Really, I was trying to get my steps in.
I was a Fitbit fanatic and had been a lazy bum for half the day.
This week had been exceptionally slow at work, which equaled a lot of ass-meet-seat time for me.
Which inevitably meant not getting the steps that I usually did, and since I was currently in competition with Keisha and a few other ladies from high school for the Workweek Hustle, I sure as fuck wasn’t going to sit on my ass and let them pass me by. Even if it meant I had to walk laps around a damn ballroom in high heels and a ball gown.
It was on my third pass when the host, a small, older man in his late seventies, called everyone’s attention to the front of the room.
“I would like to thank everyone personally for attending tonight,” the man’s voice trembled.
So, this had to be Mr. Cool, the man whose son was dying of testicular cancer.
The man who’d put on this benefit to aid a man that would likely not be on this earth long enough to see the good his father had done specially for him.
“As you know, my son, Jameson, was diagnosed with cancer six months ago…”
And the story went, breaking my heart all over again for the fourth time in as many days.
The son, Jameson, had two kids and one on the way, a wife that had MS, and was a teacher for about fifty third-grade students at the local middle school.
He…
I froze when I saw the man I thought I wouldn’t ever see again.
The same one that I’d seen throw a man across a freakin’ bar room with barely any effort.
Just a flick of his sturdy wrist, and the bartender was flying.
Though, the man had done something disgusting to my drink.
Which made me want to vomit.
I looked away quickly in hopes that the dangerous man didn’t see me and moved farther into the shadows.
The darkness of the room, paired with the fact that there were no lights in this area of the room, made it nearly impossible to see.
Yet the man, the Master of the City, saw me.
He turned only his face, took a glance around the room, and stopped directly on my form.
Could he see me?
I licked my lips.
His smile, I could see, was particularly devilish.
Shit!
• • •
That moment when our eyes met stayed with me for the next twelve hours.
My mind was on those wolf blue eyes when I shoved my apartment key into the tiny pocket at the waistband of my workout capri pants and folded the band back into position before I pulled my shirt down.
“I gotta go, or I’m never going to get this done,” I told Keisha. “What time are we meeting tomorrow for lunch?”
“Eleven sharp,” she answered. “Unless you want to get our toes done first.”
I thought about that for a moment and then decided not to.
“I have to go take professional family pictures on Sunday, and likely I’ll go get them done on Friday to make sure they’re fresh,” I murmured. “My brother has this wild idea that taking professional family photos will make him more ‘human-like’ to his other clients.”
She snorted. “Okay, darlin’. Text me when you get home so I know you weren’t eaten.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
Most humans didn’t run after dark… at least not since the vampires had come out to the public.
I didn’t see the big deal. I used to run all the time before they came out, and it’s no secret that they were here for a very long time before we knew about them. So, deciding to change up a routine I’d had since I was a young kid seemed futile.
Especially since the only time I ever found time for a run was at night.
The day was for getting stuff done in town. The night was all for me.
And that was what running was to me.
Freeing. It helped me erase my mind after the hard days, and tonight especially, I needed that.
The man, Constantine, gave me heart palpitations, and he hadn’t even said a word to me. He’d only wordlessly sat across from me and paid me zero attention throughout dinner. In fact, I wasn’t even sure he knew who I was, all dressed up like that.
Sighing in frustration—and a little bit of hurt that I was so easily forgettable—I took the steps down to the apartment’s main level and pushed through the doors.
Yes, a run was exactly what I needed.
CHAPTER 4
Stalking her? I prefer the term ‘selectively watching only her.’
-Con’s secret thoughts
CONSTANTINE
I watched her run.
She was a surprisingly elegant young lady.
Her legs, although short, were lithe and quick.
Her eyes never strayed from her destination—a place I had yet to figure out—and she just ran.
Not fast. Not slow. Just a constant pace that never slowed or deviated from the mile before it.
If I didn’t know any better, I would think that she was a vampire.
Not because she was running fast, but she was running like a machine. Like a—well—vampire.
Vampires didn’t look around. They didn’t fuss or muss. Didn’t grow tired.
At least not for a very long time.
At the pace she was running, I could run for days. Weeks, even.
And that was exactly what she looked like she set out to do.
I was easily keeping pace with her, keeping a slow and steady jog about two hundred yards back from her so I wouldn’t accidentally catch her attention. Though, I was keeping to the shadows.
It wouldn’t do for a citizen to see me in my three-piece suit and thousand-dollar shoes running like I was a normal human being.
They would know with just one look that I didn’t belong.
Especially not in this shitty neighborhood.
Jesus, what was she thinking living in a place like this?
The part of the city she was in, known as the Lowtown of Austin, Texas, was one of the most crime-ridden in the entire fifty square miles that surrounded our city. And it was clear to not just me, but everyone I asked about her, that she was well-to-do.
Her brother was a vampire counsel, and he made astronomical amounts of money seeing as no other human being defended vampires.
There were, of course, actual vampires that were lawyers, but now that we were out in the open, everyone—police, judges, and the general population—regarded us with a wariness that I should have expected.
But I never, not in a million years, would’ve thought that when we came out, that people would act quite like this.
Though, I blamed the modern media for that one.
They were cruel, only painting the darkest pictures of us, and not caring one bit that they were feeding bullshit to society.
No, all they cared about was making a buck, and they didn’t care that they were ruining lives—even if those lives were the undead.
I must’ve got lost in thought, because between one second and the next, I looked up and realized that the woman I was following was no longer where I’d last seen her.
Slowing to a halt, I widened my senses and started to listen.
I could hear the televisions—all two hundred and six of them—within a four-square-mile radius. Most of them were watching a reality show—The Bachelor.
I could hear people fighting, arguments about money, kids, what one woman was going to do for the rest of her life.
As my heightened senses scanned the area, I frowned when I couldn’t even hear her running footsteps any longer.