“I can’t in good conscience leave you here to be hunted.”
“This conversation is going around in circles, and I have a session with a client,” I said. “Why would I believe a word of what you say when you won’t give me any details?”
Valentine’s hand slid atop mine, the skin of his palm as smooth as velvet. Desire trickled down my spine and heat spread across my skin. Despite three years of trying to forget the man, deep down, a traitorous part of my body still yearned for his touch.
Before that desire could reach Valentine’s enhanced sense of smell, I flinched away, pulling back my arm.
“Don’t touch me.” I raised my hand and struck at his face.
Valentine caught me by the wrist, a growl reverberating in the back of his throat. “Will you behave yourself and listen to what I have to say?”
My breath quickened, and heat rose to my cheeks. It had been a mistake to go for the slap. His reflexes were much faster than mine, and I’d just given him another chance to touch me.
Valentine’s eyes darkened, and red flecks appeared across his irises, indicating a heightened emotion or the need to feed. With a rolling growl that made my insides shudder, he asked, “Well?”
The pounding of my pulse filled my ears, and every ounce of moisture evaporated from my throat. “Let me out.”
“In the middle of Park Lane?” he asked with a smile.
“I’ll walk the rest of the way back to work.” I pulled at the hand restraining my wrist, but he was too strong, too persistent, too determined to carry out this abduction.
For what felt like the hundredth time since he’d haunted the crystal shop, I asked myself why. Why someone could shatter a girl’s heart and return on the day she decided to move on. Why he had chosen me as a target for his sick games. Why he wouldn’t believe me when I demanded that he leave me alone.
Breathing hard, I lowered my lashes, careful not to spend too long in his gaze. Vampires could enter the mind of a weak supernatural, and the only defense from this was avoidance.
After what felt like an eternity, he released my arm. “Are you hungry?”
It was like igniting a match. Didn’t this blood-sucking wanker just tell me there was an assassin after my hide? Or had that been a sick attempt to make conversation?
“Why aren’t you listening to a word I say?” I asked from between clenched teeth.
“Mera,” he said my name like a sigh. “I know you’re disappointed with—”
“Don’t,” I snapped. If he dared to describe our last encounter as disappointing, I would throw my Dharma salt into his eyes.
Valentine frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t presume you know anything about me.”
He tilted his head to the side and studied my features like I was a point of endless fascination. It was the sort of look a person gave a malfunctioning computer when trying to work out which button would activate a reset.
“You’re always stressed when you’re hungry,” he said, sounding nostalgic.
“I’m agitated because unlike some people, I follow through with my commitments,” I snapped. “Now, will you please let me out so I can tend to my client?”
The twinkle in his eyes and the tiny smirk on his full lips told me he didn’t believe a word about my wanting to tend to Jonathan.
What annoyed me most was that he ignored the barb I’d directed at him about commitments. Being a vampire royal sure made a person think they were beyond reproach.
Valentine patted my hand. “We can discuss everything over a quiet meal.”
His idea of a quiet meal turned out to involve dining in the Dorchester Hotel, which the limo approached by driving the three-mile perimeter of Hyde Park in busy lunchtime traffic. By the time we reached our destination, my stomach growled, making Valentine shoot me I-told-you-so smirks.
They wouldn’t have been so aggravating if Macavity hadn’t stolen my last croissant this morning. Aunt Arianna’s homemade chocolates should have arrived by now, but either she’d forgotten to send them or they were delayed in the post.
Valentine stepped out of the limo first, letting in a gust of cold air. “Shall we?”
“What do you want?” I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth.
Every dream I’d had about Valentine had either ended in an orgasm or waking drenched in perspiration with slick folds and a heart pounding in time with the pulse between my legs.
If I maintained my dream weavers, I could keep him out of my thoughts, but one slip-up, and this dinner would give my mind fodder for even more vivid dreams.
“Come.” Valentine reached into the limousine and took my hand, the touch sending sparks across my skin.
I stepped into the restaurant with Valentine, cringing at being miserably underdressed in jeans and a sweater and woefully inappropriate on his arm. Two huge vampires trailed after us, looking like they could smash the place up with their fists. Dotted around the place were suited people whose supernatural energies radiated off them like sirens. I clenched my teeth. Of course Valentine would have planted his people here. He never left anything to chance.
Looking at us together, anyone would think I was his intern and not his ex. Thankfully, someone had checked my white coat, and I’d already stuffed the gloves in my pocket.
The waiter guided us through a foyer of green lights trailing down the walls like ivy, into the restaurant’s luxurious interior. Every wall was paneled with mahogany with deep green carpets that reminded me of freshly-mown grass. Elegantly dressed people sat around round tables, enjoying beautifully presented food on large, white plates.
I wasn’t exactly intimidated. Beatrice often treated us to places like this when she got Groupon vouchers or when the upscale places gave the employees of her accountancy firm special offers. It just felt strange to be out in public with Valentine. Even stranger was the sight of people casting him admiring glances but not rising off their seats to bow.
My gaze landed on one couple who sort of matched us—a tall, dark, and suave-looking man in a suit dining with a blonde woman about my age. While she wore a dress as casual-looking as my jeans, the paisley tattoos running up her arm gave her the look of an artist.
At the center of the restaurant, a thick curtain of optical fibers shimmered down from the ceiling, forming an opaque, circular space. The waiter led us into the sectioned-off area to a round table set for two but large enough to seat at least six.
Large shadows settled outside the curtain, and the combined magic of his guards wrapped around my neck like a noose. I was trapped. Trapped to spend at least an hour with the man I despised.
Valentine pulled out my chair the way he did every time we dined together back in his palace in Logris. There were plenty of restaurants in our supernatural city, plenty of places a man could take a young woman, but we always went to the human world. That’s because he didn’t want to be seen. With me. A lowly Neutral only good for one thing.
My nostrils flared, sending a fresh surge of fury through my veins. Having read a whole host of women’s magazines and learned a lot about male behavior since moving to London, I now recognized his behavior for what it was. He’d totally been seeing me on the down-low.
I hadn’t been totally naive. When I’d asked, he explained that he didn’t want me to suffer the spotlight until I was sure that I wanted a relationship with a vampire king. He never introduced me as his girlfriend to anyone within his household, nor had he explained my presence whenever I’d visited. The only thing that puzzled me about this down-low arrangement was why he hadn’t had sex with me right away.