temptation that was human Benjamin Vecchio.
He’d been slowly wearing down her control for years, picking at her, making her lower her guard, trying to reveal the human beneath the vampire she’d become.
Ben thought he knew her, but he had no idea.
“Tenzin?”
Radu was gone. The two of them sat alone at a table on the edge of the forest with a candle burning between them and an open bottle of blood-wine.
She turned her eyes to him. “Why do you try to humanize me?”
Ben looked surprised. “Because you are human.”
“I’m not.” Something in the center of her chest ached. “You should be honest about who I am, Benjamin. Otherwise, the person you think you love will only be an illusion.”
The smile he gave her was halfway between bitter and sad. “I know who you are.”
“Do you?”
Ben leaned on the table. “I think you tried. I do. But the last job finally made me understand how you saw me as a human. So maybe this was all inevitable.”
“Do you think I thought I was greater than you? Better somehow as a vampire?”
“I know you did.”
“You’re wrong.” She leaned forward and ran a finger along his jaw, reveling in the contact, the energy that embraced her, even as he held her at a distance. “You were always too good for me, Benjamin. I never deserved your admiration or your friendship, much less your love.” She gently touched her lips to his. “Shining boy. White knight. You should have been more afraid of me.”
“I couldn’t be.”
“Are you afraid now?”
His lips remained parted. “No.”
“You should be. I’m trying to remember who I was,” Tenzin said. “But the parts I had to cut away were all the soft, gentle things. I’m not sure what’s left.”
He grabbed her hand. “If you take off before this is finished—”
“I’m not.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve been following you for two years, Ben. You haven’t figured out why?”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me,” he said. “You call me a white knight, but we stopped playing chess the minute I stopped being human. I need to hear the words, Tenzin, because I’m tired of trying to read your mind.”
You’re lovely. Lovable.
Lovable. She’d had to look it up to make sure she understood the nuance. Love was a very imprecise word. Lovable meant “deserving of love or affection,” which was a circular definition and not at all precise, but it told her one thing: Ben thought she deserved love, whatever that meant to him.
What did it mean to her?
Tenzin looked toward the bonfire. “English needs better words.”
“Then find another language to tell me how you feel,” he said. “You find the right words to tell me, and I will learn the language.”
27
When Ben opened his caravan door to the dusk sky, he was in an entirely new landscape. His trailer was parked on the crest of a hill where the earth sloped down into rolling fields of poppies and tall grass. For as far as Ben could see, not a vehicle or a human habitation was in sight. A pair of rabbits stared at him from the edge of the grass as they munched on thin stalks of what looked like wild oats.
The sky was a brilliant velvet blue that reminded Ben of the deepest ocean. Stars were just starting to peek from behind the clouds, and the scent of fire and roasting meat filled the air.
He turned to the left and followed the scent around a copse of oak trees toward a meadow carefully mowed down to make room for the Poshani settlement.
“Good evening.”
Ben turned to see Tenzin walking with René.
Is she trying to piss me off?
Ben felt like they’d been getting somewhere the night before—he thought they’d had a meaningful moment—but maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe all of this was wishful thinking.
René looked like the cat that had blissfully chowed down on the canary as he bent down and kissed Tenzin on the cheek. “Au revoir, chérie. Shall we meet for a drink later?”
“No.” Tenzin stared at Ben. “Don’t bother me until tomorrow night. Or maybe the next one.”
René chuckled. “As you wish.” The smile he smothered was smug and satisfied.
Ben waited for the Frenchman to be well away before he spoke. “Seriously?”
Tenzin lowered her voice to barely over a whisper. “I told him what is really going on with us.”
“You mean—”
“He knows we’re not really mated. That we’ve been estranged for a couple of years.” Tenzin frowned. “More like three if you count