Chapter 25 #2
Before she could speak again, Tai’s metallic eyes washed charcoal, and he flinched as if she’d slapped him.
None of this was right, was how she’d have chosen to tell him, except part of her had chosen it, and the rest of her was still trying to catch up.
Tai set his hands on her shoulders, gently as if she might be injured there too.
He stepped in close, hesitant…oh. He thought she might need space from him.
Might not welcome the physical contact. Claire wrapped her arms around his back and pressed her palms there, pressed closer to him, buried her face in his hoodie, which was softer than it looked, well-worn.
Tai’s arms surrounded her in safety. He gave a single, shuddering breath against her hair.
He held her, and she let herself be held. She wasn’t lonely anymore.
“Come on,” he said.
Before she had to move, he scooped her into the cradle of his arms and carried her to the open living room.
Claire hid her face in his shoulder as feelings she’d kept in check began surging inside.
Not the aftermath of the fight. She’d kicked that blond misogynist’s butt.
No, this was something else. This wasn’t about then; it was about now.
She didn’t have to pick up her own pieces.
Tai was here. Tai was holding her. Tai was safe, and Claire could rest. She was still the feather of strength, but in this moment she wasn’t soaring high and catching a solitary current.
She was floating down, down, down to settle in Tai’s arms.
Except she still had to tell him.
She could often predict his reactions to things, but this? She had no idea what he’d say about this. What he’d think, what he’d feel.
Tai settled her on the couch. He seemed to move away with effort, wanting to hold her, but she had to tell him first. She sat up and swung her legs to the floor, and Tai sat beside her and took her hand.
A muscle twitched in his jaw, and she heard him grind his teeth a few times before forcing himself to stop.
“There’s something I’ve been doing,” she said.
He nodded, waited for more. When she didn’t continue, he said, “Claire, please tell me.”
The quiet plea jarred like a physical blow, all the way down her spine. She must be right about the intervention of the universe. This must be the day he was supposed to know.
“Claire?”
She shut her eyes a moment, then kept her gaze on their hands.
She wove her fingers through his. “Twice a month, I pick a human club, and”—she gestured to her dress, her face, the neon eyeshadow and lipstick—“I pretend I’m a human woman who’s had just enough to drink.
I make my movements sluggish and wait to see if there are any predators in the house that night. ”
Tai was grinding his teeth in earnest by the time she paused, his chest still as he forgot to breathe. “And if there is a predator?”
“I let him think he’s going to get what he wants. Until I get him alone. Then I zip-tie him and leave him for the police.”
A sudden, sharp breath shuddered into him, then back out. “The wig is blonde.”
A surprised laugh caught in her throat. “Good guess.”
“And your contact lenses are brown.”
He couldn’t possibly know that. Except he did.
Future-sight? It was rare among vampire men, but it wasn’t unheard of.
He cupped the back of her head, not gently as he usually did, but tightly, protective and possessive all at once.
He tilted her head as if he didn’t already have easy view of the wound at her collarbone.
His smooth baritone came out wrong, strained to breaking. “At the meeting tonight, a police lieutenant showed me a picture from a hotel security feed.” His voice fell to a whisper. “Meanwhile you were out hunting again.”
Slowly she nodded, mind scrambling to catch up.
Tonight. He’d found out from someone else tonight.
He’d studied a picture of her leaving one dangerous man locked in a bathroom while she threw a bloody stun gun dart back in the face of a different dangerous man.
Was his police lieutenant friend also Nova’s source? Had they seen the same picture?
“Who did this to you?” The words choked out of him, and his eyes began to glitter like shards of glass as he stared at her collarbone wound, which wasn’t bleeding anymore but still felt raw.
“The police have him by now. He shot me with a stun gun, but it’s not—”
He let out an awful sound, a hiss garbled with a wail behind his teeth. His fingers skimmed above the wound again.
“He did this. To you.”
“Tai, it’s only—”
He was gone from the room. Across the house. In the elevator. Pounding the buttons for the ground floor as if he’d smash the entire panel. Claire darted after him, moving as fast as she’d ever moved in her life to sneak past the elevator door as it slid shut and nearly clipped her.
“What are you doing?” Tai hissed.
“What are you doing?” she snapped.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“How? Are you going to march into the police station and demand to see him?”
