Granted, my mom had just died at the time. Really, I’d wanted a seat on any boat leaving the harbor because I was not stable. Instead of resorting to drugs, I had found a vampire.
I was a different person now, though. An experienced, knowledgeable person who was mostly stable. It would be absurd to assume a vampire could still affect me the same way…
After another sip of whiskey, I dried my hair in a towel and stared at the closed door dividing Darius’s room from mine. He’d closed it after delivering the whiskey. When I went over to him was completely up to me. Despite all his talk about chasing and hunting, he was giving me the control.
He probably knew that if I didn’t have it, I’d tell him to get lost.
“Oh, this is a terrible idea,” I said as another wave of butterflies surged through my stomach. “A terrible, bad idea.” The whiskey went down a little quicker that time.
“But really, what’s the worst that can happen?” I asked myself, needing to hear a voice, even my own. “I should call Callie.”
I shook my head. Another terrible idea. She’d start plotting Darius’s death immediately. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. And if I tried to explain, she’d tell me how stupid I was for having promised such an asinine thing.
“I am stupid. Oh my God, I am so stupid.” Another gulp of whiskey. “But again, what’s the worst that can happen?” I thought about it for a second. “The absolute worst would be if I fall into a trance and start worshipping the ground he walks on. If I lose myself to him.”
That wasn’t helping. I shouldn’t think of the worst.
“What’s the best that can happen?” I asked myself as I shrugged into my T-shirt. “If I stick out my neck, give him the blood he needs, and he absolutely hates the taste, maybe it’ll break the spell I somehow have over him.”
I nodded. Yes. That was the best thing. I needed to hope for that thing.
My yoga pants went on, and I took another shot of whiskey, summoning my courage.
This was worse than slowly creeping around someone’s house waiting for them to pop out like a jack-in-the-box. Horror movies should be made of what I was about to do.
Oh wait, they were. And for good reason.
I closed the sun-proof drapery and faced that door again. It was time. I couldn’t stall any longer.
I felt like dead Reagan walking.
When I reached the door, I hesitated, then ran back for another shot. In times like these, I wished I had a normal person’s alcohol tolerance. As it was, the alcohol was just taking the fine edge off. I still had a lot of stress and anxiety. A lot of stress and anxiety.
Back at the door, I lifted my hand to knock. Then realized it was technically my door.
After opening it, I sucked in a breath.
All of the available raised surfaces were covered in lit candles, radiating warm, flickering light. Rose petals littered the floor and the made bed. Darius sat on his sofa, dressed in a tailored suit and swirling a glass of something brown in a snifter.
As I walked in on wooden legs, he inhaled the contents of his glass before taking a sip. He turned his gaze to me. “I miss a good cognac.”
“I…should change…” It wasn’t quite a question, but was definitely leaning in that direction.
“Of course not. You look as beautiful as ever.” He stood gracefully and waved his hand toward the bottle of cognac on the coffee table in front of him. “Please, would you care for a glass? Or perhaps you’d rather bring in the whiskey? I can also ring for anything you’d like. Name it. Are you hungry?”
I’d called for room service shortly after our return to the hotel—and proceeded to eat more than a starving pig. Otherwise I would’ve said yes. One thing I did love about my dad’s heritage—I could eat all day without gaining a pound. That part definitely wasn’t human. My mom used to curse me for it.
“I’ll get the whiskey.”
“Of course. Or I can grab it, if you’d like to sit down?”
“Yes, please,” I responded meekly. I suddenly felt very out of place. I knew I should act like a lady, but I had no idea how ladies typically acted.
“Please.” He held out his hand.
I avoided it like he carried the plague. Lady or not, touching him needed to wait. I contorted my body expertly enough to win a game of Twister to get around him without making contact, then sat down on the chair adjacent to the couch. He turned on the jets, zoomed into my room, and was back a moment later and pouring me a drink.
I took it with a nervous smile. He sat into his original seat and resumed swirling his cognac.
“What do you think of the events of today?” he asked pleasantly.
I cleared my throat, trying to dislodge the flurry of butterflies still flapping around my middle. “I think the Mages’ Guild is suffocating this town.” I crossed my legs at the knee. Then uncrossed them and recrossed them at the ankle.
“Reagan, please. Don’t be nervous.”
“I am extremely nervous. I don’t know how not to be extremely nervous.”
He smiled. “I realize I am asking a lot of you. That you are honor-bound to follow through. So in that vein, I’ll share a troubled spot of my past with you, if you’d like?”
I crossed my leg at the thigh this time. It felt the most comfortable, while not feeling comfortable at all.
Why did this feel like I was losing my virginity?
“Sure,” I said.
He smiled again, disarmingly. Like he knew my skin felt too tight and my legs were trembling.
“I think you know that I am very old. The last time I was human was in William the Conqueror’s time.” My eyes widened. That meant he was nearly a thousand years old. “You are surprised. Yes, it is hard for someone of your youth to comprehend living that long. And believe me, not many immortals can sustain their life to do so. The human world has always been turbulent. Their ways violent. It was as such when I was human, and it is so now. Magical people are the same. To make it so long is difficult. It requires skill and finesse, not just the ability.”
“But…I thought you were in the French Revolution?”
“As a vampire, yes. I lived a great many of my years in France before I had the means to make my home wherever I chose.” He paused, but when I left it at that, he continued. “You once asked if someone had ever tried to trap me. Tried to get me to a certain location in order to kill me.”
I squinted in thought. That sounded like me, but I couldn’t recall saying it. Of course, I rarely recalled what I’d said a few minutes before, so that was no surprise.
As if he could tell I needed prompting, he said, “It was when we were on the way to the unicorn paddock. You were giving me your thoughts as to why someone would wipe away their footprints. You said—”