His smile widened. He had white perfect teeth. Not, she noted, vampire teeth.
“I appreciate that you think I am a gorgeous hunk of male.”
She wanted to close her eyes to savor his voice, his accent, but it was just too dangerous. Everything about him was dangerous. His hair was very long and very black but salted with streaks of fine silvery gray. She always thought men with long hair looked a bit silly, but on him, his hair didn’t detract for one moment from his ultramasculine features. She was fairly certain he had a tattoo that crawled up his back and moved over his shoulders and down his arms, but it wasn’t like any tattoo she’d ever seen and in the faint light streaming in through the windows she couldn’t be certain.
“It will make you happy to know that I am no vampire. I hunted vampires for centuries, but stopped a very long time ago.”
She blinked. Her gaze dropped to his thick, heavily muscled chest. Then to his flat—like twelve-pack—abdomen. Serious muscle there. She swallowed, trying to school her gaze to keep from looking any farther down his body, but there was no stopping her wandering eyes. Damn. The man was fine. She was fairly certain he had a fine ass, too. He just hadn’t turned enough yet.
“If you aren’t a vampire, how can you float in the air and sleep in the ground?” she demanded. Her mouth was watering a little looking at the man’s body.
His gaze drifted over her face. Then her body. She felt the touch right through her clothes to her core. The core that gave a convulsive spasm. He was waking up things best left alone. There was possession in his gaze. Interest. Not just any interest, but sexual interest, and she so wasn’t going there, no matter how fine he was.
His feet touched the ground just in front of her. He waved his hand, a graceful movement that sent a myriad of notes dancing in the air between them. Immediately he was dressed. A thin black shirt stretched across his amazing chest. His trousers fit him snugly. He wore sandals on his feet.
He looked pretty darn fine in clothes. Really darn fine. This killing-him thing wasn’t going so well. And now he was close. So close she could feel his heat. She was cold so his heat felt good. Too good.
“I am Fane. Keeper and guardian of the monastery.”
In her life, Trixie was rarely at a loss for words, but she could barely breathe. Up close he smelled good and his music blended with hers. She could hear the song and knew it was beautiful and it was right. How could he be a vampire when he had a song so perfect? It didn’t make sense. The notes made their way inside of her, just as they had before. They settled, all silver and gold, in those lonely places, and this time they didn’t retreat. They stayed. And they brought him with them. Her body began to tremble and she stepped back, tripped on the vampire-hunting box and started to fall.
Fane caught her, gripping her forearms to steady her, bringing her in close to his body. To his heat. Holy cripes. He was hot. He had to notice she was shaking like a silly teenager. She was an old lady, well past her prime. He had to stop looking at her with those hungry eyes. If they were just hungry for her blood, well, she could take that. She could fight for her life. She had the feeling he was hungry for something altogether different and she didn’t know how to process that.
She put up a hand to ward him off. She wasn’t tall and she wasn’t short. She was a woman with curves, but he made her feel small. Her hand looked a little silly there, a slim defense against him. He stepped even closer so that her hand rested against his chest. She could feel those delicious muscles there. She felt his heart beat, part of the rhythm of his song. Did vampires have hearts that beat? She thought they were dead.
“Lady. Tell me your name.”
He gave the command in a low, deep voice. Husky. Raspy. Caressing. She had to find a way to pull herself together and stop her body from responding to just the sound of his voice. She was no teenager to get lost in a man. He was weaving a spell. Because. He. Was. A. Vampire.
“If I give you my name, doesn’t that give you power over me?”
His smile flashed again and he shook his head. “Sívamet, you do embody the meaning of the word cute. I never much liked that word until this moment because I did not get the meaning. The meaning is a woman who thinks I am a vampire but still asks me questions thinking I would help her out. A vampire would kill you immediately. Or he would nearly drain you dry and then torture you before finishing you off. He is wholly evil. There is no conversation with a vampire. And these things you have brought with you are useless against him.”
Well. That wasn’t good at all. Not. At. All. She sighed. “I’m tired and I’m going to sit down, so if you aren’t really a vampire, just give me a few minutes to rest. I’ve been hiking all day and most of the night and I’m not so young anymore.” She thought it best to point that out to him so he’d get that really hungry look off his face. She was a dried-up old prune and had no idea what to do with a man as fine as he was. Well, she’d read enough books to know what to do with him but since she didn’t have any practical experience, she knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Suiting action to words, she sank down onto her sleeping bag and began gathering up her vampire-hunting tools. At least she wouldn’t have to carry the stupid heavy box around with her anymore, because none of it worked on him. Not one single thing. A waste of money, and if she ever got home she was putting up a one-star review and blasting the seller. That was for certain.
9
Fane studied his woman’s features as she sank to the ground. She looked exhausted and was hiding scared. She had beautiful skin. That had been the first thing he’d noticed. Soft as a rose petal. A beautiful, dark, almost chocolate color that made him want to run his fingers over her skin. She had a lot of hair. It was long, reaching her waist, and was in small braids that wrapped around the sides of her scalp to the back where it was gathered by a tie of some sort and the braids fell in a thick stream down her back. Beautiful. Unusual.
He hadn’t seen in color in well over a thousand years. More. He hadn’t felt anything at all. At first, it was difficult to assimilate just what he was feeling, but he was a patient man and elation was at the forefront. She was human, and she clearly had ideas about what was and what wasn’t going to happen between them. He didn’t bother to disabuse her of any of her very wrong ideas. She was his lifemate. His reward after so many centuries of keeping the world a safe place.
He was still able, after so many centuries, to keep a cloak of civility around him and that had landed him the position of keeping the other ancients there in the monastery in check. He wasn’t a man who argued or lost his temper. Looking at his lifemate, he was fairly certain he was going to need those traits.
He crouched down beside her, his fingers catching her chin so she was forced to look up at him. “Your name, my lady.”
She scowled at him and for a moment he thought she might defy him. He would be forced to take the information from her and he didn’t want to frighten her any further. She was holding it together by a thread.
“Trixie. Trixie Joanes. I’m from the United States, and I’ve come here looking for my granddaughter Teagan.”
Teagan. He should have known. Fane had felt a strong connection to Teagan, Andre’s lifemate, from the moment he’d first met her. She was related to his woman.
“I have met Teagan. She is safe.”
Her eyes lit up. She reached out and caught his wrist. “Are you sure it was her? When did you see her?”
“Last rising.”