After we got out of there tonight, my life could go back to normal. Quiet job, quiet days, quiet nights alone. Normal and lonely. Michael would continue running, since the vampires knew he was in Fort Worth. He’d be gone again just when he was back in my life. Now, when I could date him. Could sleep with him. Could touch him and not worry about endangering others with my lust for him. I touched my mouth, thinking of his kiss. My fingers strayed to my neck, where nothing indicated that I’d been bitten. He’d been right—it had been wonderful.
How many women had he bitten since we’d broken up? I hated that I even wondered, as if I had any claim on him. This was just a hookup with an old flame. I could blame it on the aphrodisiac, but the truth was, I’d wanted him and I’d taken him. Simple as that.
This evening when he awoke, his eyes were bright and his smile brighter. He looked over at me and reached his hand toward mine. “Ruby.”
I stood up, straightening my borrowed shirt. “No time for chitchat. We should get out of here while it’s still early. We can get a head start on the bad guys.”
Michael sat up, the expression on his face inscrutable. “We should talk—”
“Not right now,” I said in an exasperated tone. “Michael, please. I don’t want to live in this dusty old meatpacking plant forever.”
“Of course,” he said in an angry, stiff voice, clearly taking my actions as a rebuff.
And maybe they were. Friends didn’t get all sappy with friends after they had sex, right? I began quickly unbuttoning my shirt. “Where is your closest hideaway?”
“Southwest side of I-35. Other side of downtown. Not a great neighborhood, but that’s what makes it ideal for a hideout.”
“Okay, we’ll go there for now. Then we’ll decide what to do.” I took off the shirt and handed it back to him. This time, his gaze was carefully averted from my na**dness, and for some reason, that hurt. Why did sex have to ruin everything? “I’m going to go in jag form. You’re going to be my owner. I found a strip of fabric that can pass as a collar and some rope, so I’m going to be your exotic pet, all right?”
He frowned. “But that’s demeaning to you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’ll give me a chance to protect you if I need to and allow me to use my animal senses. Plus, it’ll be easier than strolling through the street na**d.” I dropped to my knees to change again.
“Ruby,” he began thoughtfully.
I shot back upright, my heart hammering with hope. Was he going to tell me how he felt? “Yes?”
He smiled at me thoughtfully. “Thank you. For everything.”
I could have cheerfully strangled him. I dropped back to my knees and began to shift.
—
People swerved off the sidewalk at the sight of my jaguar form. Michael just smiled and acted as if he always took a massive feline out for an evening stroll. I hoped the bright pink bow collar I’d fashioned out of discarded costume parts would alleviate some of the fear. It looked ridiculous, and I felt ridiculous wearing it, so I hoped it took away a lot of the scariness.
We turned down an alley, and I kept guard as Michael slipped a key from his wallet and then punched in a key code. The door clicked open, and Michael nodded at me. “Come on in.”
I quickly changed back to human form and followed him inside.
We entered a butcher’s shop, and my mouth watered at the overwhelming smell of meat. Even though it was put away in refrigerated cases, I could still smell it, the blood soaking the paper, everything. It was like walking into a buffet.
“It’s back this way,” Michael said, going behind the counter.
I stared up at the security cameras and crossed my arms over my br**sts. “Are those going to be a problem?”
“Oh, uh.” He paused, scratching his head. “I guess they will be. Don’t worry. I’ll leave a note for the manager.”
“Won’t he wonder why you’re not on the camera and I am? Totally na**d, I might add?”
“A long note,” Michael amended, then gestured for me to follow him. “Come on.”
Reluctant, I followed behind him.
Michael entered the meat freezer, and I tiptoed in behind him. He moved to the back of the freezer and began to run his hand along the back wall. I glanced at the gigantic sides of beef hanging from the hooks, the pork, the splayed racks of ribs. Wow. It all looked… juicy. The thought revolted me even as my stomach growled. My jaguar half wasn’t picky, but the human part didn’t like the thought of gnawing on raw meat.
“Here we go.” Michael’s hand found a seam in the metal wall, and he pushed at an invisible panel. The wall clicked and opened a crack, revealing a dark room on the other side. I followed Michael in and was surprised to discover that this was just a small antechamber, equally as cold as the meat freezer. The room was empty of everything but a windowless door on the far side and a numbered security panel set into the wall.
