“Why?”
I bit my lip for a few long seconds, then released it.
“Having an irregular heartbeat means that every once in a while, my heart skips a beat,” I explained. “Say right now, for example. It’s beating normally, and then all of a sudden skips a beat. No big deal. Now, if I’m working out, my heart skips a beat every three beats. Normally, where that wouldn’t be that big of a deal, suddenly it is. Most of the time, no problem. But it only takes that one time for it to get out of whack at just the right time, and in an erratic rhythm. At that point, I would need to be shocked back into a regular rhythm again, or it could deteriorate. Maybe even fall into cardiac arrest if it goes on long enough.”
He just looked at me.
“So, you continue to work out, running miles and miles at a time with your heart at a continuously higher level, and see nothing wrong with that?” he asked carefully.
I shrugged.
“I did not save you, pull you out of that car, and give you my blood just to see you throw your life away.”
My eyes widened at the ferocity in his voice, and I finally made the connection.
The little thing that’d been nagging at me for days upon days since I’d first met him.
“It was you!”
His mouth tightened.
“Knew the moment I tasted you on my lips again.”
I blinked. “How would you have tasted me?”
His mouth was a hard line.
“Blood is blood, no matter if it came from the source or not. That night, after saving you by giving you my blood, I brought my fingers to my lips and licked them clean like one would barbeque sauce. And that taste has stuck with me for years, taunting me, until about twenty minutes ago when you freely gave it to me again.” He sounded like those words were ripped from the bottom of his soul.
“How… why?”
My mind went blank as I went back to that night. Not wanting to remember but the memories taking me under regardless of what I wanted.
• • •
“Cadia, seriously,” Milly snapped. “It’s not that bad.”
I looked down at the hole that I’d ripped into my brand new, hundred-dollar pair of jeans, and winced.
Again.
“Not that bad, my ass. I can see my freakin’ underwear for crying out loud!” I cried. “My father is going to have a conniption!”
She snorted. “It’ll be okay. Don’t worry your pretty little face.”
I grumbled under my breath.
“What was that?” my friend asked in exasperation. “I didn’t hear you over your inability to speak your sentences out loud.”
I bit my lip as I tried not to scream at her.
And had been succeeding at not doing so when lights filled the windshield.
One second, I was staring out the window at darkness, and the next I was screaming.
Glass shattered. Metal crunched. Screams filled the air.
Far off an explosion rent the air, and before long I was having a hard time breathing.
Something felt heavy in my chest, and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t see.
That’s when the throbbing in my leg and arm started, followed shortly by the heaviness in my chest becoming an ache that I could no longer ignore.
Seconds passed. Minutes turned into hours.
I didn’t know how long it was. Possibly only milliseconds.
Whatever it was, it was too long.
“Milly?” I rasped.
My friend didn’t answer.
“Milly? Tonny? Carrie?” I moaned. “Please answer. Oh, God, I hurt.”
“Shhh,” a male said quietly. “You’ll be okay.”
“My friends!” I cried out.
The man didn’t answer.
But I heard a low curse that told me better than words.
“No.” It was a keening wail, and the man that’d stopped to help took hold of my hand and squeezed it lightly.
“No more.”
I didn’t have it in me to protest.
Then everything just… stopped.
My head felt better.
My chest was no longer heavy.
And there was a distinct taste of something in my mouth that tasted of spices and dark chocolate. Like the most delicious hot chocolate that I’d ever tasted in my life.
I opened my eyes to see the man licking his wrist.
He took one long look at me with those pretty eyes of his, and said, “Sleep.”
• • •
I gasped, lurching up and toward the man that’d saved my life. The man that’d pulled me out of a burning car only seconds before it blew up and took the bodies of my friends with it.
The man that’d starred in my dreams since that terrible night.
Constantine caught me, gathering me into his arms as if he’d done it a hundred times before.
• • •
CONSTANTINE
She felt right in my arms. Like a freakin’ dream.
One that I couldn’t have.
“You should go.” I cleared my throat and set her away from me.
“Why?” She wiped her tears.
I gritted my teeth.
“Because you don’t belong in this world,” I told her bluntly. “You’re everything that I’m not. You thrive during the day, while I live in the night. You have a job with the police department, while I do everything in my power to stay away from anything that is law enforcement. And to top it all off, you’re not what I want.”
She stared at me like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Not what you want.”
That was said with such a deathly quiet tone that I nearly winced.
Nearly.
“You don’t want to be in my world, princess,” I told her. “I was a Viking. I’m a man that is used to having everything he wants, and not taking no for an answer. Is that what you want to live with the rest of your life? Are you willing to become a vampire? You would be saying goodbye to your world as you know it.”
Her eyes had gone wide, and I saw instantly that she hadn’t thought much past the present.
“Go home,” I ordered. “And stop coming around here.”
She got up, her face as white as a sheet, and walked out. Not once looking back.
I got up, too, following her out.
She didn’t look back at me, but she knew I was there.
And as she hailed a cab and got in, sparing me once last glance, I realized two things.
One, I was further gone than I thought.
And two, I sure as hell hoped I had it in me to let her stay gone.
CHAPTER 10
Sometimes I want to drop kick my ass into last week.
-Constantine’s secret thoughts
CONSTANTINE
“Constantine?” my office elf, better known as Crude—yes, that was his real name—asked nervously.
This was why he’d never been anything more to me. The nerves.
He acted like at any second I was going to kill, maim, or turn him. Which I’d assured him more than once that I wouldn’t.
Which I guess, sometimes, I was wanting to do. He was too timid, and that pissed me off. Today more than most.
“What?” I snapped.
Crude looked like I’d beaten him.
“There’s someone here to see you,” he whispered.
Had I been a normal human, I wouldn’t have heard nor understood him. But I wasn’t human, thank fucking God, meaning that I could hear him thanks to my heightened senses.