Safe Hex With a Vampire (9 page)

“You can control people’s minds?” That
stunned her but she wasn’t sure why that would surprise her. “I
mean I felt like you were trying to do that with me before, but
then I thought about it and it seemed crazy. It’s hard to believe
you could control minds.”

He raised an eyebrow. “This is coming from a
woman who can move things with her mind.”

She actually laughed and it relieved some of
her tension. “You have a point. It must be hard to avoid using it
to get your way all of the time.”

“I don’t really use it that often,” he
admitted with a shrug. “I can control most human minds but I don’t
interact with humans too often. They don’t live long and I can’t
get most human women pregnant.”

“You only get involved with women you can
impregnate?”

“Something happens during pregnancy to
transform the woman. She becomes more like what I am and she
develops the longevity. Although, I guess that didn’t happen with
Claudia, but I’ve never heard of that before now. You need to
understand that if I don’t get a woman pregnant she will live a
normal human lifespan, and then I’ll just have to watch her age and
die. That’s if I’m lucky. I had a longer affair with a woman who I
really liked many years ago. She ended up contracting some human
disease, small pox I think, and died before she reached her
thirtieth birthday,” he explained. “I’ve had other brief affairs
but they always have to end before the women realize what I am. The
older I get the more I realize that it’s just not worth the
heartache. When I was younger I had some relationships that were
really hard to end. As I got older I learned to avoid becoming too
emotionally involved.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she admitted.
“Does that mean you don’t have sex often?”

He laughed. “I guess I should rephrase that.
I don’t have long entanglements with humans. I limit them to one
night now. The woman I tried to kidnap was the first woman I’d ever
met who I couldn’t control. The funny thing is that I only tried
because my cousin wanted me to convince her to go to a party. He
was interested in
her
cousin and thought it would be a great
idea if I seduced the other cousin. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really
very attracted to her, and I intentionally acted like a complete
ass around her. Then I tried mind control because my cousin was
glaring at me. When the mind control didn’t work I decided right
away that we were meant to be together. Unfortunately, she didn’t
feel the same. This didn’t really come as a big surprise after the
way I’d acted. She was uneasy and afraid of me. I figured that if I
could just get her alone for a few weeks she’d get to know me and
things would work out. Yes, I know how crazy that sounds. So,
again, I’m not claiming that I’m good person.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad person, Aiden,”
she said.

He let out a humorless laugh. “After what I
told you?”

“People make mistakes,” she said with a
shrug. “I think it’s time you stopped hating yourself for
yours.”

“You really are too good for me, Tempest,”
he said with something like awe in his voice.

She snorted. “I nearly killed you by
slamming you against a wall. I locked you in the basement. I nearly
drown you. Yet, I’m too good for you? There must be something that
you aren’t telling me.”

His lips curled into a hint of a smile, and
he looked at her from under his lashes. “Why do you do this?”

“Do what?” she asked.

“Run this center, hunt them down,” he
thought for a moment before continuing. “It’s not that I think it’s
a bad thing. I just get the feeling that there’s a story behind
this career choice.”

She sat down on the cot next to him and let
out a weary sigh. “Shortly before I started medical school I met a
man named Brian and we hit it off right away. In fact, we moved in
together after dating for only a month. I had this idea that we
would finish medical school and then get married and have babies.
He just seemed perfect.”

When he didn’t interrupt with a snide
comment, she looked him straight in the eyes. “One of my friends,
Lucy, was raped at a party. My
wonderful
boyfriend was one
of the men who raped her.”

Aiden swore under his breath, and wished
that he hadn’t asked. He wasn’t at all certain why he’d asked, but
something compelled him to want to understand Tempest. It would be
so much easier to just think of her as a man hater. Then he
could write her off. He could write off the attraction and move on
when he left here. She’d already made it clear she didn’t want a
relationship with him so why get to know her? No matter how
illogical it was, he wanted to know everything about her.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you
don’t want to,” he assured her.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I guess you deserve
some sort of explanation for how I started hunting rapists. You did
get caught up in my obsession. Ivy was with me when I found Lucy
huddled behind the bushes in front of the campus library. She
wouldn’t go the hospital or the police. All she did was mumble
incoherently and cry. Ivy was able to read every emotion and every
memory of the rape. She told me what I would never have guessed.
Even after Ivy told me, I had trouble accepting that Brian and his
friends, my fellow med school students, were rapists. When I
confronted him, he told me that it wasn’t rape but yes he had given
in when Lucy had come on to him. I asked about the bruises and he
told me that she liked it rough. I moved out that day. Lucy hung
herself a month later. Brian and his friends are all doctors now. I
finished medical school with them, and my hatred for that type of
man grew every day. I figured it was better to put that hate to
good use.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. He also wanted
to kill someone and couldn’t for the life of himself figure out
why.

“After that I knew that I wanted to help
women who had been abused. Ivy felt the same. We used money from
out trust funds to open this women’s center. At first, it was all
about offering counseling, medical care, and a safe haven. It
didn’t take long to realize that the men guilty of these crimes
often went unpunished. Many times they were never even caught.
That’s when I started hunting. It’s not something that I’ve had to
do often. Mostly, I just provide the medical care.”

When Aiden looked at her he saw something he
didn’t want to see. Tempest looked fragile. Aiden realized that he
didn’t like that, not one bit. Now seemed like a good time to pick
a fight.

“Why don’t you come sit on my lap and let me
show you what a good man can do for you?” He patted his lap.

Tempest shot to her feet.

He stood too and moved until they were toe
to toe. Then he stared down at her.

