“Yeah, right.”
“Claro, I mean it,” he insists, spinning me lightly under his arm.
And weirdly, I think he does.
There’s no mocking in his voice, no shallow flattery.Just truth wrapped in charm and a hint of sadness.
“Look,” he continues, leaning in, “you seem real.Sweet.Wholesome, you know?And that is not something men like us deal with a whole lot in our circles.”
Men like us.
Like Nathan.
Like him.
Famous.
Hunted.
Desired.
Devoured.
“I don’t know about wholesome,” I murmur, heat creeping into my cheeks, “but I wasn’t lying either.I’ve known Nathan since we were kids.”
“Then he’s even luckier than I thought,” David says.
I snort.“I don’t know about that.”
“I do.”He twirls me again, slower this time.“See, the world is full of vampires,linda,” he whispers, and suddenly his whole expression changes—haunted, exhausted.“And they all want a piece of us.”
A chill skitters over my skin.
Because I know that look.
I’ve seen it—more than once—in Nathan’s eyes since he’s been back.
I know little about who he became after he left.Who he had to become.
But I also know that once, long before the fame tried to swallow him whole, that I saw it hovering at the edges of that life as it crept toward us.Toward him.
“David, I want you to know that whatever you might have seen or heard, Nathan means a lot to me,” I whisper, unsure what I’m even trying to say.
His hand squeezes mine.“I get it.I can tell.So, protect him, yeah?Now that you got that ring on your finger, use it like a shield or a sword.Whatever you have to.”
My throat tightens.
“I will.”
I nod in agreement.
David looks at me long and hard.I don’t know this man from Adam, and what’s more, he has no idea how much those words hit.
How much I already want to do exactly that.
But then David’s voice drops lower.
“Be careful, though.Don’t lose yourself.Not in this shitstorm we call success, yeah?”
