Page 38 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter thirty-six

Mira

T he green irises—so familiar to me by now—were nearly consumed by darkness. His pupils were dilated so wide they left only the thinnest glowing emerald ring around the edge. The effect was inhuman. Mesmerizing. Terrifying.

“Tell me what ye see in me , Mira,” he whispered, then again louder—pleading now. “ Tell me! ”

His voice was firm but tender, carefully measured. It was like he needed me to see him—needed me to understand that the power in this moment belonged not to him, but to me.

He was giving me the truth.

I looked at him—and then quickly turned away, unable to hold his admission, unwilling to admit what my body already knew.

I’m sure the painful recognition was clear on my face. I could no longer deny what I’d seen, what I now knew. His eyes, luminous green, pulsed with a glow no mortal man possessed. The way he moved—too fast, almost a blur at the edge of vision.

He was the same.He had always been the same.

He had tried to hide it from me, shielded me from the truth of what he was, but a few times he’d slipped, just for a moment. Why hadn’t I seen it? Or had I seen it, and simply refused to believe?

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, thick with shame. “Bastien killed Agnes when he couldn’t have her. I couldn’t protect her,” he said. “He killed her—forced me to watch as he drained the blood from her body. And then…”

Baird’s voice cracked. He was shattered by the remembering. “And then he turned me. Into the same kind of monster he is.”

A silence settled, heavy as stone.

“Agnes was my wife, Mira,” he said, barely audible. “And I failed her.”

Baird’s shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.

The same broken weeping I’d seen at Agnes’s grave, only now I understood what it truly meant.

The rational part of my brain was lighting flares in every direction, sending up warning shots, begging me to run.

And yet…some illogical but deeply rooted knowing inside me believed him.

I didn’t want to. It would’ve been so much easier to walk away, chalk it all up to meeting a dangerously attractive man in Scotland, falling into a wildly passionate fling, only to discover he was a complete crackpot.

But I knew better. I knew .

I stayed in the corner, silent. Just watching him.

I don’t know how long passed—maybe an hour, maybe more. The fear ebbed from my body eventually, slipping out of reach like a receding tide—illogical, perhaps, but no less real. In its place rose something far more dangerous.

Anger. Anger at him .

Finally, I found my voice. “So…let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I believe you. Or…maybe I’m trying to.” My tone was sharper now. Controlled. “Can we go back to the part where you said vampire ? ”

Baird looked up, his face pale and drawn, but remarkably calm.

“It might not be the perfect word,” he said quietly, “but it’s the closest I know—for what I am.

For what he is.” He paused, searching my face.

“The books and movies…most of it’s nonsense.

We don’t sleep in coffins, we can’t fly or turn into smoke.

Daylight doesn’t affect us. But some of the things they say are true. ”

He hesitated.

“We need blood to survive. Doesn’t matter the source. Animal or human—it works the same. We age slowly…we live for a long, long time.”

“But you eat food,” I said, folding my arms. “I’ve seen you.”

He gave a small shrug. “It’s mostly for show. Part of how we blend in. We’re good at hiding in plain sight.”

“Garlic? Crosses?” I asked, half a smirk curling my lip.

He shook his head. “No effect.”

“Mirrors? Photographs?”

“Ye’ve seen me in a mirror. And if ye want, grab your phone—take my picture.”

“That would just prove you’re an insane human , not a vampire.”

He sighed, the grief returning. “Maybe I just want there to be something for you to remember me by. Like the portrait of Agnes was supposed to be for me.”

“So you aren’t going to kill me and drink my blood? Isn’t that how this ends?”

“Jaysus, Mira, is that what ye think of me?” Baird said in frustration. “If I was going to do something like that, wouldn’t I have done it already?”

“Maybe you like to play with your food?” I raised one shoulder in a half shrug, eyes steely in their resolve. And then, unbidden, Granny Margaret’s words echoed softly in my mind: “Now for the ither, the man with the green eyes, he’ll nae hurt ye.”

I clung to that. Beneath all my questions, beneath the fury and fear—I knew it was true. But I wasn’t done. Not even close. I needed to ask at least a thousand more questions, and I was going to do my best to make sure he was uncomfortable before I was done.

At that, Baird let out a short laugh—but the smile faded almost instantly, pain flickering across his face.

“Touché, Miss Garvie,” he murmured flatly. “I see ye’ve managed to keep yer sense of humor.”

“What else?” I asked, my voice low but steady. “What else do I need to know about you ?”

Baird tilted his head, brows knitted together. “Aren’t ye more interested in him ?”

“Oh, I’ll get to him,” I said, my tone sharp enough to cut.

“ After I’m done asking about you , thank you very much.

Remember just a bit ago—when you hauled me upstairs and opened that trunk?

What was it you said then?” I cocked my head.

“ Oh, right. You wanted me to promise I’d stay and ask all my questions.

Well, I’m just getting started asking the fucking questions,” I said through clenched teeth.

“And you , you asshole, are going to sit there and answer every single one of them until I’m ready to change the subject. ”

Baird sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, hands in his lap like a schoolboy. All his attention was on me as the questions kept coming.

“What else,” I said, gesturing wildly between us, “ can you do ?”

“We’re unusually strong. And fast.” He met my gaze. “I know ye’ve seen the fast part. A few times, I…I let ye see how I move. Wanting ye to ask. But ye just…didn ’t.”

He shook his head and looked almost confused—by what he seemed to read as my willful blindness.

I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It’s easy to ignore red flags when all I can think about is the next time you're going to slide your cock into me,” I snapped.

Baird flinched, just slightly.

“You turn my insides to jelly, Baird. I’ve been walking around for days like some dick-drunk teenager , completely unable to think straight.”

