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“A vampire,” he finished for her. “Yes.”
“That’s impossible.” Tessa fought against the wild panic clutching at her heart, squeezing her throat tight until she felt as though she’d never draw another breath.
But even as she tried to deny it, she knew it was true. She’d seen his…fangs. God. Her head felt as if it were going to explode. She couldn’t believe this was happening. There had to be some other explanation. Trick of the light. Her eyes went weird on her, that was all. She’d seen something that wasn’t there.
Vampires only existed in television shows. Really gorgeous vamps, with souls who didn’t bite people. Well, she told herself with another shocked look at him. He had the gorgeous part down pat. Who knew about the biting. Oh, God. A vampire.
This was so not happening. Clearly, the years on the run had pushed her over the edge. Her brain had finally snapped and who could blame her?
“Impossible,” she repeated firmly, determined to not go believing in imaginary creatures—no matter how gorgeous they were.
“Is it?” He lifted both hands and she saw the burns marking his skin. Brain whirling, she remembered the same scorch marks she’d seen on his skin earlier, when she’d found him lying in the dawn.
Sunlight.
“No way,” she said, fingers tightening on the bookshelf until she wouldn’t have been surprised to see indentations from her grip smashed into the heavy wood.
He blew out a breath, scraped one hand through his thick hair and slowly stalked the confines of a hidden room she’d been completely unaware of. She kept her gaze on him, and still managed to give the small room a quick once-over. There was a square table and four chairs. A single bed pushed against one wall and several empty shelves along another. It was a safe room of some kind, she thought as he spoke again.
“Believe me or don’t. That’s your business.”
He sounded tired. And she could understand that. Nearly going up in flames was bound to take a toll. Even from across this distance, she saw the scorched, burned flesh on the backs of his hands and on his face. He had to be in terrible pain, but he showed no sign of it.
And despite the evidence in front of her, Tessa argued with the only possible conclusion. She fixed her gaze on him and found the tattered threads of her courage. “Vampires don’t exist.”
“Not if you don’t want them to.” He leaned against the empty shelving and blew out a breath.
“If you are one, and I’m not saying you are,” Tessa hedged, “why didn’t you bite me before?”
He gave her a long, thoughtful stare. “Thought about it.” His gaze lowered to the base of her neck. “Still thinking about it.”
Her stomach turned over and fear quickened within only to dissipate a moment later. He’d had ample opportunity to kill her, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d warned her off. Tried to make her leave him alone. And right now, he was trying to scare her into backing away.
“You’re lying again.” She shook her head. “If you’d thought about biting me, you would have.”
“No,” he said with a smile that curled her toes. “I’m not lying. I wanted to drink you.”
She sucked in air like a drowning person and felt the world tilt at a weird angle. As he stared at her, she could almost feel his mouth at her throat and a part of her wondered desperately what that would feel like.
Was he making her feel like this?
“Why didn’t you then?”
Wincing, he rubbed one hand with the other and shrugged. “You were trying to help. Seemed ungrateful.”
“A polite vampire?” Why did that sound so much weirder?
He laughed shortly, used the toe of his boot to pull out one of the ancient chairs and dropped onto it as if he didn’t have the strength to stand any longer. Bracing one arm on the table, he leaned back, kicked his feet out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. “Let’s say old habits are hard to break. Good manners being one of them.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
“I told you to leave me alone.”
“You didn’t tell me this though.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me anyway,” he pointed out.
“True.” She wouldn’t have. If he’d been honest with her, she’d have thought he was crazy. She could hardly believe his truth now, and she’d seen the evidence with her own eyes. He had fangs, for Pete’s sake. Sunlight had burned him. Another moment or two and he would have died. But, could someone already dead actually die again?
Who would ever have guessed she’d need the answer to that question?
“So now what?” she asked. “I mean, now that I do know, what’re you going to do to me?”
“Nothing,” he muttered and slapped one hand against the table.
“Why should I believe that you’re not planning to bite me?”
“Because I give you my word.”
“Uh-huh…” Her disbelief colored her voice. She’d heard promises before. And in her experience, promises weren’t worth the breath used to make them.
“Stay in the sunlight,” he told her. “Then you won’t have anything to worry about.”
“Until night.”
He speared her with a look. “Look. I’m tired. I’m hungry.”
She flinched.
He saw it. “You’re right to be careful. I’m a vampire. Definitely not to be trusted. But you’re safe from me, Tessa. I won’t harm you. And I’ll leave.” He closed his eyes. “Just as I told you I would. Right after sundown.”
Strange, but that assurance didn’t make her feel any better. Oh, she believed he wouldn’t bite her. She wasn’t sure why she believed, but she did. It was his promise to leave that she didn’t like. She wasn’t sure why, but the thought of him disappearing from her life was not something she wanted to think about. Staring into his eyes, she saw pain and resignation and regret and felt those same emotions tugging at her.
He didn’t speak again. And Tessa studied him. Without the fangs, he looked like any other man. Better-looking than most though, even with the patches of raw, angry skin on his face and hands.
Every instinct she possessed told her she could trust him. Foolish? Maybe. But she’d learned the hard way to trust her instincts.
They’d kept her alive when her would-be boyfriend had tried to kill her. Those same instincts had led her to this tiny town in Wyoming where she’d found this place and some small semblance of peace. And, they’d led her into the early morning snow to save this vampire’s life.
There had to be a reason for it.
Before she could change her mind, she turned for the kitchen, grabbed the first-aid kit and headed back to where she’d left him. His eyes were open…those dark, penetrating eyes that seemed filled with a strength and a loneliness that drew her to him in spite of his warnings.
