CHAPTER SEVEN
He didn't care. He really didn't. She was fine, and if she wasn't, who cared? He hadn't hurt her.
He checked on her for the eleventh time in sixty minutes, and was relieved to see the bruise on the underside of her jaw fading to a mere shadow. Guilt rolled off his shoulders like a boulder.
To save time and steps—if he left he'd just be in here five minutes later—he gave up the pretense of indifference, sat in the chair beside the bed, cupped his chin in his hand, and watched her sleep.
Jane scowled, even in the throes of unconsciousness. It would have made him smile, if he hadn't felt so angry and betrayed.
Betrayed? All right, tell the truth and shame the devil...yes. Betrayed. And angry and sick at heart and furious with the little twit tied to his bed. Most of his anger was directed at himself, it was true, but he had a nice helping saved for Miss Jane.
She'd fooled him; that was all. A simple thing, but devastating. She made him believe she accepted the monster, when in fact she most assuredly had not. The duplicitous wretch agreed to join him for dinner to placate him, then made arrangements to slink out of town like a thief, but not before putting hunters on his back trail. If he hadn't shown up early to escort her to dinner, she would have disappeared and he might never have known what had become of her. Would have wasted years of his life wondering about her fate.
Or might not have wondered at all, if her hunters had been able to kill him, a possibility that could not be discounted. He was good, he knew, and a skilled survivor, but no one could avoid their fate forever. His was to die at the hands of the noble...or at least the non-vampiric.
Instead, he'd taken in the situation at a glance, and acted accordingly. Well, all right, that was a rather large lie. He had panicked—all he could think of was to get her home, stop her from leaving him. Leaving town, rather. (Yes, that’s what he meant, leaving town.) The one bit of luck was that it had happened too quickly for the lone witness—the doorman—to see much more than a swirl of cloth. He’d been careful all the way home and was certain they hadn’t been followed. Wherever and whomever her hunters were, he’d moved before they could get into position. Or he’d lost them on the way back to his building. Praise whomever for small favors. Dusk and speed had been his friends, as they were for most monsters, even if Jane was not.
And that was the rub of it. He'd allowed himself to forget, for one evening, that he was the troll under the bridge, the wolf at the door. He had forgotten there could be no relationship with a woman other than the most carnal type. He wouldn't have vampire women, and mortal women wouldn't have him. And that was fine. Sure it was.
But Jane would pay for making him forget. She'd pay for making him think, however briefly, that he was a man first and a beast second.