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The last word came after a loud silence, full of explanations he didn’t give.
It forced me to think backward, to recall the times we’d touched.
Wait, no, that wasn’t quite right. Each time I’d try to touch him, he’d stopped it. He’d restrained me, kept me from having any free contact.
Why hadn’t I realized it? I’d chalked it up to some sort of dominance kink. Hell, I’d even gotten off on it like some game. It lost that magic, however, when I realized something sinister rested beneath in the action.
“Why not?”
He blew out a breath, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
I pointed at my throat. “Yes, it really sort of does. You don’t get to do this then not talk to me.”
He reached forward, and I couldn’t help my flinch. Sure, I wasn’t exactly afraid of him, but he had just strangled the shit out of me. Even if he hadn’t meant it, it was entirely reasonable that I might be a little jumpy around him.
Even with my reaction, however, he only paused for a second for me to regain my confidence. He slid his fingers against the mark. “It looks like after you had that run-in with the poltergeist.”
“Well, you and she have the same go-to move.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I could have done far worse. I could have snapped your neck.”
I wanted to reach up and touch him, but I kept the desire in check. I recalled when Troy had touched me, after I’d told him about my past, about the man who had abused me, and about how much Ididn’twant his hands on me then.
“Do you know much about vampires after they’re turned?”
I shook my head.
He continued to stroke the mark, as though that were how he could distract himself from what he said. I got the sense it wasn’t a story he told often, or perhaps ever. “When newly made, vampires are exceedingly weak. They’re hardly stronger than a human and have far more weaknesses than one. They rely heavily on the vampire who made them.”
I noticed he usedtheyinstead ofwe, probably to distance himself from his story. I let him have that, if it was what it took to get it out.
He pulled his hand from me, moving to cross his legs on the bed and lean forward. It made him look less like the unapproachable and extraordinarily strong vampire I knew, and more like a man who had a very long past, much of which wasn’t good.
Then again, even in a short human life, how much was shit? How much of my life had been just terrible? If I extrapolated that out to however old Kase was, he had to have a lot of horrible memories locked up in that head of his.
“Old vampires are dangerous, cold. The stronger and older they are, the worse they become. My maker was amongst the oldest and strongest, and certainly the most sadistic.”
That last word held a wealth of information. No one called someone sadistic without good reason. It wasn’t the term used when people were jerks, when they were selfish. Sadism was about enjoying the suffering of others, and there was a level of evil there I rarely dealt with.
Still, I didn’t speak, letting Kase get his entire story out.
His shoulders sagged, as if he crumbled. “I have no wish to go into any real detail, but I spent the first few centuries of my life as little more than a plaything for the vampire who made me, for him and whoever he pleased.”
Even without Kase saying it, the reality bled through his words. I had always seen him as untouchable, as larger than life, so to recognize he’d come from nothing, that he’d suffered beneath those so much more powerful than him forcenturiesmade my throat tight. It also explained him a little better—his need for control, his attempts to manipulate people, his aloofness.
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing damn well the words didn’t mean a thing.
He didn’t lift his gaze, didn’t acknowledge my useless platitude. “I have had a very long time to get past it, to move forward. As I became older, stronger, it was easier to pretend it had never happened at all. However, when someone touches me, they put their hands on me, I feel the same spark of disgust I did before, and I react as in on instinct.”
I folded my hands in my lap, trying to make it clear I wouldn’t press his boundaries. “I didn’t realize.”
“Of course not. How could you? I have shared that with no one.”
“No one? In”—I muttered a jumbled string of sounds since I had no idea how old he actually was—“years?”
He let out a humorless laugh. “If you know the worst of my secrets, what does my age matter? I was turned around 1800 BC.”
Thatshocked me. I’d known he was old, but I’d thought a few hundred years. Maybe a thousand? The math quickly added up to over three thousand years old, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard of a vampire of that age.
