Page 20 of The Vampire's Guide to Wooing a Scholar
She had written about how her cousin had often done the same in Toronto. By repeating that positive experience, she might become more comfortable in his presence and inadvertently reveal secrets.
As expected, she brightened. “Would you?”
“Of course.”
He opened his journal and smoothed his hand over a page. “‘The storm appeared as if by magic, settling over the bay with such fearsome speed that half my crewmates were asleep when the sky was clear and awoke to being jostled out of their bunks.’”
She rose and slid into the seat next to him. “When was this?”
He flipped back. “1775, on the coast of Newfoundland. The storm would now be classified as a hurricane.”
She opened a notebook and began scribbling, which he took as a sign to continue. But when he looked at the next page, the print was smudged and unreadable. He mentally brought himself back to that night and pretended to continue reading.
“I struggled to the deck, where a dozen figures were flitting around, shouting even though their voices were lost to the fury of the wind. They tied ropes around their waists and attached themselves to the ship, but that proved a fatal idea.” He remembered the flash of yellow slicker coats running around the deck of the ship to which he’d been posted. “The rain struck like thousands of sharp stones, and the wind thrashed the sails back and forth. I joined two other men trying to rein them in, but the storm was too strong. George was the first to be swept away, the rope around his waist becoming loose enough that when a wave washed over the deck, he was thrown ten feet in the air and landed on a broken railing. I will never forget the bloodied wood sticking out of his chest and the way he screamed as he pawed impotently at the protrusion, as if he could bat it away.”
“It sounds awful,” she said. She’d sidled so close, he could hear the rapid thrum of her pulse.
He tried not to smile at the excitement in her voice and resisted the urge to drape his arm around her shoulders. “The sky was almost perfectly clear, like an enormous hand had scooped up all the clouds as far as I could see and whipped them into a single, fearsome funnel. Lightning sparked along the edges of the hurricane as if holding it in the sky.”
The sound of her pencil sliding along the paper made him look up. She was sketching as he described.
“That’s not quite right,” he said as she created a thin body for the hurricane.
She stilled and tilted her drawing so he could see it. “Do you think it was taller?”
“No.” He reached for her notebook before stopping himself. “May I?”
She slid it across the table. He picked up her pencil and tilted it so it formed a softer mark. “It was—would have been—more like a wine cork, quite bulbous.” He used the edge of his hand to smear the marks. “The exact boundary would have been difficult to define, as it shifted and warped, always turning and reforming. I—ah,my grandfatherdescribes it in more detail on a later page.” He drew a tiny person standing on the grass to show the size of the cloud.
She touched the figure. “Is that him?”
He chuckled. “No.” He curved a line between the figure and the cloud, then drew wavy lines. “The sea.” He sketched the rough shape of a long ship with three masts. “The ship. It sank that day, taking most of the crew with it, including my grandfather.” He realized too late the flaw in his story, that his ‘grandfather’s’ death would not explain the existence of the journals, and quickly added, “He survived, of course. By clinging to flotsam for hours in the freezing water until rescue arrived.”
“This is remarkable,” she said. “It’s almost as if you were actuallythere.”
He shuddered. The scene on the paper was exactly like he remembered. He could almost hear the howl of the wind and feel the sheeting rain striking his face. It was not a memory he wished to keep. He should have been goading her to discuss her family but was delving into his own past instead. If she was a hunter, she was damnedgood at subversion.
She flipped her notebook closed. “I wish I could see it myself. Reading about what happened is marvelous, but actually visiting the ruins of an ancient city, or climbing up a volcano…” She trailed off, then gently placed her hand on top of his. “Perhaps we could go together?”
He gulped. She had the look of a woman intent on getting what she wanted. Over his long existence, he’d been in similar situations hundreds of times, but not once had he felt so uncertain. Further intimacy between them was a terrible idea, given his weakened condition and suspicions about her. He didn’t possess the control to have her so close without giving into the urge to drink from her again.
“What I said last night…” she said as her cheeks turned red. “I was being truthful. I enjoyed what we…what you did.”
His fangs throbbed at the memory of her blood sliding down his throat. He wanted to taste her. Not just the inside of her mouth, but her breasts, her thighs, and the sweetness of her quim. More than anything, he ached to plunge his fangs into her flesh at the same time he brought her to orgasm so that her pleasure would thrum through them and make their joining that much more intense.
He jerked his hand out from under hers. His lustful thoughts meant he was not in control. He had to put distance between them, and he knew exactly how to dampen her desire.
By telling her the truth.
“Winifred, there is something you must know.”
She tilted her head. “Oh?”
He cleared his throat. “I appreciate your interest, but I could not join you on excursions to historical sites because I cannot leave this castle.”
“You can’t…” Winifred gave him a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I understand that you have lived as a recluse. It is not my intention to force you to attend social events.”
“It is not that,” he said. “I have not left the grounds in nearly a decade.”
