"You ken I would no' risk continuing." When he'd said he wouldn't let her be burned again, Emma supposed he'd meant it.
Still, she didn't understand how he'd prevented himself from rolling the dice with this one drive tonight. If she had been kept away from her home for one hundred and fifty years and she was within two hours' driving distance, she would have dragged the unwitting vampire along.
Lachlain had refused, instead finding them an inn, not of the caliber they'd enjoyed, he said, but he'd "sensed it was secure." He'd felt comfortable enough to get two adjoining rooms because he planned to sleep, and as he'd promised, he wouldn't do it around her. A quick calculation told her he'd gone nearly forty hours without.
Even so, he seemed uncomfortable having to divulge his need to sleep. In fact, it was only because his attention had wandered as he'd peered around them with narrowed eyes - which he'd been doing with increasing frequency - that he'd spoken of it. He'd absently admitted that he would have just gone without, but his injury was not healing as it should.
Injury, meaning his leg. The one that looked like a human's leg just after a six-year-long cast came off. The injury that she found herself thinking about, imagining scenarios for.
He had to have lost it. Her bite on his arm, which she'd caught him peering down at with an almost affectionate expression - an expression that she might prize even over a rare hug - was rapidly healing. Yet he continued to limp. He must be completely regenerating it.
She glanced up at him, realizing that as she'd been contemplating his leg, he'd clearly been doing the same to hers, staring at her thighs, getting that...that wolfish look in his eyes. She pinched the hem of her skirt, endeavoring to hop up and wiggle it down. His gaze was glued to her actions, a low, barely audible growl rumbling from him for long seconds. The sound made her shiver, irrationally made her want to exaggerate her movements so he'd enjoy them more.
When sane Emma blushed at her thoughts and tugged the corner of the cover over her, he gave her a brows-drawn expression of deep disappointment.
She looked away, picking up the remote once more as she cast about for a handle on this bizarre situation. She didn't need to be in a hotel room with this Lykae when both of them were lucid and when she was getting in the habit of falling asleep against his naked body in a bathtub each night. She cleared her throat and faced him. "I'm going to watch a movie. So I guess I'll see you at sunset."
"You're kicking me out of your room?"
"That about sums it up."
He shook his head - her desires ignored without even a thought. "I'll stay with you until dawn."
"I like spending time by myself, and for the last three days, you've allowed me none. Would it kill you to leave the room?"
He appeared confused, as if her wanting to be away from him was sheer craziness. "You will no' share this...movie with me?"
The way he'd phrased his question almost made her grin.
"Then after, you could finally drink again."
The urge to smile faded at his sexy, gravelly words, but she didn't look away, too fascinated by the heated way he studied her face.
He continued to ask her to drink, reinforcing her belief that he'd enjoyed it as much as she had. Though it had baffled her, she'd felt his erection - hard to miss, that - and had seen the desire in his eyes. Desire just like she saw right now...
The moment was broken by the sound of some woman screaming her way to ecstasy. Emma gasped, and swung her head around to the TV. She'd been inadvertently pressing the remote and had somehow wound up on Cinemax. This late at night, Cinemax meant Skinemax.
Her face was hot with embarrassment as she frantically worked the remote, but even the regular channels seemed to delight in showing Unfaithful or Eyes Wide Shut. Finally, she landed on something without sex -
Oh, shite. An American Werewolf in Paris.
In full gory attack scene.
Before she could change it, he shot to his feet. "Is this how...is this how humans see us?" He sounded aghast.
She thought about other werewolf movies - Dog Soldiers, The Beast Within, The Howling, the oh-so-subtly-titled The Beast Must Die - and nodded. He was going to see these things sooner or later and he would learn the truth. "Yes, they do."
"Do they see all the Lore like this?"
"No, um, not really."
"Why?"
She bit her lip. "Well, I've heard the Lykae never concern themselves with PR, while the vampires and the witches, for instance, throw money at it."
"PR?"
"Public relations."
"And this PR works for them?" he asked, still watching with a sickened look on his face.
"Let's put it this way - witches are viewed as powerless Wiccans. Vampires are seen as sexy...myths."
"My God," he murmured, sinking onto the bed with a long exhalation.
His reaction was so strong, she wanted to delve. But delving meant being subject to the same. Just then, she didn't care. "So the werewolf appearance there...it was all wrong."
He rubbed his bad leg, looking weary. "Damn it, Emma, can you no' just ask me what I look like when I change?"
She tilted her head at him. His leg clearly hurt him, and she hated to see anything suffering. Apparently even crude and rude Lykae, because to take his mind from his pain, she asked, "So, Lachlain, what do you look like when you change?"
His expression was surprised, and then he seemed not to know how to answer. Finally, he said, "Have you ever seen a phantom mask a human?"