“I don’t think her mom has any clue what’s going on with her daughter. That boyfriend of hers ...” Sara wasn’t sure what happened first, if Pete jerked his hand away or she did, but the next thing she knew, her boss looked white as a sheet and was grabbing his stomach with both hands and moaning.
She leaned forward, concerned. “Pete? What is it?”
His face contorted with pain. “I . . . I ...” He shook his head. “Oh God!”
“Are you all right?”
“I have to go to the restroom.” His chair scraped back and he got up, heading for the back of the restaurant. Sara stared after him, then dropped her gaze to the mussels. Oh jeez. And she’d invited him—
The sudden quiet in the room—real, not imaginary this time—clipped her thoughts short and she looked up, hoping not to see Pete laid out on the mahogany floor, convulsing. But the silence had nothing to do with her boss. Walking through the restaurant, looking like six feet three inches of branded, terrifying sex appeal was Alexander. The other patrons seemed to either shrink in his presence or, and this was mostly the female clientele, stare covetously while their dates slumped in their chairs unable to compete with the godforce walking past. Even the staff stopped what they were doing and had the good sense to look nervous.
He sat down in Pete’s chair and glared at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Having dinner with a colleague.” His scent seized her nostrils, made her stomach growl for the first time in twenty-four hours.
He lowered his voice. “Trainer is still out there and bloodthirsty.”
“And Dillon’s right over there.”
He snorted, as though the
veana
he’d recruited to protect her had zero skills to actually do the job.
Sara leaned forward and whispered, “You need to leave. My boss will be right back.”
“Don’t count on it.”
Her eyes widened. “What did you do?”
He shrugged. “Stomach issues.”
“You gave him a stomachache?” she said, furious at his cavalier attitude.
“I suggested it.”
“Unbelievable! Why the hell would you do something like that?”
Barely controlled possessiveness rolled off of him. “I don’t want him around you. I don’t want any male around you.”
“Tough shit,” she said, keeping her voice barely above a whisper.
A growl rumbled in the back of Alexander’s throat as his eyes lowered. “Your mouth is exquisitely delectable when you curse at me.”
A searing wave of desire moved through Sara and in her mind she saw flashes of his hands on her skin, raking up the insides of her legs . . . Goddammit! Why did he have to come here? Why couldn’t he just leave her alone, let her get over him, forget he existed? She glared at him, asked with barely restrained calm, “How’s Bronwyn this evening?”
His gaze caught hers and held. There was great care in their depths. “I wouldn’t know. Lucian is responsible for that particular guest.”
So he hadn’t fed from her? Is that what he was saying? Or he had and he was done, like fast food? She didn’t want to ask, couldn’t bear the answer if it was the wrong one.
He was watching her, his eyes heavy lidded and filled with ire. “The man in the bathroom wants to fuck you. Did you know that?”
Yes, she knew. “What do you want, Alexander?”
“I want you to come home.”
“That’s not my home.” She shook her head, as much to herself as to him. She had no home, wouldn’t until Gray recovered. What Alexander offered her was another place for failure and pain.
“I want you in my bed,” he persisted.
“I don’t belong in your bed.” Where she was good enough to screw, but not feed from . . .
“Why are you out with this man?” Alexander demanded, his voice remaining low and controlled, though his face contorted with rage.
She knew people were staring at them. “It’s none of your business,” she told him.
“I won’t have it.”
“Do you hear yourself? You sound like a caveman.” She glanced over his massive shoulder to where the bathrooms were. “You need to go.”
His face changed and his eyes softened. “I need you,” he said gently.
“What you need is something I can’t give you.”
“Not true.” His eyes blazed with heat, with something close to anticipation. “I wish to make you an offer.”
She shook her head, her heart utterly deflated, her body and mind growing weary of the fight. “What does that mean?”
“You return home, and I will help your brother.”
She froze. “What did you say?”
“His memory of the fire, the pain, all of it, I will remove it from his mind.”
