“Try not to panic,” he says.
And then—
Seriously, what the actual fuck?
He’s on the opposite end of the room, leaning casually against the wall as though he didn’t just teleport there.
Chipper looks up, head tilted, as confused about this teleporting billionaire as I am.
Again, he flashes by, a blur of movement and a whoosh of papers on the desk the only sign that he’s even still here, that he hasn’t disappeared.
He blips in then out of existence, leaping around the room, seeming to just vanish and blip into existence.
“Okay, how?” I whisper, my voice a faint ghost. “How the heck are you doing that?”
Chipper must sense the distress in my voice because he leaps up and starts barking, his floppy tan ears suddenly alert and perked up. He gazes at Torsten in confusion, baring his teeth in a growl when he finally comes to a stop just in front of the desk.
“Can I calm him?” he asks me. “We have simple charms, ways to manipulate mortals.”
“We? Who heck are we?”
“Vampires.”
I make a noise somewhere between a laugh, and a gasp, and a guttural choke.
“What?” I snap.
“Vampires,” he states again, as though it isn’t the most ridiculous thing in the world. “May I?”
“Will it hurt him?” I say, and then bring my hand to my forehead. “Wait, what the hell am I even saying?”
“No,” Torsten says, approaching Chipper slowly, hand extended.
He murmurs some words in a language I don’t understand and then waves his hand. Chipper’s bark turns to a goofy grin and he sits down, head tilted as he regards Torsten and then me, as though he’s trying very hard to work out why he was just barking.
“These work on people, too,” Torsten says. “But there’s no pleasure in manipulating a person. Some of my kind, when there were more of us, they delighted in using their powers in that way. But not me. Never me.”
“Torsten,” I whisper, wondering if any moment I’m going to wake up with my forehead resting against the Victorian spoon I just wrapped. “What the hell is going on? You’re not a vampire. Come on.”
“I am a vampire, Tammy,” he says with a firmness in his voice that sounds somehow believable. “And this amulet is proof that you’re the woman I’ve been waiting a thousand years for.”
“What?” I gasp.
He hunts closer to the desk, stopping close to me, his hand tight around the amulet but the light flaring between his closed fingers.
“Long ago, a sorcerer gave me this amulet and told me that it was the only way I could ever become a mortal man again. But for that to work, I’d need to find the woman I was fated to be with. I needed to find a woman who I couldn’t imagine being without. I’ve looked far and wide, Tammy. I’ve searched every corner of this planet in all time I’ve lived and I’ve never felt … never felt what hit me when I scented you in the air the night we met.”
My heart begins to thud in the back of my throat.
The desire to believe him flames inside of me, but I’ve been tricked too many times in my life to just sink into the moment.
My mind starts to leap over explanations, trying to settle on one that makes sense.
Projectors, drugs … freaking I don’t know.
Something that could make it seem like he was teleporting around the room.
Because this has to be a trick, a twisted game, a billionaire toying with the stupid curvy naïve girl who’s been the butt of far too many jokes in her life.
“When I scented you in the air,” he growls, “I knew you were the one. Your scent stood out over everyone else in the city. I’m stunned I never felt you before, but perhaps it was fate that the wind was blowing toward me and you were close enough on the night I was on the roof. When I scented you, I knew that you had to be the woman I’ve been waiting for my whole long life. And now I have proof. I went to the far north and collected the amulet from the sorcerer’s cave and—”
My womb tries to seize me and throw me up into his arms, but my mind is doing backflips trying to work out how this is all going to come around to me looking like a complete idiot.
Vampire.
Amulet.
Sorcerer’s cave.
What is this, a freaking nursery rhyme?
“So this is why you hired me,” I snap, feeling a blush creep over my cheeks and down my neck. “So that you could make a fool of me. Is this how you get your kicks, Torsten? You pick up girls off the street and try to make them believe this …”
I shake my head, words failing me, and then fly across the room and scoop Chipper into my arms.
My instincts will me to go to Torsten, to grip onto his solid body, and lay my head against his heaving chest.
My desire wills me to clasp his face and tell him I need him as badly as he says he needs me.
He scented me.
He chose me.
But reason tells me this is a trick, has to be, a clever ploy for … for what?
Twisted pleasure?
“I have to go,” I whisper, striding toward the door.
“This isn’t a trick, Tammy,” he says quietly, as though reading my mind. “I’ve never told anybody this before. I’m only telling you because you’re mine. You belong to me. Now and forever. You’re the woman I’ve been waiting my whole damn life for and if you need a little time to come to terms with what happened here, then fine. But you need to know something. I’d never lie to you. You’re mine.”
I shove open the door with my shoulder, cradling Chipper, trying to get my breathing under control as I walk into the night-dark street.
Chapter Five
Torsten
I smash my bare fists into the cement-filled punching bag, taking chunks out of it as it whines loudly on the specially made bracket.
Cuts open and heal and open on my knuckles.
I pound into it over and over, thinking about the way Tammy ran out on me yesterday, the way she thought I was tricking her.
As if I would ever trick her.
The gym is pitch-black, but my eyes pick out the tiniest shred of light and expand it, lighting it up like the inside of a bulb.
Everything is stark and alive to me as I throw another savage right hook at the bag. A stony crunch noise sounds like shards of cement and leather fly into the air.
A long time ago, one of my kind told me that trying to be with a human would always fail, amulet, or no amulet. They said that mortals were not capable of accepting all the things we could do that they couldn’t, that it simply wouldn’t fit into their heads.
But no.
That’s not fucking fair.
I could scent Tammy’s desire when I told her she was mine when I told her I’d been waiting my whole damn life for her.
I scented her desire but uncertainty flickered in her eyes, as though she thought I was doing this for some nefarious reason, as though she suspected me of playing some cruel trick on her.
I turn away from the bag, making a huffing snarling noise.
My fangs are tingling like a son of a bitch and my shirtless torso is pumping hotly, one second away from blazing blood-red if I don’t do something about it.
Ever since Tammy ran out on me yesterday, I’ve tried to stay strong and fulfill my promise of giving her time to process everything I told her, showed her, and yet the desire to find her scent in the air and find my way to her is too goddamn strong.