Secret Worlds (45 page)

Tentatively, I grazed his knuckle with my pinky, and he smirked as he slipped his hand around mine once more.

“Don’t get attached.” He whispered the words so quietly, I didn’t know if the words were meant for me or for himself.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, his voice more rigid than usual. “I just don’t want you to expect anything from me.”

Wow. Talk about blunt. I took my hand back. More than anything, I wanted to disappear. I told myself his words had only hurt my pride, but it was more than that.

“I don’t expect anything from you,” I said defensively.

“Good.”

I wasn’t sure why I cared, but I did. Why did he keep leading me on if he didn’t want anything to do with me? “I better get going.”

“We can go to my place now if you like. Perhaps you need some rest.”

I glowered at him. “I don’t need any rest, and I don’t need your help.”

Observing me like one might observe the clouds to determine if it might rain, he let out a sigh. “I hurt your feelings.”

“No,” I lied.

He frowned. “Hurting your feelings is exactly what I’m trying
not
to do.”

Sure had me fooled
. I shrugged one shoulder.

His eyes searched mine. “You can’t trust your feelings right now. There’s still a lot you don’t know, about me or my world.”

“So tell me.”

“Look,” he said gently, “I will make sure you’re safe, but I can offer no more. I can’t risk telling you everything.”

“Forget it,” I said, starting to walk away. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

He stepped behind me and closed his hands firmly over my hips. I froze, and his voice deepened to a low vibration in my ear. “Stop being childish, Sophia. There is no room for that in your life any longer.”

My breath caught in my chest.

“Do not ask me any more questions about my world. I am not your enemy. We will leave for my home now.”

“I don’t need your help,” I said again, fiercely angry now.

Who was he to tell me what to do, let alone
demand
I obey his every word? I threw his hands from my hips and stormed off, too infuriated to accept whatever protection he might be able to offer.

***

IVORY HAD ALREADY TOLD ME what I needed to do if I encountered a Cruor. Staking, decapitation, and burning. I picked up everything I could need at the local hardware store and hurried home before darkness settled over Belle Meadow.

But once night fell, I sat up in bed with my knees tucked to my chest, too on edge to fall asleep. With all my worries tumbling through my mind, sleep didn’t come until long after the moon stitched itself into the sky.

A SOFT TAPPING jarred me awake. I held my breath. Silence. I rolled over, and the noise sounded again—louder this time. My window? I rubbed my eyes and checked the clock on my dresser.

2:17 am.

As I stretched across my bed to pull the curtain aside, the glass pane rattled from the force of another knock. I flinched, and the edge of the drapes slipped from my grasp. Probably a branch from the overgrown bushes out front. Shaking my head, I peeked again.

A shadow filled the window frame. I opened my mouth to scream, but clamped it shut when I recognized Charles. I shot out of bed and opened the casement windows.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you, too.”

“Might have been if I wasn’t sleeping.”

His gaze touched over my body then back up to my face, and my heart thundered in my chest at the idea he was seeing me this way, dressed in nothing but a white tank top and sleep shorts. My face was surely all puffy, and my long blonde curls probably resembled something of Medusa’s offspring.

I crossed my arms. “Are you spying on me?”

“You’re not so interesting that I came to watch you sleep, darlin’,” he said, leaning his hands on the windowsill. He dipped his face to meet my gaze. “I only came to check on you. Now admit it—you’re glad I’m here.”

I wasn’t about to admit anything.

“It’s two in the morning,” I said, hoping to illuminate the oddity of him standing outside my room in the pitch black of night.

Charles arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“No.”

I turned to find something to slip over my tank top, thinking I would meet him outside, but immediately spun back around. The last thing my already tattered reputation needed was my neighbors spotting a man outside my window at this hour.

“Just hurry and climb in before anyone sees you.”

He obliged, closing the windows behind him, while I grabbed my organic terrycloth robe from the hook behind my door and slipped it on.

“Most people knock on doors,” I said, turning around as I tied the belt of my robe tight around my waist.

“I tried. No one answered.”

