An Acquired Taste (The Valentine Society)

Chapter Eighteen

A n hour passes, maybe two, and the rain shows no sign of letting up. I’m shivering and wet. Barnabas lays curled up beside me with his head in my lap. He keeps looking up at me with his big brown eyes like he’s asking me to do something about this horrid situation, and it only makes me feel worse.

“I’m sorry, Barny,” I whisper, running my fingers through his wet fur. I realize he’s shivering, too, and a fresh wave of guilt hits me. I unbutton my coat and pull him up into my lap. He nuzzles closer to my warmth, sticking his cold nose into the side of my neck. It only makes me colder and wetter, but I hope I can share some of my body heat with him.

I’ve resolved to wait here till morning when I hear something through the rain. I squint against the sheet of water, wondering if I imagined it.

“ Amelia! ”

No, that was real. Definitely real. I cup my numb hands around my mouth and yell back, “I’m here!”

Shockingly fast, a form dressed in head-to-toe black emerges from the rain and joins us under the protective branches of the weeping willow. I stare, half-delirious and startled and clutching Barnabas. The last person I expected to see was Sebastian himself. Barny lets out an excited whine at the sight of him, but he doesn’t move from his spot on my lap.

“Amelia,” Sebastian says again. “What are you doing out here? What in the world were you thinking, coming out in this weather?”

“Just,” I say, teeth chattering, “a little. Chilly.”

Sebastian mutters something unintelligible and unbuttons his coat. “Take yours off,” he says. “It’s wet.”

I nod, too tired and cold to argue. When my stiff fingers fumble with my buttons, he reaches over and helps me. He pulls the coat off and wraps me in his own. He doesn’t have any body heat to offer, of course, but it’s still nice and dry and smells like him, and I wrap it around myself and Barny.

“Here, Trent!” Sebastian shouts over his shoulder. He lifts Barnabas off my lap with one arm and helps me to my feet with the other.

The moment I’m up, my ankle gives. I cry out; I had almost forgotten the injury, since my body’s gone numb.

Sebastian catches me, his eyes widening. “You’re hurt.”

“Twisted my ankle,” I say, leaning on him for support.

A moment later, Trent ducks in from the rain. “Oh, thank God,” he says, his eyes flicking from me to Barny.

“Get Barnabas back to the house,” Sebastian says, his eyes never leaving me as he hands Barny over to Trent.

“Yes, sir.” Trent pulls Barny into his coat, cradled safely in his arms.

“I’m fine,” I say belatedly. “I’m just—” I cut off in a squeak as Sebastian scoops me off my feet. He holds me in his arms, bridal-style, like I weigh nothing at all. I want to protest but his arms are strong, his coat so blessedly dry around me, and it’s instinctive to just burrow my face into his chest and let myself be carried.

With Sebastian’s long strides and knowledge of the grounds, it only takes ten minutes or so to get back to the house, but he doesn’t set me down when we get there. He carries me through the entryway without pausing to take off his shoes.

Trent comes close behind with an extremely muddy Barnabas. “I’ll take care of him, Lord Sebastian,” he says.

“Thank you, Trent.” Sebastian carries me through to the drawing room and the fire waiting there. He sinks down in front of it, lowering me to a seat on the rug in front of the fireplace. I shut my eyes, enjoying the warmth on my skin, but then they fly open again as I think of my filthy shoes.

“I’m getting mud all over,” I protest. “I should take a bath—”

“No. That would be too much of a shock for your body. You need to warm up slowly.”

He starts to stand, and I reach out and grab his arm before I can second-guess myself.

“Please don’t go.”

I think I might be delirious, because I didn’t mean to say that out loud. But I’m too cold and dizzy to care how pathetic I sound right now. Something about the way he carried me here made me ache to be taken care of, even though I’m sure he’s furious with me.

“I was just going to get you a change of clothes,” he says. But he lowers himself back to his knees on the rug, and I gratefully lean back against him. “A blanket, then. But you need to get out of those.”

I nod but make no move to undress. I’m not sure my stiff limbs are capable of it yet.

Sebastian leans over to grab a nice fuzzy throw from an armchair. Then he pulls his borrowed coat off my shoulders and sets it aside. A moment’s hesitation, and he reaches for the hem of my soaked sweater. I lift my arms to assist him, and he carefully peels it off me. I’m left only in a bra, but I can’t bring myself to be self-conscious right now. Anyway, he’s still kneeling at my back, so he can’t be getting much of a view.

“You can take that off, too,” I mumble, since I don’t feel like fumbling with it with my numb fingers.

Sebastian hesitates. Then his fingers find their way to the clasp of my bra. He undoes it, and I shrug it off and let it fall to my lap. A moment later, he wraps the blanket around my shoulders.

I expect him to leave it at that, but instead he grabs me by the waist and slowly but oh-so-easily spins me around on the rug to face him.

“Which ankle is the one that hurts?” he asks. Not quite able to form words, I tilt my chin at my left foot.