“You always leave evidence for them,” he said. “DNA, body cam, so they’ll know who I’m after, and they’ll give him away somehow, or I’ll overhear something. Whatever it takes.”
She grabbed hold of his hoodie sleeve and twisted until he met her eyes. “You can’t kill a human. You know you can’t do that, Tai.”
“This human, I can.”
“In front of a whole lot of other humans?”
“They won’t even see me move.”
Tai pressed his hands to the door as the elevator descended, and the metal was about to give, his palms just beginning to leave an impression. Claire got between him and the door, pushed him back against the wall.
“Tai, stop. Stop and think.”
But this was vampire rage as Claire had never seen it. Tai was practically vibrating with fury that seemed to form a field of energy around him, lethal and icy. When the elevator opened, he darted out, and Claire followed him into the parking garage beneath the building.
He was headed for his car. Claire kept pace with him, across the entire lower level in less than two seconds. Only as they reached his vehicle did she realize he’d swiped his keys on the way to the elevator.
He was so fast. Too fast.
She threw her arms around him from behind and held on. He tried to disengage her hold, as if that would work. She squeezed him hard, and he stood still.
“Tai,” she said into his ear. “Stop.”
“He tried to—to—”
“Tried and failed spectacularly. Now calm down. Breathe.”
“He hurt you.”
“Right. I’m the injured party here. So I get to decide what happens next, and I’m telling you to stop and breathe.”
He made that sound again, the wailing hiss.
He tried again to shake her off. She wasn’t getting through.
Claire had been mad before—deeply, coldly, vampire-mad.
The rage had been scary even as it was happening to her, made her grateful that like most vampires, she was nearly impossible to provoke to that level.
But this…Tai’s rage made her own look like mild annoyance.
And he wasn’t scared of it. He was hissing, tremoring, straining to unleash it.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said.
He gave a small jerk of surprise. A long moment passed. His voice was tight enough to snap like an instrument string. “Vampire rage is worse for a bloodfiend.”
She forced a quiet laugh, and his rigid shoulders lowered by maybe a centimeter. “I said something I don’t know.”
Tai groaned, low and long. His right hand came up to her arms, latched around his neck, and he gave her forearm a gentle squeeze. He was trying to come back to her.
“I’ve got you,” she said.
He hissed, lost again to the arctic fury.
“Talk to me, Tai. Talk through it.”
“I know it’s not what you need from me. Or what you want. I know you’re powerful on your own, Claire.” Tai’s voice was smoothing out, one sentence at a time. His chest rose and fell with the first breath he’d taken since Claire stepped into his foyer. “But I need to do something.”
“There are a dozen things you can do. Killing the guy who zapped me isn’t one of them.”
Tai’s entire body tensed as the hiss resumed. Shoot. Wrong thing to say.
She hooked one thumb into the neck of his hoodie. “Are all your hoodies official band merch?”
The hiss stopped. Another breath filled his chest, emptied slowly. He was trying. His voice was smoother again as he said, “No. One’s a souvenir from when I saw In the Heights.”
“Mm, I haven’t seen that one yet.”
“It’s getting threadbare. I only wear it at home.”
“I’m sure ‘old threadbare hoodie’ is an incredibly hot look on you.”
“I thought you liked the tux.”
“What did I say about the tux, Tai?”
“Oh right, it’s all about me.” That was a smile.
“How are you doing now?”
“Better,” he said, “but if you let go, I might still drive to the police station and kill him.”
“In that case, I’ll keep hanging onto your back like a little kid pleading for a piggyback ride.”
He chuckled, but it was shaky. She hitched herself up and wrapped her legs around his hips, and he gave a steadier laugh and reached back to support her thighs with his arms in the classic piggyback pose.
“Giddy-up, horsie,” she said.
He shifted her weight just as she moved to do the same, and then she was wrapped around him from the front instead, her lips crashing into his, her legs still hooked around his waist, and Tai kissed her back with all the protective anger left in his body.
The kiss was cold and hard and needy. He needed to know, to feel that Claire was okay; he made his need clear in every move of his mouth over hers. So she showed him that she was.
She was okay. He was here. He knew her secret. And after she’d avoided telling him for so long…it was all okay.