Chapter 9 Cassie
Cassie
“What do you want to know?” I asked, unsure what she knew already.
“How did you become a vampire? Does your body change if you get angry? If so, what happens and how does it feel? What do movies get right about your kind?”
I knew she didn’t mean anything by it, but her use of ‘your kind’ was a reminder of how very different we were. Not that fate seemed to care about that, given that we were chosen as mates. Of course my entire office was filled with vampire/human mated pairs. Obviously it all worked fine.
“Vampires are usually only created by birth,” I started. “If one or both of your parents are vamps, you’ll most likely be one too.”
“Do vampires often, uh, marry other species?”
I shrugged. “All the humanoids are compatible with each other. A lot of vamps have mates that are humans. Some mate with fae or witches. It’s a little less common to have a vampire and shifter get together.”
“How come?”
Her voice turned haughty. “Because the vampires all know we’re superior to people who shift into animals.”
“Except Lois?” she teased.
I loved that she felt comfortable enough with me to tease me.
“Yeah, she’s a special case.”
“What about my other questions?”
I replayed our conversation as the car ahead of me moved about twenty feet and then stopped again. Damn this traffic.
“Most of the time, the human side is in control of our body, but the vamp side is always there, kind of like in our mind, but sometimes we can feel them inside our bodies too,” I explained.
“Shifters are different, but for vampires, when we let our demon side take control, our fangs lengthen, the whites of our eyes get a reddish tinge, and we grow a little bigger and wider. Oh, and we look a little more pale.”
“I’m surprised that’s possible,” she said.
My mate was a smartass.
“As for movies, we don’t combust in sunlight but because our complexions are so light, we’re very susceptible to sunburns. What else?”
“Do you drink blood? You obviously don’t sleep in the daytime. What about holy water? Stakes?”
“Well, anyone would die if you stabbed them in the heart,” I said mildly. “Holy water is fine. And we do drink blood, we need at least an ounce or two a day to keep our bodies functioning, more if we are sick or injured. But we can go several days without it too.”
“Hmm.” She sat back in her seat, obviously thinking.
“We don’t drink off humans,” I added, just in case she was worried about it. “Although if they’re dying, everyone looks the other way if you want a few sips.”
She winced, and I added, “It’s not like they need their blood anymore, but it’s also messy and no one wants to be scrubbing blood stains out of their clothes while bloated with blood.
It’s definitely a nice high to drink from a live or nearly live human, but feeding off healthy humans is a serious crime, punishable by death.
The vampire leadership council has a strict no tolerance policy. ”
“What if the human says it’s okay?”
“Not even then.”
“Wow. I’m surprised people comply with that rule.”
“They don’t always,” I said. “Just like full humans, there’s always someone willing to break the rules. But for the most part, we all stay in line since the stakes are so high.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as the sign for our exit came into sight.
Seattle traffic was the bane of my existence and being stuck in this car for so long with my mate’s scent overwhelming the space was making it increasingly difficult to control my vampire.
She was begging me to bring Ruby back to our house and claim her forever.
“Do you need directions to my house?”
“No, I memorized the route,” I said.
“Already?”
“I have an eidetic memory,” I said.
“That’s lucky.”
“A lot of vampires do. That’s why we’re usually smarter than other supes.”
Ruby laughed. “And humble too, I guess.”
I pulled into the parking lot underneath Ruby’s building and slid into her parking spot.
Ruby gasped, looking around frantically.
“Wait, where’s my car? Oh my God, someone stole my car!”
“No, it’s fine, we took your car back to Sapphic Security so I could use your spot,” I said.
“I didn’t give you the key.”
“We don’t need keys,” I scoffed.
“I didn’t give you permission,” she said mulishly.
“Your father did. He’s the one paying us.”
She opened her mouth to say something, and I pressed my finger against her lips. Her eyes widened. I wondered if she could feel the hum of energy where our skin touched, the same way I could.
“Stay put while I look around,” I said.
I got out of the car, grabbing my computer bag and subtly walking around the car with an explosives detector. It had a short radius, but at least I could tell if the cars on either side had been booby trapped to explode when Ruby pulled into her parking spot.
Satisfied that everything was okay, I grabbed my duffle bag from the trunk, then walked to the passenger side, hitting the unlock button and opening the door.
“We’re good. Let’s get inside.”
Ruby still had a perturbed look on her face, so I leaned close, speaking right next to her ear. “We’re supposed to be in love, remember? Stop pouting about your car.”
Her eyes widened in outrage and impulsively I grabbed her earlobe between my teeth, biting down just enough to sting.
From a distance, it would look like I was whispering sweet nothings into her ear.
Her skin tasted as sweet as it smelled. To my surprise, Ruby made a little moaning noise when I bit down on her flesh, the sound going right to my clit.
A little bit of pain turned her on. That was good to know.
