Alone (5 page)

He pushed back his chair and stood. For a
moment, she thought he would touch her again, place his palm
against her cheek. Heat spread from the centre of her chest,
flooding down into her belly and coalescing between her
legs.

I
nstead, he took a step away.

“
I don’t want you to choose
because of me. What would you have done if I hadn’t stopped your
husband tonight? Would you have let him do what he wanted and then
pretended nothing happened?”

A lump formed in her throat and her eyes
burned with tears. She would never admit it, but he’d called her
out. She would have done exactly as he claimed.

“
I can’t save you,” he said.
“You’re the only one who can do that.” With those words burning in
her ears, he turned and walked away

“
Wait,” she called out.
“Please, wait.”

He ignored her and kept walking,
disappearing through the doorway and into the corridor.

The moment he left the room, the blown
light above her head flickered back to life. The tears welling in
her eyes trickled down her cheeks and plopped onto the back of her
hand.

Her coffee sat cold and
untouched.

Chapter Four

For almost three hundred
years
,
Sebastian Bandores survived alone.

He sat on the flat roof of the hospital,
tormented by thoughts of the dark-eyed woman. The night sky hung
above, thick cloud blocking the stars. In front of him stood the
hospital’s emergency helipad, and beyond, the lights of the city
shone. On any other night the beauty of the scene before him would
block out all emotion but tonight the sight meant
nothing.

The vampire stood and walked to the edge
of the roof. A wall divided him from the multi-story drop below. He
peered over the edge, watching the lights from the cars below move
like a procession of tiny fireflies. The height didn’t affect him.
Sebastian had no reason to fear the drop. If he jumped now, just
stepped off the roof, he would be all right. He wouldn’t hit like a
normal person; instead, his body would brace, his legs would take
the impact and he would land, cat-like, and unharmed.

Nothing could harm him. He was invincible,
immortal.

At least he’d believed as much until the
dark-haired woman caught his attention; running through the
streets, long hair streaming behind, her eyes so haunted he
imagined some terrible, invisible entity chased her.

Sebastian had never been involved with a
human before, not since his own human life ended. What was so
different about this one? Was it that the desperate, haunted look
in her eyes was so similar to the one surely present in
his?

She’d seemed trapped, as if whatever
tragedy she carried would always be a part of her.

Sebastian understood; the pain he carried
forged what he was today. He would never escape what he had
become.

He told himself he followed to be sure of
her safety. He told himself she might have children and a loving
husband waiting for her, but Sebastian knew that wasn’t true. What
woman ran so with such desperation through the busy streets of LA
and had a happy home?

So he followed and saw her hand
shaking as she put the key in the lock. He
smelled
the fear as she walked into the house. By
then, he couldn’t bring himself to leave, couldn’t bring himself to
walk away.

So he stayed, waited and
watched.

When her husband grabbed her by the
neck and threw her to the floor, Sebastian fought to not leap
through the window and rip the man’s throat out. Only his desire
not to interfere with her life held him back.

But still, he didn’t leave.

Sebastian wanted to
know
this woman. He
needed to discover who she was, what drove her.

He couldn’t understand why she stayed with
the abusive scum, what prevented her from packing her bags and
leaving. Sadness radiated from her. If she was so unhappy, why not
do something about it?

Sebastian hadn’t been given a choice of
how his own destiny would unfold. The choice had been taken away by
someone who thought it all right to be possessive, to take what
they wanted at any cost, to own another person.

He wouldn’t do that to her.

Guilt had weighed heavily upon him as he
watched her change for bed. He’d been unable to tear his eyes away
when she slipped out of her jeans, exposing her long, bare legs.
She stood with her back to the window, her arms raised up and
pulling her sweater over her head. Her long hair caught in the
material before falling in a cascade around her shoulders. Reaching
behind, she unhooked the clasps of her bra, revealing her naked
back, a long line ending in a simple pair of white cotton panties
and the gentle swell of her bottom.

How badly he had wanted to reach
out and touch her skin. To lay his head against her chest; feel her
warmth and the thud of her heartbeat beneath his ear. The longing
gripped him like an addiction and he thought he might lose himself
in it; hell, he
wanted
to lose himself in it. He craved, just for a moment, to
forget his nature.

Such desire and need for her.

The only thing he had ever desired so
strongly was blood.

Sebastian had watched her husband come
to bed and force himself upon her. He watched as she begged him to
stop and her pleas were ignored.

Then he could watch no
longer.

After three hundred years, he moved beyond
the capability of the human eye. Rage descended like a red haze
across his vision and he no longer wanted to control it.

He wanted to kill this man, make him
pay for harming her, but forced himself to stop.

If he killed her husband, he would only be
doing what had been done to him. He would be taking away her
choices. By injuring her spouse, he’d hoped the balance of power
would shift to her, giving her the strength to leave.

Sebastian had been naive to think she
would choose to escape. God, the word ‘naive’ made him laugh. To
think that even after three hundred years he could still be such a
thing.

He’d meant it when he told her he wasn’t
asking her to leave for him. Their being together was impossible,
but it didn’t stop him wanting her to be happy. To go through each
day knowing some creep tormented her while he remained helpless to
do anything, filled him with fury and made his heart ache in some
inexplicable way.

