It’s not time to feed.
It’s her.
They say we all have a mate, a partner that our newest scientific breakthroughs now say makes us stronger, quite literally and physically. Those who are mated are now the true warriors, the leaders of our war. Which is bullshit. A mate to protect, to fear for, is not a way to be stronger. It’s a weakness. And yet I’m still holding onto her. I’m not letting her go when I should be.
“Are you okay?” I ask, telling myself I’m simply steadying her.
She blinks up at me with pale blue eyes, a tiny little thing I tower over by at least a foot. “I—ah yes,” she says, her voice a sweet, gentle tone, and there is something familiar about her, something I don’t quite understand. “I think I’m actually the one who ran into you,” she adds.
“I’ll forgive you,” I say softly, the instant attraction between us all but demanding I kiss her. And she’d let me. That’s how natural, how magnetic the call of two mates can be. I’ve heard stories. I’ve thought them exaggerated. I was wrong and the guilt in me is stabbing. Ivy was my one true love. Fucking around is one thing, and I’ve done plenty of that over my many years, but a mate? A mate is an eternal bond.
I can hear the blood rushing through her veins, and my teeth and tongue tingle. Every part of me wants to pull her to me, push her against the wall, and slide inside her. Taste her.
Instead, I force myself to let her go, my hands reluctantly falling from her arms, my gaze lifting to the coffee shop sign above the door where she’s just left. I wait for someone else to exit, to join her. They don’t. She’s alone. And I’m not leaving her alone on the downtown Denver street.
“It’s not good to walk around downtown alone at night,” I chide, unable to stop myself from the warning.
“You are,” she points out.
“I’m bigger than you,” I retort.
“Maybe I’m tougher,” she counters. “You never know. Big things in little packages and all that stuff.”
“There are dangerous monsters in the city, little one,” I say. “Ones that will eat you.”
“Eat me?” she laughs. “That’s very dramatic. Maybe I should ask, are you dangerous?”
She has no idea that she’s standing in front of the most dangerous monster she’s ever known. And I don’t intend for her to ever know. “Not for you,” I say and before she can remark, I ask, “Where are you headed?”
“I’m just a few blocks away to the Ritz Carlton,” she says. “I needed a little air. I’ve been inside working all day. I really did think the location was safe.”
She’s at the Ritz.
Oh fate, how evil you are, I think. “Crime is on the rise in the downtown area,” I say. “Stick to the main strips, which means the Laramie and 16th Street mall areas. Get in after dark. I’m also at the Ritz. Why don’t I walk you back?”
“Small world,” she says. “Thank you. That’s kind of you.” She offers me her hand. “I’m Ivy, by the way.”
CHAPTER THREE
Ivy.
Her name is Ivy.
What wicked trick is the universe playing on me?
This is not funny. She is not Ivy, not my Ivy. In complete rejection, I don’t take the hand she offers. “Eli,” I say, aware that every time I touch her, I want to taste her all the more. I motion her forward. “Let’s walk.”
Her hand lowers, and her teeth worry her bottom lip. The teeth and the lip get to me. My cock twitches. Her damn mouth is too damn tempting for both of our own good. “Yes, of course,” she says of my urge for us to start walking.
We fall into pace together a bit too easily and I ask, “What brings you to Denver?”
“I’m an author,” she says easily. “I like to stay in the cities where my stories are based. It helps me get my creative juices flowing. So I’m here for at least a good two weeks.”
Two weeks to resist her. That’s a lifetime with this clawing sensation inside me. “Is this your first time in Denver?”
“It is,” she says. “I don’t like my stories to get stale. Location becomes a character of its own.”
“You just came to a strange city alone?”
“I did,” she says. “I have friends I could have invited, of course, but they have jobs that require they actually report to work. And I discovered a long time ago that being alone can be debilitating or liberating. It’s all in how you look at it.”
Alone is a word I understand. A hundred years of being alone. “Where’s your family?” I ask.
“Gone,” she says. “A few years now.”
She’s not just alone in the city. She’s alone. The way I promised Ivy she’d never be in her lifetime.
“How?” I ask, thinking about Ivy’s parents, about their sudden back-to-back illnesses.
“Both got sick. I won’t bore you with details.”
Just like before. Fuck. Not like before. She is not my Ivy but the coincidences are too many to ignore. I stop walking and turn toward her and her me. “How close together?” I ask.
“Months,” she says. “They were very much in love. They say that happens. You know? I’m sure you’ve heard stories like that.”
“I have,” I agree but it goes deeper than word of mouth. It’s what happened to Ivy’s parents.
“What about you?” she asks. “Do you have a family? I guess yes, right? Most people do.”
“They’re gone,” I reply flatly. “Long gone.” I don’t offer details. I barely know how they ended. The day I became a vampire I was a warden, at war with the rebels of our kind. Rebels that would have killed them. They believed I was dead, carried off by a wild animal.
I turn and we fall into step again together. “What kind of books do you write?” I ask, needing to know more about her.
“Vampire thrillers,” she says, and she seems uninterested in talking about herself. “Are you in town for work as well?”
“I live here,” I respond, giving her a side-eye. “I’m in one of three apartments the Ritz rents out.”
“You live at the Ritz?” Her voice is filled with surprise. “That’s interesting. Do you get to take advantage of the hotel amenities?”
“I do. Even room service and the lounge.”
“That’s pretty cool,” she says. “How long have you been here?”
“Ten years,” I say and because a conversation that accounts for years is not one I entertain, I transition the conversation back to her. “Where are you from?”
“Nashville, Tennessee,” she says. “I actually live in the downtown area and my apartment is a bit like living in a hotel. We have everything you can imagine within walking distance.”
“What part of downtown?”
“The Gulch,” she says.
“I like The Gulch,” I reply, having done a little hunting in that area a few years back. The fact that Marcus sent me there, to her territory, is now far more interesting than it was then. “I prefer The Gulch over the Broadway crowd,” I add.