“Why? What would they tell me if I could?” Something naughty, he hoped.
“Nothing.” Yet she blushed as she said it.
Gently extracting her hand from his, she pressed it to his muscled chest above his heart.
Roland sucked in a sharp breath.
“You have a heartbeat.”
He nodded, caught off-guard by her tender touch. “I’m not dead. Or undead, as I believe much of the vampire lore claims.”
She slid her hand up his chest, over his collarbone, and splayed her fingers on his neck.
The strength of the desire that small caress inspired shocked him.
“Your pulse is racing, too,” she said softly.
And it certainly wasn’t because he was afraid of her.
Although there was a hidden part of him that did fear her.
The feelings she raised in him were too intense. Too alarming. He wanted to watch over her, protect her, keep her safe. He wanted her to accept him for who and what he was.
He wanted her to like him.
It was insane. He had known her for too brief a time to be this drawn to her. This vulnerable.
He couldn’t afford such weakness.
She cupped his jaw in her tiny hand, flooding him with more of that foreign tenderness. Her thumb slid across his chin to the other side.
It was all he could do not to turn his head and bury his lips in her palm.
“Your wounds have healed.” Her gaze flickered from his neck, where Bastien had cut his throat the first time, to his jawline, where Bastien had tried again and missed, to his forehead, where her wound had opened on his body when he healed her. All three were either gone or had been reduced to scars that would fade while he slept.
“Many of them have, yes.” A few, like his broken arm and a couple of deep stab wounds, were better but would require more blood and rest to mend completely.
“But you’re not a vampire.”
“No, Marcus and I and others of our ilk prefer to be called immortals. Our human assistants call us Immortal Guardians.”
She lowered her hand and leaned back against the sofa cushions. “Whom do you guard?”
“Humanity.”
“From vampires?”
“Yes.”
Roland picked up her left hand and readied the tweezers, reluctant to begin anew and cause her more pain.
“I’m not really understanding how you differ from the vampires other than that they’re assholes and you’re not.”
He laughed. “Some of my colleagues might disagree with you on that one.”
“Then they must not know you well,” she protested, and warmth engulfed him once more.
Forcing himself to focus on the glass that sparkled like diamonds amid the blood and torn flesh of her palm, he removed a long sliver. There was a lot more of it lodged in this hand. Unlike the right, the glass was also embedded in her forearm all the way up to her elbow.
“Vampirism,” he explained, “and the characteristics associated with it are the result of a very rare parasitic virus.”
* * *
“A virus,” Sarah repeated, flinching as Roland withdrew a particularly deep shard.
“Yes.”
“What precisely are those characteristics?”A lust for blood? A penchant for biting?
He tilted her hand a little to catch the light. “Neither vampires nor immortals are dead. You’ve felt my heartbeat. You know I breathe.”
And his heartbeat had quickened beneath her touch.
“We all have heightened senses.”
Sarah remembered the way Roland and Marcus had seemed to hear the vampires’ approach long before she had. “Is that how you knew they were coming?”
He nodded, brow furrowed in concentration as he worked on her wounds. “We heard them coming when they were still a couple of miles away and knew how many there were by their individual scents.”
It boggled the mind.
“Wow,” she joked weakly. “Life must have really sucked for you before deodorant was invented.”
He chuckled. “Advances in personal hygiene have indeed made things more pleasant for us, though this latest generation seems to be regressing.”
“Tell me about it. I have students who roll out of bed and come to class without even brushing their teeth. Ow!”
“Sorry.”
Sarah pondered his keen sense of smell and cringed at the aromas she must be emitting. “Maybe I should be the one apologizing.”
He glanced up at her. “Why?”
“I’m all sweaty and covered with blood and dirt and who knows what else I picked up rolling down that hill. I wouldn’t imagine I’m generating the most pleasant of fragrances.”
“The scent of blood is as enticing to me as chocolate is to you.”
Her face scrunched up involuntarily. “It is?” That was kind of gross.
He smiled wryly. “Yes. Beyond that, you smell like the forest, your citrus shampoo, baby powder deodorant, and your own unique scent.” She saw him inhale subtly. “And even sweaty, your scent is very appealing.”
Her heart skipped. He said it as if it turned him on. “Really?”
His eyes darkened, then gained a hint of that unearthly glow. “Your pulse is racing again.”
Boldly, she reached out and touched his neck. “So is yours.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw his fingers tighten around the tweezers.
“What are some of the other characteristics?” she asked, withdrawing.
“Our vision is far sharper than yours.”
“Can you see in the dark?”
“As clearly as a cat.”
No wonder Marcus hadn’t needed a flashlight to inspect the field. “So what makes your eyes glow?”
“We still don’t understand some of the physiological changes that take place in our bodies, and why our eyes glow is one of them. All we know is that it occasionally happens when we feel pain and almost always happens when we experience extreme emotions, such as anger.”
Or arousal? she wanted to ask but couldn’t bring herself to do so. When she had touched him, stroked the pulse in his strong, tanned neck, his eyes had begun to glow.
Had he felt desire for her? Been as affected by the light caress as she had?
“We’re stronger than humans,” he went on, cataloging his differences, “a great deal stronger, and can move very fast.”
So fast he had blurred. It was cool and creepy at the same time. “What else?”
“We heal swiftly, as you’ve seen. And we’re sensitive to sunlight.”
“Is that everything?”
“No, those are only the traits we have in common with the vampires. The virus affects those of us who call ourselves immortals differently. We all start out mortal like you, then become infected through the bite of a vampire.”
“Only a vampire? Not an immortal?”
“Immortals very rarely transform humans.”
“Oh. So you were turned by a vampire.”
His lips tightened. “Yes.”
“I assume by your expression that it was against your will.”
“Yes. I was fortunate. My body is one of the few capable of mutating the virus, reshaping it, and altering its effects.” He paused while he chased down a piece of glass that seemed intent on making a home for itself in her thumb.
Sarah gritted her teeth and clenched her right hand into a fist. Jeeze, it hurt.
If plucking tiny pieces of broken glass out of her hands hurt this much, what kind of hell must Roland have suffered yanking those spikes out of his palms?
Her tense muscles relaxed slightly when he succeeded in capturing the rogue sliver.
He met her gaze. “Do you need to take a break?”
“No.” In a way, knowing how stoically he had endured his wounds made getting through this easier for her.
“The virus has negative consequences in vampires that it does not have in us. Vampires subsist entirely on blood. They become addicted to it like some do to cocaine or crystal meth. Immortals, on the other hand, lack this flaw and don’t ingest blood nightly.”