“Thomas. Lovely to see you.” Truman’s words implied anything but happiness that this man was present.
“Tru. Smells like you’ve been having fun with your human. Quite a delicious scent, isn’t it?” Ember’s reaction was to gasp at his words, but as Truman heard her response, he pulled her closer to his body.
“Ember, I need you to wait in the car.” His words weren’t mean, but they were demanding, and the moment she paused, he snapped. “Now.” She wanted to smack him for being so bossy, but as she turned to glower at him, his eyes met hers. He touched her cheek, and he leaned to her ear. “You need to wait in the car.” His words were gentle, but his tone was intense and left no room for question.
He released her body, and she walked to the car, passing by the stranger who instantly lifted his nose to the air and inhaled. “Lovely.” She nearly broke into a run as her panic rose. She didn’t know this man, and she didn’t like him, and at the moment, he was far closer to her body than Truman was. But she maintained her course with an even step.
“Why have you come here?” Truman’s voice sounded controlled, but she could tell he wasn’t happy to see this man any more than she was happy to meet him.
“Oh, come on, Tru. Mason isn’t happy you’ve allowed this little interruption to pull you away from your place in the family. This has gone on for long enough. What is it, twelve years now? It’s a liability he won’t tolerate.” Ember had no idea what he meant, and as she turned to glance back once as she neared the car, Truman’s eyes found hers and then dropped from them immediately.
She climbed in the passenger seat and watched. She could now hear nothing of their utterly baffling conversation, but she could see Truman’s body language clear enough to know he wasn’t happy. She wasn’t either.
“You know damn well she is no liability to us.” Thomas’ presence ruined Truman’s day in one second flat. Of all the vampires Mason could send, it had to be Thomas. Thomas was Mason’s brother, the one most likely to incite a hailstorm of fury in him. The man had no respect for humans, no respect for anything whatsoever quite frankly, and his vulgar approach to Ember left his cold blood boiling.
“No human holds sway over our kind, and whether you see her as a liability or not is irrelevant. You can’t possibly hope to keep her around. She’s mortal, and however deep you’ve buried her memories, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay buried forever. You know the longer you’re around her the better chance her brain will start to connect the dots. You’re a fucking idiot, frankly, for wasting your time on a walking carcass. You do understand she’s mortal, right?”
“We’re the walking carcasses, and she’s more alive than you and I will ever be. You haven’t answered my question. Why the fuck are you here?” His voice managed to be heard past his clenched teeth and jaw, but he was coming dangerously close to losing his temper, and it was the last thing he wanted to have happen with Ember sitting nearby in the car. In truth, all he wanted was to be close to her. He could see her so nearby, but she felt so damn far away it terrified him. The fact that Thomas stood between them didn’t help.
“Mason wants to see you, and if you have any sense left in you, you won’t make him wait.” With that, he turned and walked away to his car, and Truman walked slowly to his where Ember was waiting. Her eyes were wide and frightened. He wanted to reassure her, but he was as terrified as she was, if not more so. He knew exactly what his kind was capable of, and while he had thought he’d given Mason no reason to care about Ember, he was realizing with a swift kick to his conscience that perhaps he’d misjudged their situation. But he didn’t understand why.
He wasn’t the first of his kind to develop a relationship with a human, and he was certain her memories of him were safely buried deep within some dark recess of her mind, so why now? He had no choice but to go. His kind were not a patient lot, and Mason was the worst of them. The longer he kept him waiting, the more resentful he would be, and unfortunately, that resentment would come out aimed fully at Ember.
When he climbed in next to her, she watched him, saying nothing at all. She was confused, and he felt guilty. This wouldn’t be happening were it not for him, and that was likely the hardest pill to swallow. “I’m sorry, Ember. I can’t take you to Boston right now.” She watched him still saying nothing, but her face had dropped, and she was fighting the hurt she would never feel if she understood just what his motive was. All he wanted was to protect her, see to it she was kept safe, but all she could see was rejection of one sort or another.
“Why?” Her voice was quiet and timid. She was afraid of the answer, and because he couldn’t give her one that would make any sense whatsoever to her, he could do little to make her feel better.
“I have to attend to some business, and it…”
“Truman, that doesn’t make any sense. I already know you have business—”
“I’m sorry, but I need you to trust me. I want to be with you. I want to take you. But I can’t right now. I’m sorry. This is the last thing I want to do, but I don’t have a choice. You have to understand this isn’t what I want.”
Her eyes were wary and anything but trusting at the moment, and he hated himself for bringing this distrust to her. They drove in silence, and when he took her hand in his, she didn’t pull away, but she looked out the window away from him.
He followed her up to her apartment, and when she asked when he needed to leave and he said right away, she walked away to her bedroom. He set her bags on her bedroom floor and crawled in next to her. “I’m sorry, Ember. I didn’t mean for this happen.”
“It’s fine.” She rolled from his body, and after a few minutes of listening to her breathing but without any sign she wanted him there, he stood to leave, kissing her gently on the back of her neck.
He returned to his car and headed to Boston and his family’s building in Beacon Hill, and with every mile he put between them, his cold heart became colder and colder and colder. He was furious, but just as worried as he was upset. His heart was sinking with every mile. There was no way this could end well. He’d turned his back on the family long ago, when he’d rescued Ember when she was ten to be exact. He didn’t hate them as a whole, but he loathed Mason, the head of his family. They may have shared the same bloodline, but Truman didn’t feel bound to him in any way. The same could not be said of Mason though. Mason had tried for years to pull him back to them, but every time he pulled, Truman pushed back. There was little Mason could truly do to him, but Ember … that was a different story.
He was speeding, but oddly, he was in no hurry to get there. His fury was at critical mass, and he wanted to be done with this so he could return to her. But the fear lurking in the back of his mind interrupted that thought with its own. What if I can’t keep her?
When he entered his family’s historic building, he stalked past one of the women in his bloodline, ignoring her greeting as he entered the elevator. He ascended to the penthouse level, his fury building by the floor. Truman had spent many a year living in this building, and he was not happy to be back. It was gorgeous, luxurious, and equipped for a lifetime of hedonism and godly existence, but he wanted a real life, not this. This life offered protection but not freedom. Mason offered whores at will, but not love. In truth, the whores were nothing but walking shells of human women, and men for that matter. Their minds had been buried and unburied so many times over that they were in a constant daze, unable to grasp their own existence anymore and far more pliable and willing than any human should be. He had always hated them; they disturbed him in a way he couldn’t quite get over, and so, he’d always chosen to fuck his own kind … until he met her.