Sara shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“I wish you had told me earlier. I wish I had asked.” He nodded, reached for her hand. “I’m sorry for that. But I can help you now. I can remove the memory and the pain from his mind.”
She kept shaking her head. The madness he was spouting was almost intolerable, cruel to say the very least. All these years, all the work, and she had barely made a dent in Gray’s memory. As if it were so easy . . .
“Sara—”
“I don’t believe you.” She pulled her hand away, ignoring the feeling of immediate and painful loss. “Why would you say something like that? Suggest something like that? When you know how it would hurt me.”
“Sara, it is the truth.”
“It’s not possible.”
“It is,” he insisted. “It is part of my abilities as a morphed Pureblood. I am able to remove memory through the blood.”
The explanation stopped her, made her stare at him. The thread of hope she’d carried with her these past ten years suddenly trembled inside her tired body.
“There are risks to his memory as a whole,” he continued, seeing the change in her expression. “But they’re very low. I have every confidence he would—”
She stopped him with a fierce glare. “No.” She had to think, had to process what he was telling her with what she knew to be real. The threads of hope pulsed within her, wanting to kill the fear and confusion that accompanied it. “Please, Alexander, I need you to go.”
“Sara, you are a practical woman. Please do not react to this suggestion emotionally or irrationally.”
Her eyes filled with tears. It was too much. Didn’t he get that? Didn’t he get the hugeness of what he’d just offered her?
She spotted Pete coming back from the bathroom, looking pale, but alive.
“The man returns.” Alexander said the words like a snake hissing.
Sara locked eyes with him, her tone pleading. “If you care anything for me, you’ll go now.”
He looked ready to argue, but didn’t. Instead, he nodded. “Think on my offer, Sara.”
Pete drew closer. Sara uttered, “Please. Go.”
Alexander leaned down, whispered in her ear, “If he touches you,” he said, lapping at the sensitive skin of her lobe, “I swear I will hunt him down and rip out his heart.”
As every ounce of blood in her veins went hot and electric and traveled south of her navel, Sara forced her gaze away from Alexander and onto the pale shell of a boss who was walking dispiritedly toward her.
Two hours later, Sara lay on her bed at the hotel room, sheets stripped, lights off, waiting for the inevitable to occur. He would come, and when he did he would once again claim he could fix her brother.
Traumatic memory gone. All visions of the fire and the terror and the pain of his burns.
Gone.
She rolled onto her stomach. Of course, she’d been trying to do that for more than four years now with very little success, and yet the amazing, all-powerful, morphed vampire could make it happen in an instant.
It had to be bullshit. Right?
She flipped to her back again, stared up at the ceiling, at the shadows the adjacent buildings made. What if he could do it? Really take the memory from Gray’s mind? The thing was, Alexander himself was an impossibility, a miracle . . .
She turned in to her pillow and closed her eyes for a moment.
What if?
She must’ve dozed off on the thought because when she woke up the shadows on the ceiling had changed. Now, instead of floating rooflines, the outline of a man stretched out above her. She sat up, turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Alexander stood on the balcony, twenty stories from the ground, his black wool coat turned up at the collar, the tails striking his thighs in the wind. Her heart leaped into her throat at the size of him, at the brutality of his face, at the raw desire in his eyes.
She scurried off the bed and went to the window. But instead of letting him in, she went out to meet him. The frigid wind whipped at her face and her hair the second she stepped onto the concrete.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” he said, his eyes taking in every feature on her face. “But I had to see you.”
She stood a good three feet from him and hugged her arms to her chest. “I know why you’re here, and I’ve thought about your offer.” She shook her head. “I just can’t do it, Alexander.”
He took a step toward her. “You’re freezing. Let’s go inside.”
She shook her head, backed up, put her hand out to block him because if he touched her it was all over. “I want you to understand. I can’t take the risk.”
His dark brows came together. “Which risk are you speaking of? The one to Gray’s mind?”
