Night Unbound(52)

“Zach,” she began, then paused while he drew the cloth across her nose and upper lip. Her chin. Down her neck, a scowl creasing his brow as he cleaned the soft flesh the vampire had sliced open. “You said you’ve never courted a woman before . . .”
“Yes.” Rising, he returned to the sink, rinsed the blood out of the towel, and draped it over the center divider.
“Does that mean you’ve never . . . ?” How should she put this?
Swiveling to face her, he leaned back against the counter and rested his hands on the edge of it on either side of his hips. “Lain with a woman?”
Lisette nodded and awaited his response with bated breath.
“Yes.”
She stared at him. Zach had never made love with a woman. “You’re thousands of years old.” A stupid comment, she mentally berated herself. Zach knew how old he was.
“That’s correct.”
“How exactly does one go that long without . . . ?”
“Ask Seth,” he countered.
“Seth was married once and had children. You told me yourself.”
“But he has, to the best of my knowledge, remained celibate since the death of his wife.”
It boggled the mind. It really did. Both men were incredibly handsome and radiated sex appeal. They could’ve easily gotten laid every night of the year. In any time period.
“I’ve shocked you.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
He shook his head with a self-deprecating smile. “So much for appearing normal.”
“Normal is overrated,” she told him. “If you had slept with one woman per year, which is definitely below the norm by today’s standards, you would have slept with thousands of women by now. That is not an appealing thought,” she concluded. “Guys may think it cool. But every woman I know would think it . . . gross.”
He shook his head. “You are forever trying to put me at ease.”
“I am forever prying and putting my foot in my mouth. I don’t ever want you to feel uncomfortable around me, Zach. And . . . I won’t lie. I’m also trying to distract myself from eagerly volunteering to be your first.”
His hands tightened on the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening. “You want to be my lover?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.
“Because I’m a virgin?” He still couldn’t seem to comprehend that he appealed to her, not what he was or wasn’t or would never be.
“Your first or your five thousandth, I just want to be with you, Zach. Is that so hard for you to understand?”
His expression yielded the affirmative answer he wouldn’t voice.
Rising, Lisette approached him slowly and held out a hand to him. “I appreciate your cleaning my face, but I need to take a shower and wash this grime off. Come with me. You can wait in my bedroom, keep me company in the bathroom, join me in the shower, whatever you wish. Whatever will make you happy.”
A moment passed.
Straightening, Zach placed his large hand in hers and accompanied her from the kitchen.
 

 

Lisette led Zach down to her bedroom in the basement. The sheets on the bed were rumpled and still carried his scent.
“As I said,” she told him. “The choice is yours. No pressure.” Releasing his hand, she began to remove the small arsenal of weapons she carried.
Zach picked up one of her daggers and examined it.
“Are you skilled with weapons?” she asked. He had said as much, but she had never seen him use one and knew he could kill just as swiftly without them.
He nodded. “The Others thought it best to prepare.”
She set her shoto swords on a wooden chair, stained many times over with the blood of vampires from similar disarm-ings. “Prepare for what? Seth?”
He shook his head. “Seth wasn’t as powerful back then.”
“Then, what?”
He set the dagger aside and helped her tug off her coat.
She pursed her lips. “Is this one of those things you can’t tell me because all hell will break loose if someone reads my mind and spreads the word?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “That sucks.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do.” His brow furrowed as he neatly folded her coat and draped it over the back of the chair. “Keeping secrets never bothered me until I met you.”
She gave him a teasing smile. “So it’s all my fault, is it?”
His face lightened. “I can go with that.”
Laughing, she unfastened her belt, drew it through the loops, and dropped it on the chair with her weapons. “You haven’t said what you learned tonight when you spied on the Others. Are they still searching for you?”
He nodded, face sobering.