neck. “I don’t know.”
“I thought I’d explained to you before that I can control my desires when it comes to that. I don’t feed every day, and I do so often enough that I don’t crave other blood.”
He paused. “This isn’t the type of conversation I thought we’d have tonight.”
I laughed. “You thought we’d talk about other things? You’re the elephant in the room. You’re a box of secrets, and I know almost nothing about you.”
He shook his head. “The only thing you need to know is that I’m here with you tonight.”
We stared at each other and Thorne laughed. “I’m joking. You want to know my history.”
I nodded. “You know some of mine.”
“I don’t know what you studied in college.”
“I didn’t go to college,” I admitted. “I’ve always had matchmaking ability, so I started a business. I did take some online business classes, but that was it. I’ve always wanted to work for myself.”
“Did you go to college?” I asked.
“Harvard.”
I nearly dropped my spoon. “Wow. No small potatoes.”
“I have a law degree.”
“You do?”
“Yes. It’s old and the person who holds it is supposedly dead.”
“So that happened before you were turned.”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
The elephant in the room nearly honked his horn. Thorne’s turning hovered in the air like its own separate being, waiting to be called forward to speak.
I must’ve looked like I was salivating to ask the obvious, because Thorne’s next question was, “You want to ask me something?”
“No, nothing. Not a thing.”
“You want to ask me how I was turned.”
“The thought never occurred to me.”
“I’d want to know,” he said, “if I were you.”
“Well luckily,” I said in my voice that straddled the line between cocky and insanely overconfident, “I’m not anything like you. We all have secrets. I have no problem keeping mine, and I expect that you can keep yours as well.”
We sat in silence. “I’ll tell you my biggest secret if you tell me yours,” he finally said.
I eyed him before bursting into laughter. “Okay, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be disappointed in my biggest secret.”
He shrugged. “If it’s about you, I won’t be disappointed.”
My heart tightened. How was it that Thorne always knew the things to say that made my heart jump and sing?
“Okay.” I thought for a moment. “My biggest secret is—I don’t know much about my father. I know that he knew a lot about witch history, but I don’t know to what extent.”
I fingered the heart necklace that sat at my throat. “It’s one thing I wish I knew. The man saved my life, but so much of him is a mystery.”
Thorne quirked a brow. “Your mother never talks about him?”
I shook my head. “No, not really. You’d think she would but she doesn’t. Whenever I asked when I was younger, she always said she didn’t know much about his research, which I’ve just taken as fact. It’s possible what he was working on was a secret or something that needed to stay a secret. I don’t really know.”
“And do you think it was an accident that you were almost killed by a vampire?”
His words were a chord that plucked deep in my heart, vibrating in my body. I’d never considered the fact that I wasn’t anything but a randomly chosen feast for a horrible bloodsucker.
“Do you think there’s more to it?” I said.
Thorne hiked one shoulder. “Hard to say. I don’t know the vampire who did it. Plus, there are many reasons why a vampire chooses its victims. That vamp could’ve been freshly turned. A toddler or young child is an easy victim. It could have been the vampire heard your heart, smelled your blood and then followed the trail until it reached your house. Or…”
He trailed off. I found myself clutching my cutlery and leaning forward so far my chin practically sat in my steak.
“Or what?” I prodded. “You can’t do that, you know. Start somewhere interesting and then just stop. It’s not very nice.”
Thorne rolled his eyes. “I had to consider what I was going to say next. I do have to think about things, you know. Not just run straight into the fire and see what happens.”
I bristled because that was exactly how I responded to any sort of lead I had. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Pretty sure you do.” He grinned mischievously. “Anyway, what I was going to say was, or else you weren’t the initial target. You were but only in a way to get to your father.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?”
“Not at all.” He cut into his steak. “It’s possible that you weren’t the intended victim. You were only meant to look like it, and your father was the one the vampire wanted all along.”
“But why would one vampire want to go after my father? And choose me instead of him?”
“It wouldn’t be one vampire. It would be more.”
Thorne’s words weighed heavily on me. “You’re saying it’s possible my father was targeted by a gang of vampires.”
“Clan, and yes, I think it’s possible.”
I nibbled the inside of my lip as I considered this wedge of information. “But why?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Those are questions you’d have to ask your mother. She’s the one person who was closest to him. Out of all the people you know, Glinda would have the answer. Or at least a piece of it.”
“But why wouldn’t she have told me this before?”
“To protect you?” He paused. “I’m not saying this is the scenario, but it’s a possibility. If you want to know more about your father, you should ask. I’m sure your mother will tell you what she knows. Or as much as she can, at least.”
I twisted the napkin in my lap. “What does that mean?”
“It means if your father was targeted by vampires, it’s possible that he was researching something that made them feel vulnerable. He might not have told anyone about his research, for their very protection. If the information was sensitive and your mother knew something about it, she may not say anything simply to continue keeping you safe.”