“ Dick-drunk , huh?” Baird echoed, a slow grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I like that I do that to ye, Mira.”

Something flickered across his face—equal parts amusement and self-satisfaction.

“Wait… Wait ,” I said, my voice tight with suspicion. “Is the…‘dick-drunk’ thing a vampire power?”

Baird inhaled deeply, his chest rising, then slowly exhaled through his mouth like he was preparing for impact. Clearly, this section of the interrogation was going to get complicated.

“The first thing— the most important thing —ye need to know before I answer that,” he said carefully, “is that I have never used any sort of supernatural power dynamic with ye.” His gaze locked onto mine, steady and unwavering.

“If this topic ever came up between us, I wanted to be able to say with complete honesty that I’ve never used anything but the part of me that remains human to attract ye, Mira. ”

He paused, then continued quietly, with something close to shame curling at the edge of his voice. “But yes, vampires can enthrall humans. We can control behavior, draw someone in—even make them forget. It’s done with the eyes.”

He let that hang in the air for a beat .

“But I have never used that power on ye, Mira. Never. I swear it.” He leaned forward slightly, his voice softening. “I wanted to know yer feelings for me, physical or otherwise, were genuine.”

I rolled my eyes after his statement of wanting to know my feelings, ‘ physical or otherwise.’

“But when I put my lips on yer neck,” Baird said, voice low and deliberate, “I know that has an effect on ye I can’t control.

” His eyes flicked to mine, then lower, his voice dropping further.

“When yer blood rises to the surface there, I can feel it…like my mouth opens a vein straight to the center of yer body and lights a fire inside ye.”

He took a breath, rough and weighted. “And if ye want to call that ‘dick-drunk,’ I can’t stop ye.” His gaze held mine with such intensity, I thought I might drown in it. “But know this—” he whispered, “it does the same to me .”

He leaned closer, his words like a vow.

“Something in ye , Mira, does that to me. No one else has made me feel that in two hundred and forty years. And it makes me want to possess every part of ye. Not just the part of you that sheathes my cock…” His voice caught for just a second, a beat of reverence in the middle of his hunger. “ All of ye, Mira Garvie.”

“Do you want to drink my blood?” I asked, breath catching—his lips still burned on my skin, the ache he’d left smoldering, impossible to ignore.

“Yes,” Baird said, ragged. “God help me, yes. But I won’t. Ye’ll never have to worry about that. When I was first turned, I drank from humans—never enough to kill, never turning them. Then I stopped. Animals were…safer. Cleaner. No worse than eating meat. ”

He shook his head slowly, then dragged both hands down his face, and then tilted his head back with a strained exhale. He looked like he was in pain. Real, physical pain.

“And just so ye know,” he said, voice ragged, “in the spirit of full transparency…”

His eyes met mine, and there was no hiding in them now.

“I can feel what’s happening in yer body.

” He paused—just long enough to make my breath hitch.

“Yer desire building…yer pulse quickening. Yer skin flushes, pupils dilate. I know ye're wet now.” He closed his eyes for a moment, struggling to rein himself in. “I can feel the heat radiating from between your thighs like I’m standing in front of a fire.”

His voice dropped to a whisper, bare and wrecked. “I can see it. Smell it. Feel it.”

A long silence stretched between us—thick with tension, sacred and charged.

“That’s the part I can’t deny myself,” he admitted finally. “I tried. I tried to resist ye. But in all my years—before and after my human death— ye are the only thing I’ve ever wanted that I couldn’t deny.”

I felt myself pulled in every possible direction at once.

Questions crowded my mind, answers blurred, and for what felt like the thousandth time in the last few weeks, I wondered if I was experiencing a full-blown psychotic break. My emotions were jumbled, overlapping, stepping on each other like dancers out of sync.

I couldn’t think straight anymore. I didn’t want to.

Maybe Baird was lying to me. Maybe he was enthralling me right now, twisting my mind into knots I couldn’t unravel. I still needed to ask about Agnes—why Bastien killed her. How Baird had survived this long. What he was , truly .

But all I wanted was for it all to stop —the spiraling thoughts, the impossible questions.

I wanted silence. I wanted stillness.

I wanted him .

I crawled to him slowly on my hands and knees, my eyes stinging and raw with tears. When I reached him, I straddled his lap, lifting myself up to him, palms framing his face as I brought my lips to his. It was the last thing I should do—I knew it—and yet here I was.

He looked stunned. “What are you doing, Mira?” he asked, awestruck, as I planted soft kisses on his lips.

“I have to know if this part is real,” I whispered, my tears slipping down onto his cheek.

Baird looked at me— truly looked—and whatever he saw there cracked through the last of his restraint.

“This is the most real thing there is, lass,” he murmured, and in the span of a single heartbeat, I was no longer in the corner of the spare bedroom.

He’d carried me—impossibly fast, impossibly gentle—into the master suite and laid me down on the bed.

“How did I get into your bed?” I asked, breathless, not sure if it was sarcasm or awe I heard in my own voice. My stomach swirled like I’d been dropped from a great height.

Baird hovered over me, the shadows softening his features. “Are ye sure this is what ye want?” he asked, his voice low. His expression was a mix of wonder and tenderness—but the desire beneath it was undeniable.

Just like mine. “Ugh—yes— dick-drunk . You don’t play fair, asshole,” I murmured against his lips, my body yielding into his.

The alarm bells in my mind faded, receding like a tide.

All that remained was the pounding of my pulse and the soft, whimpering moans slipping from my lips—hungry, already anticipating his touch, aching for him.

Baird growled low in his throat, fingers threading through my hair as he pulled me closer. “Good God, lass,” he whispered, eyes dark with heat. “I love it when ye swear. Did ye know it makes my cock hard?”

I didn’t even have words.

But I knew it was true.