Night Unbound(33)

“Would pasta be okay?” she asked. “Tracy just made a huge pot of chunky veggie pasta sauce, so it’ll be a quick and easy fix.”
Zach didn’t respond.
Glancing over her shoulder, she found him staring at her. “Zach?”
“I shouldn’t be here.”
She couldn’t place his accent. It was similar to Seth’s, which neither she nor her siblings had ever been able to identify. Eastern European? Egyptian? South African? Russian? She just couldn’t tell.
But Zach’s was a little softer, almost British.
“I thought we had already covered that,” she said.
“The Others will be looking for me.”
She drew the big pot of sauce from the fridge and set it on the stove. “Are you going to tell me who the others are?”
“No.”
“Because you’re the big, strong, silent type?” Common traits found in immortal males.
“Because they’ll kill you if they find out you know.”
A sobering thought. She turned on the burner.
“They’ll likely kill you if they find out you aided me as well.”
Well, hell. She had just thought he didn’t share because he liked his privacy.
“I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t even remember how I got here last night.”
“I’m not sure how you did either. I was asleep and only heard it.” She began filling a second pot with filtered water. “It sounded like you fell out of the sky, hit the roof hard, then rolled off onto the ground. I don’t know how you could have flown with your wings as damaged as they were, so maybe you teleported and miscalculated.” Richart had done that several times when he was sorely wounded and couldn’t think straight. Not that long ago, when drugged by Dennis, her brother had accidentally teleported to his mortal girlfriend’s apartment instead of David’s house and outed himself as an immortal.
“I should go,” Zach announced.
Denial gripped her. “Can’t you just—I don’t know—block them or keep them from finding you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you doing it now?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t see any reason for concern. If they were going to find you, they would’ve done it while you were unconscious and would have already come and gone, wouldn’t they?” And slain them both, judging by his grim expression.
“I would’ve thought so, yes.”
“Then relax.” Lisette gestured to the table in the breakfast nook. “Have a seat. This won’t take long to prepare. And you must still be weary.” Shutting off the water, she set the pot on the stove and turned on the burner beneath it. Next she took down a big box of uncooked rigatoni from an upper cabinet.
“Why are you doing this?” Confusion colored Zach’s voice.
Lisette set the pasta down and gave him her full attention. “Doing what?”
He hesitated. “Helping me. Being . . . kind to me.”
Why indeed? She kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper into this . . . whatever this was. “You saved my life.”
His lips tilted up in a faint smile that seemed to reflect cynicism, relief, and disappointment all at once. “Ah. You feel obligated. I understand now.”
“Not obligated,” she corrected. “Grateful. And . . .”
“And?” he prompted.
“Don’t you know?” she asked curiously. “Haven’t you looked into my thoughts?”
“No.”
Interesting. Seth and David seemed to lack any reservations when it came to reading the minds of their charges. And, if she were honest, she and Étienne intruded on their friends’ thoughts far more often than they should. One would think Zach, perhaps the antithesis of Seth, would possess even fewer scruples.
Or did he lie?
Could he be testing her to see if she would tell him the truth?
Hell, what did she have to lose at this point?#p#分页标题#e#
Crossing the kitchen, she stopped a foot away from Zach and tilted her head back to look up at him.
“Ask me again,” she ordered softly.
“Why are you doing this?” he murmured.
“Because I’m drawn to you, Zach.”
His heart began to beat faster.
As did hers. “I’m drawn to you in a way that makes me want to risk everything just for the chance to know more of you.”
His eyes lit with a mild golden glow. “Why?”
She gave her head a slow shake. “I don’t know. But I suspect . . . I hope . . . that it’s the same for you, that that’s why you came here—to me—when you were so badly injured and needed help.”
He raised one of his hands and, almost as though she were a bird he feared he might frighten away, captured a damp strand of hair that dangled in front of her ear, testing its texture with his fingers. “I came to you because you were all I could think of while I was being tortured.” He drew the lock closer to his face and breathed in the citrus scent of her shampoo. “I came to you because you were all that enabled me to endure it.”