Page 91 of The Ghost and the Graveyard (Knight Games 1)
He frowned. "You smell of the dead."
I sniffed my scrubs, then grasped that he must mean Logan. I knew what a dead body smelled like, and I wasn't wearing that particular scent.
"What do you want?" I asked, suddenly defensive.
He looked at me with black eyes. Beads of rain dripped from his hair and ran in trails down his chest. The attraction was instantaneous. I crossed my legs and had to look away to keep from touching him.
"Have you thought about what happened last night?" he asked.
"Yes," I said toward the floorboard.
"Then, will you be with me tonight?" He reached across the seat and placed his hand on my thigh. His voice was thick with longing.
"No." I pushed his hand away. "You lied to me."
"I never lied to you."
"Well then, you omitted the truth. Same difference. Why didn't you tell me right away? Why didn't you tell me before-" I stopped myself. I'd almost said, before I fell in love with you. Why had I almost said that? Was I in love with him? How could I be in love with a monster?
"Before what?"
"Before now," I said.
"I wanted to get to know you like we were human."
"I am human," I said through my teeth.
"I did not want to scare you away. I knew this would be hard for you."
"You got that right." I fidgeted in my seat. "I have a choice, Rick. I don't have to do this."
Before I knew what was happening, he was across the seat and in my face. With his hand on the dash and his knee on the seat next to me, there was no place for me to go. I was trapped.
"What do you mean?" he growled.
My breath came out shaky. I swallowed hard. The first time I'd met Rick I thought he reminded me of a matador. At the time, I'd been referring to his Spanish good looks. But now I realized the comparison went further. A matador's job was to sever the bull's spine with his sword. The red cape is to distract the bull so that the matador can have his way with it. Rick was beautiful, but he was deadly. I was the bull. All of this, his seduction of me, had been the cape, a distraction to get what he really wanted. My soul.
"I mean," I said, my voice cracking with fear, "that this is my life. No matter what or who I was in the past, I don't have to be that now, or ever."
He jerked backward as if I'd punched him in the gut. The expression on his face was tortured, a pure agony that almost made me regret my words. "Who is he?" he gasped.
"Who is who?"
"The ghost whose smell lies under your skin?"
"His name is Logan. He lives in my attic."
His fist came down on the dash and the resulting boom startled me. The back of my head hit the window when I jumped. "Of course he does. Grateful, he's there to be sorted!"
"So? He says it doesn't matter to him. He says I have a choice." I rubbed the lump already forming on the back of my head.
"Do you not see that your attraction to him is an echo of who you were? Something in you seeks the power, even as you deny it. You could be a queen of souls, yet you waste yourself on one of them."
"Logan wasn't a waste, but I'm beginning to think this conversation is." Anger drowned out my fear, and I moved forward in my seat. "You can't bully me into this, Rick."
It was his turn to shake. A tear gathered in the corner of his eye. He shook his head, and it was gone. "I am not trying to bully you into anything. You must remember that when I look at you, I see my wife. I see my long-lost love. I forget that you are young. I forget that you are a new person. Forgive me."
He didn't wait for my reply. Before I could pull my next breath, he was gone.
