“Watch it,” Ty warned her as her head swiveled after another strange character, making her stumble over a bit of heaved sidewalk.
“I’m not staring,” she hissed, even as she goggled at a guy about her own age who was pretty cute, actually, and who’d managed to get his hair into foot-long liberty spikes all over his head. He winked at her, and Lily couldn’t help the answering smile, despite everything, before blushing and ducking her head. An instant later, Ty had silently caught her arm and looped it through his own.
“I’d thought it would go without saying, but flirting will also slow us down.”
She glowered at him and tried to pull away. “I’m not flirting. Not that it’s any of your business if I did.”
He gave her a quick look, and the intensity in those eyes made her want to melt into a puddle right there on the sidewalk. Stupid, she thought, her anger bubbling back to the surface.
“Mo bhilis, I thought I told you. For now, everything about you is my business.” His grip turned to iron, and she very nearly dug in her heels to let him try and drag her down the street. The strong suspicion that he actually would was the only thing that kept her walking.
“Don’t call me your stupid little pet name,” Lily muttered. “And don’t talk to me. I just want to get this over with.”
Ty blew out a long breath beside her, and his quick stride first slowed, then stopped. Lily reluctantly looked over at him as people flowed around them, unconcerned. Ty tipped his head back, looking into a sky too bright to reveal its stars. He was silent a moment, but Lily held her tongue, interested despite herself in what he would say.
“Look. About this morning…”
Lily watched his face and found that she didn’t have it in her to slice into him with a comeback. His uncertainty, and his sincerity, were both too real and too raw. After a moment, he lowered his head to meet her gaze with a look of grim determination.
“I shouldn’t have touched you. It isn’t like me to take advantage. Not like that. I don’t expect you to believe me, but that much is true.”
Lily tipped her head to one side, genuinely curious. “Then why did you?”
Ty pressed his lips together, looking at the ground with a frown. “I don’t know, Lily. Something about you… It doesn’t matter why,” he said, cutting himself off with a frustrated shake of his head. “What matters is that I started to lose control with you, and that can’t happen. Not when the most important thing is keeping you safe. Too much depends on it.”
“I wasn’t safe?” Lily asked, remembering the way she had felt in his arms, beautiful and powerful and as safe as she had ever felt in her life. Ty lifted his gaze to lock with hers, and the barely leashed hunger in it was stunning—and darkly thrilling.
“When I touch you,” he said softly, “I want my teeth in you. And that would mean the death of an entire dynasty. I can keep you safe from anything else—Damien, an entire army of Shades, anything that walks the night. I hadn’t realized I would have to work quite so hard to keep you safe from me.”
She was unused to blunt honesty, but it touched her in a way no other apology might have. Lily nodded. “Apology accepted. And… thank you.”
His dark brows winged up. “For?”
She gave him a small, tentative smile. “For explaining. And for bothering to apologize at all.”
“Oh. Well.” He ran a hand through his hair and found something interesting to focus on somewhere off to his left. “We should get going. Mabon’s not far, and I’d like to get there before the place is completely packed. The earlier it is, the better the chance we’ll be able to get a moment with Anura.”
They set off again, and this time Lily let her hand rest easily in the crook of Ty’s arm. Maybe it was foolish, but Ty’s uncomfortable honesty had made her only more certain that if she had to be dragged into the vampire underworld, he was the right man to keep her safe.
As they made their way down the street, Lily’s thoughts turned to Bay and the lunch date they were supposed to have had. Maybe she could find a way to call and just let her friend know she was okay, if she could ever get away from Ty long enough to do it. She had no doubt that Bay had discovered the mess left behind and had already assumed the worst. Knowing that this was causing her friend—who had one of the best hearts she’d ever encountered—pain was a terrible feeling.
One more thing to worry about. Though she supposed her parents would revel in it if she made the news, jumping at the chance to play the grieving victims. Finally, she’d done something that might please them.
Sighing, and annoyed at herself for the bitter turn her thoughts had taken, Lily tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and narrowly avoided another collision. Ty seemed to be navigating for one, not two, in his hurry to reach the club.
