Chapter 4
He sensed her before he saw her.
Something changed in the crowded hotel bar—the energy shifted, the sound of voices lulled, and then he caught the scent of her skin, the essence of her blood, sweet and intoxicating.
He found himself breaking away from the conversation with a murmured apology. Moving to a darker corner of the bar, whiskey in hand, he watched and waited.
Damn, he felt like a predator.
He knew he should return to his colleagues, but he’d been waiting for her to arrive for what felt like gods damn hours, and all he wanted was to watch her.
He heard a few voices raised in greeting, then someone gave a low whistle.
“Gods, Clare, you scrub up well,” to which he heard her respond with her rare melodic laugh.
And suddenly, there she was.
And hell… he was well and truly fucked, wasn’t he?
He watched her greedily as she sashayed through the crowded room, her slender hips swaying in that fucking amazing red silk creation, ivory shoulders bared, the plunging neckline exposing the swell of her breasts.
All eyes were on her, tongues practically lolling out of their fucking heads.
Oliver’s fist clenched around his glass.
How dare they look at her? How dare they think they had the right?
He felt his fangs lengthening, his cock hardening.
You. Are. Mine.
What. The. Fuck?
Those words had never entered his head before, not even when his lust for human blood was at its worst. Never had he wanted to possess someone like he wanted to possess Clare in this moment.
This was bad. Really bad.
He should leave. Now. While he still retained some semblance of sanity. But he was rooted to the spot, knowing that her eyes would be drawn to him.
And when finally her gaze pierced the corner where he was hiding, their gazes fused. And it felt to Oliver like lightning sizzled between them.
He ground his molars and willed his fangs to retract. They refused, so he kept his lips clamped into a hard line. Things were no better in his pants, his dick was painful against his fly.
Her lips parted, her breasts rising and falling sharply with her suddenly erratic breathing. A pulse beat at the base of her throat.
He leaned against the bar, trying desperately to appear nonchalant. Cocking one eyebrow, he raised his glass in greeting.
“Hello, Clare,” he heard himself drawl as she stepped up to him.
“Hello, sir.”
He forced his damn fangs to retract. “Please—call me Oliver tonight.”
“Very well, Oliver,” she breathed softly. And shame on him, an image flashed before his eyes of her chanting his name as he pounded into her, her body soft and quiescent beneath him.
“It feels strange, somehow, to call you that,” she mused lightly.
“Almost like I’m not human, you mean?”
“I know you’re not,” she said, her smile challenging him to deny what everyone knew.
He threw back his head and laughed at that.
“Ah, my best kept secret, exposed.” He realized they were flirting.
Strange to find himself flirting with the object of his obsession.
At work, whenever she’d caught him staring at her, the sudden tightening in her expression always made him think she disliked him.
Made him feel rotten to be harboring such illicit feelings toward his junior.
It was wrong for so many reasons.
He was her boss.
He was two hundred years older than her. With a fucked-up past and a mental health problem he wouldn’t foist on any other living being, let alone this beautiful human.
And yet… and yet, there was this connection he couldn’t explain, like an invisible thread, binding them.
However much he tried to tell himself he was imagining it, to excuse his insatiable longing for her, he could not rid himself of the sense there was a darkness in her that complemented his own.
And because of that, he always felt lighter when she was around.
It was ludicrous, but it made him happy just knowing Clare would be in the office each day, with her solemn steady gaze, the tiny frown that puckered her brows, as if she was so much older than her years.
And then, of course, there was the possibility that he might catch one of her rare smiles or hear her laugh at a joke Saul made.
When that happened, he would hold onto the memory like a precious jewel, tuck it next to his heart and revisit it with his whiskey at night.
Sad fuck that he was.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked now. She hesitated, and he added, “There’s a tab on the bar tonight. No need to worry about being indebted to me.”
Her eyes danced mischievously. “Indebted in what way… Oliver?”
He laughed, heating behind his beard. “I refuse to answer that.”
When she accepted, he also refused to acknowledge the thrill of her standing by his side, not choosing to venture away even when others tried to tempt her.
As if this was where she wanted to be. Afterward, he couldn’t recall exactly what they’d talked about, but he remembered that her laugher had been more spontaneous than he’d ever heard it, and it made his own repartee light, and hopefully witty.
