Page 11 of Unholy Gambit: Checkmate in Blood (A Paranormal Halloween #5)

He shook his head. “Not in public. This will happen at your home or mine, or possibly in your psychiatrist’s office, so he can help you work through it without pause, right away.”

“My next appointment is at eleven in the morning, day after tomorrow.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, tomorrow now, I guess.”

“It’ll need to be a nighttime appointment unless the two of you can come to me. I rise around five hours before the sun sets in the evening, but I can’t come above ground until the sun is below the horizon. I’ll pay triple his normal fee if the two of you can come to me at the end of his day.”

Her thoughts told him she wasn’t going to let him pay her bills, but he didn’t argue the point since she didn’t say it aloud.

“Right.” She exhaled. “This’ll take some getting used to. I’ll talk to him about it at my appointment.” She furrowed her brow. “But I won’t be able to, right? How does that work, with the oath?”

“I’ll contact the Master Vampire and tell him to let your therapist know you’ve been oathed.

He’ll likely come at it cautiously, not telling you anything until he verifies it with you.

The penalties for telling someone your secret and then letting them walk away without being oathed can be death or worse. ”

Her brows drew together. “What’s worse than death?”

“Being made a sex slave for the rest of your life.” He let that sink in, and added, “If you try to tell Ruby, I’ll know.

When you think of breaking the oath, considering a way around the promise, it rings a bell in my subconscious to tell me.

I know you’re considering devising plans while I’m down for the day and then discarding them before I rise, so you can pick them up again the following morning.

Please don’t. These aren’t my rules, and if you break them, I won’t be able to save you.

Even powerful vampires are terrified of the people who enforce the rules around The Secret . ”

“Okay. For now, that can work, but long term, we’ll need to figure something out. Ruby knows everything about me, and how am I going to explain why you can never join us during the day? Or not eating with us?”

“That’s a conversation for another day. We have ways to work around all that.”

She shook her head. “You don’t get to parse information out. Tell me now.”

He sat back and considered the best way to show her. She wasn’t going to like it, no matter what.

He pulled his phone out, opened the camera, aimed it at her, and hit record.

“So there are no doubts as to what I’ve done, and so you’ll know I’m not trying to hide what I can do from you, I shall video this so you can watch it when we finish. Tell me your concerns again, around Ruby not knowing what I am.”

She looked at him a few seconds, working through what he was doing, and finally did as he asked when she realized she had no idea where he was going with this.

“How will I explain you never being around during the day, or never eating around us?”

He put a strong suggestion into her head that she was no longer worried about these things, but she crossed her arms and glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but get out of my head.”

“Are you still worried about Ruby’s response to me regarding food and daylight hours?”

“Yes, I just told you I was!”

He stopped the recording, deleted the file, and put his phone back in his pocket.

“Turns out, you aren’t susceptible to our suggestions. If it’d worked, I’d have put the suggestion into your head that it’s not a concern, asked you if you had concerns about Ruby noticing I never eat, and you’d have looked at me like I was crazy.”

She stared at him, and he added, “Whatever allowed you to see what I did to stop your pain at five years old also protects you from vampiric suggestions.”

“So, you’re saying you can suggest that Ruby won’t notice you’re never around during the day, or that you never eat with us, and she won’t?”

“Yes. I did that as an exercise to show you how it can be handled, though I don’t believe it will be necessary to do so with Ruby.”

She shook her head. “I need you to promise you won’t fuck with my friends’ minds. My parents’ minds, either.”

“I will only do so enough to keep them from wondering about my non-human attributes, to keep them safe from asking questions humans shouldn’t be asking.”

“I want to say not even that, but realistically, I can see it might be necessary. Will you promise to tell me every suggestion you put into their heads?”

“Some are just habit, but I promise to try to keep you updated. Also, I promise to never give them a detrimental suggestion. Nothing that will affect their life in a negative way.”

He paid the bill, and she meant for him to hear her fuming at him in her head, that it wasn’t fair for him to grab the bill when he hadn’t even eaten.

“Let me take care of you,” he told her softly.

“I know you have money, but as it turns out, so do I. Anyone smart enough to stay alive seven hundred years should damned well have amassed a sizable fortune.” He’d been rich as a human.

As a vampire, his net worth was greater than that of some countries.

As he’d hoped, that set her mind to considering how one would deal with wealth for more than a handful of decades.

“The trick would be in how to store it over the centuries. Precious metals, obviously, but real estate, you’d need to buy and sell based on the stability of the government, right?

The dollar would’ve worked when it was backed by gold, but it’s just a fiat store now, so not something to keep your funds in long-term. ”

“I love your mind. Even at five, I was impressed, and now…” He opened the door and offered his arm for her to step down, and then pushed a tiny bit of levitation under her, to take maybe twenty pounds of weight off her legs while she walked.

“I asked you not to do that without warning me.”

“I apologize. You’re right, but I only wanted to lighten your load a little. It’s bothering you more now than before.”

“I’m okay. Sitting and eating helped, and the aspirin reduced some of the inflammation.” She sighed. “Okay, yeah. It got stiff while I sat so long, but it’s fine.”

