Andre broke off the kiss. “We shouldn’t be doing this—not when you’re using glamour.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m in control of it.”
He touched my face. “You might be, but I won’t be in control of myself.” It was strange to think that the king of vampires wasn’t immune to this.
I closed my eyes and pushed the siren in me back to where it came from. The glow of my skin gradually dimmed before disappearing altogether.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much.” Andre’s lips met mine again, but it was a chaste consolation prize of a kiss.
“So, what exactly are we doing in your bedroom?” I asked, looking around.
“Continuing our training. Before you leave tonight, I wanted to teach you how to sheathe and unsheathe your teeth, so that you can control when they come out.”
I exhaled. “That would help a lot.” It had been annoying having to clamp my mouth shut throughout the school day to avoid scaring off classmates and teachers.
He stood up and pulled me to my feet. “Are your fangs out right now?”
My tongue skimmed over my canines. I felt a prick along my tongue and I tasted blood.
Andre’s nostrils flared; he must’ve caught the scent of blood. “That’s answer enough,” he said. “Now what I want you to do is imagine your fangs receding into your gums.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “That’s it?”
“That is it, but you can’t just want your teeth to recede, you have to visualize it happening.”
Great. This was going to be another lesson like the one on captivating prey—I was going to make a hopeless fool of myself.
He took my hands. “Try closing your eyes.”
My pulse hitched from his touch, and I couldn’t help but notice the current between us. Lately the current sometimes quieted when we were together. But right now wasn’t one of those times. “Your touch isn’t exactly helping,” I said.
“You’re nothing if not extraordinary, Gabrielle. I’m sure that you’ll figure your way around it.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said, putting as much sarcasm into the statement as possible. I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing. I imagined my teeth slowly receding back into my gums. In my mind’s eye I visualized the entire process. After I finished visualizing it, I felt my teeth.
Damnit, they were still hanging out.
“Try it again,” Andre said. “This time visualize it differently.”
I didn’t immediately understand what he was asking of me. But as I watched my teeth receded in my mind’s eye, I realized that I didn’t buy my own visualization because gums weren’t muscles; they couldn’t push and pull a tooth. So I imagined them connected to a muscle that could push and pull them. This time, when I ran a finger over my canines, they were back to normal.
“I did it!” I relished this small victory.
Andre’s eyes twinkled. “Practice this over and over again, and eventually you’ll mostly be able to control when they come out and when they slide back into your gums.”
“What do you mean mostly?”
He gave me a predatory look and closed the distance between us. My gums throbbed and my canines slid out. Well hell.
“Sometimes, when you’re scared, surprised, or turned on, they’ll come out before you consciously realize it,” Andre said, his voice husky. “Just like now, for instance.”
I pushed him back to give myself some personal space. “Now you’re just taking advantage of the fact that I’m a hormonal teenager.”
His eyes became hooded and the look he gave me set my skin on fire. “Trust me when I say that around you I’ve been having about as much trouble with my . . . cravings as you are.”
The innuendo in his statement wasn’t lost on me, and at his words the room seemed to heat up by several degrees. “That doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence,” I said, trying to diffuse the rising sexual tension.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed the painting of Andre as a crusader. The distraction allowed me to regain some control of myself. Taking a better look around the room, I realized that nothing here had been replaced.
“The fire didn’t damage anything in your room,” I said.
He looked around along with me. “The fire didn’t really make it back here. But it wouldn’t have mattered. I’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that this particular room is as fire resistant as possible.”
Before I could ask him why he’d bothered to make this room fire resistant but not the rest of the house, his cellphone buzzed. He pulled it out and glanced at the caller ID. “I need to take this. I’ll step out for just a moment.”
And then he was gone.
When he didn’t come right back into the room, I got up and looked around. The wall of books pulled me in. Most of Andre’s reading material here consisted of timeworn, clothbound books. An old edition of Euripides’ plays caught my eye.