She frowned. He had kind of nailed the perv thing right on the head. How had he known what she was thinking? Her face wasn’t that expressive, was it?
“My sister and I were both born with the ability to read others’ thoughts,” he admitted.
Her mind went blank, then filled with a maelstrom of reactions and concerns and freak-outs.
He could read her thoughts? He had been reading them all along?
Fury, alarm, and a ridiculous feeling of betrayal barreled through her. “You read my thoughts?” she came close to yelling. He must know, then, that he had intrigued her from the first night they had met. That she thought about him all the time. That she had, not five minutes ago, wanted nothing more than to strip him naked and roll around in bed with him.
The snake!
He held up both hands in a placating gesture. “Not all of them. Not even most of them. Just a few here and there.”
Her face must be turning as red as a raspberry because he seemed quite desperate to assuage her anger.
“Some gifted ones, like yourself, have a natural defense and are difficult to read,” he claimed.
“How difficult,” she snarled, ready to kick his ass if he gave the wrong answer.
“Very difficult,” he hurried to reassure her. “Extremely difficult. Sometimes I can’t read you at all. Other times I only catch a word or two.”
A word or two. That could be less incriminating, she supposed. Maybe her mind was closed enough that he didn’t know she was attracted to him.
“Well, no. I knew that,” he said.
Mouth falling open, she stared at him in dismay. Hell. Did she have no secrets from him?
“You have many secrets from me.”
“Stop reading my thoughts!”
“I’m sorry. It’s just . . . you’re broadcasting them rather loudly at the moment and . . . There is no reason to feel embarrassed, Krysta.”
“Easy for you to say! You weren’t caught mentally checking out my package!”
A startled laugh escaped him before he hastily quelled it. “You’re attracted to me. I know that. But I’m attracted to you, too. I have been ever since the first night I saw you when you stumbled out of that damned frat house, pretending to be drunk, turned your face up to the sky, and seemed to look right at me.”
Her mind quieted. “Really?”
“Yes. And now I can’t read what you’re thinking at all, so if that offends you . . . Well, I won’t apologize for it. You’re a strong, beautiful woman who knows her way around a blade. I find that”—he drew in a deep breath as his eyes traveled over her with a heat that scorched her—“incredibly appealing. But I will apologize for whatever discomfort it causes you.”
How the hell was she supposed to respond to that?
Best to just change the subject and try not to broadcast her thoughts, whatever the hell that meant. “Tell me again how immortals differ from vampires.”
He did, beginning with gifted ones and blowing her mind. She and her brother and parents had always known they were different. But they hadn’t known why. They hadn’t realized they possessed advanced DNA.
And she hadn’t known that vampirism was caused by a virus.
“So the virus causes brain damage and madness in humans, but not in gifted ones?”
“Correct. Our advanced DNA protects us.”
“Where does the DNA come from?”
“We don’t know.”
Recalling all of the times she had been splattered with vampire blood, the time one had bitten her, and the long, wet kiss she had just shared with Étienne, she asked uneasily, “How contagious is this virus?”
He smiled. “Fleeting contact with it won’t transform you. A few drops of vampire blood mingling with yours in a wound won’t infect you. And you can’t get it from a kiss. Or from sex.”
That was nice to know for future reference.
“You can only be transformed in two ways: By having most of your blood drained, then being infused with the blood of a vampire or immortal. Or by being fed from and exposed to the virus in small amounts repeatedly.” He frowned. “Have you ever been bitten by the vampires you hunt?” The idea seemed to upset him.
“Only once.” And it hadn’t been a vamp she had been hunting.
Darkness swept his visage as his brown eyes flashed bright amber once more. “Describe the vampire who bit you.”
Why should it thrill her that he wanted to hunt down the vamp who had sunk his filthy fangs into her?
“No need,” she assured him. “I killed him myself.”
A slow smile lit his face as he wagged his head back and forth.
“What?” she asked.
“I like you more with every tidbit I learn about you.”