Blood Born (27 page)

“Do you pay taxes?” She was unwillingly fascinated—if there was a way to avoid paying taxes, she wanted to hear about it.

That amused look was back. “If I must. If I can avoid it, I do.”

“Well, just a hint: you need to do enough to show up in a Google search. If anyone else does a search—and trust me, they will—the fact that there’s no information on you at all will be suspicious.”

“Why would anyone do a search on my name?”

“Because that’s what people do.”

“You’re the first human who ever has.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right. You keep right on believing that.”

He simply looked down at her for a moment, long enough that his cool, pale gaze began to make her uncomfortable. She finally snapped “
What
?” then hoped the answer wasn’t,
I’m hungry
.

He glanced around, hooked one of the kitchen chairs around, and sat down in it, then swiveled her chair around so she was facing him. Leaning forward, he took her hands in his. The heat of his long, hard fingers wrapped around her hands, and he rubbed his thumbs
back and forth over the inside of her wrists. “We need to have a very frank discussion,” he said. “You won’t like what I’m going to tell you.”

“Let me guess,” she said, trying for a brisk tone even though her heart was suddenly double-timing. “You’re hungry, and you’re going to suck me dry.”

A wry smile touched his lips. “No, I’m not hungry. As for sucking you … that’s something else entirely.”

Make that triple-time. Her heart was pounding as if she’d done a five-mile jog. He looked at her chest and she knew he could hear her heart slamming away inside, feel it in the beat of her pulse in her wrists. Heat washed over her, until she felt as if she were red from her feet to the top of her head, flushed and hungry with her own needs, her nipples pinching until just touching her bra made them feel raw and achy.

Abruptly he released her hands and sat back, as if he had to break contact with her. He scrubbed his hand over his face and she heard the rasp of beard, which distracted her a little, because who knew vampires grew beards? She could use a little distraction right now; unfortunately, that wasn’t enough, because he immediately pulled her attention back to him.

“I’ve been thinking over your situation,” he said, “and it isn’t good.”

Chloe drew a deep breath. She hadn’t been thinking ahead. In fact, she’d been trying not to think very much at all, concentrating instead on the here and now. All of that about Warriors and a vampire uprising … that was big stuff, and there wasn’t a lot she could do about any of it. Still, hearing that Luca thought she was in big trouble wasn’t a good thing.

“I can protect you while I’m here,” he said, “but I’ll have to leave in order to feed, and I have to sleep. If, while I’m gone, a vampire drags your next-door neighbor
to the door and threatens to kill her if you don’t step out, what will you do?”

Chloe gave him a wry, faintly sad smile. “You can’t live life if you hide all the time,” she finally said.

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

“I live every day knowing that I might die,” she said calmly. “This isn’t anything new for me.”

His gaze sharpened. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t tell a lot of people, because then they’d … they wouldn’t feel comfortable around me. They wouldn’t want me to pick up anything, or go jogging with me, or just be normal. I don’t want to live that way. But I doubt you’d want to go jogging with me anyway—”

“Not really,” he said drily.

“So telling you doesn’t matter. I have an aortic aneurysm. Mine was found after a car accident when I was a teenager. I may have had it all my life or it may be a result of the accident. No one knows. It’s too small for surgery to be an option, because the surgery itself is so dangerous.”

He was silent a moment, then said, “I don’t know a lot about human physical problems.”

“It’s a weak spot, like a bubble, on my ascending aorta, above my heart. Mine is stable, for now, but it can begin growing without warning. It can burst. If it does, then I’m dead. Unless I was already in a hospital, then maybe I’d have a chance if they could get me into surgery within a couple of minutes. Otherwise … no.” Her voice was dispassionate as she explained the situation. As she’d said, she lived with it every day. Life was what it was; she could either live it, or she could curl up in a corner and not have any sort of life at all. “It can remain stable all my life, and nothing will happen. Or it can begin growing, to the point where I can have surgery and have it repaired. I don’t know. No one knows.”

