As he started them back up the hill, she touched her lips. “They are?”
He nodded and kept them ascending at a steady pace. He hadn’t minded the walk around with her. They had plenty of privacy, and his instincts, which he trusted more than any other thing about himself, were not firing, not yet: There were no scents on the air that shouldn’t have been there. No movement in the shadows that his keen eyes caught. No sounds other than, off in the distance, the occasional passing car on the city road they’d come in on.
But she was clearly out of gas, and at least her car appeared back into view soon enough. When they came up to it, Jo hesitated and glanced over her shoulder. Then she looked at what was ahead of them, the vacated classroom buildings and the dorms.
As her eyes roamed the campus, his stayed by her and tried to be patient. He really just wanted her to get some rest. The change was so brutal on the body, and she needed to be strong.
“It’s like I’m blind even though my eyes are working,” she murmured.
“You’re searching for answers.”
“I just don’t know the questions I’m trying to ask.”
“How about we go back to your place.”
“I want to take a look around for a little longer.”
Jo started to walk away from him, and he was well familiar with that vacant striving she was motivated by. It wasn’t going to release its grip on her until she got what she was actually looking for—the transition. Which would transform her from something that was mostly human with a little vampire in her, to mostly vampire with almost no human remaining.
There would be no peace until that happened and he would take on this miserable prodromal period for her if he could.
“Just a little longer,” she said. “I promise.”
“It’s okay.”
As they continued on, Syn’s eyes panned left to right to left, measuring the windows in the brick buildings. Checking rooflines. Assessing what was coming at them and what had been left behind. Even though he would have preferred to take her back to her home, he followed her readily into one of the buildings. He wasn’t going to force her to leave if she didn’t want to.
Prepared to protect her if he had to, Syn trailed her as she went up a set of creaking stairs, and then wandered along corridors that were strewn with fallen plaster from the ceiling and leaf debris that had blown in from broken windows. Given the number of doors they passed, he guessed they were in a dorm, and the skeletal bed frames and wilted, stained mattresses seemed to confirm his assumption.
“I wonder if this was where her room was,” Jo said.
“Your mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“Do you not know where she stayed?”
“I barely know more about her than her birthday and her wedding anniversary.”
Jo kept on going, the sound of her boots crunching over the plaster bits loud in the silence of the building. When she came to the end of the hall, the cold breeze drifting in through the busted panes of glass lifted her hair.
And that was when her scent changed.
The arousal was a surprise.
“You’re right,” she said remotely. “We should go.”
As she turned toward him, she ducked her head and dropped her eyes. Putting her hands in the pockets of her coat, she seemed to retract into herself as she went to go by him.
Syn caught her arm. “I know what you want.”
Her eyes were shocked as they met his. “I don’t—I mean, I just think we should go home. You’re right. I am exhausted.”
Syn stepped in closer. “That’s not all you’re thinking about.”
“But—”
“And I know what you’re going to say.” He shook his head. “Use me. Let me give you what you want. I don’t care about myself.”
Jo shook her head and backed away from him. “That’s not fair—”
Syn’s body took over, moving into her, pushing her against the corridor’s wall. As her breasts came up against his chest, she gasped.
He didn’t wait for more commentary. He wasn’t interested in talking. Her scent told him everything he needed to know.
Dropping his mouth to hers, he took from her what she hesitated to give him because she didn’t want to use him for a one-sided pleasure session. But like he gave a fuck? He had been taken in the past by females he didn’t care about—and he had bonded with Jo. Plus she wanted him. Bad. So as she groaned