Leo frowned. “Yes. You told me.”
“No. Before that,” Alasdair accused. “You knew who I was before that. That’s why you sought me out.”
“Ah…no. You tracked me down. You bit me—”
“And then I almost died.”
Leo crossed his arms over his chest, the irony of the conversation not lost on him in the slightest. “So, what? You’re upset because you almost died that night instead of me? Excuse me if I’m not feeling too sympathetic.”
Alasdair’s top lip drew back, and as a snarl left his throat, his fangs came into view, gleaming and terrifying in their appearance. “You know things about me no one else knows. How is that possible?”
“We’ve already been over this.”
“And we’ll go over it again until either I am satisfied or…”
“Or…” Leo hedged. “If you’re thinking it, the least you could do is say it.”
Alasdair ignored him. “Start talking while you are still able to.”
“I told you,” he said as though he were sitting with a preschooler instead of an extremely powerful immortal. “I’ve been getting these…visions. I don’t know what they are. Whenever you…we kiss.”
Alasdair’s eyes zeroed in on him. “Visions of me when I was a mortal?”
Leo licked his dry lips and nodded. “At first, yes. But the last one I had, when we were—” Leo stopped abruptly, not even sure what to call what they had done with the other vampire.
“When you watched Vasilios fuck me.”
Okay, so he calls it like it is. Good to know, Leo thought as his body started to overheat from the reminder. He coughed and nodded. “Um, yes. Then.”
Alasdair said nothing. Instead, he watched him in a way that had Leo squirming in his seat.
“In the last vision, you were in his bed. Well, I was there, actually. I don’t know how that happened, but yeah, I was you, and we were in a bed—his bed, naked. And then he bit me. I mean you.” Leo let out an irritable grumble and shook his head. “See? Would I be this fucking confused if I knew what the hell was going on? What is going on?”
Alasdair pushed away from the fridge and took a seat opposite him. The move was so normal, all things considered, that Leo laughed. The sound coming out of his mouth was slightly hysterical, and when Alasdair’s frown hardened, his hilarity increased.
“You don’t know, do you? All this weird shit is happening to me and you don’t even know what it is.”
“I didn’t think so,” Alasdair mused.
“You didn’t think so? But what? Now, you suddenly do?” In the blink of an eye, his hilarity turned into his own brand of self-righteous anger. “Is it because you bit me? Is this your fucking fault? Did you infect me?”
Alasdair cocked his head to the side. “No.”
“No? That’s it?” Leo slapped his palms on the table and shot to his feet as though someone had pinched him on the ass. “You have totally fucked up my life, not to mention my head. Vampires, visions, and beaming me here and there. And now, you want to sit here and say nothing? Okay. Take a seat. Relax. Would you like a coffee?”
He glared down at the vampire who’d kidnapped him, threatened him, and, on several occasions, tried to kill him, and when their eyes connected, Leo couldn’t do a fucking thing to pull his gaze away.
“I am drawn to you, Leonidas. I cannot seem to leave you be.”
The anger that had been churning in his gut dispelled as the dangerously beautiful creature opposite him slowly rose to his feet.
“I have been drawn to you since the night I saw you coming out of that bar you used to frequent.”
Unable to find his tongue, Leo tried to recall ever seeing Alasdair at The Dirty Dog. But no, he would never forget having seen him. He would never forget Alasdair’s face as long as he lived. Which, right now, the time frame was totally up for debate.
“It was about two weeks before that night I came to your bed.”
Wait, Leo thought, that’s when my dreams started to—
“You stepped out into the street, and I followed you home. That was the first time I saw you. I wanted you then, and…se thelo tora.”
Leo sucked in a breath and stood up straight. Alasdair had been watching him? Following him for at least two weeks before he’d tried to… Yeah, okay. Let’s not dwell on the killing part. He’d been following me. That part, for some reason, really turned him on.
“At first, I thought I was hunting my next meal. Nothing out of the ordinary,” he explained. “You see, I like control, and I enjoy the chase. But even I found it strange that I continually ended up standing outside your window, waiting. Waiting for that perfect moment where I would finally feed from you. And I wanted it…”
Leo’s pulse thrummed as Alasdair’s hypnotic voice told the story.
“I wanted it more than I have ever wanted it before. It was all I thought about,” he admitted as he walked around the table towards him.
Leo pivoted and then watched Alasdair, unable to move. When he stopped in front of him, Leo knew he should step away, but no matter how hard he ordered his feet to do so, they wouldn’t fucking budge.
“I wanted to taste you on my tongue, file mou. Consume that which flows through your veins. It was an obsession. It still is.”
Alasdair raised his hand, and Leo flinched at the move. He was so wired that he wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but as his blood rushed around his head, his cock reacted to the male opposite him in the most primal way. He was hard and eager for release.
“Don’t you see? I couldn’t leave you alone. I didn’t want to. And now…” Alasdair’s hand cupped the back of his neck. He pulled him forward, and Leo stumbled and placed his hands on Alasdair’s chest.
“Now?” he asked, barely able to breathe.
Alasdair’s eyes drifted to his mouth. “Now, I know why.”
Then he leaned in, and Leo prayed like the idiot he was for another kiss like the one back in his office. But at the last second, Alasdair angled his face away and pressed his lips to his throat. Leo let out the groan that had been building inside him and dug his fingers into the solid wall of muscle under his palms.
He had no idea what Alasdair had been talking about, but right then, he didn’t give a shit. The lips moving along his throat were cool, but the tongue that flicked over his pulse point was blazing hot. He sucked in a ragged breath as it trailed directly up his vein to his ear, where Alasdair whispered, “You are not who you think you are, Leonidas Chapel.”
Leo’s eyes drifted shut, and his erection ached between his thighs. He was close to pleading with Alasdair to touch him—to demand that he finish what he kept starting—when the tip of a sharp fang grazed over his earlobe.
Fuck…that is such a rush. The danger packed into that tiny gesture had him close to coming. But then he remembered Alasdair’s words and bravely asked, “Then who am I?”
Alasdair’s lips hovered over his ear, and as his warm breath washed over his skin, he whispered, “I believe you may be the one...”
Leo pressed his palm flat against the chest he’d been clutching, pushing Alasdair back so he could look at him. “The one?”
Alasdair’s eyes blazed with heated jade, and then he lifted him off his toes. “Yes. The one who has been sent here to kill me.”
A TORTUROUS GROWL escaped Alasdair as he dug his fingers into Leo’s arms. Every instinct he possessed was urging him to do it. To end this madness then and there with a quick, vicious snap to this human’s neck.
But, while that emotion was formidable, he could sense another, more elusive one trying to surface. It was an emotion he hadn’t felt in years. Two millennia to be precise. One he’d never thought he’d feel again. Compassion.