I turned to Ivory. “How is my life in danger, but not yours? You’ve known longer than I have.”
“Marcus has shown an interest in you.”
“Maybe I can borrow your aura,” I mumbled. “I don’t understand, Ivory. Why would you hang around people who can control your mind or kill you on impulse?”
“Please,” Ivory said, her voice pleading. “You cannot judge an entire race of elementals on a few bad of their kind. These are the people who have been there for me since…since…”
Tears welled in her eyes, and I swallowed. Her lover had been murdered. That was why she’d moved to Colorado. Now she was flirting with danger, unless, like she said, not all Cruor were bad. Adrian had saved me and healed my wounds. Even if he still looked like he wanted to eat me, he was clearly nothing like Marcus and Marcus’ companions.
Of all people, I should’ve known not to get all judgmental, but life had a funny way of showing me what a hypocrite I was on a regular basis.
Either way, I didn’t need acceptance so badly as to befriend the Cruor. Not that they came across very friendly to begin with.
Adrian released a heavy sigh. “Marcus has strong ties with the Maltorim. It’s best if none of you return to Club Flesh.”
Don’t need to tell me twice.
Ivory nodded. “You can’t repeat any of this to anyone—not even Lauren.”
The whole, ‘with great knowledge comes great responsibility’ crap. Except the last thing I wanted was more responsibility.
Charles pressed his hands onto his knees and stood. “Adrian and I ought to get going.”
“Not so fast,” I said, and not entirely because I wanted to stare at his gorgeous face a little longer. “I have a lot of questions to ask you.”
“I would rather you didn’t,” Charles replied.
I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t think I deserve at least that much?”
Without a word of response, he bowed to kiss my hand, his lips smooth and warm against my skin. The mauve of his lips, hinting at tones of cognac, only made his eyes seem all the more deep teal. I couldn’t break my gaze from his face. Those lips were perfect—full, soft…kissable. But sexy lips wouldn’t excuse him from leaving me to be attacked. He could have taken me with him when he went for help.
Now here he was, moving about so calmly, so confidently, as though he’d done nothing wrong. That alone rendered my attraction to him irrelevant.
Ivory glared in his direction, and he gave a small dip of his head. “Goodbye for now, Sophia.”
“Bye,” I whispered, too stunned by the severity of his gaze to press him any further. I turned to Adrian. “Thanks for…well, thank you.”
Adrian saluted us. “Take care, Miss Sophia. Miss Ivory.”
As Charles passed Ivory on the way out the door, he grabbed her arm. “She deserves to know.”
Ivory pulled free and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll tell her everything,” she said. “Anything to keep her safe.”
Chapter 8
MORNING ARRIVED within an hour of the men’s departure. The sun glinted through the bedroom window, magnifying heat on my face. I rolled away.
“You look much better,” Ivory said from the bedside. “Would anything else help?”
I circled my wrist before pushing myself to my feet. “A shower?” And about a hundred more questions answered.
Did my aura—or lack thereof—have something to do with my curse? Or was I just a vessel for all things horrid and unexplainable?
“Follow me.” Ivory led me down the hall, the carpet in her old home worn but comforting. “I dropped by your house while you slept and picked up a few things. Hope you don’t mind.”
“That’s why I gave you the spare key.”
Actually, when I’d given her the key, it wasn’t so she could pick up clothes for me if I lost my purse while being attacked by vampire-like creatures in the woods behind a supernatural club.
Ivory retrieved two towels from the hall closet. “These are wicked soft.”
The towels blurred somewhere beyond the sudden vision clouding my gaze. A dead bear. Then…darkness. Fur pressed to my nose, my forehead. Well, not mine, but whoever owned the vision.
The vision tilted back, panning across the carcass to the top of someone’s head of dark hair and their hunched shoulders, their face buried against the blood-matted fur. Blood smeared over dark-skinned hands, and a familiar ring with a large scripted ‘A’ I’d seen only hours before hugged a finger on one hand.
Adrian.
The images faded, and Ivory’s towels filled my sight. Egyptian cotton, cinnamon red, according to the tag. I would have called the color rust. I opened my mouth to say something about the vision, but since I didn’t know whether it might be related to my curse, it was probably best to keep quiet.