He takes that mud-caked sneaker—my poor, yellow shoes may never recover—and sets it on his knee without a care for the dirt smearing on his nice pants. He undoes my laces, slips off the shoe with utmost care, and scrutinizes my swollen ankle.

I can’t help it; I stare at him, my awareness gradually sharpening as warmth seeps into my bones. I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, although he never lifts his eyes from my ankle. His expression is creased with concentration as he gently feels along the bone.

It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t wrap my head around the way he carried me back to the house, the way he’s treating me so softly, after ignoring me for days.

“I suspect it’s just a sprain,” he says, lowering my bare foot to the rug. “But I’ll call the doctor tomorrow to have a look at it.”

“Can’t you just give me some of your blood?” I ask, remembering the way he closed my puncture marks after he bit me.

He shakes his head. “You’d have to ingest it for an injury like this, and I’d rather avoid that,” he says. “If this were a serious injury, it’d be one thing, but for a mild sprain…”

I frown. “What’s wrong with ingesting it?”

“It can be addictive, for one,” he says. “And it also creates a temporary bond.” When I give him a quizzical look, he continues, “It’s akin to the bond between a fledgling vampire and their sire. I’d be able to sense your location and emotions, and influence you to an extent.”

“Oh.” The thought is enough to make me blush. Definitely best to avoid that so I won’t pester him with all of my wild mood swings and unsavory thoughts. “Well, yes, okay, let’s not do that. It’s not bad, anyway. I’ll be fine. I’m sure a doctor isn’t necessary, either.”

He slowly raises his eyes to meet mine. “I say it is.”

The intensity in his gaze makes heat flood my face. Now that my mind is finally clearing up, the reality of what happened today sinks in.

“You came looking for me,” I whisper.

“I wasn’t sure what to think when I realized you weren’t in your room.” He lifts my other sneaker into his lap and begins to attend to those laces as well. “And when I asked around, I heard that you had missed dinner.” He removes the shoe, peels off the sock, sets my foot beside the other while I sit still. “I wondered if perhaps you had… left. But then I realized Barnabas was missing.”

“I just wanted to take him on a walk,” I say, sheepish.

“In the rain.” His lips purse. “Of all the imbecilic—”

“It wasn’t raining when I left!”

He sighs. It’s especially dramatic because I know the man doesn’t even need to breathe. He reaches up to touch my ankle, just below where my jeans are plastered to my skin. “Can you remove these yourself?”

“I could.” A beat. “But you’re doing such a good job of it.”

He blinks, his eyes shifting up to meet mine. When they do, I crack a small smile.

Something almost like relief floods his expression. “You certainly seem to be feeling better,” he says. He shifts forward, his hand sliding over my jeans from my ankle to my knee, to the inside of my thigh. I suck in a sharp breath, but he’s all businesslike as his hands move to the button of my jeans and my zipper. Almost like he’s… teasing me?

Then he tugs my jeans down my legs, and any hint of sexiness is quickly lost as my wet pants stick to my equally wet skin. I try to wriggle to help him out, which only makes it feel more ridiculous. He sends me tumbling on my ass with one firm yank, and I collapse into helpless giggles as he finally pulls the pants free.

“My God,” he mutters dourly, which only makes me laugh more. I look up at him from where I’m sprawled on the rug before the fire, wrapped in a blanket with my hair still soaked and wild, and catch a glimmer of what I dare say is amusement in his dark eyes. He sets my pile of wet clothes and shoes aside and tugs me up so I’m sitting on his lap in front of the fireplace. He wraps his arms around my almost-naked but blanket-cocooned body.

I wish I had a reason to get him under the blanket with me, but unfortunately, I can’t use the excuse of body heat when he’s a vampire. Instead, I just rest my face in the crook of his neck and breathe in the smell of him.

Whenever he’s out of sight—which is most of the time—it’s easy to convince myself that Sebastian hates me, that he’s using me for my blood or taking care of me out of pity. That he’s some callous asshole. But when he’s here, holding me so tenderly like this, I feel dangerously fond of this infuriating man.

“You’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse,” he murmurs into my damp curls. I think I feel the faintest brush of his lips against my hair, but it could be my imagination.

“How long were you out searching in the rain?” I ask.

“Not long, thankfully,” he says. “I thought that if you were with Barnabas, he would lead you to…” A pause, a swallow. “On the path of our weekly walk.”

To the grave , I realize, flashing back to that lonely headstone beneath the willow trees. Eternally beloved . The fresh roses. He walks there every week? I almost ask about it, about her , but I stop myself. As curious as I am, I can’t bring myself to ruin this rare moment alone with Sebastian.

Plus, his arms are so strong around me, and the fire is so lovely and warm. Slowly, my frozen skin and chilled bones thaw. As the cold seeps out, exhaustion creeps in. Before I know it, my head is drooping onto Sebastian’s shoulder, and my eyes are drifting shut.

The last thought that occurs to me, before I fall asleep, is that I never asked Sebastian why he was looking for me in my room in the first place.