Vampires Realm Prophecy 01 - Child of Light

seduction to each other. Surely, he’d seduced enough girls in his time that sitting here with her shouldn’t make him embarrassed. She felt like asking him, but decided against it. He would leave if he thought she was mocking him about something like that and she needed his company.
    Looking at him again, she found he was staring at her chest and she realised that she’d been letting the covers slip while she was lost in her thoughts and was on the verge of completely exposing herself. She drew the covers back up again and caught sight of the fire in his eyes when he looked at her. Evidently, he wasn’t so prudish after all. The way he’d looked at her last night in the alley, and was looking at her now, told her that if he wasn’t in such good control of himself, she would have found out by now what it was like to be on the receiving end of one of the seductions the men of her house boasted about. She got the feeling that he’d know exactly what to do and would probably put their stories to shame.
    She bit her lower lip when part of her vision came back to her and she remembered him kissing her in the field. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, taking in the tempting curve of his lips. They had felt so delicious against hers and she’d not wanted the kiss to end. She wondered if it had meant something. It had felt like a vision. If it was one, then surely it meant he was destined to kiss her, just like he had done in her dream.
    “Prophecy.”
    She couldn’t miss the note of desire that laced his voice and found it was still evident in his eyes when she raised hers to meet them.
    “I saw... it was all so confusing,” she said, unsure of how to proceed or where to start.
    “Was it Venice?” He leaned towards her.
    “No.” She shook her head and stared at the far wall so she could concentrate. Whenever she looked at him, her thoughts roamed to the kiss and her eyes strayed to his lips. “I don’t know where it was.”
    “Were you in a city?”
    She met his question with another shake of her head. “No. It was countryside, wide-open countryside, like nothing I’ve seen before. There were mountains, and a field. You were there. And there was a castle. Then a battle. There was so much death. I screamed and it stopped, just before... before... ”
    She couldn’t bring herself to say what had happened.
    “Before?” He pressed her. She looked deep into his eyes and didn’t hide her feelings, wanting him to see that what had happened had upset her and hoping that he’d piece it together for himself so she didn’t have to say it. He frowned. “I see.”
    He was visibly shaken. A mixture of guilt and sorrow settled in her stomach, and she was overwhelmed by a sudden need to be close to him, to touch and comfort him.
    She leaned forwards, reached out and placed a hand over his while her other arm held the sheet against her body. She looked up into his eyes while he stared down at their hands.
    “Nothing happened. I didn’t let it happen.”
    He still looked shaken when he met her eyes and smiled.
    “I wouldn’t let it happen, Valentine.” She wrapped her fingers around his hand so the tips of them brushed against his palm and was surprised when he responded by curling his fingers under and holding her hand.
    “I know,” he said in a gruff tone of voice that betrayed what he was feeling.
    He was scared. She could see that now. Beneath the strong and confident exterior, he was hiding his true feelings. There was something about what lay ahead of them, or something about her, that scared him, that made him want to disconnect from it all and pretend that he could go back to his old life just like he’d wanted to in Oxford. She could understand. She was frightened too.
    She watched his thumb brush against her fingers and could almost sense the depth of his true feelings for her.
    They frightened her most of all.
    His hand slipped free from hers as he stood. “You should get ready. My contact will be expecting us, and she hates it when people are late.”
    Jealousy flared up inside her while she watched him leave. His contact was female. She glared at the far wall and wondered why he’d neglected to mention that earlier and then reasoned that he probably hadn’t thought it would matter that his contact was a woman. She huffed and threw the covers aside. It damn well mattered to her.
    Tugging her combats on, she frowned the whole time. She slipped into a black vest top and grabbed the piece of string