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“I heard that’s not all he did. ”
I bristled. Of course he’d have heard about the latest hazing. Using reasoning that might appeal to a vampire, I tread carefully, answering slowly. “I found myself in a compromising situation, an
d Trainee Joshua proved himself a gentleman. ”
Alcántara didn’t look too happy about it, and it freaked me out.
I was dying to ask if Josh was in trouble now. If Trainees couldn’t stand up to Guidons without consequences. Josh and I weren’t exactly buddies, but it didn’t mean I wanted to see him eviscerated or anything. Plus, it was hard to avoid the fact that, if he was in trouble, it was because of me. I was accountable.
I had to change the subject, take the attention off Josh. I could think of only one way, and it was the moral equivalent of batting my eyelashes. Normally I wouldn’t know a feminine wile from a hole in the ground, but I decided to go for it.
And okay, maybe I could’ve thought of other ways, but for some reason, something deep down inside me wanted to go there. Maybe it was discovering that all these girls were enjoying private intrigues with vampires. But in the wake of discovering the whole Ronan/Amanda thing, I wondered at my own appeal—doubted it, really. Either way, I felt ready to push the whole fate-tempting thing.
How did girls do this? I kicked my legs in front of me, trying to mimic Alcántara’s sexy sprawl. But his eyes remained flat on me.
Alrighty, then. On to step two. Cue the lazy smile.
I busted out my most languorous smile, but Alcántara remained a granite statue across from me—an unreadable, unemotional but very attractive slab of granite. Yet I knew that’d been an obvious softball I’d lobbed his way—wouldn’t he have had some reaction? Maybe all this nonsense about vampires having affairs was just that…nonsense.
Fine. Step three. I’d bring out the big guns: my hair. Shiny and blond, it’d always gotten a big reaction. I casually twirled a bit around my finger, because that was what flirty girls did, right? They toyed with their hair?
But only when I lifted it from my cheek did Alcántara’s eyes flare to life. He knelt before me in an instant. And it wasn’t my hair he was interested in. It was the huge bruise my hair had concealed.
He studied my cheekbone intently. When he spoke, his voice came out in a strange whisper. “What has come to pass?”
“Stick training. ” I eased away from him, self-conscious and a little embarrassed, too. “Tracer Otto faked left but went right. ”
He closed the distance I’d put between us. He lifted his hand, then gently traced a finger along the line of the bruise. “All that blood, just beneath the surface. ”
Of course. Of course he didn’t go for sexy smiles or flowing hair. It was the blood that floated his boat.
“It’s not a big deal,” I demurred, making my voice steadier than I felt, when really all I wanted to do was flee. I’d taken his mind from Josh, that was for sure.
He inhaled deeply. “Black, blue, green, purple, yellow…every color but red. And yet just below the surface, all those burst vessels, pooled a rich crimson. ”
I wriggled deeper into my seat, totally creeped out. “Happens all the time. ”
“So brave you are. Did you know they once treated bruises with leeches? The leech would suck, ingesting the excess blood. ” His eyes grazed from my cheekbone to my mouth. “We have other ways now. ”
Alarm bells shrilled in my head. Run run run. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t just because of Josh, or me, or any of that other stuff. The specter of Masha kept me glued to my seat. I needed Alcántara on my side if I wanted to stop Masha from coming and slaughtering me in my sleep.
He dragged his fingertip down the side of my face, to the tip of my chin. He pinched it, then tilted my face to look at him eye to eye. “Mi Acarita, I wonder if you’d be brave about all things. ”
I knew he meant kisses. Would I be brave about kisses? I’d thought I might. But I realized now, the answer was a resounding no. Not about kisses from him, at least.
This was my own fault. I’d been a kid with a box of matches; I’d played with fire; I’d tempted fate—all the clichés in the book.
How quickly this had gone from blood to kisses. Inside, I recoiled. But I kept my face a placid mask on the outside. I stayed still, my gaze locked with his.
Something happened—a shift in the world around me, and my skin grew cold. The air whooshed from my ears and the room grew dim—as though I might faint. And then I fell into his eyes. They were black, and deep, and bottomless, like gleaming shards of obsidian.
I trembled, fighting the sensation. I didn’t want to kiss him. So why was I leaning closer?
I was wrong to have been this bold. This wasn’t what I wanted. I blinked hard, fisting the heat back into my hands. I curled my toes in my boots till my feet cramped.
The world snapped back into clarity, and I sucked in a great breath.
Alcántara’s low laugh came to me as though from a great distance. “Touché. For now, querida. ”
