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I don’t know if it’s the stardust leaving my body, the dopamine crash, the panic breaking, or whatever just happened in that office. I can barely stay awake. My eyes keep closing. My head drops, and Nero catches it in the crook of his arm, then brushes white hair out of my face with surprising care.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” I mumble.
“Yeah.”
“It was just one time.”
“Of course,” he adds.
“I’m not into wolves.”
“No,” he says. “You’re not.”
The last thing I see before sleep takes me is his dimpled smile and the white flash of his fangs.
CHAPTER 23
LOOSE ENDS
After that night at Moon, I didn’t see Nero again. I remember fragments of the ride home. The leather seat, the city lights moving past the window, the weight of his arm. His fingers brushing hair from my face. His deep voice whispering something.
It wasn’t the worst state I’d ever come home in. Back when I was doing all sorts of drugs, I had no memory of getting home, who I was with, or where I’d been.
Sava texted me in the morning. He followed us home to make sure I was all right. He doesn’t like wolves, and he doesn’t trust them.
As for me and Nero, that went too far.
I was vulnerable. Alone. Half-dead from memories, stardust, and other people’s pain. I wanted to feel something that belonged to me, even if it hurt. I thought I could handle myself because I always handle myself. For a whole week, I fought my demons alone, and then he appeared under my building, waiting for me, taking my hand, giving me some pathetic little imitation of a relationship I haven’t had in years.
Maybe I wanted to pretend.
One night. Boyfriend and girlfriend. His hand in mine. His body behind me on the dance floor. His jacket over my shoulders. His arms around me in the back of the car.
That’s the dangerous part. Not the sex. Not the pain. Not even him.
The pretending.
The night itself is a blur after the amount of stardust I took. It’s a miracle my heart kept beating. I remember pain, mine and his. I remember his skin under my fingers and my shadows crawling into his throat. I could have killed him. Easily. I’m not sure he understands that.
Or maybe he does and is more insane than I am.
Either way, that was it.
Nero clearly has a god complex, and I don’t need another bag of problems dumped into my life. It was fun. Intense. Messy. Nothing more.
I spend the next few days sorting pieces of my life back into something that can stand. Lex kept his word, and one hundred thousand dollars appear in my account. It feels like a breath of fresh air.
I leave Voss Institute after covering the first renovation payments. Valerie looks relieved enough to cry, which makes me want to leave faster. If only she knew what it cost me, and not in money. I step outside and head toward my car when I see the black Range Rover parked behind it.
Vampires.
An elegant human servant approaches me with hands folded in front of him. His eyes don’t quite meet mine.
“Miss Voss,” he says. “Marcus wishes to speak with you.”
The hair along my spine rises. I’m ballsy and sure of myself, but no one wants to share a car with a five-hundred-year-old vampire. Reluctantly, I move toward the car. The door opens from the inside, and cold spills out before I even climb in.
Marcus sits beside me in a gray suit and white shirt with polished leather shoes. His blond hair falls in soft waves around a face that belongs on a Vogue cover. One thing I’ll give him – compared to Nyx’s vampires, and aside from the hair, he doesn’t look like someone from another era.
