Page 23 of Snowed in with the Vampire Prince

This question suddenly seemed like the most important piece of information in the world for me to have right then. I could have looked for it in his mind, but I wanted him to tell me.

Overwhelmed. Happy. Confused. Scared.

Scared? I demanded, suddenly feeling alarmed. I wanted to pull back, to put distance between us so that I couldn’t frighten him any longer.

He rolled his eyes. No, I didn’t suddenly get scared of you or anything. Stop being dumb. I’m scared this is just going to be over and done. I’m scared my life will go back to the way it was.

I thought you said your life was fine. Again, I resisted the urge to read the truth from his mind. I tried to hide my delight too, that he’d admitted that he feared losing me—the vampire who had inexplicably dropped into his life.

“It is fine,” James replied aloud. He paused, and I sensed a feeling of awe that flashed through him. He added, “Wow, speaking out loud with actual words feels weird now. Clunky.”

“It’s fine, except…” I trailed off, prompting him aloud.

I noted that he hadn’t been wrong. Speech didn’t seem the same anymore at all. It seemed like a pale imitation of real communication.

“Couldn’t you read how I’m feeling from my head?”

I felt an irrational surge of pride in him that James had intuited so much already. But then, of course, he had—he was always surprising me, and I had no doubt he would keep surprising me for a very long time. And I was fiercely proud of him that he seemed to take our telepathic bond in stride, the very same way that he’d accepted that I was a vampire. He was incredibly brave. He wasn’t like other humans. Not at all.

I could, I allowed, drinking in his presence, noting again how handsome he was, how perfect his body felt against mine. But I don’t want to invade your privacy every time I have a simple question.

He grinned at me, his eyes lighting up in a way that would have caused my heart to go all pitter-pat if I’d been a mortal man. It made me feel a surge of tenderness for him, but there was a bitter edge to my thought. Because I wasn’t a mortal man. I was just this.

A vampire. A monster.

“I’m going to teach you that you’re wrong about that,” he said quietly, but his voice was fierce and determined as his warm golden-brown eyes held mine. “You’re about as far from being a monster as it’s possible to be.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He sighed. I wasn’t lying when I told you my life was fine. It is. But it’s… flat. I have a job. I have friends that I see sometimes. I have a couple of guys I mess around with now and then. I like to read. And I like hiking and camping. But there’s nothing else.

“I don’t understand,” I admitted out loud.

His life didn’t sound bad. It sounded nice.

James gave me a tiny smile. “Nothing has ever mattered to me before. It’s like my entire life was gray until last night. Now it’s all in color. And I’m terrified that it’s all going to go gray again. I’ve only known you for a few hours, but I’ve never felt closer to anyone in my entire life. And I’m afraid of losing you now.”

I marveled, once more, at his courage. At his fierceness. At his simple humanity. It seemed miraculous. With each passing moment, he seemed more and more like a miracle to me.

You won’t lose me. I spoke the thought into his mind. Into our shared mindscape. I put every ounce of my own fear of losing him into the thought.

An expression of wonder transformed James’s face. It was guileless and real. At that moment, he seemed both boyishly innocent and timelessly wise. And true in a way that nothing in my life had ever been, not even once.

How could he have ever believed he was anything less than extraordinary?

I kissed him again without even realizing I was going to do it. His lips were warm, soft, and deliciously sweet against mine. His kiss was even sweeter than his blood had been. I wanted to drink from him all day long. I wanted to bask in the bliss of being near him.

James seemed to have the same thought because when I pulled back, he wrapped his arms around me, resting his head on my chest. His level of comfort at my nearness was unexpected, staggering, and so unlike what his instinctive reaction toward me should have been that it made me feel something so raw that it felt like it could shatter me if it all went wrong.

“How did you become a vampire?” he asked, murmuring the question aloud, against my chest.

“Surely we’re not still playing my game?”

Obviously. Except now, nothing can be hidden.

How right he was. Again, the flash of fear I felt at that thought was immediate. What if he peered into my mind and saw something that drove him away? Already, I couldn’t imagine my life without him.

“I want to know you,” he told me, and I could feel the sincerity of his words within his mind. He added, “And it’s your death day, after all. So you should talk about this.”

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