Deliberately, she took a step out of the sunlight and into the small room that was filled with shadows and the powerful presence of a wounded vampire. His eyes narrowed on her as she walked closer to him.
“I can’t decide if you’re foolish or brave,” he said at last when she stopped alongside the table. “You’re taking quite a chance, Tessa.”
She held up the kit before setting it onto the table. “You’re hurt. I can help.”
“Why would you want to?”
Good question. Her fear was still rattling inside, twisting her stomach into tight knots. But here she stood, alone with a vampire. “Because I’ve been hurt and alone.”
His gaze narrowed. “You should get the hell away from me.”
“Yeah, you said that already.”
Quicker than she could see, he shot out one hand, grabbed her arm and curled his fingers into her skin. The move was so startling, she jerked back despite her best intentions. He saw it and released her.
“You’re afraid. I can smell it on you.” One corner of his mouth lifted and fell in a blink. “To a vampire, that scent is compelling.”
Her arm tingled where he’d grabbed her. His eyes caught and held her and while she watched, the darks of his eyes bled into the whites until all she could see was her reflection shining back at her from the depths of twin black pools.
“You’re a tempting package, Tessa.” His gaze swept up and down her body with the intimacy of a touch.
“Now you’re deliberately trying to scare me.”
“Damn right.” He straightened up in his chair. “Don’t mistake me for some wounded hero. I’m a monster.”
“No.” Tessa looked at him and shook her head. “You might be a vampire, but you’re not a monster. Trust me on this. I’ve seen a real monster. Up close and personal. You’re nothing like him.”
His gaze narrowed on her. “I’m not a man, either. The man I once was, died a hundred and fifty years ago.”
She opened the first-aid kit. “How?”
“What?”
“How did you die?” She picked up the tube of antiseptic lotion and unscrewed the lid.
“Doesn’t matter.” He shook his head and glanced around the tiny, windowless space.
“Okay. How’d you become a vampire?”
He glanced at her.
“Same question,” she said with a shrug. “Sorry.”
“You’re not reacting the way I would have expected you to.” He looked at her and while he watched her, his eyes softened, becoming again the dark brown they’d been when she first found him.
“More screaming, fewer questions?”
“Frankly, yeah.”
“Well, here’s another one for you,” she said. “How’d you know this room was here? I didn’t and I’ve lived here for six months.”
“I built this room. Hell,” he added on a short, humorless laugh, “built this house.”
“Really?” She picked up one of his hands and tenderly smoothed some of the lotion onto the reddened, already healing skin. Apparently, he didn’t need her help.
As if reading her mind, he said, “We heal fast.”
She put the lotion away and closed the kit with a snap. From the other room, she heard a door open and a man’s voice call out, “Ms. Franklin?”
Grayson snapped a look toward the sound.
Tessa grabbed the first-aid kit. “It’s my guest, Joe Baston.”
“He can’t know I’m here.”
“Yeah. I figured that out on my own.”
But in a few seconds, Joe would be entering the living room and he’d see the bookcase pulled away from the wall. Quickly, Tessa spun to leave the hidden room. She paused at the opening to look back at Grayson. “You’ll be safe here.”
She stared into his eyes as she swung the bookcase closed, sealing her vampire in, and she wondered if she could say the same thing about herself.
Chapter 4
Grayson woke up in the dark. Nothing new there, but for a second he couldn’t figure out why he was awake. He sensed that it was still daylight because his body hadn’t recharged itself yet. The lethargy bore him down into the flattened, hundred-and-fifty-year-old mattress on the narrow bed he’d constructed so long ago.
His burns were mostly healed, but his hands still tingled with the reminder of the close call he’d had. Hell. He hadn’t been caught in daylight since he’d been newly changed. One day with Tessa Franklin and he’d almost become a torch.
Twice.
When the cell phone in his pocket rang again, he realized what had pulled him out of sleep. Grabbing the damn thing, he checked caller ID, then answered—only because he knew this caller wouldn’t give up until he’d gotten through. “What is it, Damon?”
“Where the hell are you?”
Damon St. John, the Vampire King, wasn’t known for his patience in the best of times. With his new reign already threatened by lesser vampires looking to take over, this was clearly not the best of times.
“None of your business,” Grayson told him. “I’m out of this and you know it.”
It was a long-running argument. Damon and he had been friends until Damon had decided to take an active part in governing the vampire “community.” Now, he’d been named king, but there were factions that weren’t happy about Damon being in charge.
Grayson didn’t care. He stayed out of politics, and instead kept to himself, along the way earning a reputation as being a rogue. Which was fine by him. He’d spent the last hundred years keeping a low profile. He’d amassed a fortune out of hard work, luck and, hell, boredom. And the king was counting on Grayson to back him in the fight to keep his throne.
“You’re in Wyoming, aren’t you?” Damon’s disgust came clearly across the phone. “Still punishing yourself for surviving?”
“Back off.” Grayson sat up, bracing his elbows on his knees. This was an old argument, too. Damon had never been able to understand why Grayson hadn’t simply accepted being a vampire. The freedom. The immortality.
Maybe it was because his immortality had come at too high a price.
“I need you back here.”
“You’ve got plenty of support,” Grayson reminded him.
“The other side is counting on you,” Damon said tightly. “They figure if you’re not supporting me, you’ll be on their side. Are they right?”
Pushing himself off the cot, Grayson stalked around the small, dark room. Outside, there was a world going about its business. Here, there were only shadows. And memories. He shoved one hand through his hair. “No,” he said. “They’re not right. I’m out of this.”
