Night's Honor (Elder Races #7)(34)

Tess looked very different, and he absorbed the changes with a blink. She wore the loose black training pants that were de rigueur at the estate, along with a formfitting black tank top. Her dark hair had grown a touch longer. The ends now kissed along the graceful wings of her collarbones.

She had also lost some weight, and healthy muscle flowed under the tanned skin of her slim arms. She didn’t move quite as fluidly as one might expect from the changes in her physique. Instead, she held herself with a certain stiffness that indicated she was more than a little sore. Xavier knew from experience that Raoul could be a demanding taskmaster, and it was clear that he had not spared her.

Her face looked more angular as well, but not in an unhealthy way. The change was small but startling. It highlighted the proud lines in her bone structure, and he realized the casual eye would no longer travel over her in search of brighter creatures. She had been pretty enough in her own quiet way before, but now she had grown arresting.

He frowned, troubled by the realization.

As she grew closer, he could hear the sound of her heart pounding, and taste the scent of her fear.

Abruptly his disquiet turned to disappointment and anger. He snapped, “Have I given you any reason to believe you are in danger from me? Have I not done the exact opposite, and tried my very best to make you feel at ease here, in my own home?”

The look in her large, dark eyes turned wry. She didn’t hesitate, but approached him at the same, steady pace as she had entered the room, even though her heart rate sped up even further.

When she reached the empty armchair, she sat and folded her hands together in a deliberate mimicry of his position. “What does reason have to do with fear?”

That drew him up short. He stared at her, eyes narrowed, while a muscle bunched in his jaw. Moments ticked by as they regarded each other. Her expression was resolute, her gaze steady. Raoul had the right of it; she was tenacious.

He did something that had become completely unnecessary over the last several hundred years, once he had died as a human man. He drew in a breath.

Abruptly, he grew aware of his own uncharacteristic loss of temper, and his anger turned onto himself. It had been a mistake to try to see her tonight, when he had only just returned.

“My apologies,” he said, his tone abrupt. “I should not have sent for you tonight. I’m tired and low on patience, and I should have known better.”

Startlement flashed in her gaze, and she lowered her eyelids. “It isn’t your fault,” she said. “It’s mine. I’m sorry.”

Was it her fault, he thought bitterly, when she faced a predator that could overpower her completely and feed on her until she died?

Or wasn’t her fear the most reasonable reaction after all?

EIGHT

He couldn’t remember the last time he was so irritated with himself. Slicing his hand through the air, he rejected her words with the gesture. “We should start over. Or better still, we should meet on another night.”

He watched her lovely mouth compress and counted three of her quickened heartbeats. Then she said in a measured, courteous tone, “How did your trip to New York go? Good, I hope?”

Coming from her, it was a major effort at conciliation. Just as abruptly as his temper had flared, it faded completely. “It was good, thank you. How has the training gone these last six weeks?”

She glanced at him from underneath her lowered lids, a sly, wary look. “It’s been eventful. A lot of hard work.”

His mouth twitched. Watching her attempt polite conversation with him was rather excruciating, and he didn’t know whether to be amused or irritated by it. “I’ll have the real truth now, if you please.”

“It’s been bloody awful,” she confessed in a rush. “I know he’s a friend of yours, but Raoul is a sadist.”

His eyebrows shot up. Whatever he had expected from this conversation, this wasn’t it. “He is?”

She nodded. “Ibuprofen has become a staple in my diet, but I can now run for a full hour, although I slow down quite a bit toward the end. I can also strip and load four different guns, and hit the bull’s-eye on the target nine times out of ten. And I still have no idea what the daggers at dinner mean.”

He repeated, “Daggers at dinner.”

“You know, the little ones that are set at the twelve o’clock position at each dinner plate on a formal table setting.” She glanced with undisguised longing at the opened bottle of Chateau Sauvignon sitting on the table beside her chair.

He pinched his nose and smiled. “Do help yourself to some wine. I’ll call for a fresh glass.”

She sat straight and reached for Raoul’s wineglass. “Thanks, don’t bother. I don’t mind using this one. It’s not like anybody at the estate is sick.”

“True enough.” He watched her pour the wine into the glass. Its color wine was lovely in the firelight, red like rubies, like blood. “I’ve asked Raoul to prepare his phlebotomy equipment. It’s past time you offer blood. Unless, of course, you wish for me to take it from the vein.”

She drank half the glass at once. “If you’re leaving the option up to me, I would rather not yet.” Her dark gaze regarded him around the edge of the wineglass. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

“I do not change my mind about things such as this.” He watched her for the tiny tells, and they were certainly there. The slender muscles in her throat flexed as she swallowed, and the way she held her mouth changed. Her expression seemed too complex for mere relief, but perhaps contained a hint of disappointment as well.