Night's Honor (15 page)

Instead, he gestured to the mat, and they took their accustomed places. Adrenaline spiked her senses as she readied herself, bringing her weight to the balls of her feet, but her adrenaline spiked every morning just before Raoul started to pummel her, and besides, as enhanced as he was, she didn't think he had a Vampyre's sensitivity to pick up on anything unusual.

He paused, studying the placement of her feet. “Are you sure you don't need to do any more stretching first?”

“I'm sure,” she told him. She brought her hands up.

“Very well,” he said. “On your guard, if you please.”

It was how he started every torture session. As soon as she heard the words, she whirled and sprinted toward the punching bag in another corner of the room.

What would he do? Would he chase her? He was so much faster—she would only get a split second from surprise. She lunged as hard and as fast as she could.

Then she heard him, coming after her. Dimly, she was aware of the others, talking and exclaiming.

Three more steps. Two.

His fingers brushed the back of her neck. She twisted away from the touch, dove, rolled and grabbed for the gun that she had duct-taped to the bottom of the punching bag.

Bracing her shoulders against the floor, she brought the gun up just as Raoul reached for her again.

He reared back, his gaze flaring.

She sighted down the gun, aimed at his heart and said, “Bang, bang. You're dead.”

Silence fell over the gym. Raoul didn't move. His astonished expression settled into something calmer and much more deadly. “How did you get that?”

She tilted the nose of the barrel away from him and opened up her hand, loosening her grip on the gun. “It's not loaded.”

Relaxing, he took it from her and checked the cartridge, then checked the chamber. “That didn't answer my question. You don't have the passcode to the weapons locker.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Diego. He shook his head at her, grinning. She rolled to her feet. “Trade secret. Did I surprise you?”

Raoul gave her a speaking look, eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”

She knew he remembered their talk from the day before as well as she did. Training was all well and good, but in real life there weren't any rules to a fight. You either won or you didn't. This time, she had cheated, but she had also won.

She smiled. “I think I just changed the conversation.”

Nothing changed about the rest of her day, and yet everything had. At lunch, most of the guys gave her broad grins, and Marc gave her a friendly wink.

As she helped to clear away the dishes, Angelica said to her, “Don't let it go to your head. You got lucky. You still have a lot to learn.”

“I know,” she told the older woman. “I'm working on it.”

Angelica's only reply was a sniff, but her attitude toward Tess seemed to relax a bit too, and Tess thought she might have gotten a step closer to becoming part of the group.

Part of the family, really. The thought made her pause, but it was true. All the attendants really were like a family. They spent their energies working for the common good.

Maybe she had taken only one step out of many, but . . . It felt good. She liked it here. She liked these people.

For the first time since she had arrived, she considered what it might be like to stay long-term and plan for a future here. When she left Las Vegas and Malphas's employ, all she could think about was getting away and trying to find a bolt-hole in which to hide. Long-term plans hadn't factored into her thinking.

What if she did choose to stay?

She couldn't train full-time for the rest of her life, nor would she want to. Eventually she would have to take on other tasks, but maybe Xavier or Raoul could give her meaningful, interesting work. As she had worked to get through school, she had been so ambitious. When she had graduated, she knew Malphas was dangerous even as she took a job working in one of his casinos.

But making money had been her biggest priority. She had been so determined she would never again be as poor as she had been growing up.

She told herself she was being worldly, working for a pariah Djinn. She wanted to be able to afford nice things, to have a fashionable wardrobe and a fat 401(k), to go on vacations to Hawaii and Europe, and retire by the time she was fifty. Now, when she looked back, she could see how foolish and shortsighted she had been.

Here, she might have a place and people to belong to. It was good to be able to go down the path to the beach and walk along the shore, and at night the estate was peaceful, surrounded as it was by forest and wreathed in fresh ocean air. Once she thought she might miss the bright lights of Las Vegas, but she didn't. She liked the quiet and the seclusion of the forest that surrounded the estate.

She might have been a fool once, but she didn't think she was being one twice. She knew there would be much more involved in her position as she finished her training. She had to complete her pact with Xavier, and one of the simplest yet hardest obstacles for her to overcome would be to walk calmly into a room filled with Vampyres.

Also, training so hard, not only in hand to hand but with weapons, might be to cover unlikely eventualities, but those eventualities did occur. Some day shit would get real, and some kind of confrontation would happen. But even that thought didn't deter her. It was good to feel empowered, and to know that because of the work she did now, she might one day have an active hand in shaping critical events.

As the day wore on and evening approached, her good mood dissipated, and she grew more and more nervous.

Honestly, she didn't know how to feel about Xavier after the previous night. She only knew that just because something had changed, maybe even something important, it didn't take away her discomfort at being around him.

But discomfort wasn't the same as the kind of outright panic she had been in when she had first met him. Discomfort was an entirely different animal. She had already taken an important stride forward.

After supper, when it came time for her evening lessons, she walked into the main house to the formal dining area, where she found Xavier standing at one of the windows, looking out over the lawn.

Reflexively, her gaze flew to the outside scene framed by the tall window. The last of the daylight covered the foliage and emerald lawn in a transparent mantle of heavy gold, but the angle of the sunlight came nowhere near the window where he stood.

He wore black slacks, a white shirt and a gray jacket, and his dark hair was pulled neatly away from his quiet, reflective face. His shirt was open at the neck and he wore no tie. She was beginning to recognize that this was his casual attire, yet he achieved a certain elegance, due to his erect carriage and natural poise more than anything he chose to wear. She suspected he would embody that same kind of elegance even if he wore jeans and a T-shirt.

As she paused on the doorstep, he turned to walk toward her, fixing his intelligent, keen gaze on her face. She felt her damn heart rate speed up again, and what little poise she had fell apart completely.

