She glared at him. “I told you I didn’t want to know any more.”
He began to undo the buttons of her shirt, slipping each one carefully from the buttonhole. His fingers brushed warmth over her soft skin, leaving behind tiny dancing flames. She caught at his hands, stilling their actions. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” She tried to look outraged instead of shocked and horrified by her own body’s reaction to him.
“I am removing your wet clothes. They are not doing you much good, honey, if your intention is to hide your body from me. The rain-soaked shirt is now completely transparent.” He pointed out the obvious without any inflection in his velvet-soft voice. “You are very cold, and you need to warm up. I thought this was the best way. But I would be most happy to choose another, if you wish.”
She pushed at the wall of his chest, turning bright red at his implication. He was right; the wet silk shirt revealed everything. “Go away. I am absolutely not taking a bath with you in the room.”
He studied her face. She was very pale. All eyes. In her mind was confusion and fear but no real resistance. She was not the type to throw herself out a window. “I would not like it if you slipped and fell, young one.”
“It’s insulting to have you refer to me as ‘young one,’ as if I were a child. I’m a grown woman,” she informed him haughtily.
His smile nearly took her breath away.
“That is what I am afraid of,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means, Jaxon, that I am much too old for you.” Lucian’s black eyes moved over her face with that possessive glint very much in evidence. “And yet there is no other for me, for either of us. We are stuck with each other.”
“Go away.” She pushed impotently at his broad chest again. “I’m going to soak in the bathtub for a very long time and convince myself none of this happened. I must be on drugs or something. Or the blow to my head has left me very confused.”
“You never received a blow to the head.” Amusement turned the warm velvet of his voice to pure seduction. “That was your partner.”
“Go!” This time she pointed to the door.
He gently allowed her feet to touch the tiles. Shaking his head at her silliness, he glided casually out of the room.
Jaxon took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. There simply were no such things as vampires in the world. It just wasn’t so. She tossed the wet shirt aside and slipped thankfully down into the hot water.
Yes, there are. You fust saw one. His name was Henrique, and he was not very skilled. There are many more. Do not worry, Jaxon. I am a hunter of the undead, and I will protect you.
He was in her mind again. She shook her head as if that would remove him. “I don’t want to know anything about vampires. I could go my entire life without that information and be perfectly happy. I don’t want to know.” What if Lucian was a vampire himself? He had gotten from the courtyard to the door she was fleeing out of, and the entire huge house had been between them. How had he managed it? “And what about all my dreams of dark princes and blood and icky things like that?” she murmured aloud to herself.
Icky things? He was definitely laughing at her. I am no vampire, although I pretended to be for a few centuries to help out my brother. I am a Carpathian, a hunter of vampires, those of my kind who have surrendered their souls to the darkness that exists within all Carpathian males.
“A few centuries? Just how old are you, anyway? Wait! Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. Just stop talking to me. This is crazy. I must be on very powerful drugs, and soon I’ll wake up in the hospital, and everything will be back to normal. I made you up. What I’m going to do is ignore you and take a bath. Vampires and you are gone forever from my mind. So don’t talk to me.”