I scowl and stare into his eyes, but they aren’t red any more. Still, I don’t feel safe being around him after he’s just fed. He might still feel the urge to drink, and I don’t know what would happen if he ever drank from me.
“Sorry if I’m a little panicked, but it’s only to be expected after what I just saw, don’t you think?”
Ethan’s smile is ambiguous. “You know that I must drink blood to stay alive, yet you still scare at the sight of the act. You need to get used to this Tegan, it is a big part of my existence, an existence I would like you to be a part of.”
His words hit me somewhere near my heart, but I try my best to ignore them. “Is that woman in your office even alive? She looked terrible.” The image of her bloody neck and grey complexion won’t leave my brain.
“She’ll be fine in an hour or two, she just needs to sleep it off,” Ethan answers flippantly.
“Right, that makes me feel so much better,” I snap.
Ethan’s dark eyes assess me and I’m suddenly aware that we are all too close to one another, in the back seat of his car no less. “Are you jealous?” he purrs, letting go of one of my wrists to brush his fingers along my neck. “Because I would be only too happy to feed from you, if that’s what you want.” His fangs are now peeking out from beneath his lips, and he grazes my neck with them, just like he’d done the other night on the boat. I shudder underneath him, and curse myself for liking it. What is wrong with me? Do I need to be afraid of a man in order to be attracted to him?
“You know as well as I do that that’s not an option,” I whisper.
“I don’t know,” says Ethan, still breathing against my neck. “Why don’t we try it?”
I push away from him as much as I can. “I thought you weren’t interested in me for my blood?” I say to him, my voice indignant.
“I’m not, but it would be a pleasant experience. For both of us.”
“No, that’s not happening.” I try to get out from under him again to no avail.
Ethan laughs loudly and pulls me back, securing me underneath him. This time he lifts each one of my legs at the knee and positions me so that my thighs are around him. I find it difficult to think straight when he grinds into me.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he tells me.
“Not unless you use some mouth wash you’re not,” I protest weakly.
“Suck it up,” is all he says before his lips meet mine in a hard, desperate kiss. Surprisingly, I taste no blood at all, and it doesn’t take long for me to melt as his arms fold around me. The moment is broken all too quickly when his phone begins to ring, it’s in his jeans pocket and it vibrates against me, not unpleasantly. Ethan grins before slipping it out and answering it, first in English but quickly he switches over to Romanian. Bastard. I want to know what he’s talking about.
Soon the conversation turns serious and Ethan slides out of the car, pacing back and forth just outside. I continue to eavesdrop, even though I have no idea what’s being said. Although I will admit that I did do a bit of reading on Romanian history while I’d been finishing my degree in Manchester, and I managed to pick up a few words here and there. I think I did it so that I could find out more about Ethan, about the cultures he’s lived through over the course of his long life.
Mostly I’d been transfixed by the story of Vlad the Impaler, and couldn’t help wondering if he was a relation of Ethan’s. I concentrate on his voice and one word stands out. One word that I recall from my studies. Fat°. It means girl. Is Ethan talking about Rebecca? Oh good Christ, I hate that my heart still deflates every time I think that Ethan might have been involved in her kidnapping.
Ethan seems to be arguing now with whoever is on the other end of the line. He can be terribly romantic at times, but that doesn’t mean he’s not scary as hell when the occasion calls for it. I wouldn’t like to be the person he’s talking to. The conversation continues for another minute or so and then he hangs up.
He takes a deep breath and begins talking to me before his eyes reach mine. “There is a situation that I need to attend to…” he says and then trails off, his eyes now glued to me. His head tilts to the side ever so slightly, as if he’s using some unknown sense to feel me out.
“What the hell Tegan?” he demands, and comes stomping toward me. My throat goes dry with nerves and he grabs me by the arm. “Who fed from you?” he asks, his voice harsh and jagged like broken glass.
“Nobody, I was attacked yesterday. Somebody stole my blood,” my words tumble out.
“And you didn’t think to tell me this?” His hand is tight around my upper arm, which is definitely going to leave a bruise.
“I was going to,” I reply, “but you kind of side tracked me by trying to get into my pants in the back seat of your car.” Well, I hadn’t actually planned on telling Ethan. I figured Finn would be able to help me find out who did it, without the need to bring anyone else into the situation.
“Trying and almost succeeding,” says Ethan wistfully, before glaring at the phone clutched in his hand, the source of our interruption. Then he snaps back to the present. “This is bad Tegan, very, very bad. You need to be more careful with your personal security.”
“Well I’d thought the secret of my blood was safe, obviously somebody found out who was
n’t supposed to.”
“Are you accusing me?” Ethan questions.
“No of course not, I’m just completely lost. I’m not seeing the full picture right now. I need to think about it and figure out who knows.”
“And I will help you, but right now I have to be somewhere. Go back into the club and tell Lucas I said to escort you home.”