8. Emmanuel

CHAPTER EIGHT

EMMANUEL

What Knox was offering was impossible.

He couldn’t want to get to know me better—not in the way that I wanted him to. Not if anything Mother had said and done these past centuries had been real or true.

Despite knowing that she was... misguided, it was still difficult to reckon with losing my whole life because she’d been wrong. It was almost easier, assuming that she was right and all I’d been through wasn’t for nothing. Somehow, it had to be my fault or failing, not just something awful that’d happened for no reason.

Still, Knox sat in the tub, looking up at me with an open expression, like he really meant it.

If he did? Well, there was nothing I had that wasn’t worth risking for a chance to keep him for real.

With a shaky inhale, I nodded and shed my velvet waistcoat, my shirtsleeves, my boots and trousers and, naked, I turned to him and saw him staring. The weight of his eyes brought a creeping heat up from my chest, but it was almost pleasant, as much as I wanted to squirm.

I—I wasn’t deluded enough to think that he was looking at me with lust or anything like it, but?—

“I’m actually quite cold to the touch,” I said, stepping over the side of the tub and sinking down into the warm water. “What did you mean, that I’m hot?”

“Sexy?” Knox said, shifting to move his feet out of the way as I sat across from him.

I blinked. Not a word I was familiar with, but I got the general feeling of it.

He laughed and settled on, “Attractive. You’re nice to look at.”

I stared at him, taking in every masculine feature, every hard line of his face, the broadness of his shoulders. Mother would’ve been quite pleased to have a son like him.

“Really?”

He nodded. “Really. The red eyes are a little creepy, and the fangs brought me up short at first, but—yeah, Emmanuel. You’re gorgeous. Don’t you... know?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t seen my reflection since I turned. I... used to like how I looked, I think? I hope it’s not much changed.” All those hours spent trying to look presentable, only to realize I wasn’t the right sort of presentable. Still, I’d liked the way my hair fell, how my lips looked when I bit them and they flushed.

I glanced at Knox from beneath my lashes. “You’re also rather—rather hot.”

When I smiled at him, his laugh turned loud, filling the room and—god, had I ever felt so alive as I did surrounded by the sound of his laughter?

Surely this was some game, some trick to put me on my back foot. I curled up at the far end of the tub, and Knox watched me with a strange, lopsided smile on his face.

“Gonna sit all the way over there?”

I nodded, wrapping my arms around my bent legs.

“That’s fine,” he said, sinking back into the water with his arms draped over either side. “Wanna give me your foot though?”

What the hell did he want with my foot?

Still, I—I could. It wouldn’t kill me to stretch my leg out.

The water sloshed against the side of the tub as I moved, and Knox reached out to cradle my heel, pulling it into his lap. A moment later, his thumbs dragged over the arch of my foot. My breath caught and I shivered.

“Nice?”

I nodded, staring. What was this?

Watching him offered no real explanation. For a minute or so, he just set to the task of massaging my foot. Then, he asked, “How’d you become a vampire?”

I shrugged, entranced by the way his arms moved so subtly as he worked magic under water. “I was sick, and my mother—for a woman of faith, she was always so afraid of dying. Perhaps she was just afraid that, were I to die so young, so... sinful, I would be damned. She always said she was protecting me.”

Knox grimaced, but the gentle sweep of his thumb up and down the sole of my foot barely stuttered.

“She found a vampire to turn her, but when it was time, she went prepared. Staked him before he had the chance to exert his control?—”

“So I could kill you?”

A cold, slick feeling crawled through me when he asked that, but he wasn’t looking at me with malice in his eyes. Only curiosity.

I bit my lip. “Not if I tell you not to.”

“Are you telling me not to?”

With a rough swallow, I sucked in my cheeks and shook my head. The sick truth was, I’d rather he kill me than leave me alone in this horrible house with my horrible life stretching out before me forever.

For some reason, that made him frown. I’d half expected to end up under water, his knees bearing down on my chest while he tried to pry my head off in the bath. He might not even realize I didn’t need to breathe to survive.

