“I’m trying.” She paused. “I’m a housewife now? I have to warn you that my cooking skills aren’t the best and I’m not a huge fan of cleaning.”
“We’ll share the housework and I can teach you how to prepare meals. It will be fun cooking together.”#p#分页标题#e#
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m an enforcer for my father.”
“Does that pay enough to keep the lights on?”
He looked highly amused. “Yes.”
“Is it like a nine-to-five job?”
“No. We’re assigned shifts to patrol and sometimes I was sent on missions, like finding you and your sister.”
“Is it dangerous living here or something? Do bears and rabid squirrels attack?”
He chuckled again.
“I’m not trying to be funny.” She shrugged. “I’m just clueless.”
“We don’t have an issue with rabid squirrels. Bears wandering into our territory are persuaded to move on. We live in harmony with nature but we can’t exactly have them trying to get inside our homes to go after food. We keep all the dangerous predators distanced from us.”
“So that’s what you do? You scare away mean animals?”
“We also make certain no one trespasses in our territory. Humans like to do that sometimes to hunt. Nobody enjoys being shot at when a poacher mistakes us for a wolf.”
“That happens?”
“Rarely. We patrol so it doesn’t.”
“What do you do with them?”
“We scare them off. They’re told this is protected land, a sanctuary, and private property. VampLycans always try to keep the peace.”
“What if they aren’t easy to scare and refuse to leave?”
“We use our ability to control their minds and implant that they never wish to return.”
“Does that always work?”
“Yes, so far.”
“Is it a dangerous job?”
“It can be, but I’m damn hard to kill, Dusti. I don’t want you to worry when I go out on patrol.”
“You heal really fast.”
“Yes. It would be very difficult for something to sneak up on me too.”
The memory of him confronting the hell beast that had found them near the river flashed in her mind. “You’re also obviously a good fighter.”
“I am. I’ve been trained how to defend myself since I could walk.”
“Speaking of, you said VampLycans age slowly. Does that mean if we ever have kids that they’ll take forever to grow up?”
“We age the same way humans do when we’re very young, growth accelerates for a few years, then slows again once we are through puberty.”
“So we could have a baby and it’s going to want to move out when it’s ten years old?”
He laughed. “Not quite that fast. Most of our children begin building their own homes when they’re nearing their eighteenth birthdays. That’s the age of consent to take a mate. We want to make certain they are trained well enough to survive on their own. It’s just that we learn things faster than a human would.”
“Like what?”
He sobered. “I could walk at six months. Human children usually don’t do that until they’re a year old.”
“Wow.” She was stunned. Then she had a horrible thought. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to grow old faster than you are.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to share my blood with you, and you already look younger than your actual age. You do have some VampLycan traits, even though they are faint. We tend to live so much longer than humans because of our ability to heal so quickly. By giving you blood, it will help slow your aging process.”#p#分页标题#e#
She sighed. “That’s good. I was picturing me looking ninety and you still being hot. That’s something I really wasn’t looking forward to for either of us.”
“You think I’m hot?” he asked, grinning.
She glanced at his chest. “Scorching hot.” She met his gaze again. “And you know it.”
He leaned in closer. “Show me.”
Arousal coursed through her body. She moved, straddling his lap. He leaned back and his big hands cupped her ass through the shirt she wore. Total awareness of Drantos was an exhilarating experience. Her heart raced, her skin felt as if it were super-sensitized, and the need to be skin to skin with him became almost overpowering.
The front door opened and Dusti gasped, twisting her head.
Drantos stood, lifting her with him so fast it made her head spin. He turned slightly, putting his body between her and the man who entered. The sudden appearance of bright sunlight blinded her for a second until she blinked a few times, then was able to identify their guest.