“Look,” he said gently, “I will make sure you’re safe, but I can offer no more. I can’t risk telling you everything.”
“Forget it,” I said, starting to walk away. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
He stepped behind me and closed his hands firmly over my hips. I froze, and his voice deepened to a low vibration in my ear. “Stop being childish, Sophia. There is no room for that in your life any longer.”
My breath caught in my chest.
“Do not ask me any more questions about my world. I am not your enemy. We will leave for my home now.”
“I don’t need your help,” I said again, fiercely angry now.
Who was he to tell me what to do, let alone demand I obey his every word? I threw his hands from my hips and stormed off, too infuriated to accept whatever protection he might be able to offer.
***
IVORY HAD ALREADY TOLD ME what I needed to do if I encountered a Cruor. Staking, decapitation, and burning. I picked up everything I could need at the local hardware store and hurried home before darkness settled over Belle Meadow.
But once night fell, I sat up in bed with my knees tucked to my chest, too on edge to fall asleep. With all my worries tumbling through my mind, sleep didn’t come until long after the moon stitched itself into the sky.
Chapter 11
A SOFT TAPPING jarred me awake. I held my breath. Silence. I rolled over, and the noise sounded again—louder this time. My window? I rubbed my eyes and checked the clock on my dresser.
2:17 am.
As I stretched across my bed to pull the curtain aside, the glass pane rattled from the force of another knock. I flinched, and the edge of the drapes slipped from my grasp. Probably a branch from the overgrown bushes out front. Shaking my head, I peeked again.
A shadow filled the window frame. I opened my mouth to scream, but clamped it shut when I recognized Charles. I shot out of bed and opened the casement windows.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too.”
“Might have been if I wasn’t sleeping.”
His gaze touched over my body then back up to my face, and my heart thundered in my chest at the idea he was seeing me this way, dressed in nothing but a white tank top and sleep shorts. My face was surely all puffy, and my long blonde curls probably resembled something of Medusa’s offspring.
I crossed my arms. “Are you spying on me?”
“You’re not so interesting that I came to watch you sleep, darlin’,” he said, leaning his hands on the windowsill. He dipped his face to meet my gaze. “I only came to check on you. Now admit it—you’re glad I’m here.”
I wasn’t about to admit anything.
“It’s two in the morning,” I said, hoping to illuminate the oddity of him standing outside my room in the pitch black of night.
Charles arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“No.”
I turned to find something to slip over my tank top, thinking I would meet him outside, but immediately spun back around. The last thing my already tattered reputation needed was my neighbors spotting a man outside my window at this hour.
“Just hurry and climb in before anyone sees you.”
He obliged, closing the windows behind him, while I grabbed my organic terrycloth robe from the hook behind my door and slipped it on.
“Most people knock on doors,” I said, turning around as I tied the belt of my robe tight around my waist.
“I tried. No one answered.”
“Because I was sleeping. You know, that thing most people do at two in the morning?”
He didn’t seem amused. He was too busy standing around with the poise of a male model, dressed in a tidy black shirt and fitted jeans that suggested no one had woken him unexpectedly.
In the dark, his strong jaw, deeply-colored teal eyes, and wide shoulders carried the same seductive heaviness as the night we’d danced at the club, and, in that moment, I craved him from my very core. Craved his hands on my hips, his body pressed to mine…I pushed the attraction away.
He reached up with one hand and touched my hair.
“I like it better down,” he murmured, his hand lingering on my hair, grazing where my collarbone peeked out from my robe.
He brushed my cheekbone with his fingertips to move a loose tendril of hair away from my face. His touch rivaled my better judgment, and I wasn’t entirely sure who would win out in the end. The moment was too intimate.
I stepped back. “Why should I care what you like?”
“I deserve that,” he said, the expression on his face dissolving.
I nodded, though the small movement might not have been perceptible to him. “So what is so important that couldn’t wait till tomorrow?”
“Your life.”
“Pretty melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“I apologize for being so overbearing earlier. I shouldn’t have shown my concern in that way.”
Yeah, he had been pretty damn bossy, but being concerned for another person wasn’t exactly the worst trait a person could have.
I mumbled a silent, “It’s okay.”