Kenton stood beside her, tempting her to reach out and touch him.
“A lovely view.”
She laughed at his wry comment. The lanterns on Main Street were too far away to afford them any light. Only the moon cast a glow on the landscape beyond, and the faint sound of moving water to their right was the only indication they were near water.
“Two weekends ago, I took a ride on this very train with my friend Charlotte. She’s—”
“An English teacher in your school. Pretty. Long blonde hair.”
He goaded her intentionally, so she refused to take the bait. “How you know that, I have no idea. But yes, she’s an English teacher.”
She would not give him the satisfaction of even a glance.
“I was sad that we’d no longer be working together. We chatted about the job, my transition . . . life stuff. And I remember her asking me if I was proud to have earned my PhD at such a young age.”
That conversation felt a lifetime ago now.
“What did you say?”
“That I was but . . .”
How could she explain out loud what she didn’t understand herself?
“But that I’d never really been able to accept praise. I mean, what is an accomplishment really? Just the successful achievement of a task.”
She did look at Kenton then.
“I know this makes no sense, really. But for some reason, I thought of that conversation you and I had earlier. When I learned”—she looked at his mouth, unable to help herself—“this is all bigger than a degree that sits on my bedroom floor as we speak, waiting for a frame. It’s bigger than the few facts I learned in school or my ability to hear a conversation clear across the room. There’s a world out there I know nothing about. And it just makes everything else feel so much smaller. I’d always felt something was . . . missing. I just never realized what that was before. And still there are so many unanswered questions.”
To his credit, Kenton didn’t laugh at her ramblings.
“You know more than most,” he said.
She licked her lips. “And still it’s not enough. I want to know even more.”
Most of all, she wanted to know how she fit into it all. And how to let go of her preconceived notions about life and death and history to make way for the idea that she had special powers in a world where vampires—immortals—existed.
“In that case, let me show you.”
He hadn’t planned on touching her after his revelation, but he could no sooner refrain from doing so than he could survive without blood. He grabbed her by both shoulders and crushed her to him, his mouth slanting over hers. Their tongues tangled in a frenzy of pent-up desire, and he drank in her goodness, her passion.
Moving only as he, or his kind, could do, Kenton pushed her back up against the door of the caboose, covering her body with his. He wanted Alessandra to feel the length of him, to understand the power and need that coursed through him but to know he would never use it against her.
She is Cheld. You are the one in danger. If you show her your power, you risk awakening hers.
Ignoring the thought, Kenton slipped his hands under each side of her dress, skating them up past her hips and toward her waist. When she thrust herself into him, he grabbed her lace thong and tore it off. Taking his cue, Alessandra made quick work of his shirt, ripping it open. Buttons scattered on the deck, clinking in protest for having been so abused.
When she pulled away from his kiss, he laughed.
“You’ve no idea the strength you have now,” he said in response to her stunned expression.
Then she looked down, and oh, how his cock strained to be inside her.
They saw it at the same time, a flashlight in the distance. A guard. Kenton had long since given up caring what humans thought of him. They certainly couldn’t hurt him or punish him if he chose not to allow it. But this was Alessandra’s hometown, and from the way her eyes darted back toward the light, he could tell she felt differently. She began to say something, but Kenton put a finger on her lips to discourage it.
Blood pounded through her body, and he could almost taste the sweetness of it on his tongue. She pulled back just slightly—as if from an instinctive reaction to his thoughts—and he realized it likely was. Her Cheld nature had picked up on the thoughts that might have put her in danger.
They didn’t.
The light became smaller and smaller. He’d wanted to seduce her. Lift her dress so slowly over her hips and breasts that the material teased her soft flesh on its way off. But the interruption had left him impatient. Instead, Kenton pulled off her dress in one swift movement, groaning as he looked down. Only a black lace bra remained, but not for long. He then removed his own clothing, tossing it to the ground in a heap.
He’d noticed the ladder directly behind her earlier. Reaching for her hands, Kenton guided them upward and wrapped her fingers around the rungs on either side of her head.
“Hold on,” he said.
But Alessandra wasn’t listening. She was watching him, her eyes having finally lifted to his face.
“I am going to fuck you, Alessandra, and you’re going to help me.”
She would know her strength before they were done. Reaching down, he thrust two fingers inside her and nearly came apart, her wetness his undoing.
In Florence, back in 1904, he’d heard Enrico Caruso sing a mere ten feet away from him. Even his normally insensitive brother had admitted no sound in the world could ever compare.
At the time, he had agreed.
But no longer.
Alessandra’s low moan would haunt his dreams.
He withdrew his hands and entered her swiftly, simultaneously wrapping her legs around his waist.
“Holy shit, Kenton.”
She said that a lot.
Knowing she could hold herself up easily, Kenton gripped her hands on the bars only to steady himself against her. With every thrust, her breasts pressed into his body, and the sensuality of her, the strength, made him feel like an untried boy. Capturing her lips to keep her from alerting the guard, Kenton used his tongue to mimic their movements below.