She bolted into the room. “Hi, I hope I'm not late. Beautiful evening outside, huh? Not that you're able to go out to enjoy any of it, at least until the sun disappears—but maybe I'm not supposed to mention something like that. You know, it does seem a little like pointing out someone's pimples. . . .”

He seemed to move at a casual, unhurried pace, yet somehow he appeared directly in front of her, which brought her to an abrupt halt. Amusement tilted the corners of his eyes. “Trust me when I say this—that is not at all how you should enter a room. Ever.”

“I just thought I might be late,” she said stupidly, looking up into his smiling gaze. His presence was so large and intense, she was surprised to discover that he was only a few inches taller than she.

He put one slim, strong hand on her arm and gently turned her around. “Enter the room once again, and this time, do so slowly, if you please.”

Ah, that phrase again. It would be her nemesis yet.

Intensely conscious of his touch, she walked back to the door. To her own frustration, she noticed her all too human reactions were out of control again. Her breathing accelerated, along with her heartbeat, and a fine tremor shivered through her hands.

Still, it wasn't quite from panic. Not quite from terror. She knew he wouldn't hurt her. She had no idea why she was reacting so strongly to him, and she had no words to describe it. He simply approached, and all her systems went haywire.

Baffled at herself, she plunged into talk again. “You should know, I'm beginning to develop a conditioned reaction to the phrase ‘if you please.'”

“Are you?” The Vampyre quirked an eyebrow as he kept a smooth pace beside her. “And why is that?”

“Raoul says it all the time, usually just before he slams me to the ground or throws me into a wall.” Reaching the doorway, she used it as an excuse to pull away from his hand as she turned to face him again.

He frowned, his lips drew tight and the small scar at the side of his mouth whitened. Her gaze lingered on it. She had seen that scar whiten once before. It was a tiny tell, and she wasn't sure what it meant, except that it revealed some kind of deeper emotion.

He said, “I noticed you were moving rather stiffly yesterday evening.”

She knew where his thoughts went, and she met his gray-green gaze. “It's all right. I'm handling it.”

He shook his head. “You should not have to deal with pain, or handle any discomfort.”

The way he said it made her pause as her perception underwent another small but irrevocable shift. If Xavier refused to take advantage of his human attendants during a blood offering, then the act of the blood offering itself was all for their benefit, not for his. Theoretically, Raoul could draw blood from everyone, and Xavier could get his needs met quite well from a distance.

So he didn't say what he had because he needed or wanted the blood offering. He said it out of concern for her well-being.

Oh hell, he was going to make her give up the whole concept of “monster” entirely, wasn't he?

“I understand,” she said softly. “And I'm on my journey toward making that choice. But for now, do you know what I did this morning?”

He studied her. “Raoul told me what happened in the gym. You surprised him.”

“Yes.” She pointed to her own chest. “I did that. Nobody enhanced me, or gave me special powers. I thought the plan up, and I executed it. And because I've worked my ass off these last six weeks, I was fast enough to pull it off. Barely, but I did, and that feels nice. I know I'm not where I need to be yet, but for now I feel pretty good about where I'm at.”

His lean jaw angled out slightly, but he refrained from saying anything further. Instead, he stood back. “Fair enough. Now, please go down the hall and come back in. Show me that you know how to walk, not bolt like a runaway horse.”

She sighed but complied. As she walked into the room again, she found that he had moved some distance away. When she paused, he walked toward her, moving with his characteristic seamless, balletic grace. She watched warily as he gave her a slight bow, inclined his head and offered his arm.

“Good evening. May I escort you into dinner?”

She squinted one eye at him. “I'm supposed to be your attendant, not a guest. Attendants are supposed to be invisible and anticipate your every need, not be escorted in to dinner.”

He sighed. “Well, I do not see any evidence of you anticipating my every need at the moment.”

“Didn't you ask me to walk out and come back in?” she said. “And didn't I do it?”

He looked at her in exasperation. “For the love of God,
querida
, do not argue over every little thing. Just go along with this.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, stung. Gingerly she put her hand into the crook of his elbow, feeling the bulk of hard muscle move underneath the cloth of his jacket like a panther's muscles shifting underneath its fur.

He led her around the table, smoothly matching his longer stride to hers. “If you were attending me at a function, what would you do?”

“How many attendants do you have with you?”

They reached where one of two formal dinner settings had been laid, and she waited while he pulled out the chair for her, then sat.

He said, “For this hypothetical scenario, I have just you in attendance.”

“Then I would keep pace a few steps behind you until we reached the room.” She watched him walk to the place setting on the opposite side of the table and sit. “After you sat down, I would take the position just behind your chair, so I could serve you wine or whatever else you might need. If this was a function without a banquet table, where people stood to mingle, I would find a place against a wall to stand and watch until I'm needed.”

“Very good.” With a flick of his long fingers, he indicated the place setting in front of her. “Now, can you explain this to me?”

She barely refrained from rolling her eyes, because she knew he would not appreciate it. Reaching for patience, she told him, “Of course I can. This is what Raoul has been teaching me for the last month and a half.”

“Then you should have no trouble demonstrating that knowledge to me, should you?” He sounded as if he might be reaching for patience too, although for the life of her she couldn't understand why.

A sigh escaped her before she could stop it. “Raoul and I have gone through table manners, a history of Vampyre customs, and what an attendant should and should not do for a wide variety of events. I just don't understand why you want to focus on this now, when I know all of it already.”

“Do you, indeed?” he said. His diction seemed to become even more perfect. She wondered if that might be some kind of warning sign, as he cocked his head, his mouth held at a slant. “Then perhaps you can kindly explain how this place setting would differ should an Elf be present.”