I exhaled and sat back in my chair. My mind swirled with all this information. Things I’d never considered danced in my head, taunting me with their possible truths.
Was it even part of the realm of possibility that my father could have been murdered because of his work? I didn’t have an answer.
Was it possible that if my mother knew his secrets, that she kept them from me for a reason?
Yes, that was quite possible. The most probable of all the scenarios, in fact. My mother had mastered keeping secrets. After all, she’d kept the prophecy from me for my entire life. If my father’s death hadn’t been random, my mother would know about it.
But would she be willing to tell?
I glanced across at Thorne. We were supposed to be on a date, not getting all twisted in the details of my father’s death. But this is how people came to trust others, wasn’t it?
They shared things, the deepest pieces of themselves—the stuff that made you, you.
I’d shared mine. It was Thorne’s turn now. As if on cue, Thorne said, “You want to know the story of how I was turned.”
I slightly nodded.
“Here it is.”
Chapter 9
“I was born in 1910 to a wealthy family in New York City. My father practiced law. I was supposed to as well. It was my destiny, he would say.”
Thorne stopped. A sad expression fell across his face. “It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what they had planned for me. M
y life was all laid out before me. I would become a lawyer, marry a well-to-do girl, have children. Maybe run for office. It was all right there before me.”
He pushed his food around his plate until he seemed to tire of it. Thorne sat back and stroked his chin. “Then the market crashed. We lost everything. My father killed himself. My mother drank poison, following him.”
I grimaced. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a difficult time, to say the least. I had nothing. But I was at Harvard studying. My father had paid the tuition all the way to the end, so the least I could do was finish. I did. I scraped by, and when I graduated there was nothing for me to return to, so I packed up and headed North.”
I stared at him. “North?”
“Yep. I cut logs, trapped for mink pelts, beaver, whatever I could get my hands on to either trade or make money from. It was a hard existence, but it saved me. I couldn’t return to New York to the nothing I had. I needed to be someone else, something else.”
He inhaled a deep breath that made his chest balloon. Thorne raked his fingers from his hair and smiled with amusement. His eyes held the look of memory, the sheen of the past, a good past within them.
“That was when I met Leopold.” He grazed the backs of his fingers over the stubble on his cheek. “He was a big-name trapper living in a compound of his own making. They trapped and lived. I met his men and quickly realized they were good people. Did I know what they were? No. I’m glad I didn’t. If I had known that, I would have been scared, afraid. Fear does bad things to people. There’s no telling what I might have done.”
He leaned forward, his expression darkening. “People make bad decisions out of fear. But anyway, life was good until a rival band of trappers moved in. They used nasty techniques to scare people and were vicious, vile men. I was living alone, in a cabin I made with my own two hands. I had a trapping line a little ways away. One morning when I went to check it, I found all the traps emptied, the lines broken.
“There was no doubt who had done the dirty work, so I confronted the men. Told them to stay away. If they ever encroached on one of my lines again, they’d regret it.”
He folded his fingers and rested his chin in his hands. “I never saw it coming. Never knew that one night I’d be attacked while asleep. The men entered my house and nearly killed me. They stabbed me all over and told me they’d do whatever they pleased.”
My stomach clenched. The hurt in Thorne’s eyes made a knot swell in my throat. I couldn’t imagine the pain he must have endured. Stabbing? How horrible.
He stopped talking for long enough that I wasn’t sure if he’d continue. Finally he picked up the story.
“They left me for dead, obviously. Leopold and his people, with their amazing sense of smell and hearing, had been able to figure out that something had happened. They followed their noses to my cabin, where I was bleeding to death.
“Leopold asked if I wanted to live.” Thorne gazed into the distance, watching the sun as it burned away for the day. “I remember then that everything seemed fragmented. I couldn’t form a coherent thought. I knew I was dying. Blood had pooled around me. I could feel the wetness of it. Felt my fingers stick to the floorboards. So when he asked if I wanted to live, it seemed absurd. I would die on that floor, and those men would have gotten away with murder.”
He dragged his gaze back to me. I shivered. “So I said yes. Yes, I wanted to live. Please, let me live.” He sighed, settled back in his chair. “Then Leopold gently smoothed my hair from my face. He opened his mouth, and I saw the fangs. My mind couldn’t process what I saw. But I felt the burn of his teeth in my neck. That was worse than anything I’d ever felt—even worse than the stab wounds.
“Once he had drunk from me, Leo opened his wrist and I drank from him. The change hurt horribly, and I wasn’t in my right mind for days. They had to chain me to a wall back at their stronghold until I finally calmed down enough to hear what I’d become.”
“And what did they say?” I asked.
Thorne cocked a brow. He sighed and brushed crumbs from his pants. “They said I would now live forever, but I would hunt for blood and drink only that. I would want humans, but I had to learn to drink from animals first. When I was ready, I could take revenge on the men who had almost killed me.”
Wow. Seemed pretty cut-and-dried. “And did you?”
