Chapter Twelve

What do you call witches who live together?

Broom-mates.

Eva gently broke through the dreamless sleep. Unlike the last time she'd woken up, this time she felt refreshed and less like a Mack truck had run over her. Letting out a low sigh, she stretched deeply, relieved that the painful injury to her calf had now subsided to what amounted to a pulled muscle. However, she stiffened and her eyes grew wide as the bed shifted behind her, realizing she wasn't alone in the bed this time. It wasn't a pillow she'd snuggled against, but a very comfortable, comforting body. The room was entrenched in darkness so thick she couldn't determine who lay silent and unmoving next to her, although she had a suspicion.

Waking up next to someone—anyone—never tended to end well for her, and Eva didn't anticipate this time would be any different. To her surprise and embarrassment, her stomach let out a long low rumble reminding her that it had been too long since she had eaten.

"Hey, it's me." Confirming her guess, Oliver's husky whisper broke through the silence and darkness of the room. "I'll open the shades a bit so you can see." He moved again, presumably to find the remote, since of course wealthy people didn't just walk over and open blinds.

The soft whirring of the motor near the window confirmed that he did, in fact, use a remote. Not only did the shades open, but the darkened windows behind them began to lighten up, filtering in bits of sunlight, gently easing her out of the dark.

Blinking as the soft light infiltrated the room, Eva attempted to ascertain how much time had passed. With no internal sense of direction and complete lack of familiarity of the house's layout, Eva couldn't tell if it was sunrise or sunset; only that it was one or the other.

Not for the first time, as if reading her mind, he said, "Sunset of day three." Oliver's voice remained soft, but Eva could feel his gaze pinned on her, perhaps waiting for the shock of this revelation to hit.

And it did. Panicked at the passage of days, Eva flipped her head around to look at him, no longer embarrassed at waking up in a bed with a man she barely knew. "What? I've been gone that long? I"ve got people who'll worry. My work will be freaking out. My friends won't know what to think."

"Eva," Oliver gently began, and Eva hated the pity he'd heard in her voice. "You had a text from Jackson asking what's up? We said you were writing. And that's it. No other missed calls or texts."

Of course. Closing her eyes, sadness filled Eva. Really no one cared since Gram had gone. Jackson probably wasn't even in the country and had taken a chance that she could talk.

He believed that?Bullishly, she considered how well Jackson knew her. I would've stopped writing immediately to FaceTime with my best friend. Her friend group wasn't large at all. The few others she had were married with children and didn't always reach out. Running into her while she served them at the coffee shop with promises to keep in touch better wasn't a great way to preserve a relationship. Admittedly, she'd given up calling and texting after repeatedly reminding her friends who she was when she did see them. It sucked being a wallflower, but sometimes more wasn't worth the effort. Apparently, shutting people out was becoming her profession. Ohhh, wait . . . Her profession?

Eyes open now, lying face to face with Oliver, she tentatively asked, "Why would I be writing?" She pulled the blanket up to her chin, tucking her hands under it, and then suddenly a strange feeling flowed through her. Regret? Trepidation? Unable to recognize this unfamiliar but hopeful feeling, she waited.

"There are a few things we need to talk about." Oliver closed his mouth tightly before continuing, "I had to give you my blood for you to survive the journey here. If I hadn't, you would've died. We never would've made it in time."

This time it was definitely regret that flooded Eva, along with a healthy jolt of fear, "Wait, what? Am I going to turn into a vampire? And why are my emotions all over the place? If I was going to be a vampire I wouldn't have emotions, right? Aren't they, like, stone cold or whatever? Or am I going to die? I'm going to die, aren't I?"

Sardonically, Oliver chuckled, "No, I promise you aren't going to die or turn. If you were, it would've happened already. And you would've had to die to turn. It was close," he admitted, sincerity marking his words. "I wouldn't have done it differently, but it was way too close, and everyone deserves a choice when it comes to that.

"The matter of your emotions is actually a little bit more complicated. First, vampires are, in fact, very emotional. Easy to anger, easy to laugh, and all that. In fact, emotion is sometimes what makes some vampires so unpredictable. We have to learn to control our emotions, like Spock." Holding up a flat hand to pause her from a barrage of questions, he separated two fingers from the other two as a way of explanation. "But the emotions you're feeling aren't because you"re becoming a vampire."

Oliver"s steady voice, flat and nearly devoid of emotion and inflection droned on, pushing through quickly, as Eva fought to not interrupt. "Sounds like you're feeling my emotions. Since I fed you"—Eva raised an eyebrow at this—"I've been feeling like I'm inside your head, and now that you're awake it appears you're feeling my emotions through some sort of psychic connection. I thought it would fade, but here we are three days later, and I'm still getting a lot from you. I'll try to work harder to hold mine in check, but I admit it has been difficult."

