That was short notice. Hopefully our flight would arrive in time and Viktor wouldn’t spend hours interrogating us. “Sounds good.”
Christian suddenly snuggled up behind me. “Hurry up, will ya? You’re hogging all the covers.”
Glass coughed. “Who was that?”
“No one,” I said, elbowing Christian. “Just my partner.”
“The Vamp?” he asked, a hint of irritation in his tone.
“So how does eight o’clock work for you?”
“I think I can pencil it in,” he said, a smile in his voice. “See you then, Miss Black.”
I hung up and rolled over.Crap.Now I was going to have to act like a girl and worry about what to wear.
Christian folded up the paper sack into a neat square and leaned over me to toss it into the wastebasket. “Well, if you’re going to go out with a Chitah, maybe I should warn you that their love bites can kill.”
“So can mine.”
“You should stick to your own kind.”
I snorted and rolled over to face him. “And what kind is that? I’m two halves of a whole. And what do you have against Chitahs anyhow?”
Christian scooted down so he was lying on his back. “They’re a nuisance.”
“Maybe you should tell that to Claude.”
“He’s different. He’s a hairdresser.”
I sighed. “Don’t ruin this for me, okay? I haven’t spent much time in the dating pool, so I forgot how to swim.”
“Why waste your time with such archaic traditions? And I’d like to know why it is that you won’t even date your own kind.”
“Because my maker didn’t want me.”
Thunderstruck silence followed, and Christian turned on his side to face me—his eyes fixed on mine. “Go on.”
I hesitated. I’d always been one to speak my mind, but anything attached to my emotions I kept guarded. Maybe I was still drunk on Christian’s blood, or maybe it was the fact that despite our quarrel, he’d still come back and brought me dinner, but something made me want to open up to him—to trust him.
So I began.
“He approached me in a bar and complimented my eyes. Normally that’s a pickup line I ignore, but he was charismatic and interesting—like no one I’d ever met before. We talked for hours, and I don’t mean casual talk. It was the kind of conversation you have with someone when you’re baring your soul. In retrospect, maybe he charmed me to tell him my life story, but I remember him being so easy to talk to. He didn’t even try to make out with me. We found a quiet spot in the back, and then he told me about Vampires.”
“And you believed him?”
“No. But after he showed me his fangs and then retracted them, I began taking him seriously. I guess after all that alcohol, I wanted to believe that maybe I was destined for something else. He said Vampires didn’t drink blood to survive and convinced me they weren’t evil. It was so impulsive,” I said, my thoughts drifting.
“You’re telling me he turned you that very night?” Christian’s lips thinned.
“He said he was lonely and wanted a companion—someone he could talk to and be easy with, the way we were together. We went out to his car, and he turned me. Not all the way, though. I don’t think we completely finished the process. He said my death had to look real so nobody would come looking for me. He was afraid my father would file a police report and my picture would be stapled to every telephone pole in the city. He brought me to the brink of death, and when I woke up, he was gone. I never saw him again.”
Christian’s brows arched. “Is that all? I thought there was more to the story.”
I gave him an oblique look. “There’s always more to the story.”
“So that’s why you’ve turned into the praying mantis who devours her lovers? Because you were abandoned? I’m not going to lie to you—I think your maker was a gobshite for leaving you behind, but I don’t understand the drama. I thought he might have tied you to a whipping post and made you his pet. But it doesn’t sound as bad as all that. That’s not a good enough reason to turn your back on your kind.”
“Why? He turned his back on me.” I rolled away and stared up at the ceiling. “He showed me how committed Vampires really are—how trustworthy. He ruined my life, Christian. Sorry if I don’t have any love for my fangdaddy, but it’s not without good reason.”
