Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(25)

“She was a good soul,” he said. “A kind person. She didn’t want to do harm. Just like you.”

Ahmare laughed in a harsh way. “I spend my nights teaching self-defense. It’s all about punches and kicks, target practice and technique.”

“So innocent people don’t get hurt.”

“I suppose I’ve never thought of it that way.” She eased back and assessed her work. “Other side. And stay really still. I’m getting close to your skin—I wish we had shaving cream to soften things up.”

“There’s running water in that sink. And a bar of soap. Or at least that’s how I left this place when I built it.”

She lowered the blade. “You did all this?”

Duran looked around. “It was part of my grand scheme, and now just a relic to the best laid plans. My mahmen used to help me sneak out of our room. Every time she created a diversion and I went into air ducts, I know she hoped I would escape and never come back. My idea was to get her out, leave her here, and return for her after I was done with killing my father. Not the way any of it went.”

He frowned and focused properly on Ahmare. “You know . . . I never expected to tell anyone all of this.”

“Because it’s private?”

Duran looked away. “Something like that.”

In fact, he’d assumed the only person he’d ever open up to was his mahmen when they were reunited in the Fade—after he’d found some way of dying without committing suicide as soon as he killed his father.

That had been his ultimate endgame, that loophole in the whole if-you-kill-yourself-you-can’t-get-into-the-Fade thing.

Then again, maybe all that afterlife stuff was just like his father’s belief that you couldn’t cause the death of your own young and live on. Maybe it was just superstition. In any event, given what he had learned of mortal existence—and this was even before Chalen had gotten his claws into him—skipping his mortal due on earth for an eternity with the only loved one he’d ever had had seemed like a no-brainer.

But now . . . as he looked into this female’s eyes, he could sense himself making a shift on that one.

Ahmare kind of made him want to stick around.

Even though that was crazy talk.





14




THE SOAP AND WATER were a godsend, Ahmare decided. Without them, she would have turned Duran’s face into a Halloween mask.

“Okay, I think we’re done.”

She eased back—and could not look away from what she had revealed. During the shaving, she had been paying so much attention to not cutting him that she’d gotten no impression of his face. Now, with the overgrowth gone, it was as if she were meeting him for the first time.

He had hollows in his cheeks and his jawline was too sharp. Eyes that had been calculating and aggressive now seemed wary.

The lips were even better than she’d imagined.

“That bad, huh,” he muttered as he put the bowl of soapy water and the cloth she’d used aside.

Ahmare wanted to tell him that, on the contrary, he was attractive. Very attractive. Beautiful, in a word. But some things were better left unsaid.

Would that they had remained unthought.

“Will you shave my head, too?” he asked.

“Oh, God . . . not the hair.”

“I don’t have lice, you know.”

At that, he reached across his chest and scratched the outside of his opposite arm. Bug bite, probably. She had them, too, but at least she knew they didn’t have any ticks. After their barrel-ass through the brush, if they’d been human, they would have been covered with those carriers of Lyme disease, but vampire blood beat deet any night of the week when it came to that particular variety of bloodsuckers, a professional courtesy extended in both directions that unfortunately didn’t apply to mosquitoes.

“You hair is . . .” She wiped her mouth for no reason. “Well, it’s . . . too beautiful to cut.”

Shit. Had she just shared with him That Which Should Not Be Spoken?

Yup, going by his shocked expression, she had.

Duran was beautiful all over, though, in the way only a survivor could be. He had been through such cruelty, the road map of salted scars on his skin the kind of thing that told her way too much of what had been done to him. And the fact that he had somehow been strong enough to endure and not come out the other side insane, mean, or a vegetable, made him stronger than anyone she had ever met.

God, those humans in those gyms—hefting weights, worrying about whey protein, and posing in front of a fan base that lived and cheered only inside their own heads—were CGIs of strength compared to this male.

And yet as powerful as Duran’s inner core was—and she wasn’t talking about his abs—here he was sitting in front of her, staring up at her with a shyness that suggested, however nuts it seemed, that he cared what she thought he looked like.

That her opinion mattered.

That he wanted her to like him. Be attracted to him. Be captivated a little, in spite of their crazy circumstances.

“I am,” she whispered.

“You are . . . what?”

“Attracted to you.” She cleared her throat. “That’s what you’re wondering right now, aren’t you.”

His eyes shifted away so fast, he had to catch himself on the edge of the bunk. “How did you know.”