“Because I was sleeping. You know, that thing most people do at two in the morning?”

He didn’t seem amused. He was too busy standing around with the poise of a male model, dressed in a tidy black shirt and fitted jeans that suggested no one had woken
him
unexpectedly.

In the dark, his strong jaw, deeply-colored teal eyes, and wide shoulders carried the same seductive heaviness as the night we’d danced at the club, and, in that moment, I craved him from my very core. Craved his hands on my hips, his body pressed to mine…I pushed the attraction away.

He reached up with one hand and touched my hair.

“I like it better down,” he murmured, his hand lingering on my hair, grazing where my collarbone peeked out from my robe.

He brushed my cheekbone with his fingertips to move a loose tendril of hair away from my face. His touch rivaled my better judgment, and I wasn’t entirely sure who would win out in the end. The moment was too intimate.

I stepped back. “Why should I care what you like?”

“I deserve that,” he said, the expression on his face dissolving.

I nodded, though the small movement might not have been perceptible to him. “So what is so important that couldn’t wait till tomorrow?”

“Your life.”

“Pretty melodramatic, don’t you think?”

“I apologize for being so overbearing earlier. I shouldn’t have shown my concern in that way.”

Yeah, he had been pretty damn bossy, but being concerned for another person wasn’t exactly the
worst
trait a person could have.

I mumbled a silent, “It’s okay.”

He frowned. “Though I will not force you to do anything you do not wish to do, I can’t stand here and do nothing.”

“Sure you can. No one made you my keeper.”

After awarding me a long scowl, he took a deep breath and gentled his voice. “Sophia, will you please come stay with me so that I may ensure your safety?”

“No.”

He ticked his head back, his irritation breaking through into his expression once more. “I really don’t wish to fight with you—”

“Then don’t.”

“I only desired to offer protection. I’ll leave you alone now, since I’m clearly not welcome here.”

At the thought of him leaving, my stomach sank, and I frowned. “No…,” I said. “Please stay.”

He reached out and took my hand. “I know I’ve been…contrary with you.”

“Hot and cold,” I said. “Mostly cold.”

“You have to understand that I go to Club Flesh to get
away
from the human world. I liked you from afar, liked you safe in the world that doesn’t know about my own. I never would have approached you if things hadn’t played out as they have.”

“But they did.”

“They did,” he repeated. “And now I hope it’s all right with you if I stick around, if only to look out for you until this all blows over.”

“I don’t object,” I said quietly, even though I knew I should.

“Then you will come stay with me.”

As much as my pride screamed for me to say no again, my desire to be able to sleep without fear of who might come for me in the night was stronger. I’d be better off with Charles around, staying at a place Marcus didn’t know about and hopefully couldn’t find.

“Only until a more suitable arrangement can be made,” I finally agreed.

His gaze searched mine. I wasn’t sure what he expected to find in my expression, but I was content to stand there with him, despite the rattling of my heart and the flip-flopping in my stomach.

My gaze slid down, taking him in, contemplating how he might look without a shirt on. Definitely there would be stomach muscles involved.

“You all right, Sophia?” he asked.

I shot my gaze back to his. “Of course. What were you saying?”

He leaned closer and whispered, “
Nothing
,” his gaze now trailing the length of my body.

Charles cleared his throat and traced his finger over the edge of my altar behind him. “You don’t look Wiccan,” he said.

I tried not to smile. Charles wasn’t the first person to say that. For some reason, people thought Wiccans had to be ‘Goth’ or ‘Emo’ or something. Like we’re bound to some law that doesn’t allow us to have pet bunnies or paint our toenails pink or smell like something other than patchouli.

Some people believed something bad must have happened to drive us away from more acceptable religions. As though any other religion can inspire a person, can be something you feel is right, except for Paganism. Paganism, they thought, only happened out of desperation or as some sort of childhood fad.

Then there was the idea that we had nothing to identify with other than being Wiccan, as if our brain was on a constant ticker all day,
wicca wicca wicca
. What a shocker, we actually thought about other things, too.

