Page 1 of Sanguine
Chapter 1
Bastien
I generally like priests,even when they’re trying to kill me.
But I’m really not in the fucking mood this morning.
I can feel the warm kiss of the sunlight through the open folding doors, and I can hear the gentle churn of the Coral Sea outside—it’s time tosleep, not deal with holy men scratching at my gates, and anyway, the whole reason I rented this place on Hamilton Island was so I could have a few months of peace, which I think I’ve earned, and I’ve especially earned the right not to be vexed by a self-righteous butcher, and all I want to do is sleep curled up in this sunbeam like a cat, and is that so much to ask?
After the buzzer rings the third time, I reach for my phone and open the security app to answer it. “Fuck off. And if you’re here to kill me, extra fuck off.”
“I’m not here to kill you.” The voice on the other end of the line is impatient, as ifI’mthe problem here, even though he’s the one rudely waking me up to murder me.
“I don’t believe you,” I say crisply. “Now please go away.”
“We both know,” the voice says, “that I can be inside the house in the next five minutes anyway. Unlike you, I don’t need an invitation to enter, so you may as well let me in.”
I think about this for a moment. The house is surrounded with stone walls and gates, but they’re more to limit the gaze of tourists (and their smartphones) and paparazzi (and their cameras) than to stop serious intruders. Or priests on a mission.
“I can call security,” I say.
“You can,” the voice agrees.
It’s Australian, that voice, although not broadly so. Just some pleasantly relaxed vowels and a slight lilt to the end of his sentences.
Damn that friendly accent, I can’t tell whether he’s telling the truth or not.
“Ugh,” I say—not into my phone, just into the warm, sea-scented air.
I came to the Whitsundays to relax! To splash around in the water! To drink some nice Australian wine! And yes, fine, to bite the suntanned necks of happy tourists, but that’s really immaterial to the point. Don’t I deserve a vacation? Don’t I deserve an infinity pool with ocean views?
“Fine,” I say irritably—to the priest this time, not just my room. “You can come in. But maybe I’ll killyou, have you ever thought of that?”
“I’m not here to kill you,” the priest repeats, mostly without inflection, although I still hear the thread of impatience in his voice. Like he’s already late for an appointment and taking the time to kill me is making him even later.
Ugh, fuck this guy. I have stuff I’d rather be doing too! Like sleeping!
I mutter a pissy noise into the phone—not strictly necessary, but I want him to know how annoyed I am—and I press the gate button. As it opens, I pull up the camera view to get an idea of his size. Not that I’ve ever had a problem fighting off priests—a tribe of paper-skinned elders and their scrawny, still-pimpled pupils—but it’s good to know one’s enemy and all that.
But I’m too late with the camera view. I just get a glimpse of silver-white hair as the priest moves past the gate and onto the narrow path crowded by exuberant tropical plants. An old man.
Please go away,I think as I push myself out of bed and tug on some linen pants. As grumbly and tired as I am, I still don’t want to kill anyone. I’ve never liked killing, even when it was necessary, and I certainly don’t like killing priests. Or old men.
Maybe I can scare him enough that he won’t come back. Although if I know priests, I know that he will come back, and that’s—sigh—a thing. A real thing that would be close to a problem, and I’m so very tired of problems.
Don’t make me kill you, old man.
I pad to the door and open it before he can knock—and then freeze. Because I am not looking at an old man.
There’re a few lines around his eyes, but that’s not surprising for someone with fair skin as sun-kissed as his. The hair—the hairisnear-white, but up close, I can see it’s a very particular shade of blond, and it hangs to his shoulders in a sort of careless tousle that I like very much.
And his face … it’s the face of a man past true youth and into his prime—but not by very much. Stubble shadows a square jaw, a shallow cleft winks from his chin, and bright amber eyes stare at me from beneath heavy brows. He can’t be much more than thirty-two or thirty-three, but those eyes look at me with the weary acceptance of someone three times his age.
Although as he takes me in—my face, my exposed chest and stomach, my bare feet—the expression in those haunting eyes changes somewhat. Heats into something less weary that could be lust or could be loathing, it’s hard to say. I often inspire both in people.
The Australian priest is big, massive, a rock wall of a man—six and a half feet, shoulders filling the doorway—and I find myself appreciating the brutal, holy hulk of him as I take a step backward onto the balls of my feet. I’m very strong—I was before I changed, being not too much shorter than the Viking in front of me, and now I’m an apex predator anyway—but even I might have trouble with this one.
He sees my movement, and his amber eyes flash from my feet back up to my face. “I told you I wasn’t here to kill you.”
