A neat trick, she thought, and then frowned. “Is that witch magic, or vampire magic?”
“I make no distinction between the two.”
She took a bite of her sandwich, sipped from her teacup. “Do you miss food?”
“Not anymore.”
“Have you been a…what you are, a very long time?”
He shrugged. “A few centuries.”
Eyes widening, she blinked at him. “Centuries?”
“Vampires and some witches live very long lives.”
Bryony shook her head. Centuries!It was unbelievable, impossible. “How did it happen? Becoming a vampire? Did it hurt? Did you ask someone to do it?”
“I got drunk in a tavern one night and got into a fight with a man twice my size. I was winning until he pulled a knife on me. He cut me up pretty bad, dragged me outside and threw me in a ditch. I was bleeding to death when a woman floated down into the ditch beside me. I thought I was deliriouswhen she asked me if I wanted to live. The world around me was going black and when she asked me the same question again, I said yes. And she bit me.” He shook his head with the memory. “I don’t remember much after that except she made me drink her blood and then I passed out. When I woke up again, it was dark and I was a vampire. Charis, the one who turned me, was beside me. She stayed with me for a few months and taught me what I needed to know to survive. She kept me for a playmate for a time, and then one night when I woke up, she was gone.”
Bryony stared at him, thinking that was the most bizarre tale she had ever heard. “Where is she now?”
He shrugged. “I’ve only seen her once or twice in the last seventy or eighty years. Enough talk about vampires. Would you like to go for a walk?“
“A walk would be nice.” Why was she agreeing to spend time with him? They weren’t friends. He was a stranger. A stranger keeping her in his house against her will.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
She bit down on her lower lip, then nodded. He followed her to the front door where she found two hats waiting on a side table. He handed her a pretty white straw bonnet adorned with silk flowers and pink ribbons. His was, of course, black. It made him look even more dashing and mysterious.
He took her hand and they walked out the front door and turned left on a wide path that wound through lacey ferns and flowers. Birdsong filled the trees. A gentle breeze whispered through the leaves.
Stefan slid a glance at Bryony, pleased that she hadn’t pulled her hand away. She was a rare creature, timid as a fawn one minute, defying him the next. She wanted very much to hate him but deep inside she yearned for his touch and hiskisses. He repelled her and fascinated her at the same time and she didn’t know how to handle it. But mostly, she was attracted to him, and that frightened her more than anything else.
He smiled inwardly. One way or another, he intended to have her. All of her.
Perhaps she sensed it.
Perhaps she wasn’t afraid of him at all. Perhaps what she feared the most was her own growing desire. For him.
Chapter Nineteen
It was late that night when Stefan returned from hunting. For once, he’d had no interest in prey. His every thought had been for Bryony.
He was about to go down to his lair when he heard the soft sound of her tears. Ah, Bryony. So young and innocent, so ripe for the taking. Eager as always to see her, hold her, he went up to her room. Standing outside the door, he tried to quell his conscience as he listened to her weeping. Deny it as he might, he was responsible for her tears. She missed her family desperately and it was all his fault.
Monster.
Opening the door, he moved unerringly through the darkness to her bedside and took her in his arms. “Hush, love.”
She buried her face in his shirtfront and cried the harder.
With a sigh, he stroked her hair. “I will make a bargain with you.”
She sniffed. “What kind of bargain?”
“If you will stay here with me for the next three months and promise not to run away, I will take you home.”
She looked up at him through eyes luminous with tears, her nose red, her cheeks damp.
