Yay for me.
Just as I’d managed to produce that coherent thought, he was back on my side of the car again and giving me a repeat performance. It caught me off guard, and I accidentally bit down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. The good news was he liked that, so I came off as provocative, not inept.
“If that was an attempt to shut me up, screw you,” I panted after he’d let me go a second time.
Through my hair, where his face was buried, he muttered, “I did it because I wanted to. Shutting you up was an added side benefit.”
I shoved at his shoulders. “Ass.”
“You said that already,” he said, his fingers tracing the lines of my jaw.
“Meant it this time, too.”
“Jane, I know you were frightened. I know their methods of questioning can be a bit brutal, but that was necessary,” he said, pulling me tighter against his chest. I rested my forehead against the hollow of his throat, happy to find comfort even for a few moments. Having your brain scoured is an emotionally unsettling experience.
“I know you’re angry with me for bringing you here,” he murmured. “But failing to answer the council would have caused far more problems. And as your sire, I’m responsible for presenting you to the panel. I’m responsible for watching over you in these first weeks. Obviously, I haven’t been doing a very good job.”
“That’s pretty insulting,” I said, poking his ribs.
Gabriel finally said, “I’m sorry.”
“Excuse me?” I said, cupping my hand around my ear. “What was that?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry for being so abrupt with you at your house.
I’m sorry for blowing up at you over spending time with Dick. I’m sorry for being so…unsettled around you. I’ve never spent time with a childe I’ve made. There are complications I didn’t expect. I have this overwhelming need to protect you, and you’re making it very difficult.”
“Why haven’t you ever spent time with a childe?”
“It hasn’t been possible,” he said in a voice that brooked no further questions.
“And even if you weren’t my childe, I would feel this way. We’re connected, you and I.
That’s why seeing you with Dick tonight was so unnerving. He’s always had a way with the ladies, and you’re exactly the kind of woman he enjoys corrupting. The idea of some other man touching you, kissing you, smelling him on your clothes, your skin. I couldn’t take it. Between that and the council summons, I overreacted.”
“So, it’s not that you like me, it’s that a biological function is making you jealous,” I muttered.
“Yes, wait—no!” he howled. “Why do you always reduce me to a blithering idiot?”
“This is blithering?” I grinned.
“For me,” he admitted.
I had to concede that one.
“You smell him on me?” I asked, sniffing my shirt. “What does he smell like to you? To me, it’s all lust and bergamot.”
“Uselessness,” he grumbled. He tipped his forehead to mine and kissed my temple, my forehead, the bridge of my nose. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply. “I do enjoy your scent, though, and I like you. Very much. I want to protect you.
If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I would do.”
I lifted my head to eye him warily. “You’re not going to do something weird with my dryer lint, are you?”
“I never know what is going to come out of your mouth,” he said, staring at me. “I enjoy that, in a morbid way. I am saying that even before I turned you, your scent was part of what kept me close to you.”
“What did I smell like?”
“Mine,” he said, kissing the hollow of my throat, the tip of my nose, and finally my mouth. “You smelled like you were mine.”
“Can you take me home now?”
“Are you tired?” he asked. “Sophie’s methods can take a lot out of you.”
“No, I don’t want more people to see me making out with some random guy in the Cracker Barrel parking lot.”
“I’m hardly random,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “I’m your sire.”
“Well, people don’t know that, because they don’t know I’m a vampire,” I said, rubbing my wrists. “I’ve already got ‘jobless’ and ‘publicly drunk’ going. I don’t need to add ‘parking-lot ho’ to the list.”
“One day, you will explain to me what that means, and I don’t think it will make me happy,” he muttered, turning the ignition.
Just when I thought our “date” couldn’t possibly get worse, we arrived at my house to find my Daddy waiting on my porch swing with a Meat Lover’s Pizza. I hadn’t had fatherly approval for a “gentleman caller” since I was a senior in college. This was not going to go well.
Gabriel nodded to the porch. “Do you know this man?”
“That’s my dad,” I said. “I still haven’t told him.”
“I know,” he said. “I can leave now.”
“No, the two most influential men in my life are going to have to meet sometime.”
“Hi, baby,” Daddy said, kissing my cheek between bites of pizza. “Your mama had a sales party thing tonight. Makeup or lotion or home decor or some such thing. I never can keep them straight. I don’t object until they try to talk her into hosting the things herself. I thought I’d surprise you, but it seems you had plans for the evening.”
“That was sweet. Gabriel Nightengale, this is my father, John Jameson,” I said, waving him and Gabriel in through the front door and leading them to the kitchen.
“Daddy, Gabriel is my—” Sire? Interfering pseudo-mentor? Guy most likely to be my first ugly undead breakup? I settled for “Friend.”
“Pizza?” Daddy asked, opening the box to display his cholesterol-laden treat on my counter.
“Oh, no, thanks, I couldn’t,” I said.
Daddy arched a brow as I pulled out a counter-height barstool for him. I never turned down pizza. Ever. “You’re not going on some crazy diet, are you?”
For a brief, wonderful instant, Gabriel looked stricken. I laughed. “No, we already ate, smart alec.”
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Gabriel said, disappearing out the kitchen door.