Kenton waited for her legs to tighten around his waist. And then, just like the first time she found release, he pulled away and looked into her eyes. He would not look away, and neither would she. Ever so slowly, he circled his hips and then thrust his full self into her.
“Holy—”
“Shit. You’ve mentioned that.”
He smiled, enjoying her relaxed grin as much as he had the sight of her hooded eyes filled with desire.
“You set the pace,” he said, following her lead.
And she did. Slow at first and then faster and faster until he was pumping into her with wild abandon. When her mouth opened and her eyes began to close, Kenton stopped her.
“Look at me, remember?”
“Oh,” she swallowed.
He reached down between them—even at this pace he could find what he sought—and it took just a moment longer. Clenching around him, she climaxed so powerfully that Kenton could feel each pulse as if it were his own. The intensity of it ruined his good intentions of allowing her to relish in her release before he found his own. Instead, he lost himself in her.
Lost himself so completely that, when it was done, his entire body shuddered in the aftermath.
Releasing his grip, Kenton finally wrapped his hands around Alessandra’s waist and lifted her from him. And then shocked himself even more, if such a thing were possible, by pulling her tightly against him, his hands delving into the tangled mass of her hair. Breathing in the smells of summer and vanilla, of pure Alessandra, he was prepared to linger there, to relish in this moment of pure joy. Had he ever felt such contentment?
That was when she full-on cupped his ass in her hands.
“You’re like a solid piece of rock. Everywhere.”
He pulled away enough to look her in the eye.
“I am a vampire, love.”
“And
you’re all like that?”
“To a degree. The curse made us stronger.”
Her wrinkled brow told him she wasn’t convinced. She was quiet a moment, as if contemplating his words. Then she said, “What the hell was that?”
Unable to restrain himself from touching her face, he traced the outline of her lower lip with his thumb. So soft, so perfect.
“I told you, you are stronger than you realize. And many of the heightened senses I enjoy, you do as well.”
“OK, but—”
That light returned, and this time, it moved toward them.
Tearing herself from him, Alessandra began gathering her mutilated undergarments and thrusting her head into her dress. For his part, Kenton wasn’t as keen on getting dressed, but he supposed at this point there was no help for it.
When the light shone on them a few moments later, he’d managed to get his pants on at least.
“Who’s there?”
Shoving his hands into his shirtsleeves, Kenton didn’t bother attempting to close it. After all, there were no buttons to speak of. He moved Alessandra behind him.
“Just two wayward lovers, my friend.”
“This is federal—”
“We’ll be on our way,” he said.
“Miss Fiore?”
The guard had come up to them at an angle that made it impossible to hide her face.
“Oh God,” she groaned.
“You’re the new professor at the university.”
The man’s censure was as painfully obvious as Alessandra’s discomfort.
“He’s the security guard at the college too,” she whispered to him. “Not good.”
Kenton leapt down the stairs and walked up to the man, likely in his fifties with a belly to attest to years of beer drinking, and grabbed his wrist.
“What in the—”
Without pause, Kenton lowered his fangs, pulled the resisting man’s wrist toward his mouth, and drank. He could hear Alessandra jumping down from the train car behind him. By now, the man had stopped struggling. Though he did not need to feed, Kenton relished the hot copper taste nonetheless.
“Kenton, stop! What are you doing?”
The intensity of her response reminded him of Alessandra’s heightened sense of danger at the hands of a vampire. “You can’t kill him—”
Her panic cued the end of his meal. Releasing the man’s wrist, he took out the ever-present handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the spot of blood.
The puncture wound had already healed.
Coming out of the trance the feeding had put him in, the guard looked at them as if seeing them for the first time.
“What . . . what’s going on here?”
Kenton pulled his shirt closed with one hand and grabbed Alessandra’s wrist with the other. He could feel her eyes still on him.
“Thank you, sir, for checking on us. As I said, we were just taking a leisurely walk out here—”
“It’s not safe to be near the tracks at night. I suggest a walk down there.” He pointed to the sidewalk that led toward the town’s center.
“My thanks,” Kenton said with a nod. He wasted no time in leading Alessandra away. Anticipating her questions, he said, “I had no intention of killing him, love. A vampire’s bite renders its victim helpless for a time. They feel no pain, only . . . as if they’d been drugged. The whole night will be foggy to him now. Likely he won’t even remember seeing you.”
As they walked back toward the square, Kenton rolled up the sleeves of his tattered shirt.
“How is that possible?”
He didn’t dare look at her. The implications of what had just happened had begun to seep their way into his addled brain. She is a Cheld. Alessandra might have killed him, or at least had a better opportunity than anyone before her.
“Part of the counter-curse, the Balance, I imagine. It allows us to travel the world undetected.”
“The counter-curse? Balance?”
Shit. He might as well tell her that he’d spent his long life hunting Cheld, like her, ensuring that very Balance did not end the life of those he loved. Not only had he revealed himself, he had actually encouraged her to use her strength, to tap into her dormant power.