When they went in to dinner, by some fluke of fate she was seated directly opposite him. And amid the conversation and laughter, the banter and joking of their colleagues, their gazes would graze, and he would feel that invisible thread pull taut between them.
Later, he made his escape from the throng, trying to temper his elation, to return to his usual controlled self.
Out on the balcony, he set his back against the railings, his gaze tracking the dart of red satin as she moved around the room, mingling but not dancing with any of those eager monsters who would happily put their burly arms around her waist, hold her against their brutish bodies.
The thought sent jealousy spreading through his veins, thick and viscous.
Abruptly, he turned and stared at the skyline instead, remembering how it had changed over the centuries, the modern high-rise buildings that had sprung up around The Hole In The Wall District.
The rooftops of Old Motham remained unchanged, however.
Further out, there was that dark patch of nothingness that signified the Wastelands and the Pit, where ferals still gathered in makeshift huts and lit fires and fought among themselves.
He bit back memories of his own time among them. Oh yeah, he knew that black hole on the edge of the city far too intimately.
Gods, nowhere was safe to rest his gaze. Neither inside, nor out.
Suddenly he sensed Clare’s presence by his side and stiffened.
Casting a glance sideways, he drank in the sight of her profile, the strong clean line of her brow and chin, the straightness of her nose, her long, slender neck.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” He smiled into his glass to hide his pleasure.
“I can’t dance.”
“Can’t, or choose not to?”
“Choose not to, I guess.”
“Then how can you say you can’t dance?”
“I’m tone deaf, for a start.”
“So music doesn’t move you?”
She shrugged. “Not really.” He detected a small huff. “Once or twice, maybe.”
“When?”
“W-when I was a kid, perhaps? Honestly, I don’t remember.”
“Why do I sense that is not true?”
She turned toward him now, her face tilted up, her lips curving into a barely-there smile. He wondered what it would feel like to sip gently from that mouth, to just alight there without needing to slake his thirst.
Would he resist tracing lower, piercing the white skin at her throat?
Her next words broke through his fantasy. “I choose not to remember certain things.”
“Why is that?”
“Because they are not worth remembering.”
Oliver barked a laugh. “Congratulations, if you can so easily forget.”
“It’s not easy. I work at forgetting,” she said softly. “What about you, sir?”
“Oliver,” he corrected.
“Very well, but tomorrow I will address you as sir again.”
“If you must,” he acquiesced.
Her eyes widened in feigned shock. “It would be highly unprofessional to call you by your first name at work.”
“Let’s lay professionalism aside for tonight, Clare,” he said pointedly, loving the sound of her name, the hard C and the soft R rolling off his tongue. So very like her.
Hard and soft.
Dark and light.
“Okay then, Oliver-for-tonight-only,” she teased. “What things do you wish to forget?” Her question pierced him, as if she saw past his facade to the darkness within.
He composed his features. “Speaking of such things would open the door to remembering them, which would defeat the purpose of forgetting, would it not?”
“Very true.”
“Suffice it to say, I have worked through the memories. They are long gone.” A lie, but she would never know.
“As in, centuries gone?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you trying to gauge my age?”
“Maybe…”
He snorted. “You wouldn’t be the first. I think there was a poll that went round the bureau one year. Guess Hale’s age and he will buy a round of drinks on Friday night.”
“Did anyone succeed?”
“Nope. Hence, I never bought them drinks.”
“May I try?”
“Why not—since the drinks are free tonight.”
“Okay.” She tapped a finger on her lips thoughtfully. “Four hundred years old.”
“Gods, do I look that old?”
She laughed. “You are ageless, sir, to be honest.”
He felt smug “Halve it.”
“Two hundred?”
“Not quite. Two hundred and twenty-three, to be exact.”
“Wow, you were alive during the Great War.”
“I was four years old when it started, and ten years old when it ended.”
“That’s fascinating, you must have so many memories of that time.”
He held up a hand in warning. “Please, no more questions. That is the period I choose to forget.”
Her brows pleated. “But you must get asked about it often, surely?”
“No. Because I never mention my age.”
“You’ve just mentioned it to me.”
“That’s different.”
“How come?”
He found himself laughing, exasperated and elated in equal measure.