Before, he’d never looked at it, but since Kadence’s arrival, he often found himself admiring his view of it. He tried to let its beauty soothe the demon within him, but it refused to be appeased by plants. It wanted blood; it wanted her.
He settled the curtain back into place and turned to face her. “Yes, with me.”
Callie’s heart hammered with excitement and apprehension. Despite their awful start, this past week had been some of the best days of her life. However… “I barely know you.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. Over their time in the hotel, they’d shared a lot of their history. She’d revealed a lot to him, and he knew her as well as some of her closest friends, only a whole lot more intimately.
“No, that’s not right,” she said. “I’ve come to know you fairly well, but we haven’t known each other for long.”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes!”
And then she took the time to really consider his question. Did it matter?
So what if they only met each other a little over a week ago? In that time, she’d come to know him better than her high school boyfriend and her college one. And she felt a whole lot more for him than she had for either of them. She’d considered herself in love with them, but those feelings were a pale comparison to the ones Lucien evoked in her.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
Lucien walked over to stand before her. Sensing her uncertainty, he rested his hands on her shoulders before pulling her close. He hugged her as she stood unmoving for a minute. Then her arms came around him, and her fingers bit into his back as she hugged him.
“Why don’t we take it one day at a time?” he suggested. “And see how it goes.”
And during those days and nights, he planned to make her so happy she wouldn’t want to leave.
Callie closed her eyes and listened to the reassuring beat of his heart as she held him. “I still have to go home for some of my things.”
Lucien wasn’t going to argue with her about it. “We’ll talk about it again in a week.”
“My rent is due soon; I have to get into my bank account so that I can pay him, and I need to let my boss know I’m not coming back. Though, I’m sure he’s figured that out.”
A new possibility occurred to her. “My friends and boss have probably reported me missing. The police could be looking for me.”
“The Savages probably already took care of that in case you turned up again. I’m sure they’ve gone to the police and buried your case. If you’d died like they planned, they wouldn’t have bothered, but since you survived, they’ll cover their tracks.”
That realization made nausea churn in her belly. “If my landlord has heard anything about me being a missing person, he’ll throw my stuff on the curb the second he doesn’t get his rent. I love my place, but the guy is an asshole, and I can’t let that happen. I have to get into my bank account and send him a check or something.”
“The Savages will be watching your accounts. They won’t be able to figure out where you are, but if they see you pay your landlord, they’ll keep an eye on your apartment.”
“That can’t happen,” she muttered.
“I’ll pay him.”
“I don’t want you to pay him. I have money; I just need to get to it.”
She still had most of the money from her father’s life insurance policy, and she’d saved some from her job over the years. She planned to buy a small farm where she would have plenty of room to rehabilitate injured wild animals and foster shelter animals.
She had a vivid image of her future home in mind, so she was saving up enough to buy the house of her dreams while making sure her mortgage payments were low enough to live out those dreams.
And now those dreams lay in broken pieces around her.
“You can pay me back,” he said. He would never take money from her, but he hoped to appease her unease with his words.
“You’ve been taking care of me since all this started; you shouldn’t have to.”
And she hated her continued reliance on him. She’d always been independent, and she missed her ability to take care of herself. However, she never could have seen this coming.
Lucien gripped her shoulders as he leaned back to stare down at her. “I don’t have to do it; I want to do it. I’ll make sure you don’t lose your place or your things, and we will get them for you.”
She bit her lip as her gaze traveled to the curtains. “Maybe we can have them mailed somewhere. I have some friends who would pack up some of my things and send them to me. It will be difficult trying to convince them that I’m okay enough to do it, but I’m sure I can think of something.”
“No,” Lucien said. “If the Savages are watching your place, you’ll only be putting your friends at risk.”
“Then I can hire a moving company!” she cried as the idea struck her. “They can ship it out.”
“And the Savages will learn the mailing address and be waiting there for someone to pick it up.”
“I hate them,” she muttered.
“So do I, but we will get your things for you, and until then, I will pay your rent.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Okay, but once I can access my money, I’ll repay you.”
“Don’t worry about that right now. Try to relax and enjoy yourself; you’re safe here.”
“Safe,” she breathed as the truth of the word sank in.
Then she laughed as she leaned into him.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“I’m safe in a place I don’t know, where I’m stared at by a bunch of strangers, and half of those strangers are vampires. It’s a little weird, and not where I thought my life was going a week ago.”
Lucien chuckled. “I didn’t see my life going this way either a week ago, but then, I was barely coherent a week ago.”
She couldn’t stop herself from laughing.
“Although,” he continued, “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
His sweet words caused the last of her tension to fade away. He kissed the top of her head before moving lower to her temple and then her cheeks. When she lifted her mouth to his, their lips met, and everything was right in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Over the next week, Callie spent her days exploring the mansion while she wandered the grounds. She watched the hunters and vampires drill together, work out, and run around the compound. They were like everything she’d seen about boot camp, and they worked from morning to night.
And Lucien worked with them. She was glad he was doing so much better, but it made for lonely days, and she was running out of things to explore.
Lucien had yet to leave the compound, but others went out nightly to hunt Savages. She had no idea when he would go back to hunting, but she assumed it would be sooner rather than later. Over the week, he’d put more weight on as he regularly fed from the blood bags stored in a room off the gym.
He was so different from the man she first met that she almost couldn’t believe it was the same vampire. He was almost back to his full strength again, and once he was, he would go out with the others to hunt again. As happy as she was to see him doing so well, she dreaded the day he returned to putting himself in such danger.