“No,” she breathed. “No, Larissa wouldn’t do that. If she were planning to kill me, why would she bother asking me to sell? Why not just act? And anyway, she doesn’t have the body strength to…”
“To what?” Jonas prompted, eyes narrowing.
Knowing she couldn’t give away too much or she’d risk having her memory wiped, she zipped her lips. “Never mind.”
A good ten seconds ticked by. “Just so I understand, whoever is threatening you has considerable body strength. You are aware of this because they’ve used it against you? Is that what you’re telling me, Ginny?”
“No. I’m not telling you. On purpose.”
Jonas made a sound in his throat. “You’ll have my protection regardless—”
“Regardless of whether or not you fiddle with my head? That’s a huge regardless.” She crossed her arms over her middle and asked what she really wanted to know. A question had been prodding her all day long. “Jonas. Why are you so determined to protect me?”
His cool mask remained in place. “Maybe I’m not telling you. On purpose.”
Ginny gasped over having her words thrown back in her face.
Jonas raised an eyebrow, as if to say, your move.
Roksana split a look between them and cackled. “Watching you two is better than pretending to be a lost virgin to bait vampires.”
“No way that works,” Jonas commented, sparing Roksana a brief glance before gluing his attention back on me. “You’re free to go, Roks. Please be back before sunrise to relieve me.”
“Dasvidaniya.” Roksana threw a leg out through the open window and vanished from sight. Gone. Just like that.
Leaving her and Jonas alone.
“I really don’t need round-the-clock bodyguard service,” she said into the charged stillness. “I must be keeping you from something important.”
Without confirming or denying, Jonas took a slow lap around the room, cataloguing her movie poster for The Big Sleep, the Singer sewing machine on top of her dresser, thimbles scattered at its base. He leaned toward one of her bottles of perfume, but seemed to catch himself before sniffing it, cutting her a slightly sheepish sideways glance.
Jonas continued in an arc around her bed, the fairy lights dangling from her canopy highlighting his rich, black hair. He was traveling closer to her and with each purposeful step, the fluttering in her middle intensified. She could practically taste sounds, his presence made everything around her so much more vibrant, from the hum of silence to the sharpness of colors.
“I don’t have any clients tonight,” she said, wetting her dry lips. “When I have an empty morgue, I usually go up to the roof for a while before doing paperwork.”
For the briefest of seconds when he turned, she swore his attention clung to the pulse at the bottom of her neck. Totally out of keeping with his polite nod. “The roof.” His exhale reached her skin and she shivered. “Take me there.”
She turned and walked slowly from the room, her back tingling with Jonas following behind her. Ginny’s room was located in the center of the upstairs hallway, with Larissa at one end near the bathroom. Near the third bedroom/closet sat a narrow staircase which led to the roof. “So, um…” Be cool. Be interesting. “I noticed you breathe.”
“Force of habit. Though I’m told the urge eventually goes away.”
“Isn’t it nice to have something to look forward to?” She turned just in time to catch his lips twitching. “Um.” She faced front in time to hide her delirious smile. “Won’t that be a dead giveaway that you’re not human?”
“Dead giveaway,” he chuckled quietly. “I don’t spend a lot of time around the living, so giving myself away isn’t really a concern of mine.”
Ginny opened the door leading to the staircase and flipped on the overhead light, remembering too late that the light bulb had burned out a year earlier. Right. Just an average, ordinary evening ascending a pitch black staircase with a vampire at her heels. Nothing to see here.
“So…” she began with a swallow, taking the groaning stairs one at a time. “Why don’t you spend a lot of time around the living?”
Jonas didn’t respond right away, but when he did, his smoky, touch of the south voice was close, so close, in the dark. “There are rules we live by, Ginny,” he said, gruffly. “None of them expressly forbid being around humans, but each of them was devised to make sure we’re never discovered. By allowing you to have an awareness of me, I might as well be breaking them.”
“What happens when you break them?”
“Excommunication. Death. Occasional mercy. It depends on the mood the High Order finds themselves in on a particular day.”
“Oh.” At the word death, Ginny stopped and turned so fast, she lost her footing, her heel sliding on the old, worn out carpeting. Her feet whooshed out from beneath her, but before she could even brace for her back to land hard, followed by the inevitable bumpy ride to the bottom, she found herself up on the roof in the moonlight, cradled to Jonas’s chest. “What just happened? How did we get up here so fast?”
“I caught you.” Emeralds flickered in his eyes. “It would be wise of you to remember how easily.”
Her pulse rattled in her ears. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” He trailed off with a frustrated sound, settling Ginny on her feet, but seeming reluctant to move away completely. “It means there are reasons we live by a set of rules. They’re written in stone because they keep people like you safe and prevent us from being discovered.”
She shook her head. “I’m safe with you, though, aren’t I?”
A pause ensued. “What brought you to that conclusion?”
“If you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it last night.”
Her response surprised him, but only momentarily. “Maybe I have stronger willpower than most.” He stepped farther into her space, giving Ginny a hit of his addictive scent. Cloves and mint. “Have you considered there might be a limit to it?”
No, she hadn’t considered that and frankly, she was beginning to question her conviction when it came to Jonas. Was she really so reckless as to put herself in dark, private places with a man who could clearly overpower and kill her? Or was there something almost…familiar about Jonas that made her so trusting of his intentions? “Why do you need so much willpower?” Ginny murmured. “What are you stopping yourself from doing?”
“Oh, Ginny.” He took her chin in his hand, studying her mouth with…fascination? Hunger? Before turning her head to the right and exposing her neck to the moonlight. “What am I not stopping myself from doing?”
The speed at which her nipples hardened caused Ginny to blink rapidly. She was already quite aware of her attraction to Jonas, but had he just implied he wanted her blood? She didn’t imagine it, right? And instead of recoiling like she ought to, a flame licked at her veins like a dragon’s tongue. Unexpected, that.
Very unexpected.
She’d liked members of the opposite sex before. She’d even let Gordon Collingsworth bring her to the movies once—an event he’d been eager to repeat ever since—but she’d only experienced a mild curiosity when it came to kissing Gordon. As in, would it be as clammy and moist as his palms? How long would it continue? If she let him French kiss her, would he stop begging her to come to Sunday dinner with his mother?