He dragged his keys from his pocket and handed them to me. I raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t the car push-button start? I don’t need to be physically holding the keys—as long as you are, we’re good.”
“Consider it more a symbol of me handing the reins of control over to you.”
And once again, he wasnottalking about driving.
I rolled my eyes and walked toward the stairs. “Have you always been such an outrageous flirt?”
He fell in step beside me, his long strides restrained to match mine. “I prefer to call it an outrageous zest for life and an unwillingness to waste a moment.”
“Which does not actually answer the question.”
“No.” He hesitated. “Let’s just say that while I have always had a sound appreciation of the opposite sex, it intensified after my father’s death.”
“Because you realized how short life really is?”
I felt more than saw the brief swirl of anger that ran through him. Which, considering he otherwise remained a dead zone to my senses, was testament to the sheer levels of anger he held for his parent.
“Because I realized at that moment in time how fragile life truly is, and just how quickly it can be snuffed out if one is not vigilant.”
It was a sentiment I understood only too well, given the inner darkness and how dangerous it would be if I ever lost control. But my situation was not his, and it made me wonder what darknesshewas talking about. It involved his father—the fury so evident whenever he mentioned his parent made that obvious—and yet I had the strangest feeling that it had not always been so. That, despite his father being a dark practitioner, he’d had a happy enough childhood.
Or was I totally misreading the situation and him?
It was possible, given I’d spent more than half my life keeping people at a distance. As a result, my empathic abilities—if I’d actually inherited them—were raw and untrained.
“Life and death situations do have a way of turning your life around,” I commented, as we made our way down the stairs.
His gaze was a delicious weight I could feel through every part of my being, but it was one I dared not acknowledge. “That sounds like the voice of experience speaking. I take it you’ve found yourself in such a situation?”
“When you tell me your secrets, I’ll tell you mine.”
“I hold no secrets. What you see is what you get.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that broke loose. “Says the man who is so closed down his life energy cannot be read.”
His hesitation was brief but there. “When demons hunt, it is better if they think you nothing more than one of the undead.”
“That makes it sound like demons hunting you is a regular occurrence.”
“No, but when you grow up with a father who is a dark witch, you learn concealment rather quickly.”
I’d just bet. “Is that why those demons never attacked us in the mall?”
“With my length covering yours, they could not read your output.”
“I suspect there was more to it than that.”
“Not a lot more.”
“In other words, ask no questions, be told no lies.”
“We are very new acquaintances. You cannot expect anyone in such a situation to be an open book.”
“And yet,” I drawled, “you expect me to be averyopen book, at least physically.”
He laughed. “All men confronted by a beautiful woman hope she is open and receptive. It is the nature of any predator looking to mate.”
And now that predator was after me. It was a somewhat delicious thought.
