Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,37

glow of her skin intensify, but she only nodded.

“And now, can we have breakfast?” Mrs. C’s cheery voice rang out behind Bane, and he almost laughed at the thought that his housekeeper had been able to sneak up on him, unnoticed, when dangerous enemies had never accomplished the feat in all the centuries of his existence. He’d entirely forgotten she was in the hallway behind him.

Then again, he’d never faced such a distraction.

Ryan bit her lip again, and he had to fight not to touch her lips with his fingers or with his own mouth. He wanted to soothe the tiny bite with his tongue. With his kiss.

Instead, he smiled at her. “Breakfast? Please?”

Having once said the word, the second time was easier.

She offered a tentative smile of her own, and it was as if the sun itself had decided to shine through the roof of his home and down upon him. He wanted to curl up in the warmth of her smile and stay there for hours.

Days.

“Mrs. C,” he said instead. “Do you see how the doctor’s skin is glowing?”

“What?”

“Enough with the glowing,” Ryan said, rolling her eyes.

“Bane, I think maybe you gave too much blood,” his housekeeper said tentatively.

He blew out a sigh. Maybe he had. But…

“I made pancakes and bacon,” Mrs. C coaxed, interrupting his train of thought.

“Well. I do love pancakes and bacon,” Ryan said. “Is there coffee?”

“All the coffee you could ever want to drink,” his housekeeper told his…the…doctor, who turned back to Bane.

“And Mr. Evans? He’ll be all right? You’re sure?”

“I’m very sure. This is not the first time I’ve done this,” he repeated.

Her shoulders relaxed, just a fraction, but she finally nodded. “All right. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but scientific curiosity is winning out over self-preservation.” She shrugged, which did interesting things to her breasts.

Bane concentrated on trying very hard not to stare at them or—worse—take them in his hands. If she’d known how hard that internal battle was, she would have fled in terror. Luckily, she wasn’t psychic, because she smiled at Mrs. Cassidy instead.

“Okay. In for a penny, as they say. Let’s have breakfast, and you can tell me everything I need to know. Give me the Vampires for Dummies version, okay?”

With that, Ryan moved past him and toward Mrs. C.

“So, what kind of coffee? Do you have cream and sugar? Are there potatoes? Can you put garlic in the potatoes, or is that a no-no? And what can I do to help? I’m a pretty good touch with scrambled eggs and toast, and I can carve up a ham like nobody’s business. Surgical skills translate into good kitchen knife skills, you know?”

Bane closed his eyes and drank in the sounds of their voices for a long moment as they headed down the stairs to the kitchen.

“This can’t end well,” Luke said quietly. Perhaps he’d been feigning sleep. “You know that, but I’m going to remind you, whether you kill me for it or not. You remember what happened to me.”

“There will be no end, well or otherwise, because there’s no beginning. She’s just a diversion, and she may have some interesting medical information we can use. Don’t you think it’s about time we looked at our…condition…from a scientific perspective?”

Luke’s laugh was filled with honest amusement. “Our condition? Do you really think we have a blood disease that causes what we are?”

Bane turned his gaze to the withered husk of the body on the table.

Another mistake?

Perhaps.

Probably.

Ryan, though…bringing her here was almost certainly a mistake, too. One that he admitted, if only to himself, that he was making with full knowledge of all the reasons why he should not.

But the touch of her hair…

“No,” he finally said, offering up the only truth he could share. “There is magic in what we are. But perhaps there is science, as well. After three centuries, I’d like to know.”

“And that’s all?”

He wouldn’t answer that question, though, not for Luke. Not even for himself. Instead, he nodded at Hunter. “Let’s get him into the warded room, now. We can’t watch him for every minute of three days, with everything else going on.”

There was a club meeting coming up that night, and he was startled to realize he’d almost forgotten it until now. The club’s mission was vital to who they were and what they did.

Luke, who was the vice president of the Vampire Motorcycle Club, nodded. “Yeah. We need to talk about the Chamber. Our people are wondering what the hell is going on,