She wanted him to see her as a woman, not a pathetic newbie vampire who needed him as a security blanket. Unless he saw her as a woman, whole and healthy, neither of them would know if they were together because of natural attraction or because she was needy and he had a savior complex.
And women who wanted to attract a man didn’t wear old university sweatshirts to bed.
Opening the drawer of the utilitarian wooden chest, identical to the one in every community house on the block, Melissa fingered the sheer dark-blue fabric of a negligee, closing her eyes as she remembered the first time she’d worn it. She’d liked the black one better, or even the red one, but she’d bought this color because Mark loved the way she looked in it. She’d worn it no more than fifteen minutes before he had slid the straps off her shoulders and left it in a heap on the bedroom floor.
The memory was enough to give her an empty, aching feeling that only a man could fill. Or love.
Oh no, you’re not trotting down that corner of memory lane tonight. Melissa shoved the negligee back in the drawer and slammed it. In the adjacent drawer were T-shirts, and she picked out a paint-stained dark-green crewneck that had been stretched into shapeless comfort. The only memories associated with that shirt were the long hours of painting community house bedrooms. Just thinking about it made her shoulders ache.
She stuffed the sweatshirt into a small bag with a couple of days’ changes of clothes to keep in the daysleep spaces, and then walked down the hall to the nearest of the three bathrooms they all shared.
Pig-Pen—the dirty guy in the Peanuts cartoons who was perpetually surrounded by a cloud of dirt—had nothing on her. She stripped off her mud-spattered clothes and threw them away; washing wouldn’t get out the red-clay stains. Turning on the shower, she let the water pelt her fingers until it was as hot as she could stand it.
She stood under the spray with her face turned up, wishing the rivulets of hot water could wash away not just the iron-red mud but most of the last year.
At least she started out thinking that. But without the last year, Melissa would never have met Krys or Glory—and Aidan and Mirren had found such happiness with them. She wouldn’t wish them the loss of that happiness; plus, she’d made the best friends of her life. She would never have met Cage if he hadn’t come to study Penton for Edward Simmons.
But Hannah would still have her fam-parents, whose deaths at Matthias’s hands had sent her into a tailspin none of them knew how to handle. Without the last year, Will would still be whole. Penton would still be a peaceful place to live. She wouldn’t be a vampire.
She’d still be with Mark.
By the time she climbed out of the shower, dried off, and dressed, she’d taken the circumspect view. No way to change the last year, so she might as well appreciate the good things that had happened and not dwell on the bad.
A low rumble of voices reached her as soon as she opened the bathroom door into the hallway. “Cage, is that you?”
“In the common room,” he called out.
She ran her fingers through her towel-dried hair, all the primping she had time for.
“Mirren said you need to—”
She’d glanced in the kitchen doorway in passing, and now backed up to look in again. A young woman stood in front of the open refrigerator, eating a chicken leg and staring at the shelves.
She wasn’t completely naked. A grimy garment that looked like a man’s shirt was tied around her waist, but her small firm breasts were standing at attention from the chill of the fridge.
“What, you’ve never seen a naked woman before, either? How does that work when you’re in the shower?” The woman reached in and pulled an apple from the crisper, and turned to Melissa, apple in one hand, drumstick held up like a club. “I’m Robin. You must be Melissa. Thanks for helping Niko, in case he didn’t think to say so.”
Robin edged past Melissa and sat on the nearest sofa next to a bare-chested Nik, whose shirt had apparently been donated. She held the apple out to Nik. “Here. Eat. Man can’t live by bourbon alone.”
Cage sat on the opposite sofa, facing them. He’d watched Robin cross the room and seemed to pull his gaze from her—or her perky little mammaries—way too slowly. “Hi, Mel.” Finally, he looked at her, blinked, and smiled. “A shower sounds like a grand idea.”
Well, wasn’t that just . . . impersonal. “Wish I’d known you were coming so soon, I’d have waited to shower with you.”
Cage’s eyes widened to mossy green orbs, and his focus shot over to Robin, chewing on her chicken leg and staring right back at him.
“You’re doing her?” Robin leaned back and gave Melissa a slow head-to-toe visual inspection.