Darkness Rises(31)

Sean delivered a jerky nod, then left to prepare for work.
For several long moments, Étienne and Krysta stared at each other.
“Are you really okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “And you? You were injured.”
“I’m okay. Sean patched me up.”
And healed the worst of her wounds with his hands, Étienne assumed.
Her gaze slid to the digital clock on her bedside table. “Sean is running late. Let’s put this on hold for a minute while I fix him some breakfast. I don’t want him to go to work on an empty stomach after last night.”
And Étienne had heard enough about their financial struggles to know Sean couldn’t afford to pick something up in the drive-through on the way there.
He followed Krysta into the tiny kitchen and kept her company while she whipped up a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, and orange juice.
Sean demolished that in about a minute, then rushed out the door with a last warning look at Étienne.
“I’m surprised he left,” Étienne admitted.
Krysta shrugged. “Money has been tight. School limits the number of hours he can work and vampire hunting limits the number of hours I can work. But we’re making it.” She put Sean’s dish and glass in the sink and filled it with soapy water. “You’re worried.”
He watched her with some surprise. How had she known that?
“You were worried before the phone call, but afterward . . .” She trailed off.
“We have a problem,” he admitted. Chris knew about her. Even if Richart managed to stall him, Chris and his henchmen would come looking for her. And it would be best if Étienne were by her side when they found her.
“We?”
“You and I,” he clarified.
“Let me guess. The soldiers we killed tonight have friends who are now out for our blood.”
“Yes.” He’d have to explain all of that, too. “But that’s a whole different problem.”
She frowned. “Someone else is out for our blood?”
“No. Just yours. Figuratively speaking.”
“Your vampire friends?”
“My human friends.”
Her eyebrows rose. “What?”
“Perhaps it would be best if I started from the beginning.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“I have a question I would like to ask you first.”
“Okay.” Crossing her arms, she leaned back against the counter and stared up at him. Her hair was a little mussed, finger-combed into submission rather than brushed. Her face was free of makeup, and bore a couple of faint abrasions, one on her jaw and one on her cheekbone, both on the left side of her entrancing face.
Her slender frame was garbed in a tank top and shorts that left her arms and shapely legs bare. Without her coat and assorted weaponry, she appeared so fragile. He still found it hard to reconcile this lovely, delicate mortal with the vampire hunter he had been observing for the past two weeks.
“Why didn’t you go?” he asked, needing to know.
She tilted her head. “You mean when Sean left? Why didn’t I leave with him?”
“No. At Duke. Why didn’t you run when you had the chance?”
“After you threw me behind the building?”
“Yes. I stayed and fought so you would have time to get away.”
“That’s why,” she said, her gaze never leaving his. “You could have escaped. Even tranquilized, you probably could have gotten away fast enough to elude them.”
“They would’ve killed you had I left. And the drug had already weakened me and slowed me enough that I couldn’t toss you over my shoulder and run without risking you being shot. Or tranqed. I couldn’t let either happen.”
“And I couldn’t let them kill you. Or capture you. Or whatever the hell they planned to do to you. I couldn’t let you sacrifice yourself for me.”
And that meant far more than it should have.
He eased closer to her. “Why?”
She lowered her arms and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He cupped her face in his large hands, heard her breath catch, her heartbeat pick up its pace just as his own did. Heat rushed through him at the simple touch. “You saved my life tonight,” he whispered.
Reaching up, she curled her small, soft hands around his wrists.
Étienne held his breath, waiting for her to pull his hands away. When she didn’t . . .
“Thank you,” he said.
As she nodded, he dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers.
 

 

Fire licked its way through Krysta’s veins at the soft contact. Étienne caressed her cheeks as his silky smooth, surprisingly warm lips brushed hers.
What am I doing?
His tongue stroked her lips, tempting her into parting them.