“Oh yeah? What do you think of me then?”
“I think you are sweet, tough, and you can take care of yourself if you have to. I also think you are looking for something you haven’t found yet. You think you have, but they aren’t right for you.”
“What?”
“I know you at least have a boyfriend. Maybe even a husband. But either way, they don’t fulfill you the way you need to be, so you spend a lot of time out of the house trying to find something that will.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.” I took another sip of the nasty wine and put on my best poker face.
I was with Regan. Vampires don’t have weddings, but when you make a mate, it is the same thing or stronger. That part was true, but the part about not being fulfilled, he was wrong. Dead wrong.
CHAPTER TEN
Three nights later
I left Dylan craving more of me the night he “rescued” me. He believed me when I played the brother card and was livid when he didn’t show up to get me that night. I talked him into letting me stay until morning and he jumped at it. When I snuck out after he fell asleep, I knew he would be craving my attention again like a crack addict needing a fix. It would be time to swing by the bar again and see how far I could push him.
I saw his little car parked in the same spot it had been the night I went to his house. Sitting in my car, I waited for him to come out once again before approaching him. The fewer people who knew about us, the better off Regan and I would be when it came time to leave the little town in southern Georgia.
He came out early and I watched as he looked around the parking lot. It was as if he could sense where I was because it only took him a second to start heading where I had parked my car. I thought sitting in the back of the lot where the only light had been busted out would allow me to watch him without being seen. I wondered if he had some mind reading powers too, but I hadn’t been intimate with him, so there was no way to tell that.
Knock. Knock.
The light tapping on the window hadn’t startled me, but his speed had. He was across the lot when I looked down to make sure the slit in my dress was sitting just right to show off a little, but not too much, of my tan leg.
“I was hoping you would be here,” he said as I lowered the window.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about you since you snuck out on me the other night.”
“Sorry about that. He showed up and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I wish you would have. I don’t know anything about you other than your name. It was hard not knowing if you were alright. I figured no headline in the paper was a good thing.”
“I’ve made the paper a few times,” I said and laughed. He would think it was a good joke then, but I had made it more than once for our hunts.
“I bet. I was about to head home. Want to come with me?”
I was a little taken back. Normally I was the one in control, but he seemed happy to take charge. I would have to break him a little if I was going to make it work with him, and I had to. There wasn’t time to pick another man and I wasn’t going to run to Regan and tell him I failed.
“Okay. I was going to get something to eat though. Should we swing by and pick something up?”
“Sure. Want to follow me?” he asked. “That way when you sneak out, I know you have your own way home.” He winked at me, but his smile didn’t reach up to his eyes like normal.
“I can do that. Or,” I paused for a second longer than I needed to, “I could stay until morning.”
“Hmm. I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I’m sure.”
His laugh was deep and real that time. It was contagious and I found myself laughing with him. There was something about him I couldn’t place, but I wanted to know more. One night with him wouldn’t hurt anything. Regan would expect it and I was sure he was off doing his own thing too.
“So?” I asked when he stopped laughing.
“Come on.” He opened my door and held out his arm for me to take. Walking back to his car, I couldn’t help but feel the flutter in my stomach when his hand touched my arm.
He swung through this little taco place and got us each three tacos. I would have to get creative on how I handled that because food wasn’t something I ever put in my body. It would make me sick, but I had to eat it if I was going to pull it off. If I went fast enough, I could eat one or two then head to the bathroom. I carried mouthwash in my purse for that reason.
Back at his place, we sat on the lumpy couch and talked. I unwrapped the tacos and placed them on the paper plates he brought out for us. Folding the paper towels into napkins, I waited for him to come back from the kitchen before we ate.
“Here,” he said handing me another glass of wine.
I brought it up to my nose and sniffed as I swirled it slowly in the glass. It wasn’t so much that it needed to breathe, I just wasn’t sure if I could choke down tacos and boxed wine all in the same night without getting sick on him.
“It’s okay. I was hoping you would come back. That’s the real stuff from a bottle,” he remarked when I still hadn’t drank any.
“Oh, I was letting it breathe,” I tossed out hoping he would believe me.
“I tried the other stuff after you left. It’s fine to want to let it breathe for the next hundred years. That stuff was horrible.”
“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but yeah. It was hard to choke it down.”
“I knew it. That’s why you left that night. It was the wine.”
“It really was. I thought for sure you would make me drink more and the thought of it, hmm, I couldn’t do another glass.”
“Good thing I upgraded then.”
“Good thing.” I brought the glass to my lips and closed my eyes. The sweet taste of strawberry wine danced on my tongue. “Very good choice.”
“Thanks.”
He sat down finally, and we ate our food. I made it halfway through the second one before I had to get up. Making sure to run the water in the sink, I prayed he couldn’t hear me vomit through the thin walls.
When I came back out, the rest of the tacos were gone, and he was too. It was a few seconds later when he came back out from the kitchen with our glasses refilled.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Tacos don’t always agree with me, but I love them,” I lied.
“I’ll remember that for next time. No tacos.”
“Next time?”
“Well, I’m hoping.”
“I think I could help with that.”
He sat down next to me and put his hand on my face. The feel of his warm skin on my cooler skin had me moaning without realizing it. I always forgot how warm humans were until one touched me like that.
“You’re so cold,” he remarked and moved closer.
“I know. I’m always cold.”
“Let me warm you up.”
Before I could think, his lips were on mine and a feeling rushed over me I couldn’t understand. I wanted more from him than one small kiss. I wanted to feel him press against me and hold me tight against him. I wanted to see what it felt like to have his arms fully around me and feel his manliness on all my private places.