He tipped his head to the side, a lock of his hair swinging over his brow. “Can you keep your hands off me?”
“Of course I can!” I pushed the lock of his hair back, my fingers trailing down his jaw. Just the touch of his stubble on my fingers restarted fires deep within me. “Look, we had sex, OK? It’s no big deal. I admit that it’s totally against my character to do that, and that I can’t wholly blame you for what happened, but the bottom line is that it’s never going to happen again. I don’t like you. I don’t like men who are prettier than me. And I especially don’t like bloodsuckers!”
Is that so? His mind was filled with arrogance as he pulled me up against him, his mouth like fire on mine.
I put both hands on his chest and shoved him back, slapping him before I realized what I’d done.
“Oh!” I stared at him in horror, one hand over my mouth, the other reaching out to touch his cheek. “I’m so sorry! I’ve never hit anyone before. Did I hurt you?”
Ire flashed in his gorgeous eyes for a few seconds before it faded to amusement. “Unfortunately, I have been struck many times. No, you didn’t hurt me, although I do not like to be slapped. Please refrain from doing so again.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, appalled at my behavior. “Really, I seem to be all discombobulated today. I think it’s because of this whole weirdness of being in the Akasha.”
“What did you do to end up here?” he asked, frowning again.
Even frowning, he was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
He smiled.
“Stop that!”
“You’re projecting.”
“I am not! I never project! And what did you mean, you marked me?”
He sighed. “Why won’t you ever answer a question I ask?”
“Probably because I don’t want to. Did you leave some sort of Dracula mark on my neck? I don’t remember Avery doing that, although he sure gave Jas a whole lot of hickeys that she just thought were funny.” I tried to look at my own neck, failing as I knew I would. “What sort of mark is it? Am I going to have to wear a scarf forever to keep the Van Helsings of the world from staking me so I won’t become a female vamp?”
He rolled his eyes, and just walked away.
I stared after him for a minute, not believing what I was seeing.
“Where are you going?” I finally called once I realized he was really leaving.
Away.
“Away where?”
Does it matter?
“Yes, it matters! You can’t just walk away! I gave you blood!”
Thank you for the blood. Good-bye.
I stared at his receding figure, stunned. He was going to leave me? Just leave me? After I’d given him blood and had the most erotic experience of my life, he was just going to leave?
“Hey!” I bellowed. “Alec? You’re leaving me?”
He stopped, and I knew, just knew, he was sighing.
I apologized for taking more blood than I should. I didn’t berate you for reviving me. I made you hum. What more do you want from me?
I bit back my pride and ran after him, trying to follow the same path he took around the rocks. “Well . . . geez, I don’t know. I just think that you kind of owe me, you know?”
He turned, his expression dark with anger. “For bringing me back to awareness that I am doubly damned? ” He made a low, sweeping bow, his mind filled with bitterness. “Thank you for tormenting me as no one else has done.”
“I didn’t mean to . . . you didn’t want to be woken up?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He gestured around us. “If you had the opportunity of slipping into unawareness of this torment, would you not choose to do so?”
“No. I’d choose to leave.”
The look he gave me was filled with scorn. “There is no way out.”
“Of course there is. If there’s a way in, there’s a way out. Am I going to be a female vampire now because of your mark?”
He just stared at me for a couple of seconds, then took me by the wrist and pulled me after him as he headed to what I thought was the north. “If your sister is a Beloved, you must know that it doesn’t work like that. The marking I referred to is the mental connection we have. It is one of the seven steps of Joining, which is wholly impossible given that my Beloved died six hundred years ago, but understandable given the amount of blood you gave me.”
“Well, I don’t know about this marking business,” I said, carefully locking away the thought that reincarnation might very well mean his Beloved was alive and kicking, and damned close to jumping his bones again despite her desperate attempt to stay away from him, “but as for the other, I don’t know that much about you guys. Jas went off to live with Avery, and . . . well, I’m not very comfortable around him. Or his brothers. Plus there’s the fact that Jas has been trying to fix me up with Avery’s youngest brother, Daniel, and I—”
The word Alec snarled wasn’t at all polite, nor was the face he turned on me as he gripped me with both hands. But what was most intriguing was the hot spurt of jealousy that I could feel rip through him.
He was jealous? Of me? Why did that delight me so much?
I am not jealous.
No? So the thought of me having sex with Daniel does nothing—Alec!
His tongue was there in my mouth again, his thigh shoved between mine, his fingers working my zipper down again. Mine! he snarled into my head.
Oh, I am so not yours!
You are. You gave yourself to me.
We had sex, Alec. That’s all. Get over yourself. Oh, holy mother, do that again first, though. Hooyeah!
Another shout from the distance, somewhat louder, brought sanity back to us. Alec removed his hand from my underwear, his eyes burning with passion as he rezipped my jeans.
“That ‘mine!’ crap? It’s so not happening. I don’t like possessive men,” I told him.
“At this moment, love, I don’t particularly care what you like,” he snapped, grabbing me by the hand and hauling me after him.
Chapter Five
“Where, exactly, do you think you’re taking me?”
“Away.”
“Away where?”
“Just away. You didn’t wish to be left behind, so you’re coming with me.”
“Why?”
Alec stopped and shot me a look that probably should have warned me he was at the end of his patience, but I decided that was less important than knowing where he was hauling me. “Do you ever stop asking questions? ”
“Not really, no,” I said after some thought. “There are so many things to be answered.”
He grinned. My inner devil squealed and swooned at the sight of it. I told her to buck up, that he may be sexy as hell, but he was not for us. “I happen to agree with that philosophy, but now is not the time to discuss it. What did you do to get tossed in here?”
“Wrong place at the wrong time, as best I can figure it out,” I said, following when he tugged on my wrist. Although the screaming in the distance had stopped, I had an uneasy feeling that something was back there that I’d rather not meet.
Something is. A wrath demon.
How did you hear about that? You were unconscious.
I know the sound of a wrath demon when I hear one. What wrong place?
I sighed. “You’re really persistent, aren’t you?”
“No more so than you. Why are you glowing?”