We continued scanning as we moved down the hall. There were two bedrooms with a large bathroom between them. The bathroom was all marble, with a multi-head shower stall and a jacuzzi tub. My fangs pressed against my lips as I imagined lounging in that tub with my mate. I’d never done anything like that in my life.
“All clear,” I confirmed as we finished our sweep of the apartment.
“I thought you said your team installed a new security system. Was it just the door?”
“No, they wired all your windows and put in motion detectors that you can turn on when you leave. But no security system is perfect. It’s best to be safe until we get to the bottom of this.”
“Maybe we should suggest that Eleanor get a security system too. She lives on a dead end with woods behind her house.”
“So she can run her wolf.”
Ruby paused. “Oh yeah, I guess so. I just thought she liked solitude.”
I shook my head. “Wolves are pack animals. I’ll bet that her neighbors are all wolves too.”
Ruby seemed a little flummoxed. I could practically see her reviewing her history with her friend, wondering what she’d missed.
I touched her arm. “She’s still the same person you’ve been friends with all these years.”
“Oh I know,” Ruby said. “I just feel sad that she thought she had to hide her true self from me.”
“A lot of humans would freak out.”
“I’m not a lot of humans,” she said. “My parents raised me to be open minded and accepting of all kinds of people.”
“Even vampires?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Even vampires.”
She took a step forward, then I took a step, and somehow we were nearly toe to toe, less than a foot of space between us. I wasn’t sure how it happened, it was almost like we were two magnets being drawn together.
Ruby’s pupils were wide, and in her neck her pulse was beating so rapidly that I didn’t need my enhanced hearing to know her heart was racing. My heart sped up to match hers, and my nostrils flared as the sweet scent of her arousal filled the air around us.
“Your teeth,” she whispered.
I slid my tongue over my top teeth, unsurprised to feel the tips of my fangs poking through my lips.
Ruby reached up, moving slowly, and to my shock she pushed my upper lip up so she could look at my teeth.
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
I was glad that signs of my vamp weren’t freaking her out. I don’t know what I’d do if the sight of my other form disgusted her. I’d heard of it happening before with humans.
She slid her finger down, tracing my lower lip before cupping my cheek with her hand. I relaxed into her palm, enjoying the affectionate touch. I’d grown up with a father who only touched me in anger, and a mother who spent most of her time self-medicating and trying to forget that she had a child. There was no hugging when I was a child, no affectionate pats on my head. I’d learned to fear touch, but with just one gesture, Ruby seemed to be knitting something inside me back together that I didn’t even know was broken.
My eyes bounced between hers, waiting to see what she’d do next.
“You feel this too, don’t you?” she asked, her tone slightly vulnerable. “This intense attraction between us. That’s why your vamp is pushing through.”
“Yeah, I do.”
There was no sense lying about it. I wondered if I should tell her the truth, that she was my fated mate, that after this was all over I was going to dedicate my life to making her mine. That’s right, I’d already decided not to fight it. Fate had brought me the gift of a mate. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve that, but I wasn’t going to let my crappy childhood keep me from finding love.
Then again, I’d heard from my friends how freaked out some humans got at the idea of fated mates. For some reason the humans liked to believe that they had more free will than they did, and they’d been taught that relationships that were built quickly were flawed. I didn’t want to upset Ruby or worse yet, make her want to work with another bodyguard by mentioning the mate thing before she was ready for it.
“I’ve never felt so immediately attracted to someone,” Ruby continued. “It’s unnerving.”
“Unnerving?” I asked, fighting a stab of disappointment.
