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Sirus left her standing by the roses and continued on his way down the path. She nibbled on her lip. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought she’d struck a nerve calling his castle “spooky.” With a steadying breath, Gwen walked briskly to catch up to him. They meandered further along the path in silence while her head spun with visions of what this mysterious vampire castle could look like. Sirus said it wasn’t spooky, but she kept imagining dark, cold corridors, spiderwebs cascading from the ceilings, and giant, dripping candle chandeliers.
“What’s it like there?” she asked eventually. “At Volkov?”
“Quiet,” he replied.
She scoffed a little laugh, not sure if he’d been trying to make a point or if it was the only word he knew to describe it. Gwen smirked. “Is that a hint for me to stop asking?” she probed.
He glanced at her sideways, as if unsure what she meant, and her face ached as she tried to hold back her laugh. He really was socially inept.
“It’s quiet,” she repeated. “Is that it?”
Sirus turned down a side path that skirted the edge of a small hedge maze and headed toward a long arbor of roses. “There’s no garden like this,” he added. “But there is a forest.”
Gwen imagined Sirus prowling around a dark, misty forest, looking all sexy and mysterious with his tattoos and muscles visible through his half-unbuttoned shirt. “D-do you like it?” she asked, trying to keep herself out of her head. “The forest?”
He stopped at the edge of the rose arbor. “I do. I spend much of my time there when I’m home.”
The way he said “home” made her chest tighten. As if he truly cared for it. As if an actual emotion lurked somewhere within his frigid, shadowy exterior. Her heart fluttered. This plan was failing horribly. “Is your castle as fancy as Abigail’s?” Gwen asked, because she really wanted to know more. She wandered into the arbor and brushed her fingers over several giant roses.
“There’s far less gold.”
She smirked. There was no emotion in the way he said it, but the thought of Sirus wandering the halls of a gilded castle in the same style of Abigail’s almost made her laugh. “I assume you don’t have a Roman running around Volkov, bringing you champagne?” she quipped, cocking a brow in his direction.
“No,” he replied with what Gwen thought was a touch of distaste.
She remembered how sharply Sirus had declined the champagne and how icily he’d stared down Abigail’s muscled attendant. She tensed. Had he been—jealous? The thought made her stomach drop.
“Did you have someone?” he asked. “A partner back home?”
A jolt of nerves spread through her like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. For a minute, her brain couldn’t comprehend his words. Was Sirus really asking if she had a boyfriend?
“No,” she replied awkwardly, moving further along the arbor. She’d told him she didn’t have anyone back home. Why was he asking? Why was she still talking? “I mean, I did, but—it was a while ago. I actually found out he was getting married right before you showed up at my apartment.” It felt like an eternity ago now.
“And this upsets you?” he pressed, following her into the arbor but keeping his distance. “That he’s marrying another?”
Gwen fiddled with the petals of another rose, trying to will the heat out of her cheeks. “No. Not really,” she rambled. “I was upset when we broke up, but we were never going to work out anyway. We were too different.” She was too different. Nathan had just been a cheating jerk.
Gwen turned to look at Sirus and found him glaring at her. A rush of warmth cascaded through her when their eyes met. “It was a long time ago,” she clipped, not wanting to talk about it anymore, “and I really don’t care if I ever see or talk to him again.”
“He hurt you?” Sirus guessed. Gwen’s stomach tightened, and her mouth fell open.
She’d been upset, but she hadn’t been sorry they’d broken up. She hadn’t loved Nathan, and he clearly hadn’t loved her, but still…he had hurt her. He’d treated her like a novelty in the beginning and like a chore by the end. She hated it. Hated that he’d made her feel “other.” That she’d let him make her feel less than. That he’d treated her with such little respect. She hoped he and Lauren both got food poisoning on their honeymoon and spent the entire time barfing on each other.
“He was an asshole,” she clipped, annoyed that they were still talking about this at all.
Sirus stepped closer, his eyes lingering on her hot face. “He was a fool,” he said so matter-of-factly she sucked in a breath.
Gwen couldn’t find words. After the breakup, people she knew had looked as if they weren’t surprised at all that Nathan would dump her like a sack of rotting garbage. As if he were a million times better than her because he had money and status and charm and good looks. Only Miss Jones had told her she could do better, though it hadn’t made Gwen feel any better. Sirus made her believe it because she could tell he believed it. He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t. The very idea startled her. Was he paying her an actual compliment?
“Thank you,” she mumbled, truly meaning it. Even if she was fumbling in her shock.
A stretch of silence lingered, and Gwen shifted uncomfortably. The point of this walk was to like him less, not more. She turned her back to him and wandered further along the roses, forcing herself calm. Forcing herself not to feel flushed under his gaze.
“What were you speaking of before?” he pivoted. “You implied you knew Abigail had unique tastes because of something related to our acquaintance?”
A wave of hot embarrassment coursed through her. Crap. “Uh. Nothing,” she muttered, not sure how to get out of this. She wandered further down the tunnel of roses, away from him. “Abigail just mentioned something about you two—you know—being a thing. That’s all.” Gwen grimaced. Why had she said that? Barely paying attention to where she was going, she came out of the long arbor and darted into a small maze of waist-high hedges.
“We weren’t,” he said as he followed her to the entrance of the maze.
