in the opposite direction...again.
He trailed his fingers down my calf and ankle, lifting my foot to remove my shoe before moving to the other side to do the same. “I understand this must be confusing for you even though you feel the connection between us the same as me. There are so many things you don’t know yet since you haven’t had centuries to adjust to the idea of being my fated consort.”
I could only come up with one mind-blowing possibility to explain him using words like centuries and fated consort, appearing out of thin air, transporting me to another place, fangs, and tasting my blood. “Are you a-a-”—I couldn’t believe I was actually going to say this out loud—“vampire?”
“Yes, I was born a daywalker.” He smiled and flashed his pointy fangs. “My brothers were, too.”
“Holy crap! Does Thana know?” I shrieked, my eyes going wide as I tried to wrap my brain around the fact that vampires were apparently real, and I had made out with one.
He stripped off his shirt and climbed on the mattress. “Of course, she knows. She’s Kieran’s consort. He told her when they met.”
I scrambled back to put a little space between us, not that it would do much good since he was a vampire who could be anywhere he wanted in a fraction of a second. “My best friend is married to a vampire and didn’t tell me?”
“What could she have said that wouldn’t have made you think she’d lost her mind?” I had to give that to him since I almost definitely would have freaked out if Thana had called to tell me she’d fallen in love with a vampire. Offering him a sheepish grin, I circled my hand in the air to tell him to carry on. “Vampires have a bad rep that us daywalkers don’t deserve. We aren’t ravaging beasts turned by a bite like nightwalkers.” He winked, and a wicked smile curved his sexy lips. “Well, maybe a little. I suppose I might get a little beastly when ravaging my consort in bed.”
Despite the blush spreading across my cheeks, I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “So you’re not the villain?”
“I’m not sure that most people would call me the good guy, but I’m definitely not bad and would never do anything to hurt you. Ever.” He sprawled out, his thigh resting against my side. Despite the layers from his pants and my dress between us, goose bumps still broke out across my skin just from our bodies touching. It could also be how serious his vow sounded. Or a combination of both.
Either way, my instincts told me that he was worthy of my trust—vampire or not. “So, nightwalkers are the bad kind of vampires?”
“Yes, we have good and evil like any other species,” he confirmed, nodding as he propped himself up on an elbow. I was distracted by the play of his muscles on his chest and had to shake my head to concentrate on what he was telling me. His lips curved up in a smile full of masculine satisfaction, showing me that he knew the depth of my reaction to him, before he continued, “My family, and others like us, are not like the vampires in stories. We can walk in the sunlight, although our skin burns more easily and our eyes are sensitive to it. We survive on blood but can still enjoy the delights offered by food and drink. Holy water, garlic, and crosses do not have the same impact on us as they do nightwalkers. A stake to the heart won’t kill us; though it’s painful as fuck and would definitely slow us down until we healed. Unless we’re beheaded and burned, we’ll recover. It’s a good thing we’re so hard to destroy when it comes to tracking nightwalkers down. I’ll take any advantage I can get when dispatching them to where they belong before they can destroy a potential consort.”
I’d always been open to the idea of the supernatural, so I wasn’t all that surprised when I accepted all the mind-boggling information he was giving me without freaking out. At least until this part. My heart started racing, and I had to gulp down a lump in my throat before I asked, “And a consort is the person you’re supposed to spend your very long life with?”
“Yes, fate gives every daywalker a consort, the one person they’re destined to be with. But many of us wait century upon