“If you feel like I don’t trust you or that I blame you for anything then your radar is broken.”
“My radar isn’t broken. It’s keener than ever. And I’m wide awake, eyes wide open, watching for any threat and I’m protecting you from any potential threat. I want you to breathe easy. That’s my goal.”
She snuggled in, burying her face into the crook of his neck.
She felt weird, looking at his throat.
“How’s this whole feeding thing gonna work? The idea of drinking your blood makes me more than a little bit queasy. And I don’t have the right teeth for it.”
“We’ll have to figure that out.”
“Yeah,” she had a sour face, “When you became a vampire did the idea of biting people or drinking their blood gross you out?”
“Nope. I instantly craved it the way you crave sugar.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not a vampire. I don’t know what I am.”
“You’re my princess,” he whispered and kissed her sweetly. She wrapped her arms tighter around him.
They were silent a moment. Kyla watched a bird gliding over the water, swoop down, catch a fish, and then take flight.
“I wish we could stay here a while,” she said.
“It doesn’t feel safe. I’ve only met Sasha, there are other people in their coalition on this island and until I know more, I’m not feeling it.”
“Okay,” she said.
Suddenly he went tense and alert. She looked over her shoulder, seeing a woman with long flowing wavy ash blonde hair and incredibly long legs approaching.
“Oh, hiya,” she waved, calling out, “Sam around?”
Tristan instantly rose, pulling Kyla behind him and his fangs were out.
The woman froze in her tracks, looking like she was paralyzed.
“Go back where you came from,” he hissed, “You never saw us.”
She immediately turned on her heel and walked away.
“Faster!” Tristan called and then she whooshed and blurred away.
“What, why?” Kyla started, his hand wrapped around the small of her back, plastering her to his back.
“She was vamp.” Tristan watched until she rounded the house and was out of sight.
“Sasha is micro dosing the female vamps here with Kyle’s blood but I don’t feel safe enough to trust it.”
“Oh.”
“They don’t know it’s Kyle’s blood.”
“Oh.”
He spun around to face her.
“I was going to ask if we could bring him with us.”
Tristan’s brows snapped up.
“I don’t want to leave him here. I want to try to help him. I don’t want him with people just bleeding him dry.”
Tristan nodded and she could feel tension emanating off him, “He’s key to the coalition right now. He’s what’s keeping Sasha even. She’s trying to synthesize his blood so that she can stay even without feeding from him but she says she’s not close to that yet. She also needs his blood so that female vampires who want that switch flipped to off can have it.”
“That’s…that’s understandable but, Tristan, he’s just lying there in a bed being bled.”
“Okay, how’s this? We go home, figure some things out and then go from there.”
“What does that mean?”
“I influence her to make sure she doesn’t remove him from here so that we can get back to him. She’s taken good care of him the last almost two years. She thinks of him as a son but she needs his blood, those other females on that island need it, too. They don’t even know where it comes from but it helps them. Listen, how about if we make a decision soon? Let me do some research. Either I decide to join up with them and we go from there or we extricate him at the point we decide I’m not joining.”
“Is joining a possibility? It must be if you’re saying that but… but really?”
She wanted to talk about this, explore the idea together.
He was conflicted. She felt it. He pulled her close and she inhaled his sugary sweetness, felt the strength of his arms, the heat coming off him. She lifted her chin and looked him in the eyes. His hair blew back in the breeze and she chewed her bottom lip. His eyes sparkled.
“I don’t know enough yet. But maybe. Let’s talk about it later. For now, let’s go have a nap,” he whispered the last part seductively, an even more dazzling sparkle in his eyes.
Mm hmm.
She found herself thrown over his shoulder. She squee’d in delight as he walked back toward the house.
She dangled. But she was anxious so she didn’t want to wait.
“Whoosh, babe,” she told him.
“Whoosh?” he chuckled.
“Fast. Go fast. Whoosh!”
“Sounds a little like I’m your dog on the end of a sled.”
“No, that’s mush. But whatever works. Mush. Whoosh. Just hurry!”
He slowed his pace even more.
She spanked his sexy ass and he gave her ass a squeeze in response.
They got up the stairs and inside the door and she heard Tristan say, “Brandy was on the beach lookin’ for you. I sent her away, made her forget she saw me.”