M
any years had passed since he’d last felt
this way. He thought the part of him that knew how to love had died
along with his humanity.

Torn between going back to make her change
her mind, and leaving for good, he hesitated on the
precipice

He needed to leave. The only one who could
save her was herself.

Sebastian walked the circumference of the
roof until he faced the opposite building.

The vampire lifted his face to the
night sky.

Blood hung on the air
tonight.

Another of his kind hunted in the city;
maybe more than one. Sebastian grew uneasy. Vampires were uncommon
and, like other large predators, hunted alone. Their solitary
nature made them unnoticeable. Los Angeles was his city; he didn’t
need, or want, another of his own moving in on his
territory.

Without another thought, he leaped into
the night, one leg outstretched, arms raised. He soared through the
air, relishing the moment of weightlessness before hitting the
concrete roof at a run. The impact jarred his bones, muscles
tightened to breaking point, but he felt no pain.

He moved stealthily, leaping from building
to building, heading home. If he stayed anywhere near her, he would
go back.

Sebastian owned a house in the hills; a
luxurious, eight bedroom mansion with a pool and an acre of
grounds. He never had any trouble procuring money; rich
people—especially those who had grown rich doing something they
shouldn’t—left huge amounts of cash in their homes and never
reported it stolen. Of course, a few centuries ago acquiring
property had been an easier process. Simply knocking on the owner’s
door and offering a disgusting sum of money had sealed the deal.
Now he had to deal with ‘identity theft’ and ‘fraud’. Luckily, he’d
purchased his house before celebrities decided the hills were the
place to live. At least many of those celebrities kept the same
timetable he did.

Los Angeles was one place where
night-living went completely unnoticed.

Chapter Five

Serenity lay in bed,
fully
clothed, waiting for him to come to her.

The nurse at the hospital sent her away
from Jackson’s bedside, saying she would be better off at home. She
would be more use to her husband by getting some rest.

S
leep, however, eluded her.

An unread book lay discarded at her side
and the bedside lamp cast a warm glow across her pillow.

The bedroom window stood wide open. The
night’s air hung thick and muggy around her. Jackson always hated
to sleep with the window open, so why not? Doing so defied Jackson;
at least so she told herself. Serenity refused to admit the real
reason for lying in bed with her clothes on at two-thirty in the
morning. She ignored how every fiber of her soul listened for her
stranger; every tiny creak, scratch, or thump making her leap out
of her skin and sit up in anticipation. Her whole body ached for
him and the open window invited his presence.

Didn’t she think it strange how she didn’t
listen for the doorbell instead? She didn’t want to face the
obvious questions, like how he knew where she lived and why he’d
been in her house? To any outsider, wouldn’t this man look like a
stalker?

Serenity sighed and rolled over, resting
her hand beneath her cheek. What was wrong with her? A married
woman shouldn’t act this way. No matter how bad the marriage, she’d
made a promise when taking her vows, one she had intended to
keep.

What about him?
a voice whispered in
her head.
What about Jackson’s vows? Do you think he cares about them
when he’s smacking you around?

Serenity clung to the hope that she
stayed because she might still love a part of Jackson. If things
were good, he made her feel like the most special person in the
world, but a long time had passed since he’d instilled such
emotions in her.

When she first met Jackson, Serenity
thought he was the solution to her problems. She’d been desperate
to get out from under her stepfather’s roof and Jackson had told
her all she wanted to hear; she was beautiful and he would take
care of her. So she moved out from one man’s roof and straight
under another’s. At first, everything had been great. He hadn’t
laid a finger on her until nearly a year after their wedding
day.

The first time happened shortly after
their first miscarriage. They had been so excited about the baby,
but then she woke up one morning with blood in her underwear—too
much blood—and a visit to the doctor confirmed their worst fear,
she had lost the baby.

The physician told them miscarriage was
normal and gave them some worryingly high statistic how one in
every five pregnancies miscarried before twelve weeks. He said
losing the baby wasn’t her fault; she couldn’t have done anything
to cause or prevent it. Of course, his reassurances didn’t make her
feel any better and she replayed the last few weeks over in her
mind. Did she lift something heavy? Did she accidently eat
something with raw egg?

Serenity
kept blaming herself and saw the
accusations in Jackson’s eyes. Ruining one of their pans while
cooking dinner was enough of an excuse for him to take his loss out
on her.

Afterward, he’d been so apologetic. They
cried in each other’s arms and he promised it would never happen
again. Except she would hear those words over and over.

Then she fell pregnant a second time and,
once again, lost the baby. With the next she managed to reach
twenty weeks gestation but, at their twenty-week scan, the
technicians were unable to locate a heartbeat. That one had been
the worst. She gave birth to the child, an impossibly tiny,
doll-like baby her body had killed.

The next time she became pregnant,
Serenity couldn’t even bring herself to tell Jackson. When she lost
that one at eight weeks, she sobbed in private and tried to act
like nothing was wrong.

Her life had no meaning. Incapable of
nurturing a child inside of her, what was the point in her
existence? Her body killed her babies; as though she was poisonous,
toxic. Serenity hated herself.

Consequently, the beatings she received on
a regular basis were nothing less than she deserved. She couldn’t
blame Jackson for hating her. After all, her body denied him a
family. She wondered, if they had children, would their lives be
different?