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You’re beautiful slid through her mind.
She didn’t react; instead she held herself open to him, wanting to understand him. She no longer thought she was in the grip of a mind-bending drug, and she never drank more than would give her a nice buzz.
No, the man was real.
Oddly, her fears began to dissipate as her curiosity rose. She felt like she did when she was deep into some aspect of her studies, like she’d come home, as though she belonged here talking with this otherworldly man.
She resonated with him.
The term wasn’t exactly scientific in nature, but that’s what came to her as she stood in front of—what was his name? Marius Briggs. The questions came, the ones that rolled through her mind as familiar to her as breathing. “What hidden world? And you’re not human? Yet you look human. Are our species related?”
He seemed exasperated as he shoved a hand through his loose, slightly messy dark hair. He grimaced. “I don’t have time for this.” He glanced around, worried.
Michelson, her former lover, had often been exasperated with her. If Mr. Briggs hoped to get her help, he’d better lose the attitude and start talking.
Despite his hold on her, she wiggled just enough to fold her arms over her chest and lift her chin. “I’m going to need some answers if you expect me to cooperate.”
“I’d better just show you.”
He pulled back his lips slightly and the next moment, she watched a set of what appeared to be extremely sharp fangs descend.
More horror movies popped through her mind. Really? Fangs? Flight? The black leather coat and all this supreme sexiness?
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re a vampire?”
“We’ve lived in a secret cavern-based culture, right alongside yours, all this time, with our own customs and beliefs, our own problems. But we have disguising abilities, something that apparently you’re good at seeing through but have kept us as separate species from the beginning of life on earth.”
A number of thoughts and questions rattled through her brain, some of a scientific nature stemming from her curiosity about other cultures. But he’d already told her enough that she sensed she was in some kind of danger. “Does your kind prey on ours?”
“The worst of my kind does, yes, and they need to be stopped, which is why I’ve come to you for help.”
“And I’ll need to go with you, right?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Exactly.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Otherworld Vampire, but I’m going to Malaysia to do critical fieldwork. I’m leaving in two weeks and I have a boatload of work to get done before I go. I have my own life, my own goals, and sorry but you’re out of luck.”
She’d spoken with confidence, but he still had hold of her arms and his face was taking on a tight, stubborn look. “You’re still not understanding either the depth of my world’s need or why it has to be you.”
“Oh, come on, I can’t be that special.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You have specific, latent abilities that dovetail with my world. The fact that you can communicate telepathically with me no problem at all is a profound indication that what I’m telling you is true. And we need you, desperately.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m still kind of in shock.”
“As you should be.”
He looked so damn sincere. If she’d met him anywhere else, like at a party, she would have trusted him.
The flying man got a strange look on his face, his gaze still pinned to hers. “I saw pictures of you, but I didn’t think you’d be this beautiful. My God.” His voice had dropped into the lower registers.
She knew that man-sound. For all his fine words about looking for someone to help him save his world, maybe he was just cruising the university bars looking to get laid. Maybe this was just his line. No doubt male vampires, sharing DNA with humans as he suggested, had a lot in common with males of her species.
Exce
pt that his kind could fly.
Yeah. Except for that. And they had fangs for a purpose well documented in human fiction.
