“Why is that?” He sounded genuinely curious. “What happened to you? Beyond your family being killed, that is. It seems like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Lizette swallowed hard and studied her manicure. This was important. She needed to share the whole truth. “I want to tell you about Jean-Baptiste.”
* * *
HOLY FUCK, WAS she serious? He’d flown halfway around the world and she wanted to tell him about her dead boyfriend? He literally wanted to talk about anything but that dude. They could even not talk at all and that would be preferable. But he forced himself to remain nonchalant and just say, “Yeah?”
Lizette kicked off her heels and tucked her slim legs under her skirt in a move that he found wildly distracting and really sexy. Okay, she could talk about the dead guy.
“You see, we had a solid relationship, but as I said, we were not without our issues. But I was committed to him and assumed we would have a future. But during the late nineteenth century, when medical schools were getting so heavily into dissections, you know there was a lot of grave robbing and whatnot going on, yes?”
“I can’t say I’m really familiar with the time period, since I was born at the end of the century, but I can see how that would happen.” Just a little before his time.
“Due to advances in science and anatomy, the human body was considered essential to the study of young medical students, and they were willing to look the other way as to how bodies were acquired. It was a booming business. Jean-Baptiste was stolen from his coffin in the catacombs on the assumption that he was a corpse.”
That was more than a little fucked-up.
“But of course what happened was that when they dissected him, he woke up. Since it was daytime, he was disoriented, I presume, and they were able to secure him to their operating table and watch as he healed. So they dissected again. Again he healed.” Lizette swallowed hard. “I witnessed a good deal of this as I followed the carriage in the hopes of rescuing him.”
Shit. That was why she was so afraid of being caught. She’d seen the consequences. Johnny felt like a complete jerk-off. He reached out and took her hand, which she had clenched into a fist on her knee.
“But they never left him, and I couldn’t see how to get him out of the restraints and help him move when it would take all my strength to protect myself from getting caught. So I watched his torture. It went on for hours and hours and he was awake for the entirety.” Lizette stared at him with glassy eyes. “I will hear his screams of agony forever.”
“That’s horrible,” he said, because there were no words adequate enough to express his sympathy and disgust. “I’m so sorry.”
“Finally, after they posed for photos with his bleeding body, skin peeled back from all his bones, head scalped, nails driven through his hands to see what the result would be, they went out for a pint to celebrate their real-live Frankenstein. It was my plan to release him then. But Jean-Baptiste begged me to merely kill him. He didn’t think he would survive anyway, and I would only be slowed down and putting myself at risk.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it. How could I?”
“Holy shit, baby . . .” Johnny was speechless. She shouldn’t have had to make that kind of choice.
“But then one of them came back because he had forgotten his hat, and I knocked him unconscious. I knew I had to kill Jean-Baptiste then, so . . .” Lizette took several deep breaths. “So I did.”
Johnny took her hand and stroked her cool skin gently. He spoke softly, awed by her strength, her tenacity for the last several hundred years. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that was like for you. I understand completely why you feel the way you do.”
“Thank you. It is important to me that you understand, because I do care about it. I do wish to live a life that is more spontaneous, but without unnecessarily risking my own safety or that of those I care about.” Tears glistened in her eyes, true vampire tears of blood and pain. “I do not want anything bad to happen to you.”
“It won’t,” Johnny assured her, humbled and experiencing a deeper sense of admiration for her than any woman he had ever met. This was what Stella and Wyatt were talking about. There was no urge to run, no need to fear commitment, when you had such a deep, impenetrable respect for the person you were with. “I am going to lie low for a while, and fix things with Benny and Raven. I’ve got some growing up to do, and if you’re okay with it, I’d like to do that here, in Paris. With you.”
That was throwing it all out there. She might laugh, reject him in two seconds flat, or feel sorry for him. But you know what? He had flown halfway across the world, so he might as well go for broke. He may be maturing, but he was always going to be a risk-taker.