CHAPTER 39
“Is it okay if I touch her?” Cassidy asked him.
Julian lifted his head from the computer andblinked at her in confusion. She’d touched Aida plenty of timesbefore. Then, he realized Cassidy was scared he would lose controlif someone else touched Aida. Cassidy had grown up around mates,and she knew the rules; you didnotfuck with a vampire’smate.
“Yes,” he said.
She smiled as she rested her hand on Aida’sarm and squeezed it. The click of the keys was the only sound inthe room as Julian’s fingers flew across the keyboard. In less thanfive minutes, he was staring at the shadowed main room of thegallery in real-time. With a few more strokes, he was in the videoarchives.
“I’m in,” he said.
“Holy shit,” Kyle said. “That was fast.”
“I forgot how good you are at that,” Cassidysaid.
He didn’t bother to tell them he’d done thisonce before; they’d want to know why, and it was none of theirbusiness. He clicked through the footage of the main room andwatched Aida speak with numerous people. Often, she would disappearfrom the camera’s focus as she led them into the hallways to givethem a tour of the gallery.
He would look at the cameras in the hallsnext, but he remained focused on the main room until Aida lockedthe door and left for the night. She never showed any signs ofdistress throughout the day, but then, she’d been perfectly normaluntil he woke to find her sitting on his chest.
All the people in the footage looked normal,but he couldn’t detect another vampire through the camera as hecould in person. “It’s most likely a man,” he muttered, but for thelife of him, he still couldn’t figure out who.
He didn’t recognize anyone in the footage,but it was grainy, and most of the people were far from the camera.Someone could have come in through the storage room and got herthere, but if they entered the main room, then they would be oncamera.
He had footage of the storeroom too. Therewas an emergency exit in the back hall, but an alarm would havetriggered if that door opened. Still, he would go through the videoof the storage room and back hall next.
“Why do you say that?” Kyle asked. “Maybe oneof the women from your travels got a little too attached anddecided to follow you home.”
“There aren’t any women from my travels,”Julian said. “Aida has been it for me since I met her.”
“Damn,” Kyle muttered. “So, you mean you wentover four years without sex?”
Julian glanced up to see the disbelief onKyle’s face. “She’s theonlyone I’ve ever been with, and Iwouldn’t have it any other way.”
Kyle looked like Julian just told himAtlantis was rising from the sea.
“I crave death, not sex,” Julian said. “Whenyou reach maturity, what you’re doing now will get worse. I buriedmyself in computers and hacking because I could lose myself in thatworld and push aside my growing need to kill. When Aida walked intomy life, she gave me a sense of calm I’d never experienced before,and she did it during one of the worst times of my life. We’d justlost Doug, we had no idea if Jack was alive, and a good portion ofour family was planning to return to that island.
“The whole drive to Canada, all I could thinkabout was going to the island and unleashing this festeringthinginside me. I wanted to let it maim and kill everythingit came across. And then I saw her, and it all silenced. For thefirst time in a couple of years, I knew peace, and it was amazing.I love her so much, I left her behind because I believed that wasbest for her. When I did, all that peace went away.”
Kyle closed his mouth as he gazed between thetwo of them with a longing Julian understood well. It wasn’t Aidahe wanted; it was the love and peace Julian mentioned.
“You’ll get through it,” Julian told him.
Kyle’s jaw clenched as he focused on the wallacross from him. He acted carefree, but Julian knew the truth ofthe desperation propelling him from one woman to the next. Tearspooled in Cassidy’s eyes.
“It will be okay,” she whispered.
Kyle stared at the wall for a second morebefore tearing his gaze away to smile at her. “Of course, itwill.”
Cassidy stared at him, but there was nothingshe could say, and they all knew it. Finally, she turned herattention back to Julian. “When Aida wakes up—”
“I’m not sure I can let her wake up,” heinterjected. “I don’t know what’s going on with her mind. Thevampire who took control of her is strong. I don’t think it’s apureblood, because it would most likely be older than me if itwere, and I’m not sure I could have broken an older purebred’s gripon her.
“As it is, I don’t know if I’ve broken thatthing’s control over her. If I let her wake up, she could be tornbetween what she’s compelled to do and her love for me again. Yousaw the reaction it caused.”
Cassidy breathed a small sigh as her handtightened on Aida. “Her love for you must be powerful if sheresisted a vampire’s compulsion even a little bit.”
Love swelled inside Julian as he gazed ather. “I know.”
