The Heart's Ashes
Page 14

I stared at him, incredulous. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”
He shrugged. “I got a lotta time.”
“Go...catch a goat or something.” I waved a dismissive hand, then picked up my pace.
“Can’t. Got my eye on something a lot tastier.”
“I’d say bite me, but...” My smart remark was wittier left without closing.
“Would you like to grab a coffee?”
“Eric, I just told you—I’m running late.”
“What if you weren’t? Would you then?”
“Probably.” Even though you’re annoying and I should avoid you.
“Great. It’s a date then.”
I stopped walking and stared at him. “A date?” Awkward. “I don’t really want to date anyo—”
“Just as friends.”
“Friends?” My brow rose on one side. “But you just told me you want to eat me. Friends don’t eat friends, Eric.” I started walking again.
“Why?”
Insult littered my scowl. “I won’t even dignify that with a response.”
“You just did.”
“Argh!” My fists clenched. “You’re so annoying. Can’t you see I’m trying to avoid you?”
“Yes.”
“Then let me. It’s taken a lot of thinking to get this kind of clarity, and you with all your—” I waved at his...well, at all of him, “sexiness is not helping.”
“I’m sorry.” He stopped walking and looked down at his feet. “It’s just that...you’re a cool girl, Amara.”
“Me? Cool? Those words don’t really belong in the same sentence.”
He jammed his hands into the pockets of his black jeans and gave a bashful shrug. “But you are to me. It’s kind of nice hanging out with a human that knows what I am.”
With a sigh, I rolled my head forward. I shouldn’t be doing this. “Okay, fine. Meet me after I finish work?”
He looked up, smiling. “Great. I’ll wait for you all day.”
“I finish at three—you can come then.”
His eyes followed me as I passed him. “See you soon, Amara.”
“I look forward to it,” I called over my shoulder, waving without turning around.
While I paced the four steps from one wall to the other, my student played the scales jaggedly, hitting the wrong note every second finger. But cringe, as I may have yesterday, I did not today, because Eric’s smile and his witty sense of humour played louder in my thoughts than the erratic scaling’s of the eight-year-old in front of me.
I knew I shouldn’t be thinking about Eric. I shouldn’t be looking forward to catching up with him, shouldn’t be considering things I’d previously only ever considered with two other guys in my life—both of them being guys I was in love with. I mean, I didn’t love Eric. Like him—a lot, yeah. But not love.
Not even want to love.
I don’t know. I stopped pacing and leaned on the wall, crossing my arms, smiling only as a prompt for my student to continue. Maybe I don’t really want Eric at all—not even for my own...pleasures. Maybe my lust is just manifested abandonment and rejection. I have issues. I’m sure of it.
The next time I looked at the clock, it said three.
Thanking the hands of time silently, I packed up my things, said goodbye to jerk-face, I mean Geoff, and hurried out of the store.
“Hey beautiful.”
The glass door hit me in the bum as I stopped dead and looked across at Eric, leaning against his motorcycle with folded arms, sporting the cheekiest grin ever—even more so than David’s.
With a rise of hot blood in my limbs, I breathed out and looked away. “Eric—right on time.”
“Hop on.” He jerked his head to the seat behind him.
“No way. I’m human, remember, and the one helmet you have won’t fit my head.”
“So? You’ll love it. Come on.”
My shoulders dropped. To be on the back of his bike, with my arms wrapped around his waist, my legs touching the sides of his and my chin nestled tightly against his shoulder blade, would be pretty good. I know I’d be safe. Vampires have quick reflexes, right?
The afternoon sun stroked the silver spider webs painted along the abdomen of his bike, and his hair almost seemed to look silver too, like he was an angel cast under a spotlight from heaven, with the devil’s grin to make me want him. Reluctantly, I walked away from the music store and straight past Eric. “No thanks. I’ll pass.”
“Okay, we’ll walk.”
“Walking, I can do.” But as he paced himself beside me, leaning slightly around to meet my eyes, the one thing I couldn’t do was look at his free flying, shaggy hair, and the sexy indent on his right cheek—not a dimple, like David’s, but a line that pressed in when he smiled.
“Hey, Amara?”
The urge to look at him took over and the kindness in his chocolate brown eyes made me smile for a second.
“That’s better,” he said, finally looking forward. “I was wondering where that pretty smile was.”
Hmpf. Pretty? But his flattery nudged its way into my better judgement and forced a little giggle, which I ate the moment it touched my lips. Damn vampires. Remember, Ara-Rose, I told myself, you can never let yourself be attracted to him. You must stay on course—eternal loneliness and abstinence.
Great, I’m a nun.
“So, who’s the newb?” Eric asked, looking down at his boots.
“The newb?”
“Yeah—the guy at your house. Who is he?”
I stopped walking. “Okay, that’s creepy. Have you been stalking me?”
“Uh—” He shrugged. “Only a little.”
“Eric?” I started walking again, melodramatically rolling my head back.
“I’m sorry.” He stuffed his hands back in his pockets, contradicting the confident Eric with the bashful, remorseful one, as he stayed on the spot for a second. “I can’t help it. You’re a very attractive, very delicious-smelling human, and I’m not allowed to kill you,” he finished, catching up.
“You want to kill me?”
He shrugged. “Among other things.”
“That’s…erk, whatever! But, why aren’t you allowed to kill me?”