And given that Rhamp wasn’t even speaking to her at the moment, the fact that her next-of-kin’s were all vampires was actually the secondary problem.
Oh, and Dev was moving, anyway. So… yeah.
Together, they walked up the building-wide steps that ascended to the refurbished marble entry. The Commodore looked more like a governmental office building with its concrete collar of steps that rose to the glass necklace of its entries, but there was only so much you could do to spice up twenty-five layers of windows rising out of the urban ground.
They mounted the half dozen snow-cleared levels, and as he put his hand on her elbow, she was reminded of his manners. And the mother who had died who he hadn’t liked. What was it about physical attraction that made you want to get into the mind of the other person? she wondered. Then again, with how intensely she was feeling, she did want to understand him, as if in doing so she could understand her own powerful response.
Although on that note, given the number of inquiries he hadn’t made of her, clearly she was on a one-sided quest in this relationship.
Situationship, rather.
As they entered the lobby, they stomped their soles off on the matting and their footfalls echoed all around. The security guy at the desk gave them a wave, and as they both returned it, she wondered if she was going to be asked for ID because it had been so long since she’d been here.
Except the security system no doubt had facial recognition software.
Over at the bank of elevators, Dev punched the button, and they waited together. In the reflection of the polished steel doors, she looked at the pair of them. He was calmly perusing the lobby they’d just gonethrough, his body relaxed as he wandered around with his eyes. God, how she envied him, especially as she watched herself jump as the arrivalbing!went off.
“What floor?” he asked as he got in by the rows of glowing buttons.
“Fourteen.”
“You got it.”
There was a subtle bump, and then up, up, up, and away they went. When the nextbing!came, she felt like it had taken a second and a half, but that was distraction for you.
“Here we are,” she murmured as she stepped out.
While she walked along the corridor, she kept an eye on the numbers by each door. They went down… until she got all the way toward the end. Then frowned.
“Oh, wait. Sorry, it’s back there. Sorry, I’m all turned around.”
“No problem.”
Lyric doubled back, taking them past the elevators again and down halfway to the other end. “Here we are.”
The copper key went in fine, but she held her breath, wondering if she had the right—
The bolting mechanism turned just fine, and she opened things up. The scent of fresh lemon greeted her nose, and she was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in here, and yet it had clearly been cleaned recently. Fritz and his staff were just amazing.
The interior was dark, and she tried to be discreet patting around and searching for a wall switch. She ended up wandering out past the half bath and the entry into the kitchen, and wondered whether she shouldn’t just will things on and call it motion detection. Crap, she couldn’t remember if there were lamps or maybe it was track lighting—
Thank God. A switch. “I’ll just turn this on.”
Click.
As illumination bloomed, she looked over her shoulder. Dev had hung back, and while he leaned against the wall, his hooded eyes were on her.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said as he nodded over his shoulder at the door they’d come through. “I can leave now that you’re safely home.”
She glanced around. The place was like a hotel room, in the anonymous sense of the words. Neat, tidy, with functional furniture in the right places. The color scheme of gray, cream, and white was clearly intended to calm the weary mind, and the view of the western horizon showing the twin bridges and the city’s twinkling other side was beautiful, but cold.
She met his eyes in the reflection from those windows, and all she could think of was that he was leaving Caldwell.
“No.” Turning around, she went over to him. “You’re going to stay.”
Reaching up to his windbreaker, she trailed her hands down the pads of his chest. Even through the layers, she could feel the heat coming off of him, and when she got to the lower hem, she didn’t hesitate. She lifted the folds up his torso.
He was hardening already.
