Bad Blood (Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, Vol. 3) (10 page)

When Dante made no move to start the car, I stole a sideways look at him.

He grinned from ear to ear.

“What?” I demanded.

He gave a slight headshake. “You’re so damn cute.”

I wasn’t cute. I was angry. I opened my mouth to tell him, but he beat me to the punch.

“And you’re right. I’ve been an ass. The truth is I’ve never had a serious girlfriend.” Dante began tapping the steering wheel. “I’ve never wanted to… until you.”

I’d never considered myself a sucker for honeyed words, but damn he made my heart soar in the most weightless sort of way when he said those things.

“I haven’t been with anyone in seven months, not since we went out for pizza together.”

Seven months! For a hot-blooded young man like Dante, that was like the Sahara of all dry spells. No wonder he talked dirty every chance he got.

The night we had pizza hadn’t even been a date. I couldn’t believe he’d hold out for someone who wasn’t a sure thing. It made me believe he really did care about me.

Dante’s car keys jingled right before he turned on the ignition.

I gave him another look, no longer sure of the plan.

Dante shot me a dimpled grin. “Let’s get out of here. Grab lunch. Go for a walk along the coastal trail. What do you say?”

“I’d say that sounds fine to me.” I shrugged casually, but inside my heart hummed a happy tune. I’d never been called cute before, or ever expected Dante to live like a monk until my return. We weren’t even going out when I left.

That was a hell of a lot more than I could say for Fane. Fane had shacked up with Valerie the moment I broke up with him, then bitten Noel when Valerie ditched him for Gavin. Death was overrated all right. It was high time I chose life.

5

I didn’t know what I would have done without Dante in the final days leading up to fall semester. We bought textbooks and school supplies together. He gave me a campus tour. It had been easy to take an in-state college for granted, but now that the first semester was approaching, I suddenly felt the way I did before starting high school—magnified by ten.

This was college!

All my clothes were unpacked, and I’d even put a couple posters on the wall. Dante offered to help me paint my room any color I wanted, but I was more interested in getting everything ready before school started.

Yep, I dug my heels in and decided to stick it out.

No way was Noel chasing me out of the house. It was great, and so was the location. Two out of three. Couldn’t have it all. The key to cohabitation was simply a matter of treating Noel like any other unwanted roommate. As long as we kept out of each other’s way, it might possibly work.

She had to leave early for high school, giving me time to relax with my tea and toast before my first class started at ten. Since I didn’t have homework yet, I used the time to assemble my first-day-of-college outfit—jeans, tee, and a cardigan.

Once dressed, I headed back downstairs to spend my remaining half hour flipping through the first chapters in my textbooks. Before I cleared the kitchen, someone knocked at the front door. I turned around, heading the way I’d just come.

I hoped it wasn’t my mom surprising me on my first day of school. I’d told her she could come see the place at the end of the week—not while I was a bundle of nerves on my first day.

I hand-brushed my hair over my shoulder as I walked to the entryway. When I opened the door, it wasn’t my mom waiting outside, but Fane Donado.

He stood a foot from the door all casual-like: tall, lean, and dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a graphic tee of a screaming Indian head with skyscrapers for a mohawk. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, which put me face to face with his beautiful abs. Admiring them for even a second was out of the question.

“Aurora Sky,” he said with a familiar inflection that made my heart ache just a little.

How dare he? My lips curled back in outrage.

“Noel’s not here.”

“I’m not here to see Noel.”

“What do you want, Fane?”

He straightened. “To clear things up. You took off before I got a chance.”

“I’m not interested in hearing your excuses.”

Before I could close the door, Fane stopped it with his hand. He leaned into me, which made me pull back. His body moved forward as mine withdrew, into the entryway. Fane shut the door behind him.

“I did not invite you in,” I said.

This was supposed to be my space. Bad enough I had to share it with Noel Harper. Now I had Fane showing up unannounced on my first day of college. If only real vampires had to receive permission to enter. But there was nothing mythical about them. They were all just undying brutes.

“We need to talk,” Fane said.

“Then why didn’t you call?”

Six months of radio silence. True, I wouldn’t have picked up or returned his call, but he could have at least tried.

Fane frowned. At least he kept his distance now that he’d shown himself inside.

“This is a conversation I wanted to have face-to-face. I stopped by your house six months ago and your mother said you’d left the state and weren’t coming back.”

I snorted. Good ‘ol’ Mom. In this case I found her lie more funny than upsetting.

“Well, I don’t have time to talk right now. I need to leave for class in thirty minutes.” Speaking of which, “Shouldn’t you be at school? How did you get this address?”

“I’m not going to school this year,” Fane said. “And I got your address from Noel.”