His face was very still as he looked at her; she couldn’t read a single emotion in his expression, didn’t know if he were even feeling any emotion at the moment. Probably not; after all, what did she matter to him? And yet she could feel the weight of his gaze as if it were a tangible thing, a probe going straight to her soul. Was he wondering what it was like to know you might die at any minute? Did the passing years weigh on someone who was immortal? Did he ever wish that his life was finite? Did anyone? Everyone she knew wanted to live long and prosper.

Finally he blew out a breath that sounded a little ragged to her, but he continued as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “Another option is for us to leave here, for me to hide you somewhere until this is over. Your Warrior can still contact you wherever you are.”

“That’s a plus?”

Her tone was so skeptical that it drew a smile from him. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it, and maybe now that you know what’s going on the process will be easier.”

“How long would I have to hide?” she asked. “I have a job, I have a family—”

“There’s no way to tell. Months, possibly.”

“Then … no. I can’t do that.”

“I didn’t think you’d be willing.” He drew a deep breath. “That leaves one other option.”

“I don’t want to be a vampire,” she said rapidly, in case that was what he had in mind.

He shook his head, his long dark hair falling about his chiseled face like some ancient god. He gave no reaction to the unintentional insult she’d just thrown at him. “It isn’t that. I can bond you to me.”

That didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded even worse than being made a vampire. “Like Renfield?” she asked incredulously.

That was evidently the wrong question, because he looked pained and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Forget Renfield,” he finally said with what sounded like strained patience. “Renfield was glamoured—Hell, what am I talking about? Renfield is
fiction
. Got it? Fiction!”

“So this bonding thing doesn’t have anything to do with glamouring?”

“No. In fact, it’ll prevent any vampire, even me, from glamouring you. You’ll be stronger, quicker, and for what’s coming you’ll need every advantage you can get.”

Cautiously she said, “That sounds like the upside. What’s the downside?”

He drew in a breath. “It’s a lifetime bond. We’ll always be linked. I’ll know if you’re happy, if you’re sad; you’ll know if I’m nearby. When a vampire and human fall in love, they’ll usually bond.”

His gaze was getting more and more remote and his tone was flat. Chloe studied him, picked up on the reluctance he couldn’t quite hide. A little pang hit her, and this time she was the one trying to hide her reaction. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Have you bonded before?”

“Once,” he said, his tone so final it was like hitting a verbal brick wall, and she knew she didn’t dare pursue that subject any further.

But all in all, bonding didn’t sound all that drastic, so she knew there was more or he wouldn’t have offered this as the last option. She waited, staring at him.

He met her gaze, then held it. “The way bonding is accomplished,” he said gently, “is through sex and blood.”

“Sex and blood,” she repeated, something in her going cold.

“I take your blood, and I give you mine.”

“During sex,” she said, just for clarification.

“Yes.”

Chloe shoved her chair back, stood, and walked away. That was certainly an original pickup line, she thought as she went into her bedroom and firmly closed the door. She hoped he took the hint and didn’t come in, because she didn’t know what she’d do if she had to talk to him right now.

She sat down on the bed and laced her trembling fingers together. Yes, she’d had a strong physical reaction to him from the start. If things had been different, maybe they could have had something together. But he was a vampire, and in her mind that had put sex between them in the “can’t happen” category. That hadn’t done away with the longing, the heat; she couldn’t deny both were still there, as strong as ever.

The hell of it was: how did she know he was telling the truth? People lied all the time to get what they wanted. Men pretended to fall for a woman just to get sex, women pretended to be crazy about sports or a guy’s friends, some people lied just to be lying. She didn’t know how vampires operated. Was deception part of how they got what they wanted, namely sex and blood?

At least he’d been up-front with her, telling her what was involved. And she couldn’t assume that he was lying. After all, he’d twice saved her life, endangering himself at the same time. She’d been too dazed to really know what was going on when Enoch had attacked her, but she had no doubt he’d been about to kill her, until Luca stopped him. And Sorin … she’d been preoccupied with Valerie, but she’d seen enough of the fight to know how fast and brutal it had been. No pretense, there.

