“Thanks, Nick.”
Smiling, he dipped his head in a brief nod. “See you later.”
The prospect pleased her more than it should have. For some reason, it felt as though something had changed between them.
But it hadn’t, right? Not really?
Uncertain, she entered her home and closed the door.
Chapter Three
Nick couldn’t get back to sleep. He tried. He really did. But every time he closed his eyes, he remembered how it had felt to wake up with Kayla’s warm, pliant body in his arms. Her firm ass wedged against his lap. Her narrow back pressed to his chest. Her full breast cupped in his hand. Her fragrant hair teasing his nose.
He hadn’t slept with a woman in the literal sense in… well, he couldn’t remember how many years. Decades?
No.
Centuries?
Yes. It had been centuries. Not since he had become immortal now that he thought about it. The risk had been too great.
He also hadn’t slept with a woman in the figurative sense in a long time. Meaningless sex with strangers got old after a century or two, particularly since the positions he could choose were limited. The eyes of immortals and vampires acquired a very noticeable glow whenever they felt strong emotion—like lust. So he almost always had to take women from behind to keep them from freaking out.
And while such did scratch the itch, so to speak, after a while it just got boring. He never made a personal connection with one-night stands the way he had when he’d taken lovers as a mortal. There was no friendship. No affection. Just the satisfying of a physical need. Like eating an apple for a snack. He could eat an apple every day for centuries, but it just wasn’t the same as a big piece of steaming hot, fresh-from-the-oven apple pie.
Yeah. He had long since lost interest in casual sex with strangers.
Unfortunately, immortal/human relationships almost always ended badly. Humans couldn’t transform with the vampiric virus without suffering the progressive brain damage that would rapidly drive them insane. So the human was destined to age and die. More often than not in such relationships, the aging human grew bitter over the fact that her lover remained forever young. When he would leave each night to hunt, she would suspect him of meeting clandestinely with a younger woman. Then he would grow bitter over her lack of trust. And even if such did not transpire and the two remained steadfastly devoted to each other, the human was destined to die and leave the immortal alone to grieve her loss.
Tomasso and Cassandra were a perfect example of the latter. The two had been together for over a century. Seth’s incredible healing gift had enabled him to extend Cassandra’s life. But he couldn’t stave off old age and death entirely. Cassandra now looked old enough to be Tomasso’s grandmother. The two were still as in love and devoted to each other as they had been when they’d met 130 years ago. But their relationship was not without difficulties. Their time would draw to an end in another two decades or so. And Tomasso would be devastated when he lost her. He had waited hundreds of years to find Cassandra and experience the love the two shared. Nick didn’t know how his friend would survive facing centuries of solitary grief after she was gone.
Nick headed down the hallway to his studio and grabbed a sketchbook. Opening it, he flipped past dozens of drawings he had done of Kayla and began yet another.
Immortal/gifted one relationships didn’t fare well either. The fact that gifted ones could safely transform and spend the rest of eternity with the men they loved didn’t necessarily mean they would want to. For centuries immortals had been likened to vampires, whom the church had deemed evil. Soulless. Damned. In the past, no gifted one had been willing to risk an eternity in hell by transforming to be with an immortal. And immortals, not knowing why exactly they were the way they were, had not asked them to.
Slowly, Kayla’s likeness came to life on the page as he sketched her the way she had appeared as she’d slept beside him on the sofa.
Times have changed though, a little voice inside him murmured.
Immortals now understood that a peculiar virus—one that behaved like no other on the planet—made them what they were. They understood that anyone who possessed advanced DNA like their own could safely transform without losing their sanity. And several female gifted ones had fallen in love with Immortal Guardians in recent years and voluntarily transformed so they could spend the rest of eternity with them.
Maybe Kayla is a gifted one too, the voice suggested.
He didn’t think so. She had demonstrated no special abilities that he could see.
Then again, gifted ones were usually careful not to reveal their differences. And the DNA of today’s gifted ones had been diluted with ordinary human DNA for so many millennia that they sometimes bore gifts that were so mild they didn’t even realize they possessed them.
The phone next door rang.
Nick ignored it. His preternatural hearing enabled him to hear the goings-on in most of the homes around him. Centuries of practice enabled him to tune most of it out as he did now.
Until the machine asked whoever was calling to leave a message.
“Hi. This message is for Kayla,” a woman said. “This is Harper, from Dr. Fisher’s office. I was just calling to see if you were still planning to come in for your appointment today. If not, please let us know so we can reschedule you.”
His hand stilled. He glanced at the clock as Harper droned on, leaving a phone number and mentioning they would have to charge her a fee for missing the appointment.
Kayla had left over an hour ago. She’d said her appointment was at three thirty.
It was now four o’clock.
Frowning, he set the tablet and pencil aside, left the studio, and headed downstairs. Maybe she had run into traffic. It seemed as though rush hour started earlier every year in Houston. Or perhaps there had been an accident that had backed things up.
He’d left the remote on the ottoman earlier. Nick grabbed it and turned on the television, flipping over to a local channel that hosted an early-evening news program. The anchors mentioned a double murder in Bellaire, glossed over the latest happenings in politics, then followed with a fluff piece about a dog.
No mention was made of the vampires he and Eliana had slain at the University of Houston the previous night, a result of the network’s astonishing ability to clean up such things.
An Amber Alert followed the dog story. Really? A dog adopting a stray cat took precedence over a missing child?
He shook his head in disgust as they segued into a weather forecast teaser. No rain. No freezing temps. No surprise.
Nick fought a growing sense of unease as he glanced at the time indicated on the screen.
Finally! The traffic report.
A woman in a formfitting dress and incredibly uncomfortable-looking shoes warned drivers of a longer than usual commute. Apparently a four-car accident had brought traffic to a standstill. The muscles in his shoulders began to relax. The intersection mentioned was likely one Kayla was trying to get through to reach her dentist’s office, so she must have been held up in—
His mind blanked when the helicopter’s camera zoomed in on the scene.
That had been one hell of an accident. And one of the mangled cars was the same color as Kayla’s.
“There are lots of silver cars in Houston,” he murmured. And many of the models looked similar.