Chapter 4
Lucian
The bathroom door clicks shut behind Sawyer, and for the first time since bringing her here, since stupidly placing her in my bed, I let myself take a complete inhale and exhale—something no longer required, being immortal.
I avoided her scent as much as possible, until certain what I’ll be doing with her.
Keep her as an ongoing snack? Keep her to mate her and turn her into a vampire?
Her fruity aroma makes me starve for the kind of fruit I haven’t eaten in over two hundred years. Strawberries and raspberries. Before her, I couldn’t recall the taste of them, yet she returns it all by her mere existence. Humanity—the sweet but strange flavour tainting my tongue.
She’s moving around inside the bathroom, running the tap and flushing the toilet that’s never been used. When she comes out, she’ll want to leave, but she won’t be. I’ll use the weather as an excuse until emotionally tying her to me in some way.
By Christmas, she’ll be as obsessed with me as I, for some reason, am with her. I found her bleeding and broken. Fixed her up and cared for her. That makes her my property.
If only I could have ignored the tug, killed her, and put all this behind me. Instead, her sweet scent, scars, and the haunted look in her eyes compels me closer. She’s truly a Christmas miracle, because no mortal should ever claim such control over a vampire.
Being close to her is a test of the control I’m already struggling to keep. Feeding from her is becoming a craving, a desperation, and being nearby isn’t helping—but I can’t stop myself. With her every breath, my fangs fight to remain in my jaw and not tear into her pretty throat.
Sawyer finishes up in the bathroom, but doesn’t leave. She’s hovering by the door, probably trying to plan her escape. It’s inevitable she’ll try eventually.
Unfortunately for her, prey never escapes me.
The door cracks open, and she returns with a damp face, skittish forced smile, and wandering eyes. The long look she once again casts at her shoes in the middle of the floor is as telling as the rest of her behaviours.
Admittingly, my experiences with mortals beyond screams and pleas are quite limited. And no experience has ever been with such an attractive human like her. Certainly no one that managed to quell my hunger and make me crave something else entirely.
If Sawyer were from my time—and from a high enough class—she’d have the kind of face that would fill her dance card almost instantly at every party. The kind that would earn her proposals by the dozen.
I drop my attention to her left hand. If she has a mate at home, she may resist me, but her fingers remain clean from another man’s brand.
Her enthralling sky-blue gaze finally returns to me, and then the door. Her heartbeat picks up as she mumbles, “I should probably get out of your hair. If you don’t have a phone, would it be strange to ask if you have a car?”
“I do not.”
Her heartbeat quickens even more. Any faster, and I may be changing her simply to save her life when she has a heart attack. “You walk everywhere? In the middle of winter, in the Rockies, you walk?”
Run, actually. With a speed you’d never imagine. Telling her that isn’t an option until figuring out exactly why I want to keep her and for what.
“Yes. It’s refreshing and good exercise.” Was that a mortal enough answer?
“Then how will I leave?” She scans the cabin, and then again quicker before bringing her bottom lip into her mouth. Her heartrate increases, though her attempt to conceal her blatant fear by exhaling long breaths is admirable. “What time is it? There are no windows.”
Not that the time particularly matters, but I keep a clock for such curiosities, and gesture to its location beside the lamp. It’s displaying three in the afternoon, hours too early for me.
“I slept that long?” she mumbles to herself before touching her head, where the injury had been healed into a bruise and minor cut. It took every nerve to not taste her earlier, but anticipating her willingness held me back. “Well, now I’m definitely wasting my vacation.”
“Where’s your rental located?”
She rattles off an address from memory that isn’t overly far from here. With my speed, it’d be a quick run and easy to get her there, but then she’d leave me—and I don’t like the idea of that.
“I-it isn’t much,” she stutters, shifting her feet, though I don’t understand what in this conversation could be nerve-wracking.
“Kinda a shithole, to be honest. Anything nicer would cost too much. Anything closer to the major tourist areas would also be too expensive, even at this time of the year. I just want to see some parts of this world, starting with our country, before I die.”
Death isn’t an option for her any longer. It’s not good enough for this girl. No, the strange instinctual urge to protect her ensures death won’t receive her soul ever in this lifetime.
She paces towards her shoes, obviously contemplating running. She couldn’t be less obvious if she tried. While the sun is up, I can’t stop her once she’s outside, which means not giving her the opportunity.
