Levet scowled, caught between the familiar sense of delight and annoyance as the female halted directly in front of him.
“How can you ask such a ridiculous question?” he demanded. “You are the one who brought me here.”
The black, oblong eyes flashed with fire. “I most certainly did not.”
Levet waved his hands in the air, his tail twitching. “Then how do you explain the fact that I was in one place and then . . . poof . . . I was in another?”
“Mother,” Yannah muttered and they both turned to discover Siljar had silently slipped away. “She must have brought you.”
Perversely, Levet didn’t care why Siljar would have gone to the effort to bring him to the caves. He was too annoyed by the fact it hadn’t been Yannah.
If he was going to be zapped and poofed and yanked from one location to another, he should at least be rewarded with a kiss and a snuggle.
Where was his snuggle?
“Why do you keep running from me?” he abruptly asked the question that had been bothering him for weeks.
Yannah tilted her tiny nose in the air. “I am not the only one to run.”
Oh.
Busted.
Levet grimaced. Perhaps she had a point. He had traveled to Paris without explaining where or why he was going.
“I had to confront my past,” he said, defending his hasty escape from her lair. “It was a spiritual journey.”
Yannah wasn’t impressed. “And when you returned you took every opportunity to be apart from me.”
Levet spread his fingers in a helpless motion. “I am a male.”
Yannah frowned. “And?”
“And I am not supposed to make sense.”
“You . . .” She appeared to have trouble speaking. Strange. She’d never had trouble before. Then she lifted her hand and Levet felt that weird tugging in the middle of his belly. “Go away.”
Darkness closed around him.
“Eek.”
When Roke had promised he was going to make sure she was well fed, he hadn’t been kidding.
Sally had been too weary to protest when he’d urged her to sit on the edge of the cot. And if she were completely honest, she couldn’t help but enjoy the sight of the badass vampire fumbling with the unfamiliar task of opening various cans of food to heat them over the kerosene hotplate.
The man was ruthlessly powerful, impossibly beautiful, and so sexy he made her ache with longing.
Who could blame her for the knowledge he wasn’t perfect?
But as he brought her dish after dish, carefully testing the temperature before he placed the plate in her hands, her petty amusement was replaced by an unexpected stab of pain.
Which was ridiculous.
So what if Roke was only pampering her because he was compelled by magic? Or that if he was in his right mind, he’d sooner be stuck in this hidden lair with a rabid pit bull than her.
She didn’t need to be coddled.
Her mother had taught her that only the strong survived and that a woman stupid enough to depend on anyone was destined to be betrayed.