Page 5 of Vacation with the Vampire
That was not what I expected him to say, not at all. I searched his face, trying to find the catch, the punchline, the gotcha moment where he’d break character and laugh, or… The silence stretched between us, and I realized there wasn’t one.
His eyes met mine, and for a second, the world narrowed down to just that. No bones, no darkness, no panic. There was just the strange, impossible intensity of his gaze. I felt like there was something there too. I didn’t really have a name for it, but it felt steady. This wasn’t something that felt like a joke. No, this felt like a moment of true understanding, as if he were staring straight into my soul with his dark, mysterious eyes.
It hit me, sudden and unwelcome, that I had never seen that kind of look from my ex. Never, not once. Not even when he’d said he loved me had he looked me in the eye and truly seen me. The thought stung, and on its heels followed guilt, because I was pretty sure I’d never looked at him that way either.
I swallowed hard and shoved the thoughts away; this was not the time or place for regrets. “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay, I’m trying.” Trying, but not yet succeeding. This felt like I was having an actual panic attack, and everything suddenly seemed impossible, especially breathing, or trusting a person, a stranger.
“Breathe,” he said, and I shot him a glare because he’d just asked me to do the hardest thing, at least that’s what it felt like. His expression was stern, his dark eyes gleaming at me in the light my phone cast.
“I am breathing!” I shot back, fire sizzling through my veins as if he’d issued me a challenge. This was probably why my ex had broken up with me—by letting me walk in on what I’d walked in on. Shocking me so I wouldn’t put up a fight at all. Or maybe he really had been that much of an idiot; that wouldn’t surprise me either.
“No,” he cut in, sharper now. “Properly.” Before I could protest, his hand came up and pressed against the back of my neck. They were long, elegant fingers with a shocking amount of strength, warm and firm. The touch sent a shock of sensation through me.
“Hey!” I began to protest, but the sound was cut off by his barked command.
“Forward.” An order I couldn’t ignore. He guided me down before I could argue, bending me until my head dropped between my knees. I let out another startled noise, my free hand bracing against the ground as dizziness swept through me.
“Stay,” he instructed. He was gruff but, I realized already, not unkind. He was taking care of me despite clearly being incredibly odd and impatient. I wasn’t sure what to think at this point, only that it was hard to stay scared.
“This is...” I sucked in a shaky breath. “...really weird.” I knew that leaning over and breathing between my knees could help, but in my panic it had never even crossed my mind.
“Breathe,” Raoul said, no longer sounding so gruff. His French accent was lyrical, softening his tone and making him exotic rather than some weirdo sleeping in the catacombs and pretending to be a vampire. Oops. I shuddered, then forced myself to focus on breathing only.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
His hand stayed at the back of my neck, steady and grounding. Rationally, I knew this would help, but my panicked mind didn’t believe it until it suddenly did. It wasn’t just the position, and it wasn’t just the breathing; it was the warmth of his touch. It cutthrough the cold that had seeped into my bones. That touch was solid and real, anchoring me in place.
Gradually, the tightness in my chest eased. The world stopped spinning quite so violently. As my thoughts slowed, they started rearranging themselves into something a little less catastrophic. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t seen real fangs, maybe it was just really good prosthetics and makeup. I peered up at his face, intimately close to mine, and couldn’t detect so much as a hint of cosmetics.Reallygood makeup, I whispered to myself.
I was just stressed. There was the breakup, the cheating, the long journey yesterday followed by this crazy adventure. Now I was injured. Freaked out. Whowouldn’tbe a little confused after all that, and a whole lot stressed? Yeah, that had to be it.
“Better?” he asked with a husky drawl that sent shivers down my spine. He was still so close, I could feel warmth radiating from him through the slightly ratty fabric of his waistcoat.
I lifted my head slowly, blinking up at him. This was so surreal my brain was slipping out of panic and into some kind of overtaxed drowsiness. “A little,” I admitted. My voice still wobbled, but it was better than before. “Still feel like I got hit by a truck, though.”
His gaze flicked down briefly, to my wrist, my knees, and something tightened in his expression. Before I could ask what that strange look meant, he moved. His arms moved lightning-fast as they swept around me, one under my knees, the other against my back. I yelped as the ground disappeared. “Whoa!”
He picked me up like it was nothing, like it was perfectly normal to just pick a stranger up off a tunnel floor. He hadn’t helped me up; he hadn’t offered an arm like a normal person. No, he’d just lifted me like I weighed absolutely nothing, rising to his feet in a smooth motion.
“What are you doing?!” I demanded, grabbing onto his coat out of pure reflex. It felt rough beneath my fingertips and slightly grimy with dust. If he was going for that whole “I slept for centuries” kind of look, he was succeeding. It didn’t make what was already a bizarre experience any better.
“Expediting matters,” he said coolly, already turning and heading deeper into the tunnel. His feet made barely any noise against the stone floor, and his stride was steady, even, and precise.
“Excuse me? I can walk!” I snapped. Sure, my knees were busted, but they weren’t so bad that I couldn’t put any weight on them. It was my wrist that was the real concern.
“In your current state, you would slow us considerably,” Raoul said coolly, but without any hint of judgment. I felt it anyway, because I was used to pulling my own weight. Hell, dating Logan, I’d been used to pullinghisweight, too.
“Wow,” I said. “Rude. I’m a modern woman, you know. I’m perfectly capable of…” My words trailed off when a thought abruptly struck me. It was getting darker, which meant we were leaving our source of light behind: my phone. “Oh my God,” I screamed. “My phone!”
I twisted in his arms just as the light behind us dimmed completely, plunging us into darkness. “No, no, no, no! Stop! You have to turn back, I need that!”
He made an annoyed sound under his breath but turned without setting me down. “This had better be important.” He didn’t even break a sweat, either, and I knew I could stand to lose a few pounds around the hips.
