If her thoughts weren’t scattered bits of crumb, due to their blistering proximity and his body, oh Lord his body, she might have recalled her earlier sensation of déjà vu. Of trusting him without reason or cause because she knew, without a doubt, he’d never hurt her.
Jonas lifted his chin and pressed their foreheads together. “You’re forgetting the second rule, Ginny.”
“No killing humans,” she whispered. “I remember.”
Regret laced his tone when he spoke. “Break one, break three.”
“No. That sounds like something that was made up to control your behavior. Like, ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ Clearly an apple farmer thought of that. No one ever stops to think of the origin of…of…why are you laughing?”
“You.” His lips brushed over her hair. “You refuse to stop making me laugh. And—”
“And you shouldn’t be here.”
“That’s already getting old, isn’t it? It’s the truth.” His gaze mapped her face. “My strength would be a wildcard if I gave in to this. I can’t predict how I’d react to kissing you—or more, when I barely understand what you’re doing to me without throwing…more into the mix.” He paused. “This is unusual, Ginny.”
More.
That huskily spoken word made that made her thighs want to open. He would press against her hard and she’d wrap them—
“Stop,” he breathed. “You’re tempting disaster.”
“Maybe one kiss?”
He laughed without humor. “It wouldn’t stop there,” he said thickly, bracing his hands on the wall on either side of Ginny. “It would have to be all or nothing with you.”
Jonas flicked her a searing look and she saw his meaning there. Oh, she certainly did. A corresponding moving image came to life in her mind. Jonas moving roughly on top of her, her skirt around her waist…his teeth fastened to her neck. Her thoughts must have translated to her face because Jonas blurred away with a curse, leaving her in a near puddle against the wall.
“Only another eleven hours and seventeen minutes to sunrise,” he muttered. “Downstairs, please, Ginny.”
“Yes, Dreamboat,” she quipped, before blushing to the roots of her hair. Avoiding his questioning look, she slipped past him down the stairs.
“I knew I’d heard you call me that last night.” His voice was brisk—and directly behind her. “Do you have a nickname for Gordon?”
“I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”
“You wanted it to be my business or you wouldn’t have brought him up.”
“I was befuddled when I did that.”
Jonas hummed a skeptical sound. “How do you know him?”
“Am I…putting his well-being at risk by telling you?”
“No. Remember the rules.”
Ginny stopped and turned at the bottom of the stairs. “The rules are pretty much the only thing I’m thinking about right now.”
He touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. “Same.”
They held a heated mini staring contest. “What happens when you find the person who has been threatening me? Are you going to slap them on the wrist and ask them nicely to stop? Anything else would be against the rules.”
“You don’t think I’ve considered this?”
“What did you come up with?”
He took Ginny by the wrist and guided her in the direction of her office. “You’ve changed the subject from Gordon. How do you know him?”
“His mother is the founder of my dress making club. She favors a polyester blend.”
“Itchy.”
“Yes,” she agreed fervently. “And not breathable at all.”
A corner of his mouth jumped. “So you’re in a dress making club. I don’t suppose you’ve made many enemies there.”
“No…” she hedged, following him into the office and turning on the desk lamp, casting the small room in a dusky glow. “No enemies, per se…”
“Be less convincing.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve made any friends, either.” She dragged her index finger across her father’s old mahogany desk and the initials she’d scrawled there with a protractor when she was eleven. Her father had scolded her for it, then taken her for a Carvel ice-cream cone out of guilt. “They call me Death Girl, so we haven’t done a lot of gossiping over coffee.”
Jonas’s expression had turned stony.
“You’re mad on my behalf,” she breathed. “Are you sure we can’t kiss?”
“If there was a way, I would have done it already. Several hundred times.” He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, they were scanning the room and Ginny’s stomach was still mid-somersault. “What about unhappy customers? Anyone who stands out?”
She sat down behind the desk, flattening her palms on the spread of paperwork. “Everyone who comes here is unhappy. It’s hard to pick just one.”