“Yes.”
“Sara,” he said gently. “I told you—”
“You told me there was a small chance of permanent damage to his memory.”
“Infinitesimal. Far less than anything you’re doing to him now.” Alexander studied her. “Is it truly your brother you’re worried about?”
“Of course,” she said far more passionately than she intended.
His pupils dilated as he watched her, his nostrils flared as he took in her scent.
I DON’T BELIEVE YOU.
She pointed at him. “Don’t do that!”
He shrugged. “I fear you’re lying to me, and to yourself.”
“That’s ridiculous. I just don’t want to do things your way, come back to your house and live with you.” Her whole body was shaking now. From cold, and from concern that perhaps Alexander saw her mind and heart better than she ever could. “Go home.”
His eyes locked with hers. “I am home. Wherever you are ...”
The words cut deep into the near-broken heart in her chest. They were lovely words, yet so cruel because they could never be true. Why wouldn’t he stop tormenting her?
She turned around and went back into her room.
Alexander followed. “Where are you going?”
“To the bathroom.”
“To escape this conversation?”
“Fuck you.”
“You are acting like a
balas
, Sara,” he said as she shut the door.
She crumpled into a ball on the other side of the wood, hoping he would just go away and leave her alone tonight. Just tonight. Tomorrow she would be herself again: strong, quick, able to take on moody patients, irresponsible parents, and, yes, irresistible vampires with self-serving agendas.
But he didn’t. He stood outside the door. “Sara?”
She said nothing.
“What is it really?” he pressed, his tone gentle now as if he really wanted to know, wanted to help her know. “Are you afraid your life’s work will have no value? Is it that you will have no identity, no purpose if he’s cured?”
Her heart started to race and she scrambled over to the tub and turned on the shower.
“Is it that you can’t face him?” he said louder. “Face what you did if he truly gets well?”
“Shut up!” she roared, a sick strain of panic racing through her blood now. Fully clothed, she climbed into the shower and sat under the spray, desperate to drown out not just his not-so-bullshit analysis of her, but the questions they were bringing up in her mind. It was supposed to have been her. She was supposed to have fixed Gray, cured him, and brought him home to their mother. If she wasn’t the one to do it, what did that make her but a huge time-wasting failure? If she wasn’t the one who fixed him, how would she ever gain forgiveness for breaking him in the first place?
She heard the lock click open, the door creak back, and Alexander walk into the bathroom. The shower curtain ripped back, and he looked down at her, his body suddenly engulfed in steam.
“Jesus.” He stripped bare, then climbed in, knelt down in front of her. “Let me help him. Let me help you.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “You don’t want to help me—you want me to come back. It’s all that matters to you.”
Alexander cupped her face as water sluiced down her back. “Yes, that is what I want, what I must have. God help me, the need to have you near—the need to see you safe is excruciating and undeniable. But does it matter? The motivation?”
Tears, like droplets of blood, fell from her eyes and her words came out choked and pained. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
Her head dropped forward. “If I let you do this, I’m a failure. Don’t you see? You’ve brought him back. That wasn’t the deal . . .
I
broke him,
I
fix him.”
“Look at me,” he demanded. “Look at me, woman.”
Again, her eyes lifted to his impassioned gaze.
“You are no failure. You are this.” He touched her chest, her heart. “You beat with life and with love. You are brilliant, extraordinary, amazing, my captor and my friend. And make no mistake, you have kept Gray alive, as you kept me alive that morning on your door-step.” His voice dropped. “You need to stop punishing yourself.”
Sara’s lips trembled and she blinked, tears falling to her cheeks.
He shook his head. “I love you, Sara.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “What did you say?”
He ran his hands over her face, gently placed her wet hair behind her ears and leaned in, kissed first her top lip, then her bottom. “What I have never said to anyone, have never felt for anyone but my brothers. I love you, and as impossible is it may be, you belong to me as I belong to you.”