Page 24 of Protecting His Vampire Mate

I had to laugh at that. “He gave you hell.”

He laughed too, right along with me.

“It was worth it,” Nathaniel said, a moment later. “I wouldn’t trade a thing. Ethan is worth it. And so is Bryan.”

“Thank you.” I found myself surprised at how glad I was that I’d called him.

“Of course. Call me again if you ever need me. You are a friend of Ethan’s, and you are a friend of mine.” He paused, then added, “Believe me, I know some of what you’re going through. Discovering one’s true, fated mate, out of the blue…” He chuckled wryly, then added, “Well, it isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s an extreme sport, I’m afraid. As you are beginning to understand.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. It wasn’t like he was wrong.

We said our goodbyes and I hung up smiling, despite how miserable I still felt.

Except, of course, that I had already promised to leave Bryan for good once this was all done. But Nathaniel was completely and unequivocally right about one thing. I wasn’t giving Bryan nearly enough credit. I was assuming that he wasn’t strong enough to heal without me.

But he was, wasn’t he?

Because what Giles had done to him was a violation that would have destroyed most people. But Bryan wasn’t most people. He was my mate, and he was way stronger than he looked. He was strong enough to get through this without me. It wasn’t my job to fix him, was it? Even though I sure as hell wanted it to be.

The sudden knock on my window caused me to jump.

My hands flew into spell-casting positions and an extremely handy incantation to blast a potential enemy across the parking lot rose to the tip of my tongue. Then I turned and saw Bryan standing next to the driver’s side door, scowling at me.

Busted.

I lowered my hands and turned the car on long enough to roll down my window before switching the engine back off.

“Bryan,” I said brightly, as if I hadn’t just been caught camping outside his motel room at two in the morning, like a towering weirdo. I turned up the wattage on my too-innocent smile. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m renting a room. But you clearly know that.” He sighed, frowning at me. “You’re here, what? Sleeping in your car so you can keep an eye on me?” He sounded exasperated. Which, I supposed, was better than furious.

I was pretty sure my smile turned sheepish. I shrugged, trying to play it cool. “I mean, yeah. I figured it would be best for me to be close by. Just in case.”

“You slept here last night, too.”

It was a statement of fact, not a question. I shrugged again, wincing. I waited for him to tell me to leave.

Bryan’s glare softened fractionally at that. “Well, you’re going to be a pretty shitty bodyguard if you end up being so kinked up that you can’t even move. And it’s only a matter of time before Liz notices you here and calls the cops to have you removed. So… I guess you can stay in my room with me.” When my eyes widened in disbelief, Bryan’s glare returned full-force and he added, “There’s only one bed, so you’re sleeping on the floor.”

*

Bryan led the way, his back ramrod straight, and he practically vibrated with tension. He didn’t say another word. But he didn’t change his mind, either.

When he opened the door for us, I saw that the motel room was cheerless, a little dusty, and utterly lacking in anything that could, even generously, be called an amenity. It also smelled a little like mothballs.

It was hands-down the best room I’d ever seen in my entire fucking life.

Bryan pointed to the spot on the floor between the bed and the door. “You can sleep there. That way if something gets in, it’ll get you first. It’ll buy me time to escape.”

I snorted, unable to help my smile. “Right.”

“I’m warning you. Zero cuddles. This is strictly business.”

“Got it. I’ll behave. Zero cuddles,” I agreed solemnly.

I made a big show out of dragging the threadbare oval rug from the center of the room and placing it in the spot where I would be sleeping. Then I got a small dixie cup of water from the sink next to the bathroom and sprinkled the edges of the rug with it before using an old Welsh incantation—only three lines long and requiring so little magical power that even a mundane might’ve been able to do it—to clean the rug and make it more comfortable to sleep on.

Bryan frowned at me when I was done. After a long moment where we both stared down at the perfectly ordinary rug and it stared back up at us, unchanged, he said, “Um. Nothing happened.”

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