And how could he avoid the same fate?
“Did you want dessert?” he asked, trying to move their conversation in a less depressing direction. “This place has the best strawberry pie you’ve ever tasted.”
It wouldn’t smell half as good as Cora did, but being surrounded by her scent all night had him craving one of the few human foods he indulged in on a semi-regular basis.
Cora let out an agonized groan. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I ate so much? Strawberry pie is my favorite dessert, but if anything else goes in my belly, I’m going to look like Violet Beauregard.”
He didn’t get the reference, but the intention was obvious. He’d have to bring her back there another time for pie.
If he managed to get another time.
Glancing out the window, he noted the sun was maybe an hour from setting. “Do you need to go sleep off the food coma or are you up for a little more fun?” he asked, hoping she didn’t hear the edge of nervousness in his voice. If she wanted to go back to the compound, then he would take her, but he really hoped he’d done enough to warrant a little more time. “If it’s not too taxing on you. I don’t want to push if you need to rest because of…”
He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t bring up her illness, but he had to make sure he didn’t do anything to make it worse. He would spend the whole night studying up after she went to bed, but in the meantime he would have to trust she knew her own body.
“I’m fine,” Cora glared. “You don’t need to walk on eggshells around me. I’m not a porcelain doll.”
He observed the little flare in her eyes. There was his obstinate girl. He could work with that.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked casually, leaning back in the chair far enough to balance on two legs. “Prove it.”
She scoffed, but he didn’t miss the twinkle of excitement in her eyes.
“And how do I do that?”
He grinned. “Come with me.”
Chapter thirty-two
Cora
“When I asked you earlier if you were out of your fucking mind, the answer to that question should have been, ‘Why yes, Cora. Yes, I am.’”
It was the only logical reason that he would have looked at her with such amusement when he’d told her to jump.
When Saiden had first dragged her from the car in the middle of nowhere and started off down the overgrown pathway, she was worried he might be taking her somewhere to finally murder her. It would have been one hell of a long game considering he could have done it at almost any other point, but she saw no other reason he would bring her out into the woods.
Until they arrived at the waterfall. The setting sun cast an orange and red glow across the top, almost as if the water was fire spilling down the side of the cliff, and it was incredible to witness.
There had been one couple splashing at the base of the falls, but they left the moment she and Saiden arrived. When she asked why, he simply shrugged and said that people around there knew his family valued privacy.
Before she could ask anything else, he’d swooped her up into hisarms and dashed up the steep side of the falls. Depositing her at the top of the cliff, he’d grinned and said, “Jump.”
Clearly laughing at her assessment of his mental faculties, Saiden started stripping off his shirt.
So that's why he brought me here,she thought. He was back in seduction mode.
Except it didn’t feel like it. He wasn’t casting her heated glances or slowly pulling the shirt up to reveal each of his defined abdominal muscles one by one. No, this felt like a different Saiden. Relaxed and carefree. Like he genuinely just wanted to go for a swim and nothing more.
Which would have been fine if said swim wasn’t at the bottom of a hundred-foot drop.
“Come on,” he protested. “It’s only forty feet.”
Hrmph. Looked like a hundred.
“Seriously,” he continued, yanking off his boots. “It’s not like I’m asking you to jump off Burney Falls. Now that might warrant the very dubious look you’re giving me right now.”
“That’s easy for you to say; you’re a vampire. You could jump off here or Burney Falls or, hell, even Niagara and you’d be fine. I’m not quite as invincible as you are.”
