Claimed by a Vampire. Rachel Lee

skin reacts badly to bright light. I won’t bore you with the medical stuff, but suffice it to say that at dawn I lock myself in my bedroom and I don’t come out again until dusk. I can’t. So if you stay with me, I can offer protection only for a few hours. After that, you can stay as long as you like but don’t come back here.”

      She nodded slowly, feeling punched, her thoughts scrambling. She didn’t want to accept favors from Creed Preston—or anyone for that matter—but she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone given what she was feeling right now. What if this thing, whatever it was, could follow her?

      Her mind stuttered to a halt, then focused on the one certainty in her life, the one thing she loved beyond all else. Her thoughts seized on it as an anchor, stilling. “Can I at least have my laptop? So I can work?”

      “I’ll get it. Anything else?”

      She thought of nightclothes, a change of clothing. Did she want him pawing through her things? But did she want to be stuck in what she was wearing forever? “I need to come in. I need a change of clothes.” She hated that she could hear fear and reluctance in her own voice. This was her own condo, for Pete’s sake. She couldn’t even begin to sort through the welter of emotions that reminder caused her. Afraid to go into her own home? Afraid to spend just a few minutes packing? But her feet felt glued to the floor.

      He hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “No. I’ll get them. Trust me, I was married once, and had daughters, and I’ll treat your things with respect. And I won’t see anything I haven’t seen before.”

      The thought of walking farther into that miasma, into that threatening heaviness, forced her answer. “There’s a suitcase on the shelf in the closet.”

      He nodded. “Step outside. You’ll feel better.”

      She followed his direction and discovered that indeed, just a few steps away from her door, she felt better. Now how was that possible? The question was almost enough to make her walk back into her apartment. Almost.

      But the memory of the feeling that had slapped her the instant she crossed the threshold proved stronger than any desire to check it out. She knew she hadn’t imagined it. Her imagination ran almost entirely to the books she wrote, and rarely affected what she considered to be an otherwise pragmatic view of life.

      At least she hoped it was. She hoped the fantasies she spun for her readers weren’t beginning to affect her brain.

      No, of course they weren’t. For heaven’s sake, she knew the difference between her imagination and reality. The two only met on the pages on her computer screen.

      Suddenly from within her condo, she heard a bang. Instantly she forgot everything else and started back in. One step. Two steps. Then she froze as a blackness seemed to wrap oily tendrils in her brain. No. No!

      She tried to back up, but couldn’t. It was as if some force tried to drag her forward, deeper within her condo, away from the relative safety of the hall.

      And that noise. Something not quite curiosity, something almost like compulsion, wanted to drag her toward it. Feeling almost like a stranger within her own head, she sought the only thing she could to break the spell or whatever it was. She called out, “Creed? What happened?”

      Her voice sounded odd, as if it had emerged from the depths of the ocean. But that was impossible. Her ears hummed. Maybe the loud noise had dulled her hearing for a few seconds. That had to be it.

      “Something fell.” He sounded far away, as if calling to her from the bottom of a well. “It’s fine.”

      Then, released by whatever had tried to seize her, she backed quickly into the hallway. What the hell was going on? What had she just felt? The only comparison she could come up with was being hypnotized, and she wasn’t even sure about that.

      Creed emerged from her condo a few minutes later carrying her laptop in its case with all her peripherals, and her suitcase, along with a manila envelope. Apparently he thought of everything.

      “If I missed something, you can tell me after we get to my place and I can come back for it.”

      “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. Are you sure I won’t be a problem?” What was she doing? She ought to go to a hotel, take care of herself. Could she seriously be proposing to burden someone else? But right now she was more terrified of being alone. Especially after what she had just felt.

      “Hardly,” he said with a shrug.

      “What fell?” she asked as they waited for the elevator.

      “A pewter plate. It’s fine.”

      She knew exactly the plate he meant. “There’s no way that fell!”

      “Okay, it flew at me.”

      She opened her mouth to tell him to quit kidding when she read his expression. He wasn’t kidding. “Oh, my God,” she breathed.

      He shrugged. “I guess it didn’t like me being there.”

      “What didn’t like you being there? Creed, for heaven’s sake! Are you joshing me? Did it really fly at you?”

      “Heaven has nothing to do with this. It flew at me. And that’s another reason you’re not going back to that place.”

      “Are you okay?”

      “Minor bruise. I’m fine. But I can’t promise you will be if you go back there.”

      She felt almost dazed, trying to grasp that that heavy plate could have flown at him, but despite her distraction and confusion she noticed he didn’t hesitate to enter the elevator car with her this time. So maybe she had indeed misread him earlier.

      But even that couldn’t keep her attention now. Considering what she had felt when she entered her condo this time, it was all too easy to believe in flying plates. For the first time she was truly grateful that she could stay with him that night. Whatever was going on in her place had just magnified to truly scary proportions, and even a hotel room didn’t sound like a safe place right now.

      His condo took her breath away. Two long walls of glass gave an eagle’s eye view of the night city. The living area was entirely open, punctuated only by a bar that divided the kitchen from the rest. And it was full of color, rich colors and textures that made it seem almost jewel-like but not at all garish.

      “This is beautiful!” she exclaimed.

      “Glad you like it. When you live most of your life at night, color is essential.”

      “That must be hard for you.”

      She noted he didn’t answer directly. Most likely, she decided, he didn’t care to discuss his problem. Most certainly not with someone he’d just met.

      His sidestep was almost seamless. “Do you want to work tonight? I can clear a space on my desk.” He gestured to a table that held a computer in front of one of the windows.

      “Not tonight. I couldn’t possibly concentrate. What do you do?”

      “I’m a consultant for a foreign relations think tank.”

      She looked at him again. “That’s impressive.” And it was. But he seemed to shrug it away.

      “Before I got sick, I taught at Harvard,” he answered. “I’m glad I was able to find an alternative that fits within my limitations.”

      She nodded, sweeping her gaze over the room again. “You certainly have a good eye. I can only dream of making my place look half this good.”

      “Why do you say that?”

      “Because I’m not much of a visual person. I mean, I can see something and know I like it, but putting it together with other things to get an effect like this is beyond me.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m more the verbal type.”

      “That’s what they make decorators