She sighed and finaly spun around, her face tight with displeasure.
Aldrich Duncan was handsome, and he knew it. As the lone heir to an oil fortune, with the hair of an A-list movie star and a smile that could convince anyone to do anything, he didn’t have to work too hard to get what he wanted in life. He smiled at her when their eyes met but she didn’t smile back.
He was the combined by-product of two of the most powerful all-American families, tracing his lineage all the way back to the first colonizers in Plymouth, to enslavers. His family name came with a trail of blood behind it.
Vampire.
The oldest. The strongest. Lucifer reborn again and again, cursed by his insurrection in Paradise to live among mortals as a vampire.
He was dressed as usual: dark colors, business casual, with his dress shirt unbuttoned at the throat as if welcoming the lingering stares of women whose attention he always commanded. His dark aviator sunglasses were folded in his hand and his other hand swept his golden hair off his forehead. It looked as if he had just stepped out of his convertible. Knowing him, he probably had.
“Obviouslyyou couldn’t wait,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “What do you want?”
“Not here,” he said. He took Aurora by the upper arm and led her away from the counter, notably away from Bett’s attuned ear, and toward the empty tables by the windows.His fingers pinched the soft skin under her arm.
“Ouch, that hurts,” she said. His grip loosened but he didn’t let go. Aurora peeled his hand off her arm and glared at him.
“Aurora, I need to know,” Aldrich said, breathless. “I can’t stop thinking about what happened. What was said...”
“Do we really have to go over this again? I need time to think.”
“Think about what? It’s either yes or no. Simple. What’s so difficult about that?”
The memory knifed its way to the forefront of her mind. She could still see it so clearly. Aldrich’s bright eyes shining after a kill, the mortal’s dead body not even cold at his feet; the inky-red smear glistening on his pale skin; his fangs catching on his swollen lips as he breathed with new life when asking for her hand.
His proposal had been presented as a fact. A command. Spoken in the fervor of fresh blood.Marry me, Aurora.
Most men would get down on one knee. Aldrich had killed for her.
He’d waited for an answer purely out of courtesy. Though to hesitate, even for a moment, was akin to inviting anarchy. Denying Lucifer incarnate was not in most people’s capacity.
But Aurora was not most people.
She too was a vampire, the angelic soul Gabrielle, sentenced to a life on Earth when she’d failed to stop Lucifer after he tried to usurp power. She was to walk at his side forever.
They were bondmates, souls destined to be together in every reincarnation, the tethers of fate unbreakable even after he’d Fallen. Never before had Blue Bloods like them denied the pull of a bond, but Aurora would try—damn, would she try. But if Lucifer was cursed to live among the mortals he hated, then she was cursed to love him.
No matter the life they were reborn into, they would find each other, drawn like opposite ends of the same string tied into a knot. To an outside observer, simply leaving him would be the obvious solution. If only it were that easy.
Her temper flared and Aurora shielded her eyes with her hand, groaning with exasperation. “What is it with you! It’s like you’re not listening to me. I don’t know how I can be any clearer, Aldrich. I need more time.”
“Time for what! It’s been weeks. You won’t answer the phone, you’re never at your apartment. You’re driving me crazy.”
Her heart froze. So she reallyhadseen him lingering outside her studio apartment last night in East Central on Nassau Street, smoking a cigarette beneath a palmetto tree and looking like the James Dean of her nightmares. She’d come back from her shift to find him staring up at her darkened window, the hard lines around his mouth grim with determination, waiting for her to appear. She had decided not to go home after that and spent the rest of the night planning where she could go next, leaving her sleepless and feeling unmoored.
She slapped her hands on her thighs in frustration. “I’mdrivingyoucrazy?” she hissed. “What about the words ‘Give me space’ don’t you understand?”
“I need an answer!” Aldrich caught himself, realizing his voice had gone up in volume. He glanced at Bett, who was currently cleaning the espresso machine but whose mouth was pressed in a tight and disapproving line, her eyebrows raised with judgment. His pale blue eyes flicked back to Aurora and he kept his voice low and level. “You have to know what this is doing to me, what itwilldo tous.”
“Not everything is about you, Aldrich.” Aurora folded her arms securely over her chest.
This had become an unwelcome routine between them. Since the proposal, he was often at the Jazzy Java to ask Aurora if she had made up her mind yet and the answer was always the same. It hadn’t started in Charleston, though. He had followed her from Atlanta, and from New Orleans before that. He was not a patient man.
Aldrich’s mouth curled back into a snarl. “You are so selfish, Aurora, you know that?”
Bett shouted across the café, “Listen, buddy. Quit bugging my friend.” She spread her arms wide on the counter, displaying her tattoos. The Jazzy Java didn’t need security when she was around. “Do you know where the exit is, or do I have to show you personally?”
“It’s all right, Bett, really,” Aurora said, and waved a placating hand. “He’s just leaving. He’d hate to cause a scene.” She stared at Aldrich, her eyes blazing, and he stared back, heat simmering behind his pale blue gaze.
