Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
But I heard a low curse that told me better than words.
“No.” It was a keening wail, and the man that’d stopped to help took hold of my hand and squeezed it lightly.
“No more.”
I didn’t have it in me to protest.
Then everything just… stopped.
My head felt better.
My chest was no longer heavy.
And there was a distinct taste of something in my mouth that tasted of spices and dark chocolate. Like the most delicious hot chocolate that I’d ever tasted in my life.
I opened my eyes to see the man licking his wrist.
He took one long look at me with those pretty eyes of his, and said, “Sleep.”
• • •
I gasped, lurching up and toward the man that’d saved my life. The man that’d pulled me out of a burning car only seconds before it blew up and took the bodies of my friends with it.
The man that’d starred in my dreams since that terrible night.
Constantine caught me, gathering me into his arms as if he’d done it a hundred times before.
• • •
CONSTANTINE
She felt right in my arms. Like a freakin’ dream.
One that I couldn’t have.
“You should go.” I cleared my throat and set her away from me.
“Why?” She wiped her tears.
I gritted my teeth.
“Because you don’t belong in this world,” I told her bluntly. “You’re everything that I’m not. You thrive during the day, while I live in the night. You have a job with the police department, while I do everything in my power to stay away from anything that is law enforcement. And to top it all off, you’re not what I want.”
She stared at me like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Not what you want.”
That was said with such a deathly quiet tone that I nearly winced.
Nearly.
“You don’t want to be in my world, princess,” I told her. “I was a Viking. I’m a man that is used to having everything he wants, and not taking no for an answer. Is that what you want to live with the rest of your life? Are you willing to become a vampire? You would be saying goodbye to your world as you know it.”
Her eyes had gone wide, and I saw instantly that she hadn’t thought much past the present.
“Go home,” I ordered. “And stop coming around here.”
She got up, her face as white as a sheet, and walked out. Not once looking back.
I got up, too, following her out.
She didn’t look back at me, but she knew I was there.
And as she hailed a cab and got in, sparing me once last glance, I realized two things.
One, I was further gone than I thought.
And two, I sure as hell hoped I had it in me to let her stay gone.
CHAPTER 10
Sometimes I want to drop kick my ass into last week.
-Constantine’s secret thoughts
CONSTANTINE
“Constantine?” my office elf, better known as Crude—yes, that was his real name—asked nervously.
This was why he’d never been anything more to me. The nerves.
He acted like at any second I was going to kill, maim, or turn him. Which I’d assured him more than once that I wouldn’t.
Which I guess, sometimes, I was wanting to do. He was too timid, and that pissed me off. Today more than most.
“What?” I snapped.
Crude looked like I’d beaten him.
“There’s someone here to see you,” he whispered.
Had I been a normal human, I wouldn’t have heard nor understood him. But I wasn’t human, thank fucking God, meaning that I could hear him thanks to my heightened senses.
I snarled, causing Crude to give up and flee, pissing me off even further.
I most certainly did not want to see anyone. Not right now, and I was fairly sure ever.
Chen was… different.
He wasn’t the same man that I’d brought under my wing when he was a stupid seventeen-year-old kid. He was a man that was harder. More annoyed by everything.
I literally turned him into a man that wasn’t him, and I wasn’t sure if Chen—before when he’d been him—would want to be this man. Would he want to live a life where he was constantly having to be watched in fear that he’d kill someone?
And then there was the whole police involvement.
Luckily we’d gotten to Chen’s body before his body had been processed. Meaning they didn’t have one hundred percent proof that Chen was the one that died that night with the girl.
“You better go before the cop gets pissy and starts forcing his way in here. Then he sees your fuckin’ room and has a cow and demands to know what the fuck happened.”
I rolled my eyes at Pavlov.
I’d seen more of him and Abraham in the last week than I’d seen of them in the last two years.
Not that I minded. It was just hard to do without killing each other.
“Were you able to get a hold of the girl?”