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Chapter Ten

  Connor had managed to avoid Raven most of the five days she’d been living in his home. Shelby and Carla visited her a lot, and she actually seemed to like them, smiling openly when they were there. She even offered a smile or two to Jack. Connor didn’t get any smiles. She still looked like she hated him most of the time. Not that he could blame her, but it made things really uncomfortable.

  The only time Raven seemed at ease with him was when they watched old movies together. Stories about human life before the pandemic fascinated her. Ironically, those were the movies he preferred watching, too. Some might think it sounded crazy, but he liked trying to picture what his life would have been like had the pandemic never happened. Even knowing he’d either be dead or really old by now. He liked envisioning how his life would have been. Even the old cartoons made him think about the shows he would have watched as a child if he’d been born human. There had been no television in his childhood. He’d been nearly eighty years old when he’d seen his first movie.

  When Raven walked into the room and noticed he was getting ready to watch a movie, she sat down next to him on the sofa without hesitation. The more time he spent with her, the less human she seemed. Even though he’d gotten her shoes, she rarely wore them. Actually, she seemed annoyed when he reminded her to put them on. She also frequently forgot about personal space rules. Even now, she had her feet draped over the arm of the sofa and her head on his lap. He knew she wasn’t doing it because of some affection she felt toward him. Raven just didn’t have any hang-ups about touching. If he was honest with himself, he really liked that about her.

  They were watching a romantic comedy, and he had a hard time not laughing at the exasperated sounds she was making and the way she mumbled about the behavior of the main characters.

  “I just don’t understand why humans have so many issues with sex,” she remarked absently. “It only makes them unhappy. Are vampires the same?”

  She looked up at him.

  “I guess it depends on the vampire,” he replied with a shrug. “Some were human to begin with, so they still have those hang-ups. They can’t let go of them anymore than they can let go of their cravings for solid food. Most who were alive in the beginning were used as whores, so we don’t have a lot of romantic notions about sex.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, sitting up to look at him.

  “I thought this was common knowledge,” he said.

  She shook her head. “People paid you for sex?”

  He let out a humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t exactly put it that way. We were forced to live on reservations, and the people who ran them sold our bodies to people willing to donate blood.” He really didn’t want to reveal too much about his past, so he figured it was time to change the subject. “Do you miss living in the woods?”

  “Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “That world made sense to me. It took me a long time to get used to wearing clothes, and I still hate it.”

  Her answer made him laugh. “You just ran around naked? Didn’t you get cold?”

  The look she gave him suggested his question was stupid. “I’m a wood nymph. I’m part of nature. I could sleep naked in the snow and still be warm.”

  The thought of being naked in the snow made his balls shrivel. “Why were you living with humans?” he asked.

  “I went to live with my father after my mother was killed,” she explained, immediately starting to retreat from him. Her head was no longer on his lap, and she moved as far from him as the sofa would allow. The quiet intimacy of the moment was coming to an end, and he hated to admit he missed it already.

  “Is your father still alive?” Conner asked.

  She shook her head, and for a moment, she seemed to withdraw even further. He watched as she struggled with her answer. Her eyes were on the television, but she was obviously no longer watching it. Finally, she let out a sigh and settled back onto the sofa.

  “My father died of a human illness about fifty years ago. He lived longer than most humans in the settlement. I’ve lived with humans most of my life. Part of me wants to go back to the woods. After my father died, I spent hours out there every day trying to decide what to do. In the end, I decided I owe it to the humans to help them. They took me in, and most of them accepted me. I’ve fought beside them. I’m not sure I could go back to my life in the woods. I never really fit in there. I guess I didn’t totally fit in with the humans either, but at least they needed me.”

  She stood and looked toward the yard. “I’m going outside for a while,” she said and gave him a false smile.

  He could see the unshed tears in her eyes, and a big part of him wanted to offer comfort. In the end, he just nodded.

  He watched as she walked into his kitchen and then heard the sliding glass door open as she headed into the yard.

  Feeling like a voyeur, he walked upstairs and watched her from the window in his room. It amazed him how easily she could climb up his oak tree. Her lithe body lay draped across a branch. Her face was turned away, but he knew by the movement of her shoulders she was crying.

  Damn! It’s not that he wasn’t used to weepy women. His mother was known to go through long periods of depression, and his friend, Norah, was overly emotional, but he wasn’t usually part of the problem. Raven was strong though. She was already adjusting. The situation sucked, but maybe they would become friends in time. It could happen. She liked watching television with him, and she’d opened up about her past. It was a start.