Page 140 of Bought for Blood

“When did you last feed?”

“The quarry.”

“Bastien.”

“I hadn’t gotten around to it.”

She turns her head and pulls the collar of the coat off her shoulder.

“Get around to it.”

“No.”

“I’m offering.”

“I know. I’m taking you home first.” Two more days of shaking like this, and I’ve already decided it’s worth it. “Then I’ll ask.”

“You’ll ask.”

“Every time. For as long as I have with you.”

I kiss her.

She tastes of salt. Her hands come up into my hair and hold on. Her heart is thumping against me through both coats, and she is warm the whole length of my body. I keep it slow because I want it slow. She laughs against my mouth, once, barely. I get one arm under her and lift her off the floor, and she puts both legs around my waist.

Behind us the sun comes through the open doorway and lies down across the flagstones in a long white shape. Neither of us is anywhere near it.

“Grace will want to see the house,” she says into my shoulder.

“Then Grace will see the house.”

“She’ll bring Decker. He eats an enormous amount.”

“Marthe will be beside herself.”

Serenity laughs, and it goes through both of us, and she puts her head down on my shoulder.

“There are seventeen stopped clocks in that house,” she says.

“Twenty-two.”

“I want to wind every one of them.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“All of them, Bastien.”

“That will take some doing.”

“We’ve got time,” she says.

I came up this ridge ready to let the sun finish what it started. She drove six hours to stand in the doorway of a man who doesn’t deserve her, and I very nearly let her go.

“We do have time,” I say. “I don’t know how much.”

For the first time in my life, not knowing is the best answer I’ve ever been given.

Chapter 39