Tempest didn’t back down even one step. They
stood there, much too close to each other. Aiden could feel her
breasts pressed against him. Then he looked down into her soft
brown eyes. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. No, she was furious,
and he was finding himself incredibly aroused at the prospect of
the fight that was about to happen.

Had she cowered or been intimidated by him,
he would have let her go. Granted he would have been very
disappointed, but he wouldn’t have pushed her. He bent his head
quickly and covered her mouth with his before she could react.

Tempest responded instantly to his lips
against hers. Her hands cupped his cheeks, and
her
tongue
pushed past
his
lips, exploring his mouth.

He groaned into her mouth and planted both
of his hands on her ass. She was incredible; hot, wild, passionate,
and the energy level that she put off was so strong that he had to
struggle to keep himself from feeding off of her.

Then she was gone. She pulled away from him
and shoved at his chest until he released her.

“Oh, God, that was incredible,” he
rasped.

“Incredibly stupid,” she muttered. “I’ll
come back later to talk to you, when you’re not so distracted.”

Then she caught a glimpse of his sketchbook
and her mouth dropped open. “You’re drawing me?”

He nodded slowly.

She picked up the sketchbook and thumbed
through five drawings of herself. Her eyes met his, and she was
blushing. “Why am I naked in all of these sketches?”

He grinned at her. “That’s the way I like to
imagine you.”

She dropped his sketchbook as if it had
burnt her and walked up the stairs muttering about him being a
pervert.

“Wait, Tempest!” he shouted.

She turned to him.

“I need the pills that were in my
pocket.”

She didn’t respond.

“I either need those or I need blood.”

“Blood?” she asked in a startled voice.

“My body can’t absorb most minerals,
especially iron, from normal foods. There was a supplement in my
pocket that I have to take three times a day or I’ll need blood.
Without it, I’ll die.”

“What are you, some sort of vampire?” she
asked with a nervous laugh.

“I guess that’s the best word to describe
me,” he said a little uncomfortably. He’d grown up in a time when
that label would have gotten him killed. Despite the way that books
and movies had romanticized vampires, he was guessing that the
label could still get him killed.

She just stared at him for a long moment.
Without a word she went over to the little cabinet and pulled out
his pill bottle for him.

“Thank you,” he said as he took it from
her.

“This has been a very strange conversation,”
she said softly. “I really just came down here to let you know that
I’m going to take you back to your car in the next couple of days.
I’m sorry it can’t be sooner, but I have some things that need to
be taken care of first. We’ll talk about the other matter later.”
She hesitated before heading back up the stairs. “You do understand
why I can’t let you run around upstairs right?”

He nodded. “Sure, but I still don’t like
being in a cage. What if there’s a fire or something?”

“I can’t explain why, but I need to keep up
the illusion that you are not free to wander around.”

He started to speak, but she held out a
hand. In that hand was a key. He stared at the key, not really sure
if she meant for him to take it.

“In case you want to take a bath, or use the
computer,” she said.

He continued to stare at the key in
disbelief for a minute before taking it. “Thank you. The computer
will be helpful. I really need to check my work email. I put in a
bid last week and I expect to hear back from them any day.”

“What do you do?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Mostly graphic design work.
That’s what this bid is for. I would be working with the
advertising department to come up with an appealing new logo.
Sometimes I get commissioned to do more interesting things.”

She looked at the sketchbook and shifted
uncomfortably. “You’re very talented. Do you always take such
poetic license?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been having some
dreams about you and I think they are inspiring me,” he
admitted.

Tempest looked like she wanted to reply to
that, but obviously thought better of it. “Just lock the door to
the cell before you go to sleep, or if you hear someone opening the
door at the top of the stairs. Keep the key in your pocket. The
door at the top of the stairs locks from this side so you’d only
need a key to get back in.”

With that she headed back out of the
room.

I felt Claudia coming before I heard her.
The energy in the air was vibrating with rage, or at least I
assumed it was rage. Strong emotions were what caused the surges of
energy around her, and rage was the strong emotion I expected that
morning.

The power she exuded amazed me! I was
certain that if she ever learned to control the energy she could
move objects with it.

Excerpt from Roman Draksel’s blog

The sound of footsteps on the stairs and
loud whispers woke Aiden. For a moment he wondered if Tempest had
come back. That thought made him smile, but he knew it was
unlikely. Sure enough, he could tell from the voices that it wasn’t
Tempest so he kept his eyes closed and pretended to be asleep. He
was glad he’d remembered to lock the cell door before going to
sleep.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Yes. I don’t want that
thing
being
bred into our family. Besides, I’m pretty sure Tempest is starting
to like it.”

“That is so totally gross!”

Aiden smiled to himself. The little witch
liked him. Good. Now he just had to figure out what these two
females were after. They obviously didn’t like him. Just in case
they were there to slit his throat, he opened his eyes just enough
to see them. They likely wouldn’t notice in the darkness.

“It is kind of attractive,” one of them said
as she studied him.

“Eww! It’s not even human,” the other said
with obvious disgust.

“I know, but it really does look human.
Tempest will be really pissy if she figures out that we let it go,”
she added nervously.

So either Tempest was lying about letting
him go, or they weren’t in on it. It was probably crazy but he
believed what Tempest had said. Why shouldn’t he? He had the key to
the cell in his pocket. Sure, she could have lied about the door at
the top of the stairs being locked from this side, but he believed
that she meant to let him go. Not that he was in a big hurry to
leave. In fact, now that he had access to the computer so he could
follow up on his business, he preferred to stick close to
Tempest for a little while longer.

“We’ll be at the ceremony when it leaves so
it won’t matter. She’ll never know that we were the ones who let it
out.”

One of them shook him lightly and then
jerked back as though touching him burned her skin. Aiden played
along, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Who are you? What do you
want?”