She opened her mouth again, but nothing came out.

He slipped a couple of fingers under her chin and gently eased her mouth shut. “To avoid unnecessary conversation with any of the others, I’m going to leave the way I came in. You will lock the window when I’m gone.”

He didn’t phrase it as a question, but she nodded anyway.

Even though he said he was leaving, he didn’t move, nor did he drop his hand from her chin. Forgetting to be afraid, she watched him curiously as his gaze roamed over her face. He touched her lips with his thumb, and a slight frown came between his eyebrows. Then his eyelids lowered, hiding the expression in his eyes.

She held her breath. The pressure against her lips from the ball of his thumb was so slight that if she wasn’t looking directly at him, she wasn’t sure she would have felt it.

It wasn’t quite a caress. She didn’t know what it was.

His hand dropped away, and he inclined his head to her. Then he walked to the window, folded his lean body to slip through the open space and dropped out of sight with a boneless, catlike grace.

The room echoed with emptiness. She went to the window and looked out. He stood underneath, hands on his hips. As he watched, she closed the window and latched it. He nodded to her and walked toward the main house, where the music still played.

She watched until he had left her angle of sight and pulled the curtain closed.

Only then did it occur to her that he might have been fighting his Vampyre instincts as he held her chin and touched her mouth. But that didn’t feel right to her. He hadn’t looked as if he had been engaged in an internal struggle, and she hadn’t felt any real threat from him.

Instead he had looked troubled, perhaps even sad.

Even as the thought occurred to her, she frowned. That couldn’t be right. Why would looking at her sadden him? It reminded her of earlier, when she had thought she’d caught a hint of something wistful about him.

She had to let it go. Xavier was much too complicated for her to figure out after only a few meetings. For now, she needed to crawl back in bed and be grateful for the fact that, despite everything, she hadn’t managed to get herself kicked off the estate.

SEVEN

Mid-February

Tess hit the training mat so hard it knocked the breath out of her. Wheezing, she rolled onto her stomach and struggled to suck some air into her cramped lungs.

Raoul stood over her, his arms crossed. “That’s a wrap for the day.”

She coughed. “Give me a few minutes. I can go again.”

He shook his head. “We’re done here. After you recover, please make up the time on the shooting range.”

Please do this. Please do that.

Raoul had turned out to be a sadist with the most impeccable, old-school manners.

Please schedule an hour before breakfast for your morning run.

Please remember we will be focusing on weapons training on Monday. Please join me on the shooting range at one o’clock, after lunch.

Please protect your left side while you block me. You’re very clearly right-handed, and your entire left side is much too weak.

It was like no other training she had ever heard of, and she was in a class of one. He threw her, beckoned her to attack him from a different angle then threw her again. He kicked her, pinned her to the mat, gripped her in headlocks, slapped her against the wall, and gave her knives in practice bouts only to take them away from her with a confidence-crushing ease, and he did all of it so politely.

“Shooting range,” she said. “You got it.”

Still prone, she watched his shoes turn as he walked away.

Diego’s head came into view, angled sideways. Squatting, he deposited a cold bottle of water on the mat beside her.

“You saw all that, did you?” It was still hard to talk, and her voice came out strained.

“Hard to miss it, chica. Watching you crash and burn has become a daily thing.”

When she felt ready, she pushed onto her knees. “I would almost say I can’t remember the last time I was pain-free, except I can—it was the night I arrived here.”

“That’s right, Xavier left right after you got here.” He shook his head. “Normally people start feeling the benefits from a blood offering right away, but it must not have taken hold for you yet.”

She didn’t even want to get into that subject. Shaking her head, she screwed off the top of the water bottle and drank. “I guess I was naive, because I thought I was in shape.”

“You weren’t bad. Thing is, around here ‘not bad’ isn’t good enough.” He looked at her sidelong. “Are you sorry you came?”

She ran the cold bottle over her hot forehead. “I don’t know how I feel.” A quick glance around the large area told her that she and Diego were the only ones around. She confessed, “It’s almost like Raoul wants me to fail. Like he wants me to reach the point after another hard, bruising fall when I’ll throw in the towel and quit.”

Diego glanced around too then shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. He does seem to be riding you pretty hard.”

“Well, if he is, to hell with him,” she said between her teeth. “I never quit anything just because things got rough. I don’t know how.”

“Good attitude, chica, except for one thing. There’s lots of easier ways to live life. You don’t always have to go the hard way.” Before she could react, he slapped her lightly on the back, straightened and walked back to the weights.

Scowling, she finished off the rest of the water and headed out to the shooting range. Maybe Diego was right. The problem was, she didn’t know anything but the hard way.

After living her childhood in a series of foster homes, she had worked multiple jobs to get through school and had graduated with two bachelor’s degrees, one in computer science and the other in accounting. Nobody had ever given her anything. She’d always had to fight to succeed, and this would be no different.

As she had promised Xavier, she did everything Raoul asked of her. When at first she couldn’t run for an entire hour every day, she ran and walked as fast as she could, often battling a stitch in her side.

Then came the daily weight training sessions, both on machines and with free weights, and swimming, three times a week. After cardio and muscle-building exercises came the training sessions—hand to hand, small weapons training and the shooting range.