Page 15 of Incandescence

“Dead?” he interjected softly, flicking me a dark look.

“I was going to say geriatric.” I looked at him with narrowed eyes, calculating the numbers. “You look no older than thirty.”

He smiled. “I doubt I’ve aged a day since I was abducted as a thirty-five-year-old man with nothing more to worry about than keeping my impulsive twenty-two-year-old wife happy and proving myself in court.”

My belly dropped a little at knowing he had a wife, a woman who had aged while he hadn’t. The same woman who’d undoubtedly thought he’d been murdered or who’d maybe even left her for someone else.

His breath shuddered out. “I also have no doubt Clara—my wife—never once

entertained the thought I was kidnapped or murdered. In her mind, all men were cheaters. She was just waiting for the day I would leave her for someone else...waited for the day to have her suspicions confirmed.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hating that my worst conclusions had been confirmed.

He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s a wasted emotion. I loved her, but I think that sentiment would have died at some point had my life continued on its course.”

“What about your parents?”

His mouth tightened, as if to suppress his pain. “I was an only child of proud parents who wanted the best for me. I don’t doubt for a minute my disappearance sent them to an early grave. Unlike me. Without the vampire’s blood, I would now be an eighty-one-year-old man, probably crippled by arthritis, with my good health fading as fast as my eyesight.”

I blew out a slow breath. “You sound as if you feel bad you’ve outlived everyone you knew.” I cast him another look. “In reality, you lost all those years locked up in that vampire’s nest. Years you’ll never get back.”

He nodded. “I would’ve really liked to have said goodbye to my mom and dad—”

Not his wife, then? I wasn’t sure I was entirely pleased by the frisson of delight that one thought induced.

“But I guess, if there’s an afterlife, my parents will see me again soon enough.”

I stepped in front of him, forcing him to stop even as a heat-wave of emotion poured out of me. “You are not dying on me. Not now. Definitely not in my lifetime.”

It was only then I realized I was doing the same thing he’d done to me after I’d mentioned jumping out of a window to my death. He wanted me around just as much as I wanted him around.

Something shifted behind his eyes and I wondered if his suppressed feelings were now returning after blocking them for so many long years.

God, what had he been through?

“Without vampire blood, if I don’t die from the pain of withdrawal first, I suspect my great age will catch up with me soon enough.”

I stared up at him, willing him not to give up, not to surrender to what lay ahead. “I don’t want to face this alone. I want—need—you by my side.”

His lips pulled into a smirk. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a vampire slayer. You’d be better off finding your protection elsewhere.”

I glared. “You might be running from the vampire, but you don’t get to run away on me. We’re in this together, remember?”

His stare darkened, and he lifted his hand to stroke along my jaw and leave behind a trail of blistering awareness. His smirk morphed into a smile that revealed dimples I’d had no idea existed. “How could I forget?” he said huskily.

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