Well, since she could remember.
Every night was a struggle not to drag her bedding into her closet and sleep on the floor, praying that would give her the extra few seconds she’d need to escape if someone started to shoot up the house or tried to break inside. The same was true now. Granted, thanks to Ty Duncan’s visit earlier that night, she was more distracted than usual.
He made her mind spin. He made her feel. She was jumpy as a cat.
She threw back the covers and got out of bed, snapping on the light on her way to a recent acquisition: a thrift-shop vanity with a mirror the size of the moon. She sat on its matching chair and yanked open a little drawer to find a hairbrush.
With long, slow strokes, Ana drew the brush through her dark brown hair, something that usually soothed her.
Not tonight. She set it down, looking at herself in the mirror. Her brown eyes were troubled. She rubbed at the dark circles under them, then sat back, pulling up the frayed strap of her tank top.
Ana Martin, secret agent. Hah. Big fat fucking hah. What did Ty see in her?
How badly she wanted to trust him and reach out for all that he’d offered. His help. A sense of purpose. A team to belong to, on the side of the good guys this time. That would be interesting. It was even more interesting that Ty thought she was perfect for it. He didn’t seem to doubt that she could be what he and Belladonna needed her to be.
Maybe he was right, she thought wistfully. Maybe she could teach Belladonna’s female agents something and prove to Ty that she was worth trusting. But he seemed to know far too much about her dirty past.
It hadn’t stopped him from kissing her, though. It hadn’t stopped him from looking at her like he wanted her. Needed her. Like maybe, given enough time, he could even come to love her.
You really think a man like that could love someone like you?
It was possible. Ty had kissed her like he meant it and didn’t seem to care about her scar, but that didn’t mean the guy wanted anything from her but sex. Story of her life.
Ana pushed back the chair and flung herself into the tangled bed. She knew she’d toss and turn for hours.
She reached for the alarm clock, running her hand down the cord to pull the plug from the outlet. The last thing she needed was to watch the digital numbers change until the sun came up. She’d stare at the ceiling.
She slept and dreamed instead.
After making it back to his flat, Ty dragged himself into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. Several hours later he woke and breathed a sigh of relief. The pain had finally receded. He gingerly poked at his forehead to confirm that the bullet wound had completely healed. He’d kept the slug as a fucking souvenir.
Ty was still a filthy mess, though. He was covered in dried blood and sweat, and the bitter taste of the homeless man’s blood in his mouth was enough to make his stomach roll. The digital clock beside his bed told him it was 3 a.m. Shakily, he pulled himself to his feet and into the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth and spent almost an hour in the shower. Then, feeling remarkably better, he dried off, threw on some sweats, and headed for the surveillance equipment that took up one corner of the room.
As good as the shower had felt, it was nothing compared to the curious sense of peace that washed over him as soon as he saw Ana. Peace, however, looked to be the last thing she was feeling. Her restless, sleeping image was crisply displayed on the monitor, just as it had been for the past few weeks since he’d bugged her house. For all her street smarts, Ana still had a lot to learn about sweeping a room and making sure the enemy wasn’t spying on her. That, of course, was to be expected.
She was a tough girl, but not trained in covert operations. And despite what she wanted to believe, she was still gullible.
He’d never tried to read Ana’s mind, and even with what he’d discovered tonight about his ability to read lingering mental energy and possibly control minds, that wouldn’t change. Though he knew he was invading her privacy right now, he was doing so by garden-variety covert means, not the paranormal. He refused to stoop that low. Anything he needed to know from her, he could damn well use his other skills to get.
Unless mind reading became absolutely necessary. Then he’d play as dirty as his talents allowed him to. But right now, she was pretty much an open book to him. Far more than she realized.
As Ana muttered something and rolled to the other side of the bed, Ty winced. The speakers transmitted her low moans as her dream got worse. The images that plagued her in her sleep might be different from his, but seemed no less painful.
Cursing, he rubbed his eyes and got up to get a bottle of animal blood from the fridge. He chugged it down, almost gagging. Compared to the human blood he’d swallowed earlier, it tasted flat. Barely palatable.
But he hoped he never drank anything else for the rest of his vampire life. He didn’t want to remember the blood lust that had overcome him before any more than he wanted to remember his lust for Ana. Deep down inside, he knew he’d feel both again. The question was whether he’d act on either one.
After putting the bottle of blood back in the fridge, Ty sat at his dining table and dropped his face in his hands. Even so, he could still envision the amber specks in Ana’s brown eyes and the way the scar contrasted with the softer, silkier skin of her face.
With a muffled curse, Ty rose and returned to the surveillance station. Ana was still moaning. It didn’t surprise him that he had to fight the urge to go to her. It did surprise him that rather than wanting to fuck her or drink from her, what he really wanted to do was comfort her. Hold her.
And be held and comforted in return.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
In the cold, hazy mist of her dream, Ana was transported from the bedroom in her Seattle home to the shadowy streets of the Bronx. For a moment, she simply looked around, trying to push back the memories that threatened to overwhelm her.
It was odd the way she dreamed. As if there was always two of her: Ana, the objective observer, and Eliana, the girl who was swept away by the events of the dream. Somehow, it was possible for her to be in the heads of both of them—both of her selves—at the same time. Even more odd was the fact that being in Ana’s head was the most frightening, because while Eliana was often carried away by the violence around her, it was Ana who knew the eventual outcome and the depths to which she’d sunk.
On this particular night, Eliana slammed the door as she escaped her mother’s house, her disgust palatable. Ana cringed in sympathy.
Theresa Maria Sanchez Garcia, Eliana’s mama, was a whore of the worst kind—the kind who didn’t bother collecting her money before she let men fuck her; the kind who passed out drunk, leaving her daughters—half sisters Eliana and Gloria—alone with strange men who considered them part of the deal their mama had struck. Thankfully, now that Gloria was living with her father’s family, Eliana had only herself to worry about, but that still meant carrying the knife that her friend Miguel had given her, and using it if she had to. So far, she hadn’t had to use it, but Ana knew that was about to change.
“I’m not gonna use that,” she’d scowled at Miguel when he’d first held it out. “What? Son usted loco? You wan’ me to kill someone? I’d go to jail!”
“Jail would be better than being raped by some pervert!” Miguel had shouted.
“I’ve always escaped before. Me and Gloria—”
“Gloria’s gone now. You’re alone. It’s just you and me, and when I can’t be there to protect you, you need to protect yourself. Please. I care about you.”