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She sighed. For the first time since he'd met her, she assumed a defensive posture, crossing her arms over her chest and taking a step closer to the door. It was the pose of a woman who felt entirely too vulnerable, and his gaze narrowed. Any man with radar for it knew the signs of a woman who'd learned what being helpless truly meant. It was such an unexpected look on his Mistress, he took a step toward her before he could stop himself. Goddamn it, who the hell...
She held up a hand, drew a breath and spoke, her voice monotone. "I was turned into a vampire against my will. I worked in a bar up in New Jersey, and he was the cooler. I didn't know what he was, never did until that night. He was mesmerizing, amazing and yet...almost unreal. I thought...we didn't have a deep relationship, just a few steps above friends with benefits, but I thought at least he was my friend. Another thing a human learns quickly about a vampire." Her gaze met his, brushed and became distant again. "Vampires are never friends to humans. Not even to each other, not really.
"Yet there is a code. It's against Council law to turn a human into a vampire without their approval or the human's consent. He sought neither and was executed by the Council as a result. In our bedroom. It was in my first days, where I was nearly mad with bloodlust. He too was young by vampire standards, and he had no idea what he was doing. He just wanted another vampire to be his constant companion, his friend in a cold world. He had a female friend who worked in the bar with him, who tried to dissuade him. I thought she was a jealous former lover. After, I realized she was his human servant and was trying to save him."
He saw the shadows in her eyes, the memories of a night that haunted her. "The first days...the bloodlust is indescribable, but it's manageable. That's what I was told later, because it's only manageable if your sire knows what he's doing. He didn't."
Her voice went back to that dead tone as she obviously sought to just get it out, make him understand. "A week into it, someone was sent to deal with it. If the executioner hadn't gotten there in time, I likely would have killed humans indiscriminately, revealed vampire kind, done unimaginable harm. It's hard for me to accept how he was killed, so decisively, without remorse. However, when I was restored to some level of sanity and self-control, I understood why they punish the act so severely. The assassin..."
She shook her head. "He makes the determination whether the made vampire is a stable turning, stable enough to live. He was the first vampire who showed me true kindness and compassion, and I don't even know his name. Ironic, given that if I was one of those made vampires that turn badly--another reason the act requires approval--he would have ended me as quickly. Yet John didn't suffer. It was punishment, but not done without mercy."
When she remained silent for a prolonged period, Quinn spoke, a quiet prod. "But they didn't punish you?"
"No. Not essentially. A forced vampire is considered the victim." The word came out like a curse. "A stigma that takes a long time to overcome. When you're a forced vampire, you're like a poor relation. No one really wants you in their territory, and those who do want you, you don't want to attract their attention."
He'd thought her in control of everything, and apparently she'd been powerless for a long time. Yet she'd overcome it.
"The approved made vampires look down upon you," she continued. "You're the bottom of the feeding chain, but I had a talent for making money at running a bar, and that appealed to the territory overlord who agreed to be my mentor. Laurent."
The way she said his name, part curse, part dread, had his attention sharpening on her again, his protective instincts bristling. "He's more than four hundred years old. Very powerful. With vampires, strength comes with age. The relationship didn't start out so badly," she added, with forced casualness, "but over time I tired of him reaping the benefits of my talents and still being treated as less than nothing. So I left."
She closed her eyes, shook her head, as if in self-admonishment. Opened them again, looked him straight on. "I ran away. Left his territory without permission, and got as far outside the range of his marking as I could, because overlords impose a bloodlink on all in their territory. But if he moves in the right direction, gets close enough, he can find me. I have staked my life, no pun intended, on him continuing to consider me nothing, not worth the effort. As well as on his notable distaste for any state below the Mason-Dixon Line. In his mind, New York City is the center of the world."
"Nice to know vampire New Yorkers are no different from human ones," Quinn said dryly. "They don't realize Texas is the center of the universe."
She gave him a look tinged with despair, as if he was too dense to comprehend what she was saying. He dared to reach out, clasp her hand. She was rigid, her fingers cold, but he gave the grip a little shake to loosen her up. "Hey. Look at me."
Her lashes lifted, and he saw it then. Hunger, at the mere contact between them. Not just for blood or sex, but deeper things, things he understood from wanting his place in the world for so long and having to fight to get it. Her hand quivered in his and with an oath she pulled away. Before he could blink, she was in the corner as far away from him as she could get in the small office space. As if realizing that wasn't enough, suddenly she just wasn't there.