So, maybe Charles touched a nerve. A little.

I raised my eyebrows. “What
does
a Wiccan look like?”

He shrugged. “You, I guess.” He glanced around my room. “Not much of a basketball player, then?”

“Huh?” I followed his gaze. He was staring at the corner of my room, by the door.
Oh no
. A pair of lacy-black, boy-short underwear lay crumpled in a ball on the floor in front of the hamper.

“You missed.”

Thinking I would be breaking some kind of unspoken rule to touch my underwear with him in the room, I shoved him into the hallway and asked him if he wanted some tea. I pulled the door shut, and before he could respond, my robe caught between the doorframe and the door, and I tripped over my feet and crashed into him, knocking him back against the wall.

He laughed.

Worse: he didn’t stop laughing. He looked down at me, his arms wrapped around me from catching my fall, his shoulders shaking from laughter. My heartbeat ratcheted up at the press of his hard stomach against my breasts.

Finally, he stopped. “You’re blushing again,” he said, his voice low in my ear.

I started to pull back, but he gathered me closer, pressed his face to my hair, and breathed against my scalp. “You smell like honey and amber.”

“My shampoo?”

“No,” he said assuredly. “You’re missing the human smell entirely.”

This coming from the man who sometimes took the form of an animal?

The idea was just too much. I stepped away, the moment a reminder of why we couldn’t be together. This time, he didn’t pull me back.

“If you need blood, that means you’re immortal, right? Like the Cruor?”

His hands slid to either side of my shoulders, and he held me away from him. “I’ve been alive for over three centuries,” he said. “Does that bother you?”

“Not any more than anything else.” I considered him for a moment. He didn’t seem any older than me. “So you’re immortal?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

Charles dropped his hands to his sides. “You are the nosiest woman I’ve ever encountered.”

“You didn’t answer,” I said pointedly, leading him down the hall to the living room.

“We can age if we stop shifting,” he said.

“Then why don’t you?”

“Me?” His voice faltered. “I stick around for my family.”

“Parents? Siblings?”

“Parents.”

“What about work?” I asked. “You can’t keep one employer for three hundred years.”

We stopped at the end of the hall, at the entrance to the living room, and Charles’ gaze panned the room.

“I have enough money without working.”

“I hate people who don’t have to work.” Crap. Did I have to say that out loud? “That doesn’t mean anything. I…well, I don’t mean you.”

Usually, I had no problem biting my tongue. With him, I apparently didn’t know when to shut up.

He leaned against the arm of the sofa, ankles crossed, not at all trying to hide his laughter.

“Glad you find me amusing.” I turned on the television and handed him the remote. “I didn’t catch if you wanted tea.”

“Because you fell,” he said, still chuckling.

“Want some tea or not?”

He nodded.

While the kettle brought water to a boil, I gripped the lip of the kitchen counter so hard the trim dug into my palms. What was I going to do with him? A man. In my house. In the middle of the night.

He’s just a man. A strange, ancient man—but still a man.

After I prepared some loose tea in an infuser of a small ceramic pot, I arranged a tray with sugar, cream, and two teacups. I brought out the tray and placed it on the coffee table before taking a seat beside him.

“Please, help yourself.”

He prepared his tea—three sugar cubes to my one, and no cream, like me. Not that I was keeping track.

“Is it okay?” I asked.

He took a sip, then set the tea aside. “I have a feeling you don’t like coffee.”

Somehow, my hyperactive nerves had overshadowed my distaste for the terrible stuff, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Maybe next time you’ll ask me out for tea.”

I shouldn’t entertain the thought of getting involved with him, but I couldn’t deny the increasing attraction between us, either. After tea, Charles helped me pack up my most important belongings. We would wait until morning to relocate.

We watched television for a bit, but I wasn’t taking in anything other than the glow and mumble of the screen and the warmth of Charles’ body. As the minutes passed, our bodies inched closer together. His arm rested around my shoulders, and I leaned slightly into him. He pressed his lips against my forehead, and I inhaled the clean scent of his skin and the fabric softener used to wash his shirt.