E: It’s not what I expected, I guess.
A: How so?
E: Oh, you know.... I got here and thought the big-city thing would be fun for a night. But it’s just packed and expensive and sort of smelly. But most of all, it just seems . . . I don’t know. Plastic.
A: Oh, tell me about it. There’s nothing sadder than a fake Statue of Liberty in flashing neon lights. Awe-inspiring on so very many levels.
E: Lol. Exactly.
Eleanore shook her head at the screen.
A: Listen, girl, I gotta go. Just take it easy for the night. Stay inside and watch the SyFy Channel. Stargate should be on tonight. I know how you lust for Daniel Jackson and his big, massive, pulsing gray matter.
E: *smiles* Right. Take care, Angel.
A: You too, sweetie. Xoxo
Eleanore signed off and closed the chat box. Then she leaned back in the reclining desk chair. With everything going on, she should have felt exhausted, but instead, she felt . . . buzzed.
She thought about Kevin, the crush she had told Uriel about in the garage before he became a vampire. She was fifteen when she met Kevin, just months before that fateful day with the man and the needle. Kevin was a senior at the local high school in the Connecticut town she was living in at the time.
She hadn’t know anything about the boy because she was homeschooled, and she’d never met him personally, just watched him from afar. Every morning, he waited on the corner of the block for the bus. He stood out from the others because he was taller and more built and seemed older.
Most seniors drove themselves to school. But he always took the bus, his hands casually tucked into the front pockets of his jeans. And he filled those jeans out nicely. He wore tight T-shirts and she could tell, even from where she watched through the slats in her venetian blinds, that he had a few tattoos. She liked the tattoos. They made him seem tougher and she secretly liked them on the tougher side. In movies, she always fell for the bad guys. And, though she’d never actually dated anyone, she could imagine that dating a “bad boy” would be more fun, if shorter-lived, than dating a “good boy.” She just wasn’t stupid enough to mention as much in front of her family.
The boy was quiet. He kept to himself. She never saw him talk with the others who were waiting for the bus.
Then, one day, he turned to face the window. She wasn’t able to move back in time to avoid being seen, but she reared away from the window, dropping the blinds, her hand to her heart. After a few seconds of calming her breath and steadying her rapid pulse rate, she chanced another peek through the slats.
The boy was holding up a sign he’d made on a blank page in his spiral notebook. He’d written in thick, black ink.
I’m Kevin. What’s your name?
For the next two months, Eleanore had found it difficult to concentrate on anything but Kevin. They exchanged notes through the window, though they never spoke.
It wasn’t that her parents were prison wardens and kept her under lock and key. They simply all agreed that it wouldn’t be a good idea to become too friendly with anyone just then; Eleanore was entering a difficult stage. Her powers were inadvertently affected by her body’s changes, and sometimes they were quite difficult to control.
The Grangers couldn’t afford to take chances. They had grown increasingly worried that someone with ill intent had noticed Eleanore’s abilities and was watching them.
So Eleanore watched Kevin from the window, and he smiled at her from the bus stop. His smile always filled her with butterflies.
That was how Eleanore felt now. She was distracted and antsy and a little high on endorphins and adrenaline. There were far too many tall, handsome, powerful men in her life at the moment. They occupied her days and nights, if not in person, then in thought.
Especially one in particular. She allowed her mind to wander to that first fateful moment in the bookstore, when Christopher Daniels had pinned her to the counter and leaned in.
Uriel.
Getting past security had been a breeze in his new vampire body. Despite the hotel’s lavish decor and plethora of guards, Uriel had made it to the top floor of the high-rise hotel with no problems and without being seen.
Now he stood before Eleanore’s door and moved the bunch of red roses into his left hand. He raised his right to knock—and then he stilled. His head cocked slightly to one side. He could hear her beyond the door. But it wasn’t just her movement and the shuffling sounds her clothes made or the soft creaking noises her chair made when she no doubt swiveled in it. It was that he could hear her breathing. He could even hear her heart beating.
Even with the gold band around his wrist, he could smell her as if he’d bent to inhale the scent of her hair. Lavender. He could time the beats of the pulse in her throat. And he could imagine what it looked like . . . inviting and tinted slightly blue beneath the taut porcelain of her flesh.
He lowered his hand and closed his eyes. Azrael was right. He was a hunter now; it was a part of him. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
And then she sighed softly and it sounded so sad, so lonely, his eyes flew open once more, his heart at once aching. The call of that loneliness hardened his resolve and he raised his hand and knocked.
He could hear her pulse jump, her heart racing, forcing the blood to rush rampantly through her veins. He smiled a slow smile, unable to help himself. That blood was as much a call to him as anything else. He wasn’t surprised when she stopped moving and didn’t answer the knock. She was being careful. But he was being persistent.
He knocked again and his smile broadened. “Knock, knock,” he added, at once giving himself away. He was pleased to hear that her heartbeat kicked up another notch. “Let me in?” he requested softly. Then, in a slightly deeper tone filled with amusement, he added, “I won’t bite.” It was what he had said to her outside of her apartment several days ago. It held a lot more meaning now.
He heard her moving then, quickly making her way to the door. She obviously peered at him through the peephole. “That was a lot funnier and a lot less meaningful the first time you said it,” she told him, mirroring his thoughts.
He chuckled, his body thrumming to life at the simple sound of her voice and the hopeful fact that she was teasing him. But she made no move to open the door. He shifted from one foot to the other and considered his options. He could always break the door down. Vampires didn’t actually need any kind of invitation to enter a dwelling as myth would have people believe. And even without the magic that the bracelet held in check, his vampire body would be through the door and on the other side in the blink of an eye.
