Page 16 of Vacation with the Vampire
When I emerged from the bathroom with a cloud of hot steam on my heels, the silence that followed was noticeable. I frowned slightly as I took in the strange expression on Susie’s face. “Why are you staring?”
Her lashes fluttered, eyes averting, then coming back to my face with more boldness. She’d been sprawled casually on the bed while doing something on her strange “phone” apparatus. Very deliberately, she looked me up and down, and then she smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Wow.”
“What?” I asked, my hand smoothing over the tight fit of the white T-shirt covering my chest. There was no jacket and no handkerchief or cravat to provide modesty or show off wealth. I felt oddly bare.
“You look…” she gestured vaguely, “hot.” Her eyes lingered on my chest, then lowered to my abdomen. She even leaned to the side to peer at me—did she just peer at my ass?
“Warm?” I tried to clarify, but her brazen stare unnerved me while it was also flattering. I’d never had a woman look at me quite the way she was right now, and this was Susie. I very much wanted her approval.
“No,” she said, laughing despite herself. “Not warm. Hot as in attractive.” I considered that and liked it very much. She seemed to realize what she’d said as heat spiked and her cheeks turned an even more delightful pink.
“I see,” I drawled. I did not, but I accepted it. The phrase was silly, but the sentiment was not. So she thought I was attractive dressed in the clothing of her time? That was good; that I couldwork with. My eyes dropped to her mouth, and I recalled the brief, impulsive kiss. I wondered if she’d be receptive to more.
She moved toward the small table, picking up some kind of sleek, leather-bound folder. “I’m ordering food,” she said. “Because I need something normal in my life right now.”
“As you wish.” I did not puzzle over those words, because I did not want to feel out of my element again. There was a pause as she held what I assumed was some kind of menu, and we shared a glance.
Something unspoken lingered between us, something charged, restless, threading through the quiet in a way that neither of us addressed directly. “You’re safe,” I said finally. She looked up, and I found the blue of her eyes was like a lake I could drown in. “With me,” I added. “I am your guardian now.”
She stared at me for a beat, and then she rolled her eyes. It was very deliberate, exaggerated. Very disrespectful. I felt something unexpected curl in my chest: amusement. “You find this humorous,” I observed.
“A little,” she admitted. Then she picked up a strange item, held it to her ear, and began talking in terrible, broken French mixed with her English.
Curiously, I did not dislike it. Neither the way she butchered my language nor her amusement at my promise of protection. Susie was independent, strong, and that was precisely why she had grown on me.
When dinner came, it was thankfully a very decent amount, and though Susie seemed slightly surprised by my appetite, she said nothing of it. In fact, she very generously allowed me to eat most of it. It was a pleasant moment, and with both my hunger for blood and for normal sustenance silenced, I felt almost normal again.
As we ate, time passed, and the world outside dimmed into evening. Eventually, she changed into sleep clothes, then crawled into bed, exhaustion wearing at her. I tried to give her privacy, moving to the window to sit with my back toward the bed, forcing myself not to give into temptation as she rustled with the sheets. That would be wrong.
“Hey,” she said, her voice softer in the dark, a hushed sigh. She was the one drawing my attention to her; it was an invitation I could not resist.
I turned slightly but kept my eyes on the foot on the bed, exerting all the measly control still left to me at the end of the day. “Yes?” I queried, my mouth dry, my voice husky.
“How come you can walk around in daylight?” she asked, as if it was a question that had been weighing on her all day. As if the cover of night had finally given her the courage to give voice to it.
Flabbergasted, I blinked and stared, not at her feet like I was supposed to, but at the slender shape of her body beneath the sheets. “Why wouldn’t I?” She stared at me, though I was certain she did not realize how clearly I could see her. I had no other explanation for her, no idea why she would even ask that. I had always walked in daylight, and any vampire I knew or had known did, too.
Chapter 9
Susie
I woke slowly, like surfacing through warm water. For a few blissful seconds, I didn’t remember anything. Not the tunnels, not the broken wrist and bloody knees, and not the completely unhinged revelation that vampires were apparently real. There were just soft sheets, warm sunlight, and the gentle hum of a busy city.
Then it all came crashing back in a wild rush, and my head spun. Vampires existed, and I’d stumbled upon one when I got lost in the catacombs, chasing a light that might or might not have been real. Healed by magic, I’d also met a gargoyle, and then there was Raoul. My eyes snapped open.
The room was different in the morning light, softer, calmer, almost normal again. Though there was lingering evidence of yesterday’s chaos in the form of my shredded carry-on. My chest tightened as I recalled the shock of discovering my room ransacked, like adding insult to injury after the crazy day I’d already had.
Raoul sat in the window just like last night when I’d gone to sleep. One leg bent, the other stretched slightly along the sill, framed by the pale morning light spilling in from outside. His profile was sharp against it, pale hair turning gold at the edges, his gaze fixed on the city below as if he were studying something endlessly fascinating.
“You’re awake,” he said. He didn’t look at me. Wide shoulders lovingly hugged by the white fabric of the T-shirt. I wasn’t sure if it was too small, or if the shirt had just decided it wanted to be shrink-wrap instead. Discovering that Raoul was stacked beneath those stuffy old clothes had been mind-blowing.
I pushed myself up onto my elbows, blinking sleep from my eyes. “How do you know that?” He was a sexy, modern man now, though he’d still catch eyes wherever we went. Seriously, the acid-washed jeans did things to his thighs… I gulped.
A faint smile touched his mouth, sexy as sin, framed by pale curls now that the ribbon tying them had vanished, and by a five o’clock shadow. “Your heartbeat changed.”
“Right,” I muttered. “Of course it did.” He wouldn’t let me forget what he was at this point, and frankly I didn’t want him to. I liked that he was allowing me to be part of his world, his strange, magic-filled world.
He turned away from the window entirely, fluid and unhurried, and crossed the room toward me. There was something different about him this morning, lighter, maybe. Maybe it was just that I was seeing him clearly now, without panic clouding everything.
