Aden’s jaw clenched. “Please, Victoria.”
She stopped, faced him. A thousand different emotions seemed to fight for dominance over her features. Hope, regret, happiness, sadness, fear. Finally, hope won. “Come,” she said. “I want to show you something.”
She held out her hand. He wondered what had caused such turmoil inside her, but he didn’t hesitate to close the distance between them and twine their fingers. The heat of her skin nearly singed him as she led him through the forest, deeper and deeper, the trees thickening around them.
“You’re so hot,” he said, then, to his horror, felt himself flush. “I don’t mean you’re pretty. Wait. You are. Pretty, I mean. Beautiful. I just meant your temperature is hot.” Could he sound any lamer?
“Oh, sorry.” She jerked from his hold.
“No, I like it.” Apparently, he could. He twined their fingers again. “I was just wondering why you’re so…um, hot.”
“Oh,” she said again, relaxing against his hold. “Vampires have more blood than humans. A lot more. And not just because of what we consume. That’s why our hearts work at a greater speed.”
They rounded a corner. He didn’t recognize the area, the leaves hanging from the branches so bright a red it almost looked as though the trees were bleeding. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He hated adding to the distance between him and the ranch, just in case Dan awoke and came gunning for him, but he didn’t protest. Being with Victoria was worth the risk. Any risk.
His ears perked when he heard the nearby rush of water. “There’s a river here?”
“You’ll see,” she repeated.
They broke through a tangle of foliage and what could only be a bathing pool came into view. Boulders were stacked at one side, water cascading from them, bubbling and frothing at the edges. His jaw dropped.
“This was nothing more than a puny pond when I arrived,” Victoria said. “I worked all week to stack the rocks. Riley, my bodyguard, rerouted the water for me.”
Riley. Her bodyguard. He must be the boy Aden had seen her with that morning at the ranch. Which meant they weren’t brother and sister. Worse, they probably spent a lot of time together.
He studied the stones, using the time to tamp down a suddenly blast of jealousy. There were too many to count, all so large no one her size should have been able to lift them.
“You both did an amazing job,” was all he said.
“Thank you.”
It’s so peaceful here. I never want to leave, Eve said.
Maybe she brought you here to make out with you, Caleb said hopefully. Who knew being nice could pay off?
Uh, I did, Eve replied.
Argh! “Guys. Quiet, please. I’m begging you.” His companions grumbled but did as he’d asked.
Victoria’s focus whipped to him. She was frowning.
“Not you,” he told her. “If you want to know who I was talking to, though, you’ll have to trade me for the information.” There. That was how he’d get answers out of her. If she was curious about him. But if she was and he told her the truth, would she decide he was too weird to hang out with, as Mary Ann apparently had?
“I would be willing to trade,” she said, and he wanted to both cheer and curse. She faced the water, her back to him. “We can do so while we swim.”
Wait. What? “Swim? With you?”
She laughed. “Who else? I’ve come here every night. You’ll enjoy the water, I promise.”
“But I don’t have a suit.”
“So?” Without turning toward him, she tugged the robe from her shoulders. The material slid to the ground, and once again his jaw dropped. Never had he seen a lovelier sight. She wore a lacy pink swimsuit—the first time he’d ever seen her in color. First time he’d ever seen a girl so bare in person. She was as white as snow all over, her body perfectly curved, all lean muscle, smooth planes and hollows.
Am I drooling? he wondered.
Dear Lord in heaven, Caleb gasped out. I know, I know. I’m supposed to be quiet. But the words slipped out because—and I could be mistaken here—I think my tongue is hanging out. Never mind that I don’t actually have one.
Aden hated that his companions were seeing her like this. Hated it so much a red sheen of jealousy hazed behind his eyes, and it was far greater than when he’d thought of her and her muscled bodyguard together. All the time. Okay. The red expanded, thickened. He wanted to be the only one to enjoy her. Now and always.
Victoria waded into the pool, droplets splashing, water swallowing her up, not stopping until she reached the center, submerged all the way to her shoulders. Slowly she whirled around, grinning. “Are you coming?”
Hell, yes. The jealousy thing he could deal with later. Aden stripped to his boxers and waded in. The water was cool and caused goose bumps to break out over his skin. He took it like a man, though, and pretended he loved it. No way did he want her thinking he was a wuss. Well, any more of one.