A flash of white teeth. “I see your point. This isn’t going to be easy.” He took a seat in the chair in front of her desk. With an arm draped along the back of the chair and his hair falling over his forehead, he was straight out of one of her movies. All he needed was a cigarette and high-waisted man pants.
On second thought, scratch the latter.
Some things were better in the modern age.
“It would help if you told me how you’ve been threatened, Ginny. It would help if you told me anything at all.”
“I don’t know anything at all. I only know…what happened.”
There was a tick in his temple. “Start there.”
She shook her head. “Tell me about your roommates.”
This time, Jonas shook his head. “It’s one thing to risk exposure on my own, but I can’t jeopardize them, too.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust my desire to trust you. It doesn’t make sense when we only met last night.”
“Same,” she whispered, a little shaken at how perfectly their feelings aligned. “I understand your wanting to protect them. You don’t have to tell me anything.” She took a key out of the top desk drawer and used it to unlock the bottom one, pulling out her laptop and firing it up. “I’m just going to return a few client emails—”
“I met them through my work,” he growled. “My roommates.”
“Oh.” She closed the laptop. “Why did you decide to talk about them?”
“Maybe if I confide in you, you’ll do the same to me.”
“Not unless I suddenly gain the ability to abscond with your memories.” She swallowed. “Still planning on doing that?”
He said nothing, but a muscle jumped in his cheek.
In other words, yes. As soon as the mystery was solved.
She’d wake up one morning and not even be aware of his existence.
Trying to rid herself of the discomfort in her throat, she cleared it quietly. “Tell me about your roommates anyway?”
He stared at her hard, looking like he wanted to address her comment about memories, but ultimately he let it sit there between them like a nine-hundred-pound gorilla. “One is very serious. The other takes nothing seriously.” He changed positions in his chair, leaning forward and clasping his hands together loosely between his knees. “Like I said, I met them at work. A lot goes into maintaining our cover. Most of us have no issue following the rules set out by the High Order, but new vampires…well, they have a hard time adjusting.” He paused. “A really hard time. And I help them.”
“You helped your roommates when they were…”
“Silenced. That’s how we refer to the newly turned…because their hearts have been silenced. And yes, I trained them, helped them adapt when they were unsure how to fend for themselves.” Ginny had at least forty-five follow-up questions. Such as, how were humans turned? What did new vampires do that constituted a “hard time adjusting”? How did Jonas find new vampires to help? But her pressing questions were put on hold when Jonas shook his head. “You already know more than you should.”
Reluctantly, Ginny nodded.
Jonas waited, watching, obviously hoping there would be some quid pro quo for what he’d told her about an apparent underworld that operated without human knowledge. When she said nothing, he rose and walked to the door. “I’ll be right outside the door while you work.”
“Okay.”
The room felt empty without Jonas’s intense presence and it was hard to concentrate on anything knowing he was mere yards away, but she managed to answer all of her client emails and even make some adjustments to the AdWords she was using to court clients through Google. Larissa wouldn’t be happy knowing she kept a budget set aside for advertising, but it was impossible these days to run a business without marketing in some form. Her father had been a huge believer in word of mouth, and truthfully, that’s why most people darkened their door, but there was no reason Ginny couldn’t add a few modern touches.
Would her father be proud of how she’d been running the business?
It was something she wondered every day. Sometimes she’d even look up from her desk and expect to see him fussing with the catalogues or trimming stray strings on the carpet out in the lobby. Sometimes he’d even used a magnifying glass and would get so lost in the activity, clients would have to step over his crawling form while Ginny greeted and ushered them into the back office.
With a sigh, she put her laptop back in the drawer and stood, confident that tomorrow would be a better day for the business. Yes, that meant that people had to die, but as long as they were doing it anyway, her wish wouldn’t do any harm, would it?
Opening the office door and finding Jonas leaning against the opposite wall knocked the wind clear out of her sails. He looked like he’d been counting the seconds until she appeared again. Or was she reading way too much into the way his fist clenched while his shoulders relaxed at the same time?