Because he found it hard to believe he’d ever let her go. Not when in little more than a day’s time she’d shown him more compassion than he’d seen in his lifetime. His sluggish heart beat a little faster, something akin to fear fueling a surge of adrenaline every time he thought about her leaving for good. “Part of it is to ensure your safety while you’re under my employ. The other part is to help you in your genealogy research.”
She wiggled a little in his lap, teasing the longest-held erection he’d had in years. Damn, he didn’t remember as a teenager being able to sustain one like this. With the creamy curve of her breasts just beneath his view and the heat of her cunt resting so close to him, he didn’t know what to wish for more to end the sweet misery.
“You’re killing me,” he grumbled.
“Am I too heavy for you?” she asked, the smile on her face drippy sweet. Alice tilted her hips forward, and the contact electrified him.
“Ask me again after I start feeding you properly. For now, don’t even think about moving.”
“You encounter those things a lot? The werewolves?”
“More now than we used to, but rarely resulting in bloodshed. Once upon a time the vampire kept to his community, and the werewolf kept to his. Now that it’s becoming more difficult to keep our existences away from humans, we’re finding we need to occupy the same places. We’re almost like animals on the verge of extinction struggling to survive in the twenty-first century. Human population growth, steel enclosures, technology...all of it threatens to expose us.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can you be on the verge of extinction when according to the movies, you guys are supposedly superior?”
She said the latter with such distaste, he found himself smiling. “We live for such a long time that the Council has seen to it that we don’t overpopulate. No new vampires without their consent. Face it, you’re food. And if we run out of food...” He shrugged. This probably wasn’t the most appealing of topics for her.
Alice didn’t seem to focus on being relegated to nothing more than a cheeseburger. Her gaze became a little vacant. He studied that look. “So if someone, a human, was sick,” she said softly, “it needn’t be a death sentence. The person could be fixed. You could make him—or her—a vampire, right?” Her face canted away from his.
“I can’t.” He almost choked on the words.
She peered at him. Cautious. “What do you mean?”
His throat tightening, Bast considered how much to tell her about this thorn in his side. “I’m...” He struggled to find the right word. One that wouldn’t break him to say. “Flawed.”
The fingertips that caressed his jaw were gentle. Soothing. “Sebastian?”
“It’s doubtful I’d be able to turn someone and even if I did, if they’d survive it. The Council would never approve any attempts to find out.”
“But if you didn’t ask first? If you just tried it?”
“Both that person and I would be executed.” He watched a riot of goose bumps cover her skin. And there was a curious flickering in her expression. As if shutters had closed behind her eyes. “Never mind. It’s not worth even talking about,” he continued. “The plane’s coming in for a landing. Unless you plan on walking out like that, maybe you should put your shirt back on.”
He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling the woman who climbed down from his lap moved now as she struggled against a heavy weight. She turned back around suddenly. “If you had a good reason, might you try? To make someone a vampire.”
After a moment’s pause, he shook his head. “No. There isn’t reason enough to risk the wrath of the Council. They’re ruthless in their pursuit of those who break our laws. There’s a team of us whose sole mission is their protection. There’s also a team of men and women whose sole purpose is to punish law breakers.”
“Execute them, you mean.”
“When appropriate, yes.”
Alice took a step forward, relentless in her persistence. The plane began to tilt, but she rode its descent as if on a surfboard. “But there must be ways around those laws. Reasons why an individual might be allowed to live.”