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I had always said... okay, maybe I hadn’t said it, but I’d heard it more than once... nothing will have you contemplating life more than a long car ride (or a lengthy stint on the toilet). In my case, the ride to Estes Park, Colorado, with a very handsome and somewhat intoxicating vampire, was causing me to analyze just what the holy hell I was doing at this moment.
My life had turned into an endless loop of sleeping, eating, drinking, flirting, training, and—it seemed—murdering. Then, I’d wake up the next afternoon and repeat, just like Groundhog Day. Thankfully, though, I didn’t have to work a ‘day job’ to maintain my lifestyle. One that afforded me an expensive downtown Denver apartment with a view to kill, and all the mani/pedi money I could ever need.
Though, it didn’t take a fancy college degree for me to realize that earning good money didn’t really buy me anything but things. It didn’t buy me intelligence, maturity, or common sense, which I was now quickly learning I was probably lacking in a little bit.
I had to question, yet again, how I almost always ended up in the presence of this vampire with no regard for my personal safety. Although, I had to admit... it wasn’t as if I were some kind of damsel in distress. I could defend myself if need be, and it wasn’t like Kellan had shaken me down and confiscated all my weapons before ushering me into his expensive sports car. In all honesty, it seemed he only cared about either being inside my head, or trying to get into my very tight leather pants.
During my inner mental musings, I realized maybe that had been a slightly unfair assessment of him. He wasn’t actively trying to get into my pants. Not at the moment, anyway. We’d been alone and had had some pretty intense and heated moments, but none of them had led to us doing that. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I knew Kellan just wanted to be around me. Not that he’d admit it, but I could sense that he had gone out of his way to just be in my very awesome presence.
Case in point: He’d offered to drive me to Estes Park to help me eliminate a very stupid but dangerous vampire. Kellan hadn’t asked a whole lot of questions. He’d just offered to drive me, as long as we were back by the time the sun was going to come up.
The hazards of dating a vampire. I should write a book about it. You know, the self-help type? I could be of assistance to people who were foolish enough to think about starting a relationship with one of the very hot, fanged fiends. I could have chapters like, Saying Goodbye to the Sun, and Turtlenecks: They’re About to Come Back in Fashion for You.
The idea made me snort out-loud, and I quickly rushed my hand to my mouth to quell the sound, although by then, it was way too late.
“What’s going through your mind, little wolf?”
How did I know that was coming?
I cracked a smile. Without actually speaking the words, I directed my thoughts at him. “Why don’t you go poking around in my head and find out?”
“For the tenth bloody time, I’ve told you it doesn’t work like that,” Kellan replied aloud.
I reached over and slapped his arm. “Okay, Captain Un-fun.”
Behind the wheel of his Porsche, he visibly stiffened. “Well, you’re the only one who has ever called me that.”
I laughed a little more than I should have. “Oh, now why do I find that hard to believe, Sergeant Buzzkill?”
I watched as his fingers tightened on the steering wheel, then eventually relaxed before he growled, “I’m going to punish you later for that.”
My eyes must have momentarily gone wide, because as he put his gaze back on the road, he smiled triumphantly.
Speechless to that comment, I looked forward.
“Where, exactly, in Estes Park are we headed?” he asked as we entered the town.
“What?” I asked smugly. “Can’t you vamps sense each other?”
I watched as his sexy jaw bunched and then jumped. “Not without a bond.”
I put my hand on his cool but hard forearm that held the steering wheel tight. “Well, you can explain the bond thing later. Anyway, obviously, I’m looking for Alexander. He’s in Estes Park... somewhere.”
Without warning, Kellan slammed on the brakes, and we came to a screeching dead halt in the middle of the dark highway.
After recovering from my head almost hitting the dashboard, I sat up against the seat and clawed my hair away my face. I turned my head to look at Kellan, furious. “What in the fuck is wrong with you!”
He gave me an incredulous look. “What the bloody hell do you mean ‘he’s here somewhere’?” He put up air quotes with his fingers. “Really, Ayla? You don’t have a address or at least a place of employment we can go on? Do you forget that I can’t go traipsing around this little town during the day? I thought this was going to be a short trip, perhaps a couple of hours.”
Hearing him scold me like he would a petulant child in his haughty accent was both highly irritating and sort of arousing at the same time.