So far, she thought Luca had told her the truth, about everything.

But did she want to be bonded to a vampire? No.

Not even to Luca, who looked like walking sex. It wasn’t even that he was a vampire; she wanted to stay completely herself, a separate and autonomous human being. She would love to be in love, to one day have a husband and children, a family, and that was a bond, too, but it was an emotional and mental one, not something that sounded like an implant by which she could be tracked.

Sex and blood.

What he’d been telling her was that, because she was one of the conduits for these damn Immortal Warriors, she was a target and he couldn’t protect her. She would be hunted down and killed, and unless she was willing to completely abandon her life, run away and hide, there was nothing else he could do.

Should
she run away and hide? Would that even work? Or would the vampires then go after her parents, thinking they’d know where she was?

Chloe got up, restlessly pacing around the small space of her bedroom. If she stayed, were her parents any safer? No matter what Luca said, yes, if one of the vampires dragged her mother in front of her and offered to exchange her life for her mom’s, she’d do it. And if she stayed, would they perhaps concentrate more on catching her here, and not in locating any of her family members, who, thank God, lived hundreds of miles away? Could she be the rabbit on the racetrack, keeping them chasing after her instead of hunting her family?

Blood and sex. She could bear the idea of giving him her blood, and taking his, easier than she could think of having sex with him. Blood was just blood. Sex would mean too much. He’d gotten to her, not just because of the physical attraction but in ways she didn’t want to admit, and having sex with him would tear all her emotional defenses down.

And if she did, then what? He was a vampire; he wasn’t going to hang around after this uprising was over. What could interest him in her? He was God only knew how old, while she wasn’t even thirty yet; their experiences were, literally, aeons apart. She hadn’t been good at history in high school, while he’d
lived
it.

So he would move on, and she’d be left here, something inside her always longing for him, measuring the men she knew against him and they’d always come up short, because how could they not? They would be bonded, she and Luca. She would always yearn for him.

Did that mean he’d yearn for her, too, at least physically? She hadn’t missed how deeply reluctant he’d been to even offer bonding as a means of helping her through this. He said he’d bonded with a human woman once before; even if he’d done it for reasons other than love, such as now, evidently the link was very strong and ended only when the human died. It must be emotionally wrenching, to have such a deep connection and then to have it severed so abruptly, so finally.

She had never before had such a deep sense of transience. In comparison to his life, hers was on a par with a fruit fly, short and inconsequential.

She took a deep breath. It was time for brutal honesty. Yes, she wanted to have sex with him. No, even that was wrong. She wanted to make love with him, something that was very different, but that offer wasn’t even on the table. She was more fascinated by him, with him, than she’d ever been before in her life, but circumstances being what they were she could never have any kind of life with him. She felt cheated, she felt outraged and bitter and, dammit, fucking angry about the whole situation.

What were her options? Oh, yeah. Run and hide or
bond. None of them guaranteed that she wouldn’t still be killed. Sorin and his band of merry followers would still be hunting her. Whatever life she seized now might be all she ever had.

So what else was new?

A strange sound caught her attention and she stopped her furious thoughts, her head cocked as she listened, identified the sound. It was running water … the shower. He was in the second bathroom, taking a shower.

He knew what her answer would be, she thought bitterly. He might not know all her reasons why, but he knew the end result. An angry tear streaked down her face as she got up and went into the master bedroom’s connecting bath to take her own shower.

    When she was ready, she unlocked the bedroom door and stepped out. He was in the living room again, because she could hear the television channels flipping as he gave the remote a workout. She hadn’t gone to any effort to make herself look attractive, hadn’t put on any makeup, had simply dragged a brush through her hair. She was dressed, though, in a long-sleeved white blouse and a simple black skirt—not the stylish pencil skirts she wore to work, but something fuller, which better met her requirements.