“I had no idea how many of you there were,” she said, throwing Ty’s “no staring” rule to the wind and craning her neck to take in everything she could. The neighborhood was a little dingy, but fascinating. And even though it was a Wednesday night, the streets were alive with the denizens of the underworld. There were a few regular people like her scattered about, but not many, and they stuck out like sore thumbs. Did they know what they walked among? Lily wondered. Did they care?
“Hmm?” Ty glanced at her absently. He seemed to be looking for something, and Lily could see, when she looked more closely, that he was scenting out the place too. Weird and kind of… cool, she decided. She would much rather be able to turn into a cat at will than be able to toss furniture with her mind.
“I didn’t know,” Lily repeated, and when he looked at her blankly, she realized he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. He stopped, arching an eyebrow at her as though she was speaking a foreign language. Lily sighed, glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then stood on tiptoe to reach his ear and whisper, “All of these vampires. I didn’t know there were so many of you!”
When she drew back, Ty finally seemed to understand, and amusement flickered across his serious features.
“Humans have the most ridiculous ideas,” Ty said as they walked, a bit more slowly now. “Those aren’t vampires. All mortal, I’m afraid.”
Lily frowned over at him. “Then where are the vampires?”
“Going about their business quietly, and probably stopping to laugh once in a while at the spectacle around them. Mabon was here before this crowd moved in, but I suppose it does give it some atmosphere.” He glanced around and snorted. “Fools, the lot of them. They sense us. They want what we have. They’ve no idea what they’re inviting.”
A group of college-aged girls swept by them, looking dark, gorgeous, and like they’d happily eat the heart of any man who crossed their path. Ty looked unimpressed, but Lily felt a pang of envy as she watched them go, imagining how drab she must seem in comparison. She’d always longed for the confidence to live completely out loud. Instead, she had become the quiet watcher, guarding her secrets, protecting what was hers. Blending in.
“You’re prettier,” Ty said, and she realized he’d been watching her, along with every transparent emotion that had crossed her face.
Lily looked at him, then away, flustered. “I thought you said you couldn’t read my mind.”
“I can’t. It’s right there on your face.”
Damn.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I just feel a little weird. This is like… like the prairie schoolmarm visits Wes Craven’s imagination. I look ridiculous wandering around here.”
Ty considered her as he steered her around a corner. “In my experience, the tastiest morsels require a bit of unwrapping. You shouldn’t worry so much. Queen Cobweb back there isn’t anything but wrapping. And trust me, she’d taste terrible.”
The icky face he made, so sincere, made her laugh.
That was, until she realized he’d steered her around the corner into a darkened alley. She tried to slow him down, but it worked about as well as it had the night before, which was not at all. Her heart began to hammer in her chest. They were, as she recalled, here because they planned on actually meeting more vampires. She just hadn’t counted on it happening quite so soon.
Not ever would have been preferable, but that ship had sailed.
About halfway down the alley, which was shrouded in darkness, Ty stopped and turned to face her. Lily saw the tension etched onto his features, and her own stress immediately went through the roof.
“Oh, God, don’t tell me. Is it Damien? Were we followed?” Her voice was shaky, and she felt only marginally better when Ty shook his head.
“No. It’s just… there’s something you need to put on before we go down.”
He dug in his pockets and pulled out a wad of fabric. Lily stared, confused, as he undid it, revealing a length of crimson velvet ribbon. She watched his fingers work, fascinated by the graceful elegance of them. She didn’t understand what the big deal was about the ribbon, but it had to be something worth worrying over. She hadn’t seen him this agitated since he’d scented whatever had been stalking them at the college.
Curious, nervous, Lily simply waited for him to explain.
“Lift your hair,” he said. She did, beginning to understand what he was going to do, if not the purpose of it. His skin brushed hers lightly as he looped the ribbon behind her neck, then tied it in a small bow at the side. He had to get close to do it, close enough for Lily to feel his breath on her face. She fought back a shiver, both wanting and not wanting his gentle ministrations to continue and remembering his warning.
He finished quickly enough, though Lily could swear his fingers lingered just a moment longer on the quickening beat of her pulse. In that instant, his eyes changed again, and she saw that terrible hunger, that longing. The beauty, and the sadness of it, took her breath away.
What happened to you? she wondered, recognizing unhealed wounds. After all, she had a few of her own.