Kill me now. Wait! Is that him? He's embarrassed by this? Does that make the entire situation even more embarrassing? Is that possible? Yes.

"Did you just make a Star Trek reference? Are you a Trekkie? Can vampires be Trekkies?" Raising her own hand up in the air, she struggled to separate the right two fingers from the left, mimicking his Vulcan greeting. Blinking owlishly several times and again not waiting for an answer, Eva continued straining to keep her voice a casual reflection of his. "Sooo, why would you tell Jackson I was writing? Coffee shop, middle of nowhere town, a very human barista. Remember? One who still isn't sure all of this is real."

Lying flat on his back, Oliver ran a frustrated hand through his rumpled dark hair, next to her on the very edge of the large bed, clearly exhausted.

Eva couldn't remember much of the last few days, but she did remember he seemed to do that quite often. No one had ever appeared quite so frustrated by her before. Of course, outside of Gram and possibly Jackson, no one had spent this much uninterrupted time with her before either. Wearing clean clothes now, Oliver lay on top of the bed, smelling of a sharp, clean soap. Gray sweats. OMG. She swung her eyes back to his face before her thoughts or feelings took an embarrassing turn or, dear God . . . Was it already too late? Keeping a blank expression, Eva focused intently on his face. Don't think about the sweatpants, don't think about the sweatpants, was the frantic mantra running through her head on repeat.

"I like watching television," Oliver confessed.

For a moment, Eva wondered why he was telling her that, then she remembered the Star Trek reference. "I get that. I mean, I don't watch a lot of TV, but Star Trek is a classic that everyone should watch. Personally, I like to read. Most of my days are booked, for sure."

"I like watching it a lot," he continued, staring up at the ceiling. "I binge anytime I get a chance. I don't neglect my work or anything like that. But the last couple decades, I've been bored, so shows and movies keep the boredom and quietness away. And well, yeah, I like Star Trek. They're doing more than exploring the earth; they've visited galaxies and planets."

Even if Eva hadn't been connected to Oliver, she would have recognized his embarrassment and what it took for him to open up about such a thing. Apparently, binge watching Netflix wasn't on the list of approved things for big, bad, self-proclaimed vampires to partake in.

"And the writing . . ." He sighed. "You're A. Scriver. You're not German but still, calling yourself a writer or a storyteller is simple enough." It wasn't a question, but a statement, so Eva remained silent, unwilling to lie but refusing to admit the truth. "You pop out puns similar to the biography in the books." He listed, "You're definitely smart enough to be a writer and, well, I sort of cranked up your laptop and looked through it while you slept." With the last sentence, his voice lowered and he mumbled a bit, while he stared up at the ceiling.

Shocked, Eva sat up, letting the blanket fall from her to the waist. "Woah! I did not give you permission to go through my things." Spinning her head from side to side, she searched for the backpack that carried her latest work.

Finally he looked at her again, turning his head to meet her eyes and giving her a shrug that said going through someone"s highly personal laptop and highly personal work wasn't even in the same category as touching a metaphorical aura.

"It's in the other room." Oliver waved a lazy hand toward the door. Dropping his eyes for a moment away from her shocked look, he seemed captured by a spot just below her chin. Mesmerized, in fact, by Eva's collarbone where the strap of the thin tank top was supposed to sit. "And it's not like I touched your aura or anything like that."

He wasreading her mind. He had to be. Then, as if it had a mind of its own, the strap at the edge of her shoulder slid a hint farther. Eva's breath hitched as a lusty feeling moved through her body and ended between her legs. Was that Oliver's emotion or hers?

Don't look down at the gray sweatpants, she reminded the slutty, lusty goddess inside her.

When Oliver's brown eyes moved up toward hers, she knew that the lust she felt belonged to both of them. A surge of power shifted through her, causing tingles that ran down her arms and legs. Her breath caught in the back of her throat. "Is it?" she verified in a low, husky voice that wasn't her own.

He did fill out that white tee shirt nicely. See? She could avoid looking at his gray sweats. Running a finger down his bare arm, Eva gasped as a bolt of energy shot between them, buzzing them both.

"Oops!" She giggled. "Static electricity." Jerking her hand away, confused, she slapped it over her own mouth. What is wrong with me?!

Oliver continued watching her, silently examining her every movement, while rubbing the spot where she'd touched him as if it burned. His phone buzzed next to him, jarring him from his slow perusal. A few quick clicks on the phone later, he said, "Everyone is here, and they want to meet you. Do you want a shower and change before this meeting?" Waiting for her response, he added his own official nod. "I'll have things brought in for you to wear. Then you can eat while we talk."

Eva's stomach grumbled at the thought of food. If it had been days, then no wonder she was feeling out of sorts. Food suddenly became a priority.