I narrowed my eyes at him, but didn’t break his stare. “First off, I thought maybe you would have figured out by now that I’m a little impulsive and also a lot crazy!”
His jaw ticked as he stared at me hard, his eyes burning with what seemed to be anger and something else that was smoldering just under the surface. “Yes, I have figured that out. That doesn’t change the fact that I can’t spend hours up here on a manhunt.”
“He’s in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Near Sprague Lake,” I confessed after a long pause.
Kellan looked at me, incredulous. “Then why didn’t you just say that, Ayla?”
“Because I love bloody messing with you, Kellan,” I replied, mimicking his British accent.
“I’ll punish you for that later, too. Just keep it up, girl. Your list of infractions keeps growing.”
“Sounds like fun,” I quipped with a devious smirk.
He broke my gaze, put the sports car into drive, and slammed on the gas. My head whipped back and hit the headrest. With curious eyes, I watched as the car went wide. It swerved and then fishtailed as it made a violent U-turn and headed back toward downtown and away from Estes Park.
“Kellan,” I whimpered, “Please, no. I need to find this guy. I need to. Time’s running out. I can feel it.”
“Don’t bother begging, or using your emotional blackmail,” he murmured, his chin lifted proudly as he continued to fly down the dark highway and back toward Denver. His gaze was stubbornly fixed straight ahead and not looking at me.
A small slice of panic began to take root in my gut, and as if it had a life of its own, my heart felt like it was moving up into my throat and then to my head, its burning fear invading my entire body now.
Impulsivity took over, and I reached over and yanked on Kellan’s hand—the one closest to me. He hadn’t been expecting it, so it caused the car to swerve to the right. We were soon on the side of the road, the loud bumps echoing through the car where grooves had been made into the pavement to wake sleepy drivers. He stopped the car with a rattling squeal. He then snatched his hand away from me and used it to slam the car into park.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” he yelled, a stormy look on his handsome face.
“I need you to turn back around. Please. I have to find Alexander Asshole. I just can’t rest until I find him.”
“And where, exactly, in a big fucking national park, shall I reside once the sun comes up as you hunt him down?”
“They have cabins there. Lots of dense trees too. Oh! I know, even better, you can stay in a hotel during the day in the town. There’s a really nice one there with a lot of history. It’s rumored to be haunted, too. You could take a ghost tour or something.” I gave him my most charming smile. “I don’t need you to come into the park with me.”
Kellan laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Haunted? What?” He let out a sigh and then shook his head. “No. And as far as the park—I would never let you go there alone.” He huffed. “You are quite honestly the most beautiful, but insane and infuriating woman I have ever met.”
I bit back a smile. “You think I’m beautiful.”
He stared at me hard, and made a scoffing noise. “You’re impossible. Do you know that?”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I could tell he was relenting by the way his shoulders relaxed a little. I smiled. “Yep, I do know.”
Kellan again said nothing. He only gazed into my eyes, furious but also playful, as his stare seemed to be holding back words. As if he was wanting to say something, but couldn’t.
“Cat got your tongue?” I asked with a quiet grin as I parroted the old term my I’d heard my dad say to my brothers when they’d get caught doing something they shouldn’t, but had no response in answer to his inquisition.
He slowly shook his head, but held my gaze. “No.”
“Ya know,” I said, a playful smirk on my lips. “I could make it worth your while.” I walked fingers my fingers up his leg and to his zipper. “Let me get you relaxed a little...”
His eyes widened, and then he quickly put his carefully controlled mask back into place. At once, he grabbed my wrist gently and pulled it away from his lap. But, instead of dropping it back onto my leg, he brought it up to his lips, and, without breaking eye contact, he pressed a soft kiss to my knuckles.
I gasped a little, wondering what he would do next.
“I don’t know how you manage to disarm me so quickly, Ayla St. John, but I’ve never met anyone like you,” he confessed quietly.
His admission caused a strange and powerful feeling to stir inside me. A tingle made its way from the tips of my toes, up my legs, through my core, into my belly, and then into my heart. It wasn’t a feeling I ever wanted to end. It made me feel like I could suddenly rule the world. It also made my stomach swirl with nerves and excitement.
“I hadn’t planned on disarming you, Kellan. I’m just a desperate girl.”