Of course, good old Noel. At one time she thought Fane and I were a bad idea. Now she had him showing up unannounced at my doorstep. I should write her a thank you card.

Fane’s jaw moved from side-to-side as though chewing on an invisible toothpick.

“How come you never told me that Valerie worked in your division?”

My mouth flew open. “Who told you that?”

When Fane didn’t answer I threw an arm in the air. “Well, of course, Noel! Noel gave it all up, didn’t she?” What the hell was wrong with her? What part of secret government agency didn’t she get? I’m pretty sure sharing the identities of informants with a vampire was a big fat no-no.

Fane started toward me then stopped when I pulled back.

He stretched his arms out. “Noel and I never hooked up. She was concerned vampires could identify her blood type by taste and potentially associate her involvement with your vampire hunting organization. Given her knowledge and my past relationship with Valerie, she asked me to perform a taste test—a comparison between their blood types and whether I detected something similar.”

Oh, “perform a taste test” like it was something clinical rather than lips, teeth, and tongue.

“And you just stumbled into the first bedroom you came across?”

Fane stared at me a moment before answering. “That’s right.”

“This is such crap, Fane!”

“I know how it sounds.”

What about Noel’s excuse that she’d been trying to make Gavin jealous? She was such a little liar. I was more inclined to believe Fane.

Either way, a true friend wouldn’t use her friend’s ex to make another guy jealous. And if Fane really needed to perform a taste test, Noel could have used a knife to make a cut and dripped her blood into a spoon or any other indirect object.

There were simply no excuses.

I opened my mouth to say so when Fane added, “Noel had some really dark things going on in her personal life. She needed my help.”

Noel had dark things going on in her life? Noel!

She certainly looked like she was doing okay now.

This was too much.

My fingers curled into fists. My shoulders hunched, making my neck ache.

“Do you have any idea what happened to me after I left you two at the palace?”

Fane tilted his head.

“Marcus tried to kill me. Not right away, oh no. First he duct-taped my arms, legs, and mouth and chained me to his bedroom ceiling. Then he tried to murder me inside his music room. Ever seen it?”

Fane tried to reach for me, but I moved aside swiftly. He did not get to comfort me.

His lips pressed together firmly.

I straightened my shoulders. “But I killed him first. I’m sure it’s been a heavy blow for the vampire community around here.”

I watched Fane’s face for some kind of reaction, anything. Then I saw it, the flash of emotion I’d been waiting for, wanting.

His jaw tightened. The bridge of his nose wrinkled as his angry eyes hit mine. “You think I care about Marcus? It’s you I was worried about.”

He stepped towards me, but I was quicker, slipping past, getting behind him and beside the door.

“You need to go,” I said.

My heartbeat had turned irregular the moment he showed up. The longer he stayed the more shallow my breaths became. I needed to breathe again.

As I reached for the doorknob Fane suddenly said, “I know why you broke up with me.”

My hand froze mid-reach and my breath stopped altogether.

The way he stared into my eyes felt intrusive. We shared history, Fane and I. A brief, but intense past that always seemed to linger just below the surface no matter how hard I tried to push it down.

I broke eye contact, only to land on his lips as they moved.

“I know you did it to protect me from Valerie.”

Let me guess? Noel. That girl needed to be strangled in her sleep.

Fane leaned closer.

Static filled my insides, humming and buzzing, putting me into a temporary trance. It was that sensual voice and those damn lips. I couldn’t look at them and not think about kissing him. Not that I’d ever act on it again. Fane had said I wasn’t ready to cross that line, but he’d blown that bridge up with a cannon ball. Unfortunately, it didn’t make his lips any less appealing. I was like an addict who would forever miss the taste of nicotine even knowing every lungful was detrimental to my health.

Fane moved in, inching his way up to me, our lips now a breath apart. His liquid brown eyes shone as he leaned forward.

What the hell was he doing? First of all, I was kind of with Dante. Second of all, no! No! No! Never! Fane had hooked back up with Valerie, pushed me away, and, for his fina
l
pièce de résistanc
e
, bitten Noel. Some guys had no right to a second chance. Add vampire to the list of offenses and that’s what I called the final nail in the coffin. We had no business being together in the first place.

I leaned back abruptly. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Fane’s forehead wrinkled in confusion.

My body stretched and straightened into combat mode.

“Aren’t you forgetting how you hooked up with Valerie after I ended things in an effort to sav
e
yo
u
?”

Fane’s voice sobered. “I did that so she’d leave you alone. Valerie’s dangerous. If I didn’t humor her she very likely would have gone after you.”

My shoulders straightened even more. “Yeah, well, I’m dangerous, too.”