He slowly nodded. “I did. With the help of Leo and his clan, that was now my clan, we tracked them down and ended their reign. Turned out I wasn’t the only trapper they’d attacked. These were bad men, men who deserved to be punished.”
It didn’t bother me that Thorne had destroyed those men. Should it have? They’d wanted to kill him and had tried. The vampire world was one of death. Thorne had said as much before. In his world, he’d gotten used to death. It wasn’t necessarily my world, but in one where you drank blood to survive, that made sense.
It was kill or be killed. When life became that bare-bones, survival was the only option.
The thought of Thorne chained to a wall made me shudder. “So it was hard—adjusting to your new life.”
“You could say that,” he said gruffly. “It was weeks before I was calm enough to find the men and months before I could accept myself for what I was—a killer. A powerful one, but still a killer. The idea and scope of what the change meant didn’t hit me until I realized I would never die. It frightened me. I grew up religious, and to be told I could live forever, what did that mean for my soul? It was hard to come to terms with. I’d never put another person through that.”
“Have you come to terms with it now?”
Thorne glanced over his shoulder at the sinking sun. “See that?”
I nodded. “It’s beautiful.”
“There are things I can control and things I can’t. When it first happened, I thought I was a demon, an abomination in the eyes of God. But after talking extensively to Leo, I started to ask, how could I exist and God exist? Had God created me? Some vampires feed on humans solely. They’re evil creatures. But that wasn’t how I was brought into this world. I’ve always hunted animals and have never taken a human life unless…”
“Unless it was absolutely necessary?” It was a bold move, risky to think that was what Thorne would say. Would he be angry that I’d dropped words in his mouth?
But instead of a flash of anger filling his eyes, he slowly nodded. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Few enjoy talking about things that cause hurt.”
“It wasn’t what I’ve caused. It was you.” His gaze filled with emotion, and my heart rate ticked up. “I didn’t want to hurt you by saying these things. Or make you think a certain way about me.”
A sympathetic smile tugged at my lips. “I don’t think badly of you. You seem like a smart man, one who doesn’t make a move without considering the options. In fact, I know that. I’ve been in a few situations with you where I’ve thought you should move quickly and you haven’t.”
He cocked an eyebrow in a way that made me salivate. “If I recall, I probably should have gone along with your plan, because when you and your family are left to their own devices, you get in trouble.”
I scoffed. “Please. This is a sleepy town. I need some excitement. How am I going to get that unless I track down murderers?”
Thorne threw back his head and chuckled. The sound warmed me to my toes. “You’ve got me there. I’ll admit you’ve worried me in the past.”
It was my turn to quirk an eyebrow in question. “Little old me?”
He nodded. “Little old you has kept me up worrying.”
“I didn’t think vampires slept.”
“We don’t have to. I sometimes do. At least I lay down and rest. As you said, it’s a sleepy town. When there’s something bad going on or there’s a case I’m on, I don’t sleep.”
“What do you do instead?”
“I think.”
“About what?”
Thorne hoisted one ankle atop the opposite knee. He lean
ed back and stared at me. “Sometimes I think about you.”
A jolt flooded my body. I didn’t bother trying to hide the surprise that I knew must’ve filled every line on my face. Instead my gaze dropped to my napkin, which suddenly became very, very interesting.
“What do you think about me?”
“I wonder what it would be like to kiss you.”
I nearly fell out of my chair. Here was this husky vampire admitting he wanted to kiss me. I mean, we’d talked about kissing once before, but that was when Thorne told me I wasn’t ready to kiss.
“Oh?” I said once my tongue decided to work again. “Do you wonder that?”
“I do. I wonder if you think the same.”
My gaze dared to land on his eyes. Thorne studied me, an unreadable expression gracing his face.
I hiked a shoulder. “I won’t lie and say that I haven’t.”
Just then a waiter appeared out of nowhere. Our conversation died as he took away our plates and replaced them with small chocolate soufflés.
Thorne smiled at me. “We can talk more about that later. You should enjoy your dessert before it gets cold.”
Aw. But I wanted to talk about kissing more. In fact, I wanted to skip the talking about it and go straight to the practicing of it. I wanted to feel Thorne’s lips on mine. I wondered if he would cup my cheeks or if he would grasp my shoulders?
What would be the mechanics of his kiss? So many thoughts swirled in my head as I spooned up a dollop of the soufflé. The scent of chocolate wafted up my nose. It was warm and so inviting.
When the first flavors hit my tongue, the richness of the dessert exploded in my mouth. It was a chocolate party in there, y’all, and I had landed in heaven.
Yummy chocolatey goodness, rich and gooey, made my taste buds jump and jive. I moaned in pleasure.
“So it was the right choice?” Thorne teased.
“It was so the right choice.”
He smiled. I dug back into the dessert, doing my best to eat it in ladylike fashion, but fearing that I fell pretty darn short. I mean, I was ready to lick the sides of the ramekin it had popped out from.
In fact, I just might.