“Another long tale,” he said as they followed the uneven pathway toward her house.
And in a week, Lawrence, or his sister, would happily share it with her. Once she knew what he’d done, to her relatives, she would turn on him. The time they spent together now only ensured she’d feel furious and betrayed.
He was a fucking fool.
“Let’s get you home,” he said, forcing a neutral tone. The incident with the guard had left him shaken. He’d had no intention of revealing the particulars of a vampire’s bite to Alessandra. Though he did not know what made a Cheld turn against vampires—whether it was the way they were taught, as Lawrence claimed, or instinct, as he and his brothers had always believed— surely it was dangerous to bring her too deeply into their world.
Earlier tonight, she’d spoken to him of how her life had forever changed with knowledge of vampires. Each step she took into his world ensured she would not go back.
His stomach roiled at the thought of what he had to do tomorrow, but there was no help for it.
Kenton was well and truly screwed.
Chapter 17
Nothing.
No call. No text. No dropping by to say, “Hello, Alessandra. I just wanted to reaffirm that Saturday night was the most mind-blowing sex of my extremely long life.”
Alessandra turned around in her bed for the umpteenth time and buried her head in the pillow. Too warm. She flipped it over and tried again. There. Nice and cool and . . . uh! Get out of my head.
It was no use.
Most summers, her favorite part of having three months off was sleeping in. Alessandra loved the nights and despised the mornings. But thanks to a smoking hot vampire named Kenton, the idea of sleeping in was as preposterous as going another day with literally zero contact from him. Admittedly, she hadn’t reached out to him either, and it had only been one day, but still.
Going through the motions, she washed her face and brushed her teeth, refusing to get dressed just yet. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least remain in her pajamas. She’d spent the day in them before, after all, much to Toni’s amusement. Alessandra had spent the morning after her night with Kenton researching everything she could find about vampires. Most of it, she’d quickly realized, was crap. Stories of pasty monsters hiding from the sunlight and rising from coffins to find their next drink of blood.
The fact that she knew it was crap because she’d met an actual, honest-to-God vampire still felt like nothing short of a miracle. But she couldn’t deny this alternate world, the one she’d just learned of a week ago, existed. It was a fact, as undeniable as the blue of the sky or the fact that Stone Haven residents liked to gossip.
The bigger question was how exactly she fit into that other world.
No, Alessandra, the bigger question is why hasn’t he called?
That she should worry about Kenton’s lack of communication more than the idea that there were creatures walking the earth capable of killing humans with one bite . . . and he was one of them . . . that was slightly problematic. And then there were her concerns about her family. Were her mother and brother in any danger? Her father hadn’t known anything about his family of origin, or so she thought, but Kenton and Lawrence had found her. Would they seek out her brother too? She still had so many questions. Too bad the source of her answers had gone totally MIA. It somehow felt wrong to go to Lawrence, not Kenton, for answers. But if he didn’t call soon—
“You look like crap.”
A cup of tea waited for her on the counter.
“Thanks.”
“You’re up early.”
Toni, an early riser, liked to relax before work, sipping her tea at the kitchen table or on the front porch without a care in the world. Alessandra preferred to fly out the door a
t the very last minute, eking out every last second of sleep possible.
“Yeah. I didn’t sleep well,” she said, grabbing the tea and sitting opposite Toni at the little kitchen table.
Until now, she’d told Toni everything. But for some reason, she’d kept Kenton’s latest revelation a secret.
“I take it Kenton never called?” Toni and Tyler had left for a hike yesterday morning, and Alessandra had retreated to her bedroom by the time they returned.
She heaved a huge sigh, pouring all her frustration into it. “No.”
“Jesus. What the hell happened, anyway?”
She sighed. “Just the most incredible sex of my life, followed by nothing. Nada. No call, zip. Not even—”
“OK, I’ve got the picture.” Toni leaned her elbows on the table. “You will tell me about the sex. But in the meantime, get your ass upstairs and change. This isn’t one of your pajama days. You’re coming to work with me.”
“Yeah. No.”
When Toni crossed her arms, it was never a good thing.
“So your master plan is to mope? Wait for something, anything, while you engage in an epic battle in your head over whether or not to just text him first? And here I thought you were done ‘playing games.’”
She thought about that for a minute.
“Yep. That’s the plan.”
Which actually went against the grain. Alessandra was not usually the type to mope. She made things happen. Set goals and achieved them. Did the things people told her not to do. Kicked ass and took names.
Until now.
For some girlish reason she didn’t care to analyze, she needed him to be the one to reach out first.
“Get. Dressed.”
She wasn’t going to win this battle. Which was how she found herself sitting on her usual stool at Curiosities not half an hour later, leafing through a deck of returned conversation cards emblazoned with red skulls on their front.
“‘If you were a ghost, who would you haunt?’” she read.
Toni closed the cash register and cocked her head to the side.
“I would haunt Kenton Morley for making my friend miserable.”
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