Blood Trial Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers #1) - Kelly St. Clare Page 0,123

Could he see in the dark? Certainly better than me at any rate.

I threw myself flat again, bouncing on the cloud bed. “Who thinks like that? Wait, don’t answer that. Someone who has played a game their entire life.”

His grin remained. “You weren’t playing a game by going into my drawer and wearing my clothing?”

That was different. I was having a laugh at his expense. Not setting him up to be naked in my lair.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t play games.”

“Everyone plays games, Basilia. We learn to manipulate from a young age. We just get better at hiding what we’re doing.”

I considered that. “Yet if we see that’s how we’re behaving, shouldn’t we feel duty-bound to eliminate the fault?”

His grin faded. “That would depend on whether we accept it as life or define our base nature as a fault at all.”

“If Vissimo listened to their base natures, would there be any of you left?”

His eyes gleamed, the meadow-green colour indistinguishable in the dark. “Only the powerful.”

I swept hair off my face. “Well, maybe humans are more capable of greater growth in a short time because we don’t live as long.” I peeked through my lashes at him.

“Kitten is the wrong word for you,” he acknowledged.

Glad he’d caught up.

“Vixen is more accurate.”

That made me sound like a sexy, annoying person.

… I was okay with it.

He continued. “I’m glad you helped yourself in any case. I can’t say a woman in my clothing has ever done it for me, but you’re proving that wrong.”

Uh. Did he just compliment me on a whole other level? To my memory, most of his prior compliments were backhanded—or said with pity.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “Do you have water up here? I have the champagne dries.”

“I’ll get it.” The huge shadow that was Kyros stood.

As he moved farther into his lair, my eyes narrowed.

Kyros just offered to get me water. Without a dig at me drinking too much. Kyros. Not a word about my slight hangover or the man I’d intended to go home with last night. I’d expected a lecture and more rules—and to have to talk him around about Rory and Laurel.

Yet he hadn’t.

He’d grinned at least once and complimented me twice—if the vixen thing could be lumped in there.

I swung my legs over the side, grimacing at the pain in my hip, and reached over to flick on the lamp. Where was the switch?

“Bedside light on,” Kyros said.

The hanging lamp flared to life.

I bit back a groan. Of course his lair was ultra-modern. He had super speed and couldn’t be bothered to flick a damn switch.

Blinking rapidly against the burst of light, I accepted the glass of ice-cold water from him and two pills.

I glanced up at him.

“Pain medication. Your breath caught when you moved.”

Yep, something big was coming.

“What do you think?” he asked, returning to his chair. He kicked off his Freens, still in his suit.

I threw him a surreptitious look as I gulped back half the glass. Swallowing, I said, “About?”

“My lair.”

He’d deposited me unceremoniously several hours ago and I’d inspected his room immediately—I wasn’t perfect. The snooping left me disappointed if truth be told.

“The words cold and empty come to mind,” I answered.

Settling back in the couple-movie sofa again, he pondered my words. “I don’t like clutter.”

Sure, I got that. Marie Kondo got that too. But she also understood the need to spark joy with the possessions in your space. Where were the family pictures? Where were presents he’d received over the years? Cards. Ornaments. Hell, even paper and rubbish.

The space was minimalist. Contemporary. Beautiful.

Impersonal.

Bed. Bathroom. Drawers. Kitchenette. The warmest part of the room was the circle sofa which is why I’d gravitated there. Even Kyros did without realising why.

Don’t feel sorry for the vampire, Basi.

Darn it all. I did.

I felt sorry for a one-hundred-and-forty-nine-year-old fucking vampire. Because the softest part of his apartment—in the same building where he worked—was a sofa he liked to sit on before bed.

“I see.” I settled on, shoving down my honest opinion.

He tapped a finger on the side of the couch—which he filled. There wasn’t any room for me. I’d be squeezed in either side or more likely elect to sit on the floor. Squeezed in. That’s what was wrong with the tension between us.

If each year added to my life distanced me from the bond I’d shared with my parents, then the opposite was true with regards to Kyros. I’d lived for a fraction of his life and