Cursed (11 page)

Spying him now, sitting on the couch in the warm glow of a single lamp across from where Knox and Lucas slept, she was surprised to see that he wasn’t asleep and wondered if he had, in fact, slept at all. He didn’t look up as she quietly made her way over to him and sat down beside him, as close as she dared, given it had been many hours since she’d hit him with her full-strength scent.

There was no reaction. He didn’t even glance in her direction.

How disappointing.

He seemed deep in thought as he stared without focus in Knox’s direction and she wondered idly if he was sleeping with his eyes open.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked, speaking quietly so as not to wake the sleeping vampires. Was it just her imagination, or were there a multitude of faint bruises all over Greyvian’s face? Perhaps it was just the dim lighting?

Greyvian blinked once and then turned his head slowly to look at her. His eyes were a pale grey and distant. Oh no, he was back to being a cardboard cut-out.

“A little,” he replied, his tone polite but largely without inflection. He didn’t even look at her cleavage like most guys did when she wore this particular dress. Not even a quick glance to show he’d noticed.

“Do you normally sleep so little, or is it just because you’re in a strange place?”

He said nothing, merely looked at her with his unnerving lack of expression.

“Because if you’re anything like me, I find it really hard to sleep properly anywhere but my own bed. Too many strange smells and pillows at the wrong height, you know?” She was rambling. Shit. Uncool. But she couldn’t help it; this unperturbed Greyvian was harder to deal with than the lusty, anger-filled one. His silence made her feel the need to fill it with something, anything.

“No. I don’t usually sleep for long,” he said, answering her original question and saying nothing of her ramblings.

“Why not?”

Again, he stared into her eyes for a long, silent moment, then looked away to stare into the distance. He was quiet so long she didn’t think he was going to answer her, but surprisingly he opened his mouth and words came out. It took a moment for what he said to compute as she got over the shock of it.

“I spent over a century running from people who wanted to kill me. The habit of sleeping only an hour or two at a time is a hard one to break.”

Holy shit. Insight into Greyvian. This was new.

“Why did they want to kill you?” she asked, fascinated.

“They believed me insane.”

“Because you were drinking human blood when you should have been drinking that of your peers?”

His eyes flicked to her momentarily and then swung over to Knox. “I see someone has been running his mouth again.”

“Knox told me, yes,” she said, wanting to defend the blonde, “but only because I kept asking him why you seemed to be more affected by my scent than they were.”

“Hmm,” he murmured, but gave no indication of being angry at the male.

“Did you feed some more while I slept?” she asked, unable to let his changed attitude go quietly. “You’re back to doing your Spock impersonation.”

That got him turning his head towards her, his eyebrow lifting slightly in question.

“Spock,” she said. “Star Trek. Television. A pointy-eared dude who’s always going on about logic, a guy who’s always suppressing his emotions like a good Vulcan should.”

“Yes, I know of whom you speak,” Greyvian replied, surprising her.

“You do? You’ve seen Star Trek?”

“Hmm,” he mused. “I had occasion to see an episode once while awaiting another transition some years ago. It was… interesting.”

“Huh.” Would wonders never cease? He didn’t really strike her as a watcher of television.

“So, did you?” she prompted when he said nothing more on the subject. “Feed?”

“I did.”

Okay, good. This was good. He wasn’t thirsty any longer. But did that really explain the complete about-face?

“Is that the only reason you’re back to being so impassive?” She couldn’t help but think those faint purplish marks on his face had something to do with it.

Greyvian turned his pale-eyed gaze on her once more and she could practically hear the cogs turning in his brain as he tried to decide what to tell her. Finally, with an almost imperceptible nod, he spoke.

“The man I fed on last night shortly after dinner was ill. His blood tasted odd and I can only guess that it was due to a cocktail of drugs in his system meant to fix his condition. My mind was affected. I was not myself.”

Wow, that was the longest speech she’d heard him utter since meeting him. His voice was so hypnotic; it took her a moment to process what he’d said. He was not himself. Meaning that kiss they’d shared was only a product of his reaction to drugs? Or, was it more like the drugs released some of his inhibitions, loosened some of his iron-hard control? Thinking back to when she’d first met him, how cardboard cut-out he was, how seemingly numb, and then how that had all changed in an instant on picking up her scent, she had a feeling it was the latter.

But it did seem as if he had gone from constantly hot and cold to consistently level-headed. Something must have happened to speed up his recovery. Studying his face, she had a feeling she knew what it was.

“So, did the effects of the drugs just wear off?” she asked, looking him in the eye. “Or do those bruises on your face have something to do with it?”

Because she was watching him so carefully, she noticed that the skin around his eyes tightened slightly but had no idea what he was thinking, or if he was feeling any kind of emotion, or just squinting in the dim light. Hopefully, it was an emotion of some kind—because at least then there was hope that the Greyvian she preferred was still in there somewhere.

“In my affected state, I allowed some other vampires to take their aggression out on me. They drained my blood. It was then that I came back to myself.”

Okay, not what she’d expected him to say.

“You let some other vampires beat you up?”

“Yes.”

For some reason, that really didn’t sit well with her vision of him. To her, he was a strong male, self-assured, confident. Allowing someone to kick his ass was just wrong.

“Why?” she asked, incredulous.

“It seemed an easy way to end the torment.”

Sienna frowned.
From hot and cold to nothing. Spock.
“You mean feeling emotions, don’t you?”

“Are emotions not the reason for which many humans commit suicide?” he asked pragmatically.