For later, of course. Right now my priority had to be keeping her safe.
I just wasn’t sure how I was going to keep my hands off her when we were alone together.
It had been less than a day and I’d already forgotten all the reasons I didn’t want a mate. I was completely obsessed with Ruby.
I probably needed some back-up. With a sigh I decided I’d better come clean to Lois tonight. If she found out on her own – and somehow my boss always figured things out – she’d have my ass.
By unspoken agreement Ruby and I took the stairs up to her condo. Her door had been removed, replaced with a heavy duty steel model that would repel bullets, and the lock now required a fingerprint to get in.
As we entered, I motioned for her to be quiet while I scanned for bugs.
I moved through the unit quickly, Ruby at my back.
It was a cute place. The main area was open concept, with an island separating the kitchen and dining room.
The living area was spacious, the off-white furniture arranged to maximize the view through the windows of the Puget Sound.
“No TV?” I asked curiously, remembering that Ruby said she liked to watch historical shows.
She pressed a button, and a screen came down in front of the windows. I turned to find a projector installed behind us. Hmm, that was handy.
We continued scanning as we moved down the hall.
There were two bedrooms with a large bathroom between them.
The bathroom was all marble, with a multi-head shower stall and a jacuzzi tub.
My fangs pressed against my lips as I imagined lounging in that tub with my mate.
I’d never done anything like that in my life.
“All clear,” I confirmed as we finished our sweep of the apartment.
“I thought you said your team installed a new security system. Was it just the door?”
“No, they wired all your windows and put in motion detectors that you can turn on when you leave. But no security system is perfect. It’s best to be safe until we get to the bottom of this.”
“Maybe we should suggest that Eleanor get a security system too. She lives on a dead end with woods behind her house.”
“So she can run her wolf.”
Ruby paused. “Oh yeah, I guess so. I just thought she liked solitude.”
I shook my head. “Wolves are pack animals. I’ll bet that her neighbors are all wolves too.”
Ruby seemed a little flummoxed. I could practically see her reviewing her history with her friend, wondering what she’d missed.
I touched her arm. “She’s still the same person you’ve been friends with all these years.”
“Oh I know,” Ruby said. “I just feel sad that she thought she had to hide her true self from me.”
“A lot of humans would freak out.”
“I’m not a lot of humans,” she said. “My parents raised me to be open minded and accepting of all kinds of people.”
“Even vampires?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Even vampires.”
She took a step forward, then I took a step, and somehow we were nearly toe to toe, less than a foot of space between us. I wasn’t sure how it happened, it was almost like we were two magnets being drawn together.
Ruby’s pupils were wide, and in her neck her pulse was beating so rapidly that I didn’t need my enhanced hearing to know her heart was racing. My heart sped up to match hers, and my nostrils flared as the sweet scent of her arousal filled the air around us.
“Your teeth,” she whispered.
I slid my tongue over my top teeth, unsurprised to feel the tips of my fangs poking through my lips.
Ruby reached up, moving slowly, and to my shock she pushed my upper lip up so she could look at my teeth.
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
I was glad that signs of my vamp weren’t freaking her out. I don’t know what I’d do if the sight of my other form disgusted her. I’d heard of it happening before with humans.
She slid her finger down, tracing my lower lip before cupping my cheek with her hand.
I relaxed into her palm, enjoying the affectionate touch.
I’d grown up with a father who only touched me in anger, and a mother who spent most of her time self-medicating and trying to forget that she had a child.
There was no hugging when I was a child, no affectionate pats on my head.
I’d learned to fear touch, but with just one gesture, Ruby seemed to be knitting something inside me back together that I didn’t even know was broken.
My eyes bounced between hers, waiting to see what she’d do next.
“You feel this too, don’t you?” she asked, her tone slightly vulnerable. “This intense attraction between us. That’s why your vamp is pushing through.”
“Yeah, I do.”
There was no sense lying about it. I wondered if I should tell her the truth, that she was my fated mate, that after this was all over I was going to dedicate my life to making her mine.
That’s right, I’d already decided not to fight it.
Fate had brought me the gift of a mate. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve that, but I wasn’t going to let my crappy childhood keep me from finding love.
Then again, I’d heard from my friends how freaked out some humans got at the idea of fated mates.
For some reason the humans liked to believe that they had more free will than they did, and they’d been taught that relationships that were built quickly were flawed.
I didn’t want to upset Ruby or worse yet, make her want to work with another bodyguard by mentioning the mate thing before she was ready for it.
“I’ve never felt so immediately attracted to someone,” Ruby continued. “It’s unnerving.”
“Unnerving?” I asked, fighting a stab of disappointment.
Somehow Ruby seemed to know what I was feeling because she said, “Not bad, just unexpected.”
Then she did something else unexpected. She moved closer and kissed me.