Kincaid arched one of those dark brows. "Rescuing you from an assassin. Someone screamed the house half down. Thought you were being murdered. Turns out you were fighting off your sheets instead."
Of course. She felt like the worst sort of fool. If the ground opened up to swallow her whole right now, she would pray to any god. "Did anyone else hear?"
"Apart from Herbert, I'm the only one here, princess. Our resident inventor, Jack, had mysterious business in the city. Viscount business, I suspect. And the baroness was up to no good. Looked like she was heading out to a ball. If she doesn't come home with at least a dozen hearts in her pocket, I'll be disappointed."
A joke, for the baroness was cold and reserved, except for when Isabella looked at Malloryn.
Apart from Herbert, the butler née assassin, Ava realized she was all alone in the house with a half naked man who was a physically fine specimen of male anatomy indeed.
Kincaid resettled himself on the edge of the bed, shirtless, and with the buttons on his trousers half undone. Ava blushed. Hair trailed from his navel down into his pants, and a generous dusting of it shadowed his chest. He was nothing like Paul, her ex-fiancé. Side-by-side he'd dwarf poor Paul, and he felt... threatening in a way Paul never had.
Because you want him. Because there's danger inside this man, and you're not quite certain how to handle him.
"I'm sorry. For dragging you out of bed."
"Don't be sorry." He scratched at the faint scar on his chin. "Happen often?"
"Sometimes," she said noncommittally.
"Something bad happened to you once."
She didn't deny it.
"It's written all over you, luv." Those wicked eyes narrowed, but more in consideration than anything else. "You don't have to tell me."
Ava drew her knees to her chest. Suddenly Hague was back, trailing ghostly fingertips down her spine. She pressed the heels of her palms to her closed eyes. "I don't really want to talk about it. But yes, something bad happened to me once. Something that gives me nightmares, something I can never escape."
A soft sigh escaped him. When she lowered her hands, she found Kincaid sprawling across her bed, looking utterly relaxed, his fingertips brushing against her calf through the sheets.
"We all have fears," he finally said.
"Even you?" The mighty behemoth?
He cradled his mech hand behind his head, his abdominal muscles flexing. "Jaysus. I've had more than my fair share."
"But you're...."
"I'm...?"
"So powerful," she blurted, gesturing to his body. "And cocky. And rash. I cannot imagine anything could ever frighten you." The past swam up between them, when she'd tended to his broken nose, and Kincaid had snapped at her to get it healed so he could rejoin the hunt in time. "You wanted to hunt a vampire, when the very thought made my blood curdle."
Shadows darkened his eyes. "Vampires don't really scare me. It would be a quick death. A fairly clean one-"
"You've got to be jesting me," she broke in. "I cannot possibly imagine death by vampire to be quick, or particularly merciful."
"It is compared to the fate of others." His voice roughened. "Over in an instant of fierce terror and pain, rather than the long drawn-out spiral downward of something degenerative where you stare your death in the face every day, wondering when the time will come where your body fails you. Wondering how many days you can spend trapped within your body before you go mad."
"Well, I couldn't think of anything worse than a vampire."
"Really? Not a single thing? Not even whatever causes your nightmares?"
Ava opened her mouth to reply, but an image of Hague sprang to mind, strapping her to his examination table and shining the harsh light in her eyes as she screamed and tried to escape-to no avail. A chill ran down her spine. Kincaid was right. Death by vampire might be considered a blessing in some circumstances.
Or was it...?
She'd lived after all. She'd survived the unsurvivable as Hague infected her with the craving virus and then cut her heart out of her chest while she swayed in and out of ether dreams. It was a horrible nightmare-six months of torture and misery and hopelessness-until Perry and Garrett had appeared, bringing light and hope back into her world. Bringing freedom. Maybe Ava would never escape the past, but she was here and now, and there was a whole life stretching out in front of her, filled with all the things she'd never done.
Perhaps the idea wasn't to forget the nightmares, but to accept them. She'd spent years trying to pretend she'd put all the pieces of herself back together. To hide her screams at night, to make sure nobody knew how much it sometimes scared her to leave the house and walk the streets. To pretend she was confident and had her wits about her at all times, when but one sharp noise might send her crashing down like a cracked porcelain vase given a shove.