“If you lie to me, I’ll know.” She leveled a stare at him. “I’m a reporter. I’m going to make it my business to find out what’s going on with you one way or another, and if you lie to me tonight? You better never come around me again. You taught me where to best shoot someone, remember?”

“Yes,” he said gravely.

“Good.” Jo wrenched open the driver’s side door. “Because thanks to you, I know how to kill a man.”

And boy, that sounded like a really great idea at the moment.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

So start talking.”

As Jo put the command out, Syn pulled his seat belt free of his chest and then let the strap come back into contact with his pecs. The fact that they came up to a red light seemed apt.

When the thing turned green, she didn’t hit the gas. “Well.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Pick something random—like birth,” she said dryly.

“I fear your knowledge of me.” He looked out of the side window. “I want a better story than the one I have to give you.”

The beep of a car horn behind them had her moving them forward. “We all want a better story. But that’s marketing, not reality.”

Syn thought of the hut he had lived in with his sire, the one he had burned down. He thought of the fact that he had slept next to his mahmen’s dead body for a decade, after it had rotted with a terrible stench for three months. He thought of the drunken, slobbering, abusive tormentor he had had to endure until he had sliced the male into pieces and let the sun do the work of ashing the remains.

Maybe start with the present, he decided.

“I’m a soldier. You’re right about that.” He looked at the local shops that they passed, and reflected how he would have so much preferred to be detailing a life where going into a store and choosing which gift, which bottle of wine, which piece of cheese, to purchase was the most strenuous decision and consequence faced. “I’m a soldier and some other things I’m not proud of.”

“Being in the military most certainly is something to be proud of.”

“It’s not what I’ve done when in service that I want to apologize for.” He took a deep breath. “It’s true that I’m a bodyguard. Of a very powerful male—man. An extremely powerful one who has many enemies.”

“That explains how you acted with the delivery guy.”

“It’s my nature. And my training. Sometimes…” He cleared his throat. “Sometimes both conspire to get the best of me.”

“And you really do live with him? That man you guard.”

“Yes, in his home, with his wife and his child. He has a number of personal guards and I am one of them.”

“Who is he?” She glanced over. “Unless you can’t tell me that?”

“I am paid to be discreet. I’m sorry. And I can’t take you to where I live for the same reason.” He looked at her pointedly. “But I’m not lying about this. I am telling you everything I can—and maybe, in the future? I might be able to tell you even more. Not the now, though.”

They continued on, going into the commercial part of town. No more mom-and-pop stores with homey themes best suited for Instagram snapshots and baby showers. Now there were tile stores, and carpet stores, and places that sold electronics, tires and cars.

“Is that why you’re downtown so much?” she asked. “Helping your boss.”

“A lot happens there. It’s a dangerous place.”

“True.” Jo glanced over, and in the light glowing from the dashboard, her face seemed reserved, but no longer angry. “That’s why you said what you did to me that first night, huh. About me being in danger. About me dying.”

“You need to be careful.”

“Women can take care of themselves.”

“They shouldn’t have to.”

“Which brings us to my next question.” She refocused on the road ahead, her ten-and-two grip on the wheel tightening. “What’s up with your wife.”

“I told you.” Syn shook his head. “I don’t have one.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That is the one thing you can be completely sure of,” he said bitterly. “You know that I have a problem when it comes to sex. What female would have me? I cannae get her pregnant.”

“There’s more to a relationship than having children.”

“Not for most females, and who can blame them. Besides, it’s never been a priority for me.”

“Sex?”

“Marriage.”

There was a long pause. “Were you injured?” she asked as they came up to another traffic light. “You know, while fighting overseas? Is that why you can’t… I mean, I’m no medical expert. I don’t know how these things happen or work.”

He recalled his first rutting. It had been with a female of the species who he had paid to allow him to take her vein. Evidently, she had found him attractive and had mounted him while he had been feeding from her. He could still picture her riding up and down on his hips, her stained peasant blouse open, her pendulous breasts swinging back and forth on her chest like saddlebags on a galloping horse.

It was common for males to become sexually aroused when they indulged their bloodlust. He’d learned this over time. But that did not mean they wanted to have sex. Or, in his case, when he’d lost his virginity, consented to the act. After it was all done, she had kissed him and dismounted with an air of satisfaction. Taking the money, she had left him on the cot, her juices drying on his hard cock, a dirty feeling staining the inside of his skin.

The sense that she had taken something from him had persisted for nights.

“It’s not an injury,” he said tightly. “It’s just the way it’s always been.”

“Have you been checked out by a doctor?”

“Sure,” he murmured so she’d stop asking questions on the topic.

“And there’s nothing they can do about it?”

“No.”

“I’m really sorry.”

Syn took a deep breath, and as he let it out, he hoped the exhale took some of the sting in his chest with it. “I don’t spend any time thinking about it.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

I’ve bonded with you, he thought to himself.

“So tell me about her,” Jo said softly. “And don’t deny she exists. I can see it in your face.”

“I’m looking away from you,” he pointed out as he deliberately focused on a Panera restaurant. Then a Ford dealership. Then a Sunoco gas station.

“Fine, I can hear it in your voice.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You are now. And I can tell.”

Syn was not about to go into the bonding thing with her. So in his head, he moved on to that female from the Old Country, picturing her front and center so that all other considerations were hidden—even though, as much as he had always been told, humans couldn’t read the thoughts of others.

So it wasn’t like Jo could get into his skull and see what he was skirting.