He would have thought she'd just dematerialized like someone in a Harry Potter film, but he felt the light breeze, the scent of her against his body and realized she'd actually moved that damn fast.
"Selene." He strode up the hall, alarmed, wondering if she'd left the building entirely, then came up short.
She was behind the bar, armed with a rag and cleaning solution, and was rubbing vigorously.
Cleaning. She was cleaning.
When he was young, if Mom was pissed at Dad, or worried about something, she went after dust bunnies in the deepest crevices of the house, the ones that had been there long enough to set up house unnoticed and have dust bunny babies. Well, they did say a man was often instinctively attracted to someone like his mother. The thought caused a rueful twist to his lips, though a far less humorous feeling moved inside him. He approached the bar cautiously, gauging her mood, what was happening inside her head. Her vigorous scrubbing was giving him a nice show, her generous breasts working with the motion. The rhythmic way her whole body was moving with her efforts was how she'd be moving if he was fucking her from behind, that white-knuckled grip something entirely different.
Probably not something she'd appreciate him bringing up right now, but in a way, she'd started it. While that hunger in her eyes hadn't been only about blood and sex, those components had definitely been there. Her heated look had been sexual, possessive, needy...just the way he'd felt for her when he woke up this morning. As big a feeling as that had been, he had an inkling of what she meant about impulse control, because seeing all that sheer want in her eyes was overwhelming to him.
"Okay," he said quietly. "I get that being your servant might sometimes suck, if we had to do that overlord thing, or a bigger, badder vampire sauntered this way. But using your own logic on that, we're here in the middle of nowhere. What's the chance of another vampire ever deciding to go to fry-an-egg-on-your-ass middle Texas to find a low-totem-pole vampire and her servant, and asking to be put up in the guestroom? Or up my ass?"
She came to a full stop and stared at the bar, shining like a new penny. "Quinn, I warned you about making light of this."
"I told you I'm not goddamn doing that." He slammed his hand down on the bar between her braced palms. She flinched, and it made him madder. "You've been on top of me, literally and figuratively, since you arrived, Selene. Now you're not meeting my gaze like you're some kind of fucking timid virgin. Look at me."
How many times had he argued with himself about whether his acceptance of her vampire craziness was just his dick getting in the way of his head? Then he'd gone past his dick deep into emotional territory, far faster and deeper than he'd ever gone with a woman, and he'd been concerned that was interfering with his judgment.
The next second ended the argument once a
nd for all.
As if her disappearance from the office hadn't cinched it, this time he didn't have any warning at all. One second she was behind the bar cleaning, the next he found himself slammed against the wall thirty feet behind him, her right up against him, her hand on his throat, and his toes barely brushing the floor. The constriction on his windpipe was immediate and life-threatening. He grabbed at her wrist, stared down into eyes that were flickering with honest-to-God crimson flame. She had her fangs bared. What he'd only felt when they penetrated his throat he now saw fully unsheathed.
Yeah, they could be fakes. But he knew they weren't. No more than her moving that fast or holding someone twice her weight up against the wall like paper could be a trick. Holy God.
Spots had appeared in his vision and he was getting lightheaded. "Selene," he choked. Survival instinct trumped acting like a gentleman. He twisted, striking out at her, and his fist met empty air as his feet hit the ground and he fell to one knee, struggling to breathe.
When he managed to lift his head, she was standing a few feet away, that still, expressionless look sliding chills up his spine, raising the hair on his neck.
"This is what I am, Quinn. Take a look. You're standing on the tip of the iceberg for a world that can get far darker and bloodier than you can imagine. You can't be part of that world. I don't want you to be part of it. You've done nothing to deserve that."
He pushed up to his feet, squared off with her. She still didn't move, as if she were a statue that had sprung up in the middle of his bar. Yet as he stared at the frightening image she was projecting, he was thinking of other ones. Her in his bed in the middle of the night. The brief glimpses of vulnerability, the touch of humor and kindness in her makeup, her pride in the way she ran the bar, such that he could pick on her some about it. Her kind and firm behavior toward Maria, Carol and Manuel.
She might be twenty years older than him, but he'd been around long enough to know people weren't just monsters or saints, but a whole compilation of things in between. If they projected themselves as a monster, there was a reason for it.
She said she didn't want him to be a part of her world, but she hadn't packed her bags either. She wanted this bar. She wanted him.
"You know, I don't get the whole 'o woe is me, I'm a vampire' vibe off you," he said. "So there's a big part of you that's embraced that world, tangled it up with the type of woman you are. The type of Mistress you are."