“It’s a negligible bit of energy for me to make you a little lighter on your feet.”

Aury shook her head and didn’t argue, but he could see her thoughts — his assistance helped, but she didn’t want to get used to it. She needed to stand on her own two feet without help.

Other people were on the sidewalk, so he telepathed, You’ve done more than your physical therapists would approve of, and you know it. A little help until you can retire for the night and give it proper rest.

I should probably be creeped out that you know what I’m thinking, but I don’t want to keep secrets from you, so it’s okay. It seems unfair though, that I can’t know what you’re thinking.

She said it without accusation, just honesty.

He wasn’t used to being seen. Not like this. He was used to being analyzed. Feared. But she didn’t flinch. Didn’t recoil from his mind pressing into hers.

She welcomed the incursion.

I’m unaccustomed to feeling emotions, he admitted, and I feel as if my heart is an open wound around you — and that came out all wrong.

He exhaled through his nose, gaze locked on the dashboard. I didn’t mean for it to sound like a negative, and yet, I’m not sure how to contain the emotions I’m feeling.

He paused, and for a second, he didn’t just hear her heartbeat — he felt it, pounding through the tether that had always existed between them, now bared and pulsing.

I want to put you in lamb’s wool and lock the world away from you.

I want to keep you untouched, unseen, but I understand you’ll never be okay with that.

There. The truth. Ugly, possessive, raw.

“You’ve truly never had emotions before?” she asked gently. “Never loved anyone? Never cared for someone?”

“I cared for the people for whom my life depended — my parents growing up, my boss later in life.” He switched to telepathy again.

And eventually the vampire who made me, but it was purely a factor of my own survival.

When my parents died, I felt nothing. When I had to leave the vampire who made me, to oath into the coterie of another, there was only the uncertainty of whether the new vampire could see to my needs in the same way my maker had.

“You explained the trigger, when I was a child, what made me different, but it doesn’t make sense, logically.

Right? Emotionally, though, it makes perfect sense.

The thing is, perhaps love isn’t supposed to make sense.

Maybe our souls recognized each other, or maybe we’re some kind of fated soul mates.

I don’t want to believe in that kind of thing, but it’s kind of hard not to.

” She stopped walking and looked at him.

I love you, and I’ve loved you all my life, even when you were only in my dreams.

The Axel of last week would’ve snickered at the reaction present-day Axel had from that simple statement. Not that she loved him, because he’d sensed that from the start, but that she’d say it so soon. That she understood the connection.

Recognized that she belonged to him and always had.

Was he truly capable of love? He’d seen her as his for nearly two decades, but he hadn’t understood the feelings beyond the possessiveness.

He wasn’t at all certain he understood them now, either, and he owed it to her to be honest.

The idea of love was foreign to me, before that night. I don’t know if what I feel for you is love, but I think it has to be.

They walked in silence for at least a minute, and Axel searched for something else to talk about. “Your Dr. Woods — I can see in your thoughts you respect him as well as like him. Can you tell me more about why that is?”

“He was my therapist when I was a teen, and wow, did he help me find the right perspective toward all kinds of things. I haven’t needed him for a long time, but going from a cripple with a limp to someone who can go on hikes, go to amusement parks without needing a way to get around, and since scooters and the like are only allowed if you have a legitimate disability, it marks you, to be on one. ”

She sighed. “In a nutshell, a key piece of my identity is changing, and I hadn’t realized how much my injury defined me.

He’s helped me work through moving from being a cripple to a healthy person capable of being athletic.

I don’t actually want to be terribly athletic, but he’s suggested I might pick up a social sport, like pickleball or golf, at least for a season, to see if the activity appeals to me. ”

He looked in her head for a definition, and then told her, “I admit, I had to look in your head to see what pickleball is. What an odd name for the sport, but it might, indeed, be an interesting challenge for you. I believe you’ll be too cerebral with golf, while the speed of pickleball will get your body more involved. ”

“You know, I came to the exact same conclusion. Did you see my conclusion and echo it, or did you come to it on your own?”

“Let me expand upon my promise not to lie to you. I also promise not to be dishonest with you, and echoing what I can see in your head would most certainly be dishonest.”

“I probably should’ve asked this before, but do you play chess?”

“I do, but I’d rather not play you until we get to know each other better.”

“Is that because you will win, or you will lose?”

“It’s because I don’t want us to be adversaries in these early days. Competition is healthy, but for now, I’d like us to be on the same team.”

“Okay, that makes sense, but I’d still like an answer. Assuming you stay out of my head and don’t cheat, who do you believe will win, when we finally get around to playing?”

“I honestly do not know. I have the experience of centuries, but your mind is…” He opened the passenger door for her.

When she was in, he leaned in and brought his lips to hers, surprising her on purpose.

He didn’t want her thinking too much about what he considered her first real kiss, from a man who knew what he was doing.

His control buckled the second their mouths met, and her heat hit him like blinding sunlight through a magnifying glass.

And still, he kissed her.