His feet touched in the center, the waterline coming to his shoulders, as well, but he was taller than her and realized she couldn’t possibly reach the mossy ground. Still, she seemed unperturbed by her swishing feet, the water not even rippling.
They circled each other, their gazes never wavering.
“Ready to trade?” he asked. He was willing to do anything, even blab about himself, to learn about her.
She hesitated only a moment before nodding.
“First, maybe we should set the rules.”
“Like?”
“Like, rule one. You’re a girl, so you go first. Rule two. You’ll ask me a question, anything at all, and I’ll answer it. Rule three. I’ll ask you a question, again anything at all, and you’ll have to answer it. Rule four. We have to answer truthfully.”
“Agreed.” No hesitation. “I will begin then. So…who were you speaking to earlier when you said ‘quiet’?”
Of course she’d chosen the most embarrassing question to kick things off. But then, his luck would have permitted nothing else. “I was speaking to the souls trapped inside my head.” Hopefully she would leave it at that.
Her eyes widened. “Souls? Trapped in your head? What do you—”
“Nope,” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s my turn. Who do you drink from? And more importantly, do you have many blood-slaves?” In his head, the questions continued. Were those slaves male? And what would he do if they were?
“That’s two questions, so you will owe me. The answer to the first is humans. The answer to the second is no. I have none. I prefer to drink from my prey only once.”
Thank God. “I know you drink from humans, though. That’s not what I meant.” He thought back to the last few newspapers he’d seen, the last news at nine he’d watched. “There are no articles about recent attacks in the area. No news stations blaring stories about possible vampire sightings. Nobody but me seems to know you even exist. I don’t understand how that’s possible if you and your family are, uh, eating many meals.”
“There’s a reason for that, but you will have to trade me for it.” The last was said in a singsong voice. Seemed the vampire was using his own strategy against him. “Now it’s my turn. What do you mean, souls are trapped inside your head?”
Yep. His luck sucked. “Souls, personalities, other humans. There are four and they’ve always been with me. At least, as long as I remember. We’ve played with a bunch of different theories about how they got there, and the best we’ve been able to come up with is that I drew them into me. Kind of like how I apparently drew you, only I absorbed them inside my head. They talk all the time.” He hurried on before they could protest. “Each possesses an ability. One can time travel. One can raise the dead, one can overtake other bodies, and one can see the future. Usually when someone’s about to die.”
“That means you can do these things, as well?”
He nodded. “And now we’re even, question-wise.”
Her head tilted to the side, her expression thoughtful. “You are more powerful than we realized.”
And that was not a good thing, he mused, judging by her hardened tone. But she wasn’t running, wasn’t eyeing him as if he were nuclear waste. That was miles above what he’d expected. But then, she was a vampire.
“I wonder how my father will react to that.”
Aden wondered, too. The man had wanted to kill him merely because of the wind he and Mary Ann had created. This was a thousand times worse. “Maybe you should, I don’t know, not tell him.”
“You’re probably right. So, tell me more about them, these souls. You said they talk all the time. Are they loud?”
He shrugged, and the water rippled. “Most days, yeah. That’s why most of the world thinks I’m weird. Because I’m always telling them to be quiet or, worse, conversing with them. And now, you owe me.”
She reached out and threaded their fingers, almost as if she craved contact as much as he did. “People might think you’re weird, Aden, but they think I am evil. Maybe I am. I survive on blood. And at first, when I learned to take it, I was too eager, unable to stop myself, and hurt innocents.”
He heard the guilt in her tone, the sadness, and hated that she’d experienced the emotion. He only wanted her happy. And if that made him the wuss he didn’t want to be, well, he’d freaking be a wuss.
Which brought him back to the bodyguard Riley. Was Aden the only one who wanted her happy? Surely not. After all, Victoria had once told him that Riley was jealous of him. He hadn’t understood at the time. But maybe Riley was jealous of the time Victoria spent with him. Jealous, as a boyfriend would be.
Why did she need a bodyguard anyway? he wondered darkly. “Talking about how people view us is depressing. So let’s talk about Riley. Is he also your boyfriend?” Every part of him felt like Victoria was his. If she said yes…“You have to answer truthfully. Remember, you owe me.”