“The code is eleven twenty-nine,” he said, punching in the numbers. “Just in case you need to get back in while I’m unconscious.”
“Eleven twenty-nine? That’s my birthday.”
He glanced over at me, a hint of a smile flicking over his face. “Coincidence.”
Yeah. I gave his back a skeptical look as he turned toward the door. The panel beeped, accepting the code, and the door clicked, unlocking. Michael held it open for me.
If I was expecting something amazing on the other side, I was sorely disappointed. There was an easy chair, a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, a game system on the floor below it, and a single bed on the far side of the room. The blankets were mussed, and the room was small, maybe twelve by eight feet across.
It wasn’t warm, either. I rubbed my arms, looking around. “This is your safe room?”
“One of several.” He moved forward, grabbing DVDs off the seat of the chair and placing them on a nearby rack. “I’ve been moving around in the hopes that Mariah would think I was gone and would get the picture, but she doesn’t seem to be paying attention.”
“She doesn’t seem to be very good at that,” I agreed, then rubbed my arms. “Clothes?”
He looked stricken. “None here. It’s a fairly new setup for me.”
I tried to ignore the chill. As a shifter, I was fairly immune to cold weather, but I was na**d, and it felt a bit nippy even to my metabolism. “Mind if I get under your blankets, then?”
“Be my guest.”
I crawled under the covers and wrapped them around my body, noticing that his gaze followed me. “You hungry again?”
“I’m okay,” he said, too quickly. “You?”
“Hungry,” I admitted. “All that meat two rooms over isn’t helping.”
He grinned. “You like your meat raw?”
“Not that raw, but if I get hungry enough, it’ll do.”
He gestured back to the freezer. “There’s ready-made sandwiches out in the deli fridge.”
“Now you’re talking,” I said, smiling at him.
We retrieved a few sandwiches and another bottle of water, and I wrapped myself up in the blanket, crossing my legs and sitting up.
While I ate, he turned the easy chair toward me and watched as I devoured sandwiches. “You want my shirt again?”
“I’m good for now.” Plus, his shirt would smell way too much like him, and having it rub against my skin again might give me ideas. Time for a distraction. “So,” I said between bites, “you going to tell me your story?”
“My story?” He looked blank for a moment, then laughed.
He was so handsome that I stopped chewing just to stare at him, my heart pounding. That laugh brought back so many memories and filled me with intense longing.
“You mean how I got turned?”
Not trusting myself to speak around the knot in my throat, I nodded.
He raked a hand through his hair, and it stuck up. “Well. After I, uh, dropped out…”
When we’d broken up . . . I said nothing, letting the awkward silence fill the room. What could I say? Yeah, when you caught me banging that guy? And then you quit school?
“I decided that I should see the world,” he said. “Took my Pell Grants and decided to tour Europe.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Transylvania?”
“Madrid, actually. I met a very lovely Englishwoman named Gemma who was touring the Continent. We took to spending time together while I was in Spain. She was fun and carefree and loved to laugh. I needed that, back then.”
Fun and carefree English Gemma. I hated her. That bitch.
“I spent most nights drunk, trying to for—” He shifted in his seat and paused. “Well. I wasn’t in a good place, so I didn’t much care what happened to me. Gemma was a bit of a party girl and a drinker, so I partied and drank with her. One night, I was on a bender, and I passed out in her room early, skipping the party. When I woke up the next evening, I found out that she had turned me into a vampire.”
“Turned you against your will? That’s awful!” I immediately burned with hatred for her. That bitch.
“Well, she hadn’t meant to,” Michael said with a rueful, affectionate smile that made my heart thump with a different kind of beat—jealousy. “Turns out she’d been sipping from me here and there when we were necking, and I’d made her drunk. Too much alcohol in my blood, and she lost her inhibitions. When I passed out in her room, she’d been unable to resist and drained a bit too much. I was in danger of dying, so she turned me instead.”
“This is a pretty rotten story,” I told him. “Did you hate her?”
He shook his head. “Nah. She was truly apologetic. Anyhow, she took me under her wing and taught me how to survive as a vampire. Then, when I had the hang of things, she gave me a nice settlement and sent me on my way.”
“You should have staked her,” I muttered.