“Then it’s a good thing I have plenty of time.”
“And some vampires never become capable of doing such a thing; they just don’t have the talent.”
“I’ll be good at it,” she stated. “I’m a fast learner, and I’m good at everything I’m determined to learn because I never give up, and I practice until I’m close to perfect at it.”
He did not doubt that.
“I won’t be the dutiful wife or mate,” she said. “I don’t have to cook for you, but I’m not sewing for you either.”
The definitive way she said it made Killean smile. “I won’t ask you to.”
“I want more from my life than being your mate and the mother of your children. Though I’m looking forward to both those things; I want to find something for me too.”
Killean’s hand stilled on her back. He’d spilled in her twice. Their child could be forming inside her now, but while the possibility excited him, it also terrified him. What kind of father could he be while walking the thin line between monster and man? He’d have to make sure he didn’t come inside her again until they were free of Joseph and not until Killean knew what he would become.
“And what do you want for you?” he asked.
She lifted her head to smile at him. “I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet, and the unknowing is so freeing.”
She was about to lean down and kiss him when a loud bang from the room next door yanked her back. Killean sat upright and tossed the sheet aside before rising to his feet in a move so fluid she barely saw it.
A muscle throbbed to life in his jaw when he strode toward the wall separating their room from the one next door. Another loud bang sounded, and the landscape picture on the wall beside the door rattled.
Killean caught the coppery tang of blood on the air before the door separating the two rooms burst apart in a shower of wood splinters. Killean blocked one of the shards from burying itself in his eye as a burly man tumbled into the room.
Fisting his hands together, Killean lifted them and hammered them onto the man’s back before the man crashed into him. Air exploded out of the man’s lungs in a loud grunt before he crumpled to the ground. Putting his hands beneath him, the human tried to rise, but Killean planted his foot on the man’s spine and pushed him down before turning his attention to the other room.
A human with a blackening eye poked her head around the shattered remains of the door. The woman’s lower lip trembled when she gazed at the man before her eyes slid to Killean.
Rage blistered through Simone at the lascivious look in the woman’s gaze when it raked over Killean’s nude form and the woman smiled. Keeping the sheet clasped against her chest, Simone glowered at the woman as she rose from the bed. Killean’s head turned toward her, and his eyes flared red.
“Get dressed,” he commanded.
“Youget dressed!” Simone retorted as the woman’s attention remained on him.
“I can’t let this guy up. Get dressed, Simone.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with her!”
Her jealous and defiant nature would have amused Killean if he didn’t sense something wrong with this situation. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Go on.”
Simone turned her scowl from him to the woman and back again.
Simone go, he sent the thought into her mind.Hurry.
The urgency she sensed in his words pushed aside her anger; she hated leaving him out here withher,but something wasn’t right. Simone gathered the sheet closer against her, grabbed the bags of clothes, and stalked into the bathroom.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“What’s going on here?”Killean asked the woman. The man tried to rise again, but Killean kept him down.
“It was just a little fight,” the woman said.
“The bitch cheated on me!” the man spat. “Her lover just came to the door.”
The hair on Killean’s nape rose as he recalled the boots clunking down the walk earlier. “And just where is this lover?” he inquired.
“Gone,” the man said. “I scared him off!”
