THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

some asinine things.”
     
    Ainsley sat up in bed before the knock sounded on her door, swiping at her cheeks. “Go away, Del. I’m tired.”
    The door opened. He stepped across the threshold, closing the door behind him. “I’m sorry, I can’t oblige. We need to talk.”
    Why? She lifted her chin. Why not just do this?
    “Because it takes a lot more energy to project a thought than it does to just say it, especially when you’re just learning.” He crossed the carpeted floor to stand by her bed. “Although I must say, you demonstrate an extraordinary raw talent for it, both projecting and receiving.”
    “That’s me. A veritable walking transistor.”
    He sighed. “We could talk about why that analogy is woefully inadequate, or we could talk about us.”
    She laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. You wanting to talk about us . Or about anything personal, for that matter.”
    “I’d say touché, but then you’d accuse me of being stuck in a seventies romance novel or something.”
    “Which seventies?”
    “Good one.”
    She lifted both hands and raked them through her hair. “I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch.”
    “Which still leaves you miles ahead of me.” His eyes grew bleak. “I behaved like an animal out there. Like the very creatures I’ve been working so hard to curb.”
    She shook her head emphatically. “Never that. But you did scare me.”
    “Not nearly as much as I scared myself.”
    He turned to examine the top of her night table, and she wondered what he’d make of the loose change, well-thumbed paperback and Hershey’s chocolate sitting there, within easy reach.
    “Eli is the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had.”
    Ainsley made no reply.
    He picked up the paperback and turned it over to examine its back, but she had the distinct impression he wasn’t really seeing it.
    “He’s tough as boot leather, as talented at taking life as he is at saving it.” Delano replaced the book on her night table and turned to face her again. “He’s been my closest friend in over a century, and I love him dearly. But I almost killed him tonight. If you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t intervened…”
    “Delano, if I hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”
    He lifted an eyebrow. “True.”
    “Oh, Del, what are we going to do? Is this real? Or could it be as you suggested, a psychosomatic thing?”
    “Push over.”
    It took her a moment to process that he wanted to sit on the edge of the bed. She scrambled back, making a space for him.
    He sat, angling his body toward her where she sat propped against the headboard with her knees drawn up to her chin. “To answer your question, no.”
    She dragged her gaze from his thighs, encased as always in those civilized worsted wool trousers that utterly failed to disguise the powerful musculature beneath, and wondered what her question had been. “No?”
    “I’m not suggestible.”
    Ah, the psychosomatic thing. “Well, aren’t we feeling superior.”
    He sent her an admonishing look.
    “Sorry.” She grimaced. “There’s that bitchy thing again.”
    “I’m not saying my mind — the vampire mind — is stronger than yours, or better, it’s just … differently organized. The interaction of mind, brain, body and social context, while still present, is not precisely the same. In a stressful situation, for instance, we do not produce cortisol to the same extent as would an unmutated—”
    “You can skip the vamp biology lesson for now,” she interjected. “I believe you.”
    “Good.”
    She worried the cuticle of her thumb with her teeth for a moment. “So this can’t be in our heads?”
    “It seems doubtful.” He dropped his gaze to her mouth.
    Whoops. She dropped her hand to her lap again, feeling as self-conscious as a kid. “Then I guess we’d better figure out how to undo it, huh?”
    A pause.
    “Did I say I wanted to undo it?”
    Her pulse leapt, as much from the husky note in his voice as from the content of his words. “But it’s tantamount to a death sentence for you!”
    His lips curved in a wry smile. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. If the legend is true, the same applies for you. If I should die, you may very well be driven to seek your own end. Though obviously not by sunlight.”
    “But compared to you, I’m so … fragile.” She twisted her hands together in her lap. “I’m subject to illness, disease, decrepitude, death. These things don’t even have to enter your