“He’s making it sound more serious than it is,” I said, trying to pry myself from his grasp.
“No,” Lucian said with a calm, reassuring little chuckle. “I’m afraid, if anything, I’ve underplayed the intensity of our feelings.” We reached the basement, which gave Lucian the unfortunate chance to stop and tilt my chin up so I had to look into his obnoxiously amused eyes. “Every time I look at my darling Cara, I think my heart might burst.”
“Your balls are going to burst if you don’t stop,” I warned through tight lips, hoping Anya wouldn’t hear me.
He raised one of those thick, perfect eyebrows of his and grinned. “In fact, the thing I love most about her is how willful she is. How passionate.”
I was going to kick his undead ass if I got the chance for this.
Anya, who normally paid almost no interest to anything except her hopeless quest, was hanging on Lucian’s every word. “Star crossed love,” she whispered.
“No, no,” I said quickly, stepping back from Lucian, which only let him smoothly take my hand and accidentally spin me in a kind of dance move I wasn’t supposed to be capable of. Next thing I knew, he had a hand on the small of my back and our bodies were pressed close together.
“Yes, yes,” he said.
Anya clapped her hands, then wiped at her eye. “Is beautiful. So beautiful.”
I discreetly lifted my knees between Lucian’s leg in a ball-kicking equivalent of a warning shot. He flashed that dimple at me, then let me go. “She is, isn’t she?”
“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable on Anya’s lovely couch?” I suggested. “I don’t know where you got all this sudden energy to profess your undying love for me, but just a few minutes ago you looked like you could really use a nap, right?” I added, giving him the eyes that said you had better play along, asshole.
Lucian hesitated just long enough to let me know he was not just hot, ancient, and most likely a supernatural creature. He was also a devious flirt who enjoyed seeing me squirm. But after a few heartbeats, he dutifully yawned and nodded. “A nap would be rejuvenating.”
“Yes. Now go lay your big ass on that couch. I need to get to work.”
Lucian shot me one last blood-heating look, then went to stretch himself out on the cat-ravaged couch.
I grinned to myself, then sat down and tried—but mostly failed—to ignore the huge man lying just a few feet behind me and the pulsing thrum of my heartbeat. It was strange, like each beat of my heart sent out a little probe in his direction, checking that we were still close enough.
I started going through the motions of work. Removing samples from the fridge and spreading them on slides. Checking them under the microscope and running their numbers to gather data on various treatments I needed to test.
I’d been working for about an hour when a thought occurred to me. I glanced at Lucian, who was sleeping on the couch. I wasn’t sure if he was messing with me, but he was lying on his back with his arms crossed over his chest and his legs sticking straight out like the picture of a vampire in a coffin.
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help smiling.
When Anya wasn’t watching, I pricked my finger and put some of my own blood on a slide, then looked under the microscope.
At first glance, it was completely normal. Just the endless sea of red blood cells bobbing around like abandoned floaties in a huge pool. But there was something wrong.
Little black, spikey things were moving around the sample with purpose. They’d occasionally swarm a damaged cell, vibrate against it, and then it would look completely repaired when they moved away. But more oddly, I noticed they were all drifting in a certain direction. Each of them was moving to the right of the slide and beginning to gather at the edge of the sample.
I frowned down at it, trying to puzzle out what it meant for a while before I lifted my eyes from the microscope and looked to my right.
To where Lucian was lying on the couch.
I studied the sample again and confirmed the little black specks were now all crammed up against the edge of the sample on the right side like they were trying to get to him.
I sat back in the chair, staring at the wall, heart thumping away like I’d just run a marathon.
All day, I’d been letting the impossible facts Lucian presented me with to slowly sink in my brain. It had honestly been easier to turn it all into a difficult to believe joke. Just something to play along with while I tried to make sense of whatever was going on with my body and the weird craving I had to be near him. But seeing the sample of my blood made it all feel concrete in a way nothing else had yet. The proof was right there in my blood.