But all he did was reach out. “Other foot?”

I lifted it and let him draw my ankle into his lap.

My brow pinched with curiosity, I stared down at the spot where his hands moved beneath the water. His touch was steady, attentive. I swallowed roughly as I watched the water ripple.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Do you want me to stop?”

I shook my head, sinking down deeper into the water, so my light golden hair floated out around my shoulders and I could press my foot so deep into the water that my toes curled against his belly.

His smile tilted again. I liked that expression, a little wry but patient instead of angry.

“It seemed like you could use some comfort,” he admitted. “Do you like it?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Good. Nothing better than a foot rub.”

I blew a breath out between my teeth. I could think of one or two things that were better, but this was pretty nice.

“Was last night your first time being with a man?”

Sputtering, I jerked upright and gripped the edge of the tub. “Of course! I’m not?—”

Knox held tight to my foot, and it kept me from pulling away from him. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay, Emmanuel.”

I scoffed, turning into my shoulder.

So he tugged on my foot and I slipped down a few inches. “I’m serious,” he insisted. “Sexuality doesn’t make you a good person or a bad one. Your mother was wrong about that.”

I glanced at him sidelong. “You’re not bothered?”

Knox shook his head. “I’m not bothered.”

For another minute, he just rubbed my foot. When he was done, he set my heels on top of his thighs and pressed the tops of my feet so the balls of them pressed against his stomach. I could feel the deep breath he took before his next question.

“Why’d you make me your thrall?”

I wanted to jerk away, flee, especially when he met my eye directly, but he held my feet and—and yes , I was a vampire. Obviously I could’ve torn away from him if I’d really wanted to, but there was something in the way he was watching me that made me wonder if this really wasn’t all some ploy to turn the situation to his advantage.

As if he could.

So I swallowed, my mouth already dry, and admitted, “I don’t want to be alone.”

We stared at each other, and he didn’t say anything.

And I was a damned fool, so I rushed to fill the silence. “I’ve never been on my own. I don’t know how. What to do. How to stay safe or?—”

I sucked in my cheeks, thinking of how pitifully I’d rested, knowing that my coffin wasn’t even locked. I’d been so exposed, fear whispering through my head even as I tried to sleep.

“So why let me take your money? You have enough to get anything you need.”

I grimaced. “It’s not mine . Or, I guess it is, now, but what the hell would I do with it? Money won’t fix what I am .”

Knox’s scowl turned heavy. “And that’s it? You’re just afraid to be alone?”

I ducked my head. The steam rising off the water felt stickier all the sudden, like it was clinging to my skin. “Well, no. You—you freed me. And you’re—” I glanced up at him, and immediately back down at the water, at my hands twisting in front of me. “I want you. Not just your blood, but... everything. Company. And the care you showed your sister, the risk you took—it’s kind. I thought, if I gave you what you wanted, you might tolerate?—”

“Tolerate?”

“My . . . attention. Or my—my touch.”

Knox let me go and I shrank back, sure I’d encroached and he was going to tell me that nothing I could give him would make that tolerable.

Instead, he moved to his knees and leaned over me. “Do you want to touch me now?”

His skin was pink from the warm water. Mother had always demanded cold—that warm water stoked my unnatural urges . And, well, yes. The way his skin had darkened did do something for those.

I took a shaky breath, drawing the scent of his clean skin deep into my lungs. “Yes.”

“Then do it,” Knox said, picking up one of my hands and easing it to his slick chest.

I spread my fingers wide and looked up at him. Really? I hadn’t ordered him to do this, hadn’t even asked him. But when I met his eye, his lopsided smile was back. He nodded and I?—

I let myself feel his skin, the pulse of his heart beneath his ribs, the body I wanted so desperately.

And something about getting to—being allowed to have this, made my breath hitch and my eyes sting and?—

“Please,” I whispered. “Please don’t leave me.”