“Enhanced senses.” He says it matter-of-factly, like he’s telling me about a useful app on his phone. “I can hear her discussing our absence with your Aunt Martha.”
“What are they saying?”
“Your aunt thinks we’re ‘getting to know each other better.’” A pause. “Your mother is just happy that you’re ‘finally showing some initiative.’”
I groan. “Classic Catherine.”
“They’re not wrong about one thing.” Julian’s hand finds mine. “I would very much like to get to know you better—in every sense.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “Is this the vampire charm I’ve heard so much about in movies? Do you guys have supernatural seduction power, or something?”
“No.” His eyes lock onto mine. “Just me being honest for the first time in weeks.”
I pull him in for a kiss that is so passionate that it feels like we’re both trying to make up for lost time.
“Do you want to go back to our room?” I whisper in his ear.
“Nothing would make me happier.”
We make our way back toward the resort, passing the party on the way. Most guests have retreated to their rooms, and only the diehards remain clustered around the bar. My family is nowhere in sight, which is either a blessing or means my mom is lying in wait somewhere.
Julian walks beside me, his hand on the small of my back. The touch feels different now that I know what he is. Not frightening—just weighted with new meaning. Those cool fingers belong to someone who’s watched centuries pass. Someone who chose me, out of all the people he’s met across two hundred and fifty-seven years.
The thought should be overwhelming. Instead, it makes me feel strangely grounded.
We’re halfway to the suite when something shifts in my stomach.
At first, I ignore it. Too much champagne, probably. Or the heat. Or the emotional whiplash of learning my boyfriend is an immortal blood-drinker and deciding I’m okay with it. I mean, that’s bound to cause some physical symptoms, right?
“I don’t feel so well,” I get out before I have to stop to keep my meal down.
“Almost there,” Julian murmurs, his voice low against my ear. “Thirty more seconds.”
I love that despite everything—despite the ancient secret he just revealed, despite the danger lurking somewhere in the shadows—he’s still focused on getting me home. Still attentive to every detail.
Twenty seconds.
The suite is just ahead.
Fifteen.
His hand moves from my back to my hip, fingers pressing through the thin fabric of my dress. Any other night, that touch would make it hard to focus on walking.
Ten—
I stop walking.
“Poppy?”
“I don’t—” I press a hand to my stomach. The churning is sudden and insistent and unwelcome. “I don’t feel great.”
His expression shifts from anticipation to concern in an instant. In the moonlight, I now can see the predator beneath the careful human mask. But his eyes are soft. Worried.
“What kind of not great?”
“The kind where I might need a bathroom. Soon. Possibly very soon.”
His features sharpen—not with frustration. With focus. The same look he had when he was scanning the party crowd for threats, memorizing exits and faces and danger. Except now thethreat is inside me, and there’s nothing supernatural for him to fight.