But getting into the room wasn’t the goal here. Getting into Eleanore’s heart was. He tried another tactic and wiped the smile from his face. “You may as well at least open the door, Ellie,” he told her, his tone calm and reasonable. “Think about it. If I truly posed a threat to you, would a door stop me?”
She was quiet, hopefully mulling his words over. After a few long seconds, she softly admitted, “Probably not.”
Again, he smiled, but he ducked his head so that she couldn’t see it through the peephole. It was important in that moment for him to keep the sheep suit on a little longer. Several more tense seconds passed and then Uriel heard the chain in the lock. A latch was thrown and the handle turned and Uriel looked up to find himself staring into a pair of wary indigo eyes.
A chord of shock vibrated through him.
So beautiful,
he thought. Was it always going to be like this? Would he be stunned by her every time he laid eyes on her?
She slowly opened the door wide and gazed out at him, her bottom lip caught tight between two rows of perfect white teeth. He glanced at the pouty pink flesh, captured so tight, and thought about how it would feel trapped within his own teeth. The image made him ache and his muscles flexed of their own accord. He was lost for a while in his constant, returning desire for her, and it momentarily threw him for words.
Her perfect brow furrowed and her gaze narrowed.
Uriel realized he’d been lost and quickly pulled himself together. He felt thorns in his left hand and remembered the roses. He cleared his throat. “Truce?” he asked as he tentatively held them out for her.
Eleanore looked down at the roses and contemplated them in silence. Then, slowly, she took them from him and brought them to her nose. She inhaled and her lovely face unwound into an easy, natural smile. Uriel couldn’t use the vampire ability he’d gained to read her mind while he wore the bracelet, but he didn’t need to. He could see her thoughts written clearly in her expression. She loved the roses.
“I wanted to get you lavender,” he told her. “I know you like it.” Her hair always smelled like lavender, tempting and clean. He caught a hint of it now, in fact, and it made him yearn to run his hands through her silky strands and bury his face in it. She looked up at him expectantly, her eyes shining brightly. Again he cleared his throat, his body aching for her as it never had. “But no one in Vegas sells it,” he continued. “So I went with something that smells almost as sweet.”
Her smile broadened and she ducked her head. “I love them,” she said quietly. “They’re beautiful.” She gazed down at them a moment more and then seemed to catch herself. She straightened, her smile faded, and she struck him with a suddenly guarded expression. “But I still want to know how you found me,” she told him. “And . . .” She paused, looked at the floor, toed the doorframe in the carpet, and looked up at him once more. “And I want to know what you want from me.”
What I want . . .
Uriel could have growled with the hunger he felt when he thought about what he wanted from her. If she had the slightest idea, she would slam the door shut and bolt it. And then call the Marines.
Instead, he concentrated on forcing the fangs that had erupted in his mouth to shrink once more. And he shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them busy. “The truth is, I had no idea you would be in Vegas tonight,” he said. “I woke up and had to . . . eat.” He glanced at her nervously and then quickly averted his gaze. “Azrael brought me here.”
“Then—” She broke off, and he looked up to study her face. He could almost see the wheels spinning in her head. “Azrael knew I was here, didn’t he?”
Uriel nodded. There was no point in denying it. “Did Samael hurt you?” he asked then, surprised by his own question. It must have been burning in the back of his brain for him to suddenly blurt it out. But he found that even as he focused on the subject, his blood felt colder in his veins. His eyes felt hotter and his teeth throbbed in his gums.
Eleanore looked up at him in sudden silence, her own dark blue eyes widening slightly. He was tempted, then and there, to yank the band off of his wrists so that he could read her thoughts. There was fear in her eyes. And something else.
But she swallowed hard; he could hear it pushing past her tight throat, and she shook her head. “No,” she said. “He didn’t hurt me.”
He didn’t believe her. Not for a second. There was something she wasn’t telling him. But there were no markings on her body that he could see and he would know if she were in pain; he would be able to smell the cortisol and adrenaline flooding her system.
All he could smell right now was the lavender in her hair, the cinnamon on her tongue, and the heady scent of roses.
He cocked his head to one side and leveled his jade-green eyes on her once more. She fidgeted and captured a lock of her hair between her fingers in nervous agitation. “Uriel, can you read my mind now?” she asked. “I mean, now that you’re a vampire?”
He smiled and shook his head, holding up his wrist. “Not with this on.”
She glanced at the bracelet and he saw the memories flood her features. She was still angry about what had happened at the mansion. “I’m sorry, Ellie,” he told her honestly. “Max suggested I keep it with me.” He’d taken the bracelet as a precaution, but when it came down to it, he knew in his heart that he had hesitated in using it because he would never be able to force Eleanore to do anything against her will. “I never would have used it on you,” he admitted. He prayed that she could see the urgency in his eyes. “I hope you believe me.”
She studied him closely and he found himself unaccountably nervous under the scrutiny. Finally, she wiped her palms on her jeans and nodded. “I believe you.”
Relief flooded him, fueling his courage. “May I come in, Ellie?”
She swallowed hard again. “I don’t know,” she said. “If I let you in, can you control yourself?”
No.
“Yes,” he said, holding up his wrist once more. The gold band gleamed under the hall lights. “And I’m properly collared.”
She smiled at that, her beautiful face cracking a true grin. His stomach fluttered, his muscles tensed, and his heart melted.