Okay, he had her there. “Wait, you wanted them to
kill
you?”

He nodded, his expression giving nothing away. “Yes.”

“Would they have?”

“Most certainly.”

She blinked a few times. The guy had issues, that much was clear. He repressed his emotions to an unnatural degree and then wanted to die when they broke free of their confinement? Sheesh. But she wasn’t willing to give up on him just yet. The attraction she felt for him was still too powerful to walk away.

“So, what happened? I mean, you’re obviously not dead. How did you get away?”

Expression completely neutral, voice inflectionless, he replied, “After regaining clarity of mind, I was able to extract myself from their ministrations.”

She looked at him carefully for a long moment, taking in his muscular body, and remembered the easy way in which he moved—balanced, fluid. The male was a natural born predator—regardless of the fact that he was a vampire. Of course he had been able to ‘extract himself from their ministrations’ as he worded it. She wondered just how drained he had been at the time and how hard it had been for him. Since he was sitting here next to her, she guessed it didn’t really matter.

“So, now you’re back to being impassive?”

“Yes.”

Part of her couldn’t believe that he was telling her all of this, the other part was wondering why. Knox had said Greyvian wasn’t the type to talk much and from what she’d seen so far, the blonde wasn’t wrong. So, why now? Why was he telling her that he had felt emotions but that they were just the result of some bad blood and now they were gone? Did he really expect her to believe him? Did he really expect that she had forgotten the way he had reacted when she’d first walked into the apartment and he’d gotten a whiff of her? He hadn’t been under the influence then.

Folding one leg up in front of herself, she made sure her skirt was decently arranged, then rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand so that she could study his expressionless face in as obvious a manner as possible—while at the same time, perhaps showing a little leg. He accepted her regard easily, holding her eyes the entire time. It was still unnerving, and her heart began to race a mile a minute as she contemplated pulling him up on his attempt at deception, but she wasn’t going to be intimidated right now.

“You know you can’t fool me, don’t you?” she asked, deciding to tackle the issue head on.

He said nothing and she felt a blush creep up her cheeks. She wasn’t usually so confrontational with people, preferring easy conversation to anything serious, but she didn’t have long with Greyvian, seeing as he’d probably disappear as soon as Jacob’s transition was over, so she had to work fast.

“Don’t think I forget the way you reacted to me before you’d had that bad blood. You were ready and roaring to go way before you got some drugs in your system. I think they just served to loosen up some of your iron control.”

“Do you?” There was a dangerous edge to his voice that told her she was right and it was further proved when a muscle in his jaw ticked as he heard it too.

“You know, you don’t need to hold on so tightly. Feeling emotion isn’t a bad thing. Even when they’re not the good ones. It’s better to face them, work through them, and then let them go. It’s not good to repress these things. Let go a bit. Live a little.”

She could hardly believe she was saying these things to him, especially considering what Knox had told her about Greyvian’s upbringing; about what he, himself, had told her about being pursued for over a century by people who wanted him dead. Still, life was what you made it. You had to see the lighter side of life just to ease the suffering of living.

“You’d prefer that I was one moment away from killing you?” His voice was soft, but there was a note of the deadly serious about it.

“Would you really?”

He didn’t hesitate in his reply. “Yes.”

Sienna froze. “Why?”

“The truth, or something to make you feel better?”

Running her fingers through her hair, she mulled over the question, at the same time trying to slow her racing heart. This wasn’t a conversation you had every day.

“The truth, please,” she replied when she thought her voice wouldn’t come out as a croak.

“Alright,” he said, pale eyes unreadable. “When I feed I become a mindless beast. Nothing exists for me but the taste of the blood. Nothing but the death of my donor will snap me out of it.”

To her surprise, and she thought maybe to his, she smiled and said, “That sounds more like something to make me feel better.”

“How so?”

“Well, being unable to control yourself is better than the alternative.”

He cocked his head to the side and waited for her to explain herself.

“
Wanting
me dead because you relish the kill.”

“Who says I don’t?” he challenged, giving her pause.

“You did,” she replied, remembering his words. “When you said that nothing but the death of the donor snaps you out of it. You could have said that nothing but the death of the donor
satisfies
you. That would have pointed to enjoying it. But you didn’t. You said that it snaps you out of it. Two very different things.”

He shook his head as if disagreeing with her and said, “You put too much stock in words, Sienna.”

She hugged her leg tight to her chest and felt a little chill run down her spine. “Are you saying you do enjoy it, then?”

His pale eyes darkened slightly. “I’ve killed thousands of humans, Sienna. Don’t you think I’d be a raving lunatic by now if I didn’t enjoy it at all?”

Thousands. She swallowed hard, not ready for that kind of honesty on the subject just yet. She supposed it was her fault for asking. Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe him a monster.

“You’re not a monster,” she said aloud, more for her benefit than his she suspected.

He smirked at her. “Just because you’re attracted to me doesn’t change the fact that I kill people on a regular basis, Sienna.”

Why did he keep saying her name? The sound of it on his lips was such a distraction.

“But you could have killed me a hundred times over already,” she rationalised, unwilling to believe that it was just her attraction to him that made her think he didn’t kill for pleasure. “I practically begged you to last night and instead you got up and left the room.”

He raised one of his perfect blue-black eyebrows at her. “Maybe I like to play with my food first.”

A buzz of excitement flashed through her at his words. Her breath caught in her throat. Oh, the ways in which she would like those words to be true.