My bear stirred, restless beneath my skin. The beast didn’t fear a blizzard. Weather was part of nature, and even the harshest storms were nothing to my animal half. But Charlotte was under my roof. My beast wouldn’t rest easy until she was safe in my bed.
“Not happening,” I muttered, flinging back the blanket. But I could make sure the building was buttoned up against the snow.
Pulling on jeans and a sweater, I went downstairs and checked the generator. Its standby light glowed a steady green, indicating it was prepared for whatever the weather threw at it.
Sleep eluding me, I went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Caffeine kept humans up, but my shifter metabolism would burn off the drug within minutes. Not that I planned on going back to sleep. My beast was too wound up to let me rest.
A soft sound made me stiffen. The front door opened.
I was moving before the wind could gust through the house. The door clicked shut as I burst into the foyer. Charlotte’s scent flooded the air, which bore the bite of the storm outside.
“Fuck,” I muttered, rushing to the door and flinging it wide. Snow spun around me, flakes going up my nose and into my eyes. Wind ripped at my hair and clothes.
Charlotte was already down the steps and halfway across the parking lot. Her feet were bare, and she wore nothing but a pair of pajama pants and a gray T-shirt. Wind whipped her red hair around her head.
“Charlotte!” I shouted, wind snatching my voice.
She didn’t slow, and she didn’t turn around as she moved swiftly toward the forest. What the hell was she thinking?
Tapping my beast, I leapt the porch steps in a single bound and raced across the lot. “Charlotte!” I yelled, catching her by the shoulder.
She shrugged off my grip and kept going, her eyes wide and unseeing. Her lips were blue, and snow clung to her lashes and brows. Christ, she was sleepwalking into a blizzard.
I grabbed her by both shoulders and forced her to stop. “Charlotte, wake up!” Everett had once told me the whole thing about never waking a sleepwalker was a myth. Rousing them wouldn’t cause a heart attack or other disaster. It was just easier and less of a hassle to gently guide them back to bed.
But Charlotte was barefoot in the snow with hypothermia setting in.Gentlewasn’t going to cut it.
Giving her a little shake, I raised my voice over the wind. “Charlotte, you have to wake up. Now!”
She blinked. Then she focused on me, confusion swimming in her eyes. “Beck?” she rasped. “What…?” She looked down at her feet, then back up at me. “How did I…?”
“You were sleepwalking.” I swung her into my arms and strode toward the bed and breakfast. She clung to my neck, her skin like ice against my nape. Her teeth chattered, and she buried her face in my shoulder.
“Almost there,” I said, moving swiftly. The wind tried to shove me sideways, but I ducked my head and broke into a run, leaping the last few feet to land on the porch’s bottom step. Then I was over the threshold and kicking the door shut behind me.
Charlotte lifted her head, her teeth still clicking together as she surveyed me with obvious surprise. “Y-You…m-moved…so fast.”
I hefted her higher in my arms. “Let’s get you upstairs.” I took the steps two at a time and shouldered into her bedroom. Settling her in the center of the bed, I wrapped the quilt around her shoulders. Without her glasses, her eyes looked larger. More vulnerable. Melting snow plastered her hair to her head. The flakes on her eyelashes had already melted, leaving them dark and spiky.
“I don’t understand,” she said, shivering. “I’ve never sleepwalked before.” A hint of fear touched her voice. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” Leaning a hip on the bed, I folded one of her hands between mine and began chafing her skin. “You’re stressed and living in an unfamiliar environment. It happens.”
But even as I said it, disquiet lifted the little hairs on my body. Because the quilt had slipped, baring her neck. And just under her left ear, two tiny puncture wounds marred her skin. They were faded but visible.
Still, I hadn’t noticed them before. When we hiked, she always wore her hair in two braids, the tails frequently slipping over her shoulders and obscuring her neck. And, of course, I’d been distracted by her mouth and eyes. Her breasts and herscent. The curve of her ass. The thought of her stretched beneath me.
The marks were faint. But now that I’d noticed them, I couldn’t look away. They were puncture wounds.
A vampire’s bite.
Immediately, I squashed the thought. Charlotte was a scientist from Colorado. She was firmly entrenched in the human world. Vampires fed from their victims for extended periods, their venom creating an addiction that kept their prey coming back for more. In previous eras, the ancients kept large stables of humans. Modern times made such practices almost impossible, so most vampires lived in large cities where they could feed without rousing suspicion. They chose people who wouldn’t be missed. Humans who’d slipped through society’s cracks. Runaways and orphans?—
I sucked in a breath, every muscle in my body tensing.
“Beck?” Charlotte gazed up at me with something like fear in her eyes.
No,pain.
