Page 62 of Taken

When I glanced back at her, her forehead furrowed like she was trying to figure me out. She gave herself a shake. “I brought you something.” She got a T-shirt and a pack of boxer-briefs from her backpack and dropped them onto my lap.

“Thanks,” I said with a rueful smile. “I must smell pretty rank. Hell, I can smell myself—that’s always a bad sign.”

Her mouth twitched.

The T-shirt was light blue with a graphic of the Eiffel Tower and Paris, Je t’aime in big red letters. The boxers were white with red hearts.

I lifted a brow at the T-shirt. “The Eiffel Tower?” I asked her. The heart-decorated boxers I wasn’t even going to mention.

The left corner of her mouth hitched higher. “Best I could do.”

I couldn’t sense her emotions, but I was pretty sure she was lying—which meant she was messing with me.

My grin widened. “Good thinking. I’ll look like a tourist.”

She blinked several times. I could tell she’d expected me to insist on dressing like whatever she thought the son of a vampire primus should insist on dressing like. Then she gave a short nod, as if disguising me as a tourist had been the plan all along. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

I rose to my feet and reached for the hem of my T-shirt. Her eyes rounded. She spun to face the wall, giving me privacy.

I shucked my clothes and pulled on the clean T-shirt and boxers. She turned back as I zipped up my jeans.

Her expression didn’t change, but her gaze went to my crotch. She moistened her lips.

I finger-combed my matted hair and watched her watching me.

She wanted me. I could smell her arousal, sharp and spicy.

Those revenge-sex fantasies I’d had? They flooded my mind, sending whatever spare blood I had south. My cock twitched and hardened, tenting my jeans.

Her mouth pulled to the side. A half-smile, but not of amusement—and not at my expense. It was twisted and a little bitter, like she was laughing at herself and her weakness.

She lifted her gaze from my crotch and met my eyes. “Nothing can hide that angel face of yours. And I know you’re crap at generating a glamour. I’m surprised no one recognized you at the airport.”

Angel face?

I was still processing that when she handed me a plastic bag and told me to put the dirty clothes in it. “The cemetery closes at six p.m. When the humans leave, I’ll wash them out in one of the bathrooms.”

“There are bathrooms? You’ve been holding out on me, woman.”

She eyed me, brow lowered, mouth pursed, like she wasn’t sure how to respond to my teasing. “Three, actually—it’s a large cemetery. You wanna go with me?”

“Are you kidding? I’d like to clean up and use a toilet instead of a plastic bottle.”

“Can you make it up the ladder?”

“I already did.”

She glanced up—and saw the bloodstains on the slab. “I was planning on coming back, you know.”

“I know. You need me, right?”

We gazed at each other for a long moment. The animation faded from her face, and I felt like a dick. But it was the truth, and we both knew it.

I might joke with her. I might even be starting to like her.

But I couldn’t forget that to her, I was a monster and this was just a job, a way to get to my father.

She busied herself straightening the table, placing the half of sandwich at the back next to the beef jerky. “We’ll go around seven-thirty. That’ll give the cleaning crew time to finish, and still give us a few hours before the vampires wake up. There’s a dozen or so with lairs in the cemetery, and even more come to feed.”

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