But more importantly, shortly she would be back in the safety of her own four walls.
As she turned to the stairs leading up to the heavy entrance door, she noticed the darkness in the foyer. She glanced up. The light bulb over the door must have burned out. A couple of hours ago it had been burning brightly. She put it on her mental list of things to tell her landlord.
Maya felt for the railing and gripped it, counting the steps as she walked up.
She never reached the door.
“Maya.”
Her breath caught as she spun on her heels. Engulfed in the dark and the fog, she couldn’t make out his face. She didn’t need to – she knew his voice. She knew who he was. It almost paralyzed her. Her heart beat into her throat in a frantic tattoo as fear inside her gut spiraled.
“No!” she screamed and scrambled back toward the door, hoping against all odds she could escape.
He’d come back like he’d vowed.
His hand dug into her shoulder and pulled her back to face him. But instead of his face, all she could focus on was the white of his pointed teeth.
“You will be mine.”
The threat was the last thing she heard before she felt his sharp fangs break through her skin and sink into her neck. As the blood drained from her, so did the memories of the last few weeks.
“And you’ve tried surgery already?” Dr. Drake inquired without looking up from his notepad.
p. Gabriel released a frustrated huff and brushed an imaginary dust particle off his jeans. “Didn’t work.”
“I see.” He cleared his throat. “Mr. Giles, have you had this …” –
the doctor winced and made a nondescript hand movement – “uh … all your life? Even when you were human?”
Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut for a second. After puberty, there wasn’t a day in his living memory that he’d not had this problem.
Everything had been normal when he’d been a little boy, but the moment his hormones had started raging, his life had changed. Even as a human, he’d been an outcast.
He felt the scar on his face throb, remembering the moment he’d received it and jerked himself away from the memory. The physical pain had long eased, but the emotional pain was as vivid as ever. “I had it long before I became a vampire. Back then, nobody thought of surgery. Hell, an infection would have probably killed me.” If he’d known how his life would turn out he would have taken a knife to himself, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty. “Anyway, as you probably know better than I do, my body regenerates while I sleep and heals what it perceives to be a wound. So, no, surgery hasn’t worked.”
“I assume this has caused problems with your sex life?”
Gabriel pressed himself deeper back into the chair opposite Dr.
Drake’s, having ignored the coffin-couch with an internal shiver upon entering the practice. His friend Amaury had warned him about the doctor’s choice of furniture. Nevertheless, the coffin that had been fashioned into a chaise lounge by removing a side panel gave him the creeps. No self-respecting vampire would want to be caught dead in it.
Pun intended.
“What sex life?” he mumbled under his breath. But of course, the doctor’s superior vampire hearing assured the words weren’t lost to him.
Drake’s shocked stare confirmed it. “You mean …?”
Gabriel knew exactly what the man was asking. “Other than with an occasional desperate prostitute who I have to pay outrageous sums of money to service me, I have no sex life.”
He dropped his gaze to the floor, not wanting to see the pity in the doctor’s eyes. He was here to get help, not to be pitied. Still, he needed to impress on the man how important this was for him. “I haven’t met a woman yet who hasn’t recoiled from my naked body. They call me a monster, a freak at best – and those are the kind ones.” He paused, shuddering as the memories of all the names he’d been called came rushing back. “Doc, I’ve never had a woman in my arms who wanted to be with me.” Yes, he’d fucked women – whores – but he’d never made love to a woman. Never felt a woman’s love or tenderness, or the intimacy of waking in her arms.
“How do you expect me to help you? As you said yourself, surgery hasn’t helped, and I’m only a psychiatrist. I work with people’s minds, not their bodies.” Drake’s voice was infused with rejection, every single syllable of it. “Why don’t you use mind control on human women?
They won’t know any better.”
He should have expected as much. Gabriel leveled a glare at him.
“I’m not a complete jerk, Doctor. I will not use women like that.” He paused before he went on, bringing his anger at the dishonorable suggestion under control. “You helped my friends.”
“Both Mr. Woodford’s and Mr. LeSang’s problems were different, not …” – he searched for the right word – “physical like yours.”
Gabriel’s chest tightened. Yes, physical. And a vampire couldn’t alter his physical form. It was set in stone. It was the exact reason why his face was marred by a scar reaching from his chin to the top of his right ear. He’d received the wound when he was human. Had he been injured as a vampire, there would have never been a scar, and his face would be untouched.
Two strikes against him - already the hideous scar scared plenty of women away, and once he dropped his pants -. He shuddered and looked back at the doctor who patiently sat in his chair.
“They both claimed you used unorthodox methods,” Gabriel baited him.
Dr. Drake gave a non-committal shrug with his shoulders. “What one might call unorthodox, another might deem natural.”
That was a non-answer if there ever was one. Subtle hints wouldn’t get Gabriel the information he sought. He cleared his throat and nudged
