24. Lazarus #2
I feel so out of my element that I don’t know what to say or do or even how to react with her in my presence. At least she didn’t mention the clothes.
She had to have noticed.
I could apologize. I won’t. Mostly because I’m not sorry.
Slowly I head beside her, choosing the stepper and beginning an easy pace.
“I’m sorry.” I blurt the words out. Fast and hard. Guess I am saying them after all. “I shouldn’t have walked out on you.”
She shrugs with a teasing smile. “Your loss.”
It was in fact my loss.
I hum, I know what she’s implying. “Calliope.” She glances at me keeping to her pace. “When I finally have you to myself. It’ll be just the two of us.” I make sure to lower my voice keeping that gritty tenor that sends goosebumps across her flesh. And just as predicted, there they are.
She smirks, increasing her pace on the treadmill. “You mean if I let you have me.”
I watch her profile, the way she bites her lower lip, the flush spreading across her chest. My fangs threaten to descend.
Oh, she’ll let me.
“Your translation,” I say, changing the subject before I pick her up and set her on the screen of my machine. I’d call it, fast food. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Oh?” She sounds surprised. “And?”
I step off my machine, moving closer to hers. “You’re right.”
She stumbles slightly, catching herself on the handles. “I’m sorry, what was that? Could you say it again?”
“Don’t push it,” I warn, but there’s no heat behind it. “Your interpretation of the ancient text, it’s more accurate than mine.”
She slows her pace, shuts the machine down, and turns to face me fully. “That must have been hard to admit.”
“The hardest thing I’ve done in”—and I mean it—“ages.”
“That was even harder for you.” She smirks pleased with herself. “You know, it would have been done three years ago.”
“You’re right,” I say shocking her. “I just didn’t have a position for you.”
And I’ve gone and pissed her off. I can tell in the way she squares her shoulders and the way she backs up like I’ve slapped her.
“Soren?” She spits his name like it’s offensive, not at all how she moaned his name all night long. “You hired Soren, your friend,” she says it with the implication we aren’t just friends. “Over me, isn’t that violating some HR law?”
“Calliope.”
“And don’t think I didn’t notice the full dresser and closet.” She pokes a finger to my chest. “I noticed what you did. I notice everything, Lazarus.”
Just not that I’m a vampire.
“Do you?” I can’t help the challenge. “Notice everything, or just what suits you?”
Her eyes flash with fury, and I instantly regret my words. I watch her mouth open, then close, then open again. The silence stretches between us, thick with tension.
“You know what? You’re right.” She crosses her arms, her voice dropping to that dangerous calm tone.
She goes almost gritty, smoky and sexy. “I do notice what suits me. Like how I noticed you can’t stand being wrong.
How I noticed you’d rather walk away than admit defeat.
How I noticed you bought me clothes hoping I’d stay. ”
I step closer, unable to help myself. “And will you?”
“Will I what?” She doesn’t back down, chin lifted in defiance.
“Stay.” The word hangs between us.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you can handle being with someone who might know more than you do. Someone who might challenge you.” She pokes my chest again, but softer this time. “Someone who won’t let you run away when things get hard.”
I capture her finger, holding it against my chest where my heart beats. “I don’t plan on running again.”
“Good.” She pulls her hand away but doesn’t step back. We’re close enough that I can smell her.
Like lavender on a sunny day. In a field of flowers under a sun baking her skin.
And because time has aged me in a way that I hate. Because hurt seeps in with every glimmer of happiness. I think of existing in that field with her under a sun, and if anyone chose that moment to kill me?
They’d succeed.
Because only death would tear me apart from her in that moment. And that, that fear is why I swallow my need and want and step back.
Not because I don’t want her but because I’d make grave decisions for her.
“Why do you look at me like that?” She surprises me with her whispered admission. A question I’m not sure I know how to answer.
Because you are everything I’ve craved for centuries.
Because you are all I’ve ever hoped for and wanted.
Because I broke you to keep you and I don’t know how to tell you that.
But most of all because I fear death when I’ve only just discovered, you.
“How do I look at you?” Instead of walking away, I lean in hanging on her every word.
“Like you’re terrified of losing me when you don’t even have me.”
Bold. Such a bold bride.
“Men fear most what they want.”
“You fear me?” Is she leaning in?
“I fear the choices I’d make to keep you.”
“Well those aren’t the same things, Lazarus.” She is leaning in.
“No, they’re the same feeling of things. The same shape.” I’m a bastard for reaching for her face. To grip her head in the palm of my hand. So precious, so small, so perfectly everything I fucking crave.
“And what choices does a director at the Penn Museum make that fear is what holds you still?” Her eyes flicker between mine.
I want her, I want to close the distance. But her words.
Her words remind me she believes I’m human. She believes my fear is the job, of working with someone she’s also invested in.
That’s not it at all.
Because I’d kill to keep her. I haven’t had to kill another vampire in centuries. Our kind is lazy now in this modern era. Lazy. And I? I would kill every warring house to keep her.
Not human actions.
Actions of a vampire protecting his bride, his mate, his forever.
And she has no idea.
That’s why I step back, that’s why I don’t answer her.
“Tell me, Calliope.” I walk over to the weights. “What’s your favorite exercise.”
“Hmmm,” she lets it go. She doesn’t push. She rides the wave of the present without pushing for the future. “Deadlifts.” Then she smirks. “I’ve had to throw more than one guy out on his ass.”
I hide my smile, because I know.
I’ve been watching the security tapes for three years.
Another secret I can’t tell her.