He nodded. “It’s just a political arrangement. Why do you care?”
There were things he didn’t know about Camila and her arranged marriage. Things I’d promised never to tell him. Even now, decades after her death, my blood-vow prevented me from telling him the truth. “I like Thea.”
“That I understand. She smells sweet, but how does she taste?” he asked.
I went rigid, and darkness crept along the edges of my vision. Sebastian stepped away quickly. “Forget I asked, brother. I didn’t realize...”
“It’s just blood-lust,” I said through gritted teeth, forcing myself to push it down. My plan to take Thea home immediately just got delayed by half an hour because of his careless remark. Now I needed to satisfy myself again. It would be easier if Thea wasn’t a virgin. As it was, it seemed my blood-lust would continue until I figured out how to disentangle myself from her.
Sebastian laughed, already heading down the corridor. “Keep telling yourself that, brother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THEA
I lingered in Julian’s room, feeling increasingly silly as the seconds ticked by. I didn’t particularly like feeling trapped; however, not wandering around a house of vampires felt like a pretty solid strategy. But the longer Julian stayed away, the harder it was to ignore a new awareness. I woke up feeling like a sex goddess, even if things hadn’t gone that far. Now I couldn’t help but feel hurt by his absence.
Had I been ghosted? By a vampire?
Surely he would have told Celia to have me leave.
After another twenty minutes, hurt transformed into indignation. Maybe he had all the time in the world–he was nine hundred years old, after all–but I didn’t. If he had gotten what he wanted from me, he could be man enough to say it to my face.
I opened the door and walked straight into him.
“Where are you going?” he asked harshly.
“I was looking for you.” I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my chin to show just how unimpressed I was with being left to wake up alone. Considering he was practically twice my size, I doubted he noticed.
“You found me. Come on.” He strode back into his room without so much as a second glance. He stepped inside the door and called over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”
Julian Rousseaux wasn’t just a grouch in the morning, he was a total asshole.
Fine. I would go back into his room, but only so I could tell him off. I walked inside and slammed the door behind me.
Julian pivoted, one eyebrow raised. “Something bothering you, pet?”
“You!” I exploded. “First, I wake up alone, which is no big deal. I don’t even know if vampires sleep. Or maybe you needed to find a coffin or something. But then, you just leave me up here forever with no clothes. And after all that, you come up here and practically order me back into your room. If you think this is how our arrangement is going to work, then allow me to clear a few things up.”
Julian’s eyebrow smoothed back into its usual position, but he said nothing.
“Well,” I prompted, “aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I was waiting for you to clear things up,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. It was only then that I noticed that his eyes were darker than usual. Crap on a cracker. Had I just pissed off a vampire in a blood-rage? Even in my feverish state last night I’d seen enough to know that any mistake might be the last I ever made.
He continued to wait, his eyes growing darker with each second of silence that passed between us. That left me with two problems. Something was definitely wrong with Julian, and I didn’t actually know how to clear things up. I knew what I was mad about. That part was pretty damn clear. I just wasn’t sure that making demands of him was the best idea, especially right now.
I decided to switch tactics. “Where were you?”
“I assume Celia told you I was speaking with my parents.” He didn’t move. At all. It was like a statue had spoken and then returned to its solid form.
“Yes, I mean, she said you were talking to your mother.”
“My father arrived this morning,” he said but offered no further explanation.
Now I was beginning to feel a little silly, but that didn’t change certain facts.
“What are you really upset about?” he guessed when I remained silent.
“It’s just...” I screwed up my courage and decided to let it all out. We were keeping enough secrets with our arrangement. We didn’t need to keep them from each other. “I didn’t expect to wake up alone.”
There was a pause. Julian remained eerily still. He’d never looked more like a vampire to me than now, and I’d seen him attack more than one vampire. Then, he’d looked like a warrior. Now? He wasn’t breathing. There was no sign of movement, but somehow, a brutal energy radiated from him. Then, he finally blinked, but the darkness in his eyes remained. “I apologize. It was thoughtless. I hadn’t expected to be away so long.”
I swallowed his apology and finally nodded. “Is everything okay? With your family?”
“I think it’s best if you steer clear of my mother,” he said with a laugh that sounded less than amused.
I thought of what Celia had said earlier about not everyone in the house being my enemy. Maybe it was time to start making a list of whom I should avoid. “And your father?”
“I won’t know until he meets you.”
My heart dropped into my stomach, but I forced a quiet, “Okay.”
“But he’s not meeting you today,” he said to my relief. “I need to get you home.” He stopped and studied me for a minute. “Where did you get those clothes?”
“Celia,” I said nervously.
“Of course.” He managed a tight smile. “She’s better at being considerate than I am.”