“It’s negative thirty-nine outside,” I state conversationally, keeping my tone flat so she doesn’t realize her own power if she steps beyond the door. Scaring her is the simple, less frightening manner to keep her here. “You’d freeze before you made it to your rental.”
Her scent sours with sorrow. Sadness is an emotion vampires lose with immortality.
There’s nothing to be sad about any longer because we have the power to acquire anything we desire.
Anything we lose, as our old lives fade away, simply becomes personal history.
Being sad would make for a long existence.
“How far away is the road?”
For the sake of shifting her scent back to strawberries and away from sorrow, I gesture to the left. “Ten-minute walk that way.”
She purses her lips and stares at her shoes. Her debate ends quickly when she shoves her feet into the boots and turns for her coat, draped over the couch arm beside the bathroom.
“Don’t go.”
Admitting how I can’t and will not let her go isn’t a proper way to begin forever. Better she willingly remains.
She slides on her coat, focused on the buttons “Why not?”
“Because it’s not safe.”
“And it’s safe in here?” Behind her hair, her eyes flick up and away quick enough to not have been an intentional glance.
“If I wanted to hurt you, why would I bring you here?”
“Because that’s what serial killers do. They show compassion to lure their victims in.”
“You’re not my victim.” You’re my prey.
A nervous chuckle bursts from the lips that hold so much of my attention. “I’m supposed to believe that? Thank you for your help, but I’m gonna to walk to that road, and then to the nearest town. If you want to help, you’ll lend me another layer.”
Giving her another layer will mean she’ll be better suited to surviving, and surviving beyond these four walls without me beside her isn’t an option.
She heads for the door and immediately tugs it open. A burst of air blows through the cabin, and with it, a strip of sunlight.
With her back to me, she doesn’t notice my speed as I dart across the room and slam the door shut with my palm. A growl tears up my throat, my teeth sliding free, threatening to sink into her neck and make sure daylight is forever unavailable to her.
Her pulse flutters, and her every nerve tenses. All her little mortal instincts demand she escape, while her brain slowly pieces together her new reality.
“You’re not gonna let me go, are you?” Her whisper grates at my insides because she has no reason to fear me. But it doesn’t change the loss of venom and conviction in her words.
“No.” Not sure I can.
Her head bows, hair falling on either side of that neck. If only she knew what she’s doing, offering herself up like this. “Because life enjoys knocking me down.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
That raises her head again. She turns it slightly. “Then help me leave.”
“When the temperature eases up, we’ll get you to town so you can figure things out.” It’s a lie, but it makes her drop her hand from the handle and reins her conviction back to an acceptable level.
“Alright.” She removes her coat, then shoes, discarding both to the side before skirting around me and escaping to the couch. There, she lowers into the farthest cushion, cowers against the arm, and draws her knees up to her chest.
Only when my bodily reactions taper back to pretend-human do I turn, noticing the way she tightens her cardigan around herself.
“Cold?”
Her thirty-second hesitation makes it clear she doesn’t want to talk to me, but finally she mutters, “A bit.”
There’s limited heat because temperatures don’t affect me. But it was built with a thermostat that helps maintain the pipes for showers. I crank it much higher, the system whirling as it kicks in.
“Thanks. Do you have any food, by chance?”
She wants something out of me. A chance to provide. Sunlight has never been more of a curse than this moment, because there’s zero human food here. I’ll have to run to town to steal something, which will need to be after sundown.
“No, but I’ll get you some.”
Her eyes flick deliberately towards the kitchen and back when I don’t move right away.
“I’ll have to get some from out back, but in a bit.”
Her brows furrow deeper, and it’s like a silent conversation passes through her head before they lift again and she accepts with a shrug. After a few more minutes of silence, she lowers her forehead to her knees.
When more time passes, I wonder how her injury healed, or if it’s hurting again. The last time I healed a human was…never.
“You should lie down.”
“I’m fine.” Her voice shakes.
“You were in an accident. Your body needs rest.”
Apparently, humans have endless patience, because an even longer stretch of silence passes before she gives me a curt nod. She slowly unpeels herself from the couch, clinging to the cardigan as she skirts the edge of the room, keeping a wide berth between us.
Instead of sitting on the end of the bed how I want, I claim her place on the couch. Her trace masks the other scents—dirt, musk, and age. She’s as imprinted into this place after a day as she’ll be forever.
Sawyer lies down and feigns being a corpse for the rest of the afternoon.