He frowned. “Though I will not force you to do anything you do not wish to do, I can’t stand here and do nothing.”
“Sure you can. No one made you my keeper.”
After awarding me a long scowl, he took a deep breath and gentled his voice. “Sophia, will you please come stay with me so that I may ensure your safety?”
“No.”
He ticked his head back, his irritation breaking through into his expression once more. “I really don’t wish to fight with you—”
“Then don’t.”
“I only desired to offer protection. I’ll leave you alone now, since I’m clearly not welcome here.”
At the thought of him leaving, my stomach sank, and I frowned. “No…,” I said. “Please stay.”
He reached out and took my hand. “I know I’ve been…contrary with you.”
“Hot and cold,” I said. “Mostly cold.”
“You have to understand that I go to Club Flesh to get away from the human world. I liked you from afar, liked you safe in the world that doesn’t know about my own. I never would have approached you if things hadn’t played out as they have.”
“But they did.”
“They did,” he repeated. “And now I hope it’s all right with you if I stick around, if only to look out for you until this all blows over.”
“I don’t object,” I said quietly, even though I knew I should.
“Then you will come stay with me.”
As much as my pride screamed for me to say no again, my desire to be able to sleep without fear of who might come for me in the night was stronger. I’d be better off with Charles around, staying at a place Marcus didn’t know about and hopefully couldn’t find.
“Only until a more suitable arrangement can be made,” I finally agreed.
His gaze searched mine. I wasn’t sure what he expected to find in my expression, but I was content to stand there with him, despite the rattling of my heart and the flip-flopping in my stomach.
My gaze slid down, taking him in, contemplating how he might look without a shirt on. Definitely there would be stomach muscles involved.
“You all right, Sophia?” he asked.
I shot my gaze back to his. “Of course. What were you saying?”
He leaned closer and whispered, “Nothing,” his gaze now trailing the length of my body.
Charles cleared his throat and traced his finger over the edge of my altar behind him. “You don’t look Wiccan,” he said.
I tried not to smile. Charles wasn’t the first person to say that. For some reason, people thought Wiccans had to be ‘Goth’ or ‘Emo’ or something. Like we’re bound to some law that doesn’t allow us to have pet bunnies or paint our toenails pink or smell like something other than patchouli.
Some people believed something bad must have happened to drive us away from more acceptable religions. As though any other religion can inspire a person, can be something you feel is right, except for Paganism. Paganism, they thought, only happened out of desperation or as some sort of childhood fad.
Then there was the idea that we had nothing to identify with other than being Wiccan, as if our brain was on a constant ticker all day, wicca wicca wicca. What a shocker, we actually thought about other things, too.
So, maybe Charles touched a nerve. A little.
I raised my eyebrows. “What does a Wiccan look like?”
He shrugged. “You, I guess.” He glanced around my room. “Not much of a basketball player, then?”
“Huh?” I followed his gaze. He was staring at the corner of my room, by the door. Oh no. A pair of lacy-black, boy-short underwear lay crumpled in a ball on the floor in front of the hamper.
“You missed.”
Thinking I would be breaking some kind of unspoken rule to touch my underwear with him in the room, I shoved him into the hallway and asked him if he wanted some tea. I pulled the door shut, and before he could respond, my robe caught between the doorframe and the door, and I tripped over my feet and crashed into him, knocking him back against the wall.
He laughed.
Worse: he didn’t stop laughing. He looked down at me, his arms wrapped around me from catching my fall, his shoulders shaking from laughter. My heartbeat ratcheted up at the press of his hard stomach against my breasts.
Finally, he stopped. “You’re blushing again,” he said, his voice low in my ear.
I started to pull back, but he gathered me closer, pressed his face to my hair, and breathed against my scalp. “You smell like honey and amber.”
“My shampoo?”
“No,” he said assuredly. “You’re missing the human smell entirely.”
This coming from the man who sometimes took the form of an animal?
The idea was just too much. I stepped away, the moment a reminder of why we couldn’t be together. This time, he didn’t pull me back.
“If you need blood, that means you’re immortal, right? Like the Cruor?”
His hands slid to either side of my shoulders, and he held me away from him. “I’ve been alive for over three centuries,” he said. “Does that bother you?”