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“Because you could lose control?”

He nodded. “It’s so intoxicating, you want more and more. If you are not careful you take too much.”

I shivered. “Has that ever happened to you?”

He shook his head.

“We need humans to trust us, to work with us. That can never happen if they fear us. This is why FOH is forbidden.”

“Feeding on Humans,” I say.

Again, he nods.

“I wouldn’t mind you feeding on me, I think. As long as you didn’t take too much,” I say.

“And how much is too much?” he asks lightly and I shrug playfully.

“You should be scared of me,” he says, darkly. “I am a monster after all.”

“Not to me,” I say quickly. Thanks to him, I had been able to get out of Buzzard Creek. He had been good to me, kind to me, but I could see he was in a dark mood.

I got up, put my robe on and turned to walk away.

“Don’t go,” he said in a tired voice. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He sounded so agonized that I went back to him.

“I wish we could just hang out here for a few days,” I said. “Get better and rest before deciding what to do next. Where to go next.”

He looked at me with those intense blue eyes but I didn’t look away, holding his gaze.

“We could pretend there is no war, no outside world. Just sleep and make love and maybe sometimes, shower.”

He smiled. “It does sound lovely,” he said.

“I think you need to recover too,” I said.

I held out a hand to him. “Let’s recover together.” He took my hand and smiled, the smile I had come to love, but I would never admit that to anyone. I led him to the bed and we got under the covers, pulling the sheets over our heads so that we seemed to be in our own little world.

Chapter 22

Luc

We spent another two days hiding away at Louis’s hotel. It was wonderful, just the two of us, lying in bed, making love and getting better. When she slept, I rested, staying away from my phone, purposefully.

I couldn’t save all of the vampires or win the war on my own. There were so many different players, each with their own agenda. My mission was to find out who had killed Matteo and I was at my wits end trying to solve this.

I was beginning to accept the possibility that we may not win the war with the shifters. If that was the case, I would go back to my land in the North. I’d been thinking of taking Ruby there, to show her the fields and the horses. When I’d told her about the bees and the honey produced on the farm, her eyes had lit up with excitement. The starbursts and wild lilies were flowering now and the caretaker had sent me pictures of them. I’d showed them to her.

“It’s a different kind of life there. Slow,” I said.

“No dancing on tables or strippers with poles?” Ruby teasingly asked me.

“Do you think you could cope with that?” I asked her, pulling her close to me. We were lying in bed, with the shutters drawn. Our fifth day of being together. I’d never been this happy.

“Oh, I might struggle initially,” she grinned, “but in time, I might. With practice.”

She lay quietly in my arms for a while, then she said. “I think I want to go see my mother.”