Tall, Silent & Lethal (Pyte/Sentinel #4)(69)

“Go away,” she muttered angrily, pulling her knees up and hugging them tightly to her chest. She looked so damn lost and scared that all he wanted to do was pull her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay, but he couldn’t do that.

Right now Cloe was terrified and confused, not to mention getting closer and closer to losing control of the monster inside her, and he was afraid of doing anything that would make it worse for her. He’d hoped that she would be relaxed after her bath. It would have made the transition to drinking blood easier, but somehow that plan hadn’t worked. He still couldn’t figure out where he’d gone wrong.

Women loved baths and they especially loved being pampered. At least, he’d always thought so. His stepmother had always seemed to enjoy it when his father would pamper and spoil her as did his aunts and the servants that had worked for his family. He’d seen more than one maid giggle and blush under the attentions of an admirer when they were surprised with bouquets of flowers, chocolates and gifts. But Cloe, as he was beginning to understand, was not a typical woman. She hadn’t appreciated his attempts to help her relax. Every time he realized that she wasn’t enjoying herself he tried harder to help her relax, but nothing seemed to work.

Now they were out of time and he was running out of options. If he didn’t do something soon she was going to fall prey to what Ephraim had referred to as bloodlust and if that happened, he was afraid of what that kind of loss of control would do to a woman like Cloe. He couldn’t take back what he’d done to her, but he could make this transition easier for her, but only if she let him.

“Just leave me alone,” Cloe mumbled, absently shoving his hand away, clearly intent on continuing to sit on the bathroom floor feeling sorry for herself.

With another sigh, he sat down in front of her. He ignored the murderous glare that she shot him since acknowledging that she had every right to go for his balls was counterproductive at the moment. He decided to try another approach to get her to listen before he was forced to finally give up, drag her to the kitchen and force feed her a half dozen bags of blood before this f**ked up situation got any worse.

“Cloe,” he said, pausing as he tried to figure out what he could possibly say to convince her to listen to him and trust him when Cloe gave him the opening that he needed.

“I just want to go home,” she mumbled pathetically, averting her eyes as she roughly rubbed the back of her arm across her eyes, letting him know just how upset and terrified she really was and breaking his heart. More than anything he wished that he could take her in his arms, hold her tightly and make all of this go away, but he couldn’t.

“Cloe-”

“I’m not going to tell anyone about any of this. I just can’t deal with being here, Christofer,” she said slowly, clearly struggling not to lose what little control she had left.

He thought about lying to her, telling her that everything would be okay and that this wasn’t really a big deal, but he couldn’t lie to her. It killed him to see a strong woman like Cloe breaking down like this, but if it helped him explain to her why it was so important for her to stay here then he was going to be blunt with her and pretend that it didn’t kill him to be the one to destroy her last shred of hope.

“If you leave right now, Cloe, you will kill someone before the night is over,” he explained softly, praying that his tone was enough to soften the blow. Judging by the way that she’d flinched as though he’d struck her along with the absolute look of horror on her face, he realized there was nothing that he could say or do that would make this easier.

So he stopped trying.

“I would never-” she started to protest with a determined shake of her head, but he didn’t allow her to finish, knowing that the words would come back to haunt her one day.

“Yes, you would,” he said firmly, reaching out and taking one of her trembling hands into both of his. “You think that you can control this, that you can control what you are, but the truth of the matter is, Cloe, that right now you pose a danger to every man, woman and child that makes the mistake of crossing your path.”

“You don’t know that,” she bit out tightly even as her stomach rumbled viciously as if to give credence to his words.

“Yes,” he said, looking up and meeting her terrified gaze, “I do.”

*-*-*-*

“I would never hurt anyone,” Cloe said weakly as the truth of his words sank in.

But that’s not why she was starting to believe him.

The reason that she was starting to believe everything that he was telling her was quite simple. The tenuous grip that she had on her self-control was quickly slipping away with every passing second. If she didn’t get away from him or figure out another way to get through this, any other way, she wasn’t going to be able to ignore Christofer’s scent for much longer and that would destroy her last hope that she wasn’t really a monster.

She refused to accept this.

She didn’t want to be like this, didn’t want to crave something so wrong and she sure as hell didn’t want to worry about losing control and-

“I can help you, Cloe,” Christofer said, cutting into her panicked thoughts before they could take her to a place where she had no hope of escape. “I can help you get through this, learn to live with the changes. I can show you how to stay in control, but I can’t help you unless you let me.”