Demon Blood

disappointment.”
    Her color was high again, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Was he?”
    “No. But I couldn’t . . . But the timing wasn’t right. It was never right. And it was never going to be right. He was human and I was a Guardian, and my brother hadn’t changed.” She took a deep breath. “But I wanted so much. And I thought, Maybe one day, it would be right. So I arranged for him to become a vampire.”
    Deacon stared at her, struck dumb. That’d been the last thing he expected her to say. And how did she arrange for someone to become a vampire? It couldn’t have been against the man’s will. The transformation had to be voluntary. So the man had chosen a vampire’s life for his own reasons.
    He could understand that, easily. He remembered Camille, so bright in the darkness of his life. How she’d had a purpose—and through her, he’d had one, too, until he’d found his own again.
    This man had probably been seduced by the transformation the same way. “You knew he would accept it?”
    “I thought he might.”
    But Rosalia couldn’t be with him and provide the blood he’d need. That meant—“Even though he’d be with someone else?”
    So she’d arranged for his transformation, then handed him over to another woman. That was damn cold and calculating.
    But the expression on Rosalia’s face was neither. “He was with someone else,” she said softly. “But he was alive .”
    So his life had made the trade-off worth it. Christ.
    She continued. “And I thought . . . At some point, he won’t live up to my expectations. And I’ll lose interest.”
    “Did he? Did you ?”
    “Yes, he did. And no, I didn’t.”
    So, some perfect bastard. Someone who might be good enough for her. “So why aren’t you with him now? Your brother’s dead.”
    “Yes, well—” She took another deep breath. “Not so long ago, he was forced to make a bargain with a demon.”
    Now it was coming together. The connection. “Like I did.”
    She made a strange noise in her throat. “Yes. Like you, he was left with no good choices. Only bad ones. I didn’t know it, though. I had no idea what was happening. And while he was away from his community, I thought: Maybe now I’ll try.”
    “And you met up with him. You told him?”
    “No.” Her gaze locked on his, held steady. “I’d have to tell him how I manipulated his life. I feared his reaction.”
    He considered his own aversion to Camille trying to manage him, and his relief that Eva and Petra had never tried. “Yeah, that’d make any man pissed enough to walk away.”
    Then realize what he could have with her and get over it.
    “Yes,” Rosalia said softly. She looked away from him. “I probably shouldn’t have done it that way. I probably should have been open from the beginning. Maybe it would have changed things.” She sighed. “Or maybe it wouldn’t have. In any case, the demon got to him, and I should have known. I should have seen, but instead I was trying to flirt. And instead of being able to help him, his bargain with the demon ended . . . badly.”
    He’d died? Deacon hadn’t been around any other vampires the past six months. He didn’t know who it’d been—or even if it was a European vampire, someone he was familiar with. And he didn’t want to ask around and find out who he was competing against.
    Competing against? By the sound of this guy, Deacon wasn’t even in the same class.
    “So you couldn’t help him, and now you’re overcompensating by helping me.”
    And her wanting to kiss him suddenly made more sense. She’d transferred more than her guilt over from this other guy.
    “Yes.” She lifted her sad eyes to his again. “That’s oversimplified, but basically . . . yes. That failure is one of my many reasons.”
    He’d wanted to expose more of her? Shit. Judging by the jealousy eating at him, he’d exposed more of himself. Her vulnerability was killing him.
    He pushed all of that emotion away and said flatly, “So we have our reasons, and now we should be going. What city’s on the agenda for tonight?”
    She took several moments. Still wrestling with her heart-break, he guessed. Her answer, when it came, was soft. “Monaco.”
    Where she’d change her clothes and put on that human-scented perfume, then rub his shirt over her skin. He wanted to put his scent on her. Wanted to mark her as his.
    “Did you have all of my shirts cleaned?”
    Her puzzled expression said he’d lost her.