Dying to Date(47)

“Good thing you’ve got crazy, these-aren’t-the-droids-you’re-looking-for powers.” She flopped back into her seat and fastened her eyes on him. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”

Tarian groaned. He’d never be able to convince her she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, but the answers Melissa was searching for were ones he’d only intended to share with his mate.

And that’s not her, he told himself. Fate wouldn’t have been cruel enough to pair him with a woman he could never have. Not permanently.

And he wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall for a vampire who was far too young and naive to ever be what he needed.

It’s just lust. We both just need a night to get each other out of our systems.

Even as he assured himself, the words felt hollow. Tarian wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to scrub Melissa from his mind.

Nor was he sure he even wanted to.

…

“Tarian?” she asked. The seriousness in his eyes was unnerving. What was running through his mind?

“Did it ever occur to you I wouldn’t want to share all my innermost secrets with a woman I—”

He stopped, but she could fill in the blanks. With a woman he might never see again after tomorrow night.

Melissa turned to the window, her excitement over their escape fading away at the reality of their situation. She’d read the articles. Relationships between people brought together by stress or extreme circumstances rarely lasted. Added to that, they were both looking for their intended mates.

The idea of Tarian finding his, of smiling at some other woman, loving her, made her fangs ache. But there was no use hiding from the truth. Tarian wasn’t hers. Their romance came with a time limit.

It didn’t stop her from wanting to know him.

She leaned her head back against the seat rest. Never before had she felt obliged to share intimate details about herself with a partner, nor had she pried into a lover’s past. She’d lived by the unspoken immortal rule that the past was off-limits for all but the most serious of connections.

Now, however, the idea of opening herself up to someone didn’t fill her with the usual dread. Tarian wasn’t a man she felt the need to keep at arm’s length anymore. In fact, he was the first to ever inspire this desire to share.

She wanted to learn about his powers, but more so, she wanted to know about his life before he came into her world. It was selfish to expect such closely guarded secrets without offering up a few of her own.

“Quid pro quo,” she whispered.

“What?”

She rolled her head in his direction. If she was going to go down this road it couldn’t be brought on by a thoughtless blunder or a slip of the tongue. It had to be a conscious decision, because once they parted ways, the information they shared might come back to haunt them.

“I want to know you,” she said, staring at his profile. “And I’ll pay your price.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I’ll ask about your transformation,” he warned.

“I know.”

There was a beat of silence. “Vampires don’t offer up that information to just anyone.”

“Yes.”

His eyes flicked to her. “This is a bad idea. Keeping our distance makes things easier.”

“Much,” she agreed. Not that she’d been very good at keeping her hands off him. Maintaining distance seemed to be a hopeless dream for them.

Tarian sighed before giving his head a rough shake. “Dammit. You’ve been a puzzle I’ve wanted to unravel since I bloody well met you.”

A small smile curved her lips. At least she wasn’t alone in this twisted dance they found themselves tangled in.

“Tell me,” he ordered.

Her eyes closed briefly as the memory of screaming horses thundered in her mind. She was about to speak of a time in her life she tried her best to forget. The most painful night of her existence.

“I should have died in a carriage accident,” she whispered. “The same accident that killed my mother.”

His breath hissed from him. “Melissa—”

“No,” she stopped him. “I think…I think I want to tell you.”

Though his gaze didn’t waver from the road, one hand reached out for hers.

“I never knew much about my biological father,” she continued. “We didn’t exactly live in a time period with alimony.”

“Redgrave is not…?”

“No. He met my mother in a busy tavern and had to have her. I was just a child when they started their relationship.”

Usually pain shot through her when she spoke of her past, but not this time. She thought of the accident without the usual shame she felt that she could barely remember her mother’s face, even though she hadn’t forgotten the warmth of her touch or the love in her voice.