Page 34 of Dark Reign of Forever

“Just my world living with your very popular cousin, sweetie.” She grabbed her bag, toed into her sandals and turned off the lights. “C’mon.”

Outside, she glimpsed the vampire behind the wheel of the Nissan SUV Ryan slipped into. Female, blond, petite. Trouble. The SUV followed Samantha’s Prius at a polite distance out of the lot and down the road. Samantha chewed her bottom lip.

“So these are friends of Dominique’s?” Étienne said, drawing her out of her musings. Unbelievably, she had almost forgotten about the French hunk in the passenger seat.

“We’ll see, I guess.”

A mile of silence slid by. “He has changed,” Étienne said, thoughtful. “He never was this serious.”

“He has a few responsibilities. With his business,” she added when Étienne gave her a questioning look. Last night, Dominique had hinted that he was involved in something far-reaching that kept him quite occupied, but shrugged off all inquiries about the details as trivial, uninteresting things. His mother had been too happy to have him back to pry. Samantha prayed Étienne wouldn’t start digging now.

“As a boy, when he came to spend summers in France, he was two years younger than me, but he was my hero.”

“Oh?” she said and made note of the fact that this would make Étienne about her age.

“He could charm anything from anyone. All he had to do was smile and people—women, men, any age,” he clarified with an emphatic gesture of one hand. “They just fell over for him.”

“Fell all over themselves for him, you mean?” She could see it. She had done a fair bit of falling herself when that dimpled, mischievous smile appeared.

“Oui, ça.They did. It was his secret weapon. As long as I was with him, we could get away with anything. It was…magique. He wasmagique.”

He is still magical, Samantha thought.More than ever.

“Everything was so easy for him. Nothing was ever serious. And now—” Another shake of his head. “He still has the same charm—and he still attracts everything and everyone near him—but…there is an intensity I don’t recognize.”

“It’s been a few years since you saw him. People change.”

“Hmm.Oui. Je suppose. Now he has a business that has people looking for him in the night. Do you know anything about this?”

Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. She hated lying. So she hedged with “it’s complicated” and changed the subject. “Étienne, do you mind if I asked you a personal question?”

“You,ma belle amie, may ask me anything you wish.” His smile didn’t have dimples, but the white teeth flashing in his sun-tanned face were enough to put butterflies in her stomach.

She almost reconsidered her question. The direct approach wasn’t her style. But, damn it, she was falling for him, and before she fell any harder, there was something she had to know. “Do you…do you like—well, I mean…” She rolled the car to a stop at the last red light before home and checked to make sure the vampire still followed. There didn’t seem to be any conversation going on in the car behind them. Both faces were grim. Their business with Dominique might not ever affect Samantha. Or it might turn the world of night upside down, and her own world right along with it.

Better get this settled before the apocalypse then. With a deep, fortifying breath, she turned to her passenger. “Are you gay?”

Étienne guffawed. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever met. Even more than Dominique,” she added, thinking of the vampire lord’s true appearance, which Étienne had not seen, and which, though breathtaking and hypnotic, could also be hard and terrifying. The only thing hard about Étienne were those muscles she itched to touch.

“Oh.Merci, mais—”

“And because I think we have a connection, and I might be falling for you, but you’ve been nothing but a gentleman.” There. She said it. It was all out there now.

Étienne closed his mouth and swallowed. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He might even be blushing, though she couldn’t be sure in the low light. He definitely sounded husky. “And…you did not want me to be a gentleman?”

“Depends. Would you like to kiss me?”

“Oh,oui, yes. Very much.”

“Well, then…?”

“In France, a gentleman waits for the woman to…”

Samantha leaned toward him. “We’re not in France.”

A corner of his mouth quirked up as he leaned to meet her. “And I am not gay,” he whispered and backed up his words with the kiss she had fantasized about since first laying eyes on those lips. It was everything she imagined and more. Very gentlemanly, but with a passionate edge and a swoon-worthy attention to detail.

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