I studied Nathan as he watched me. I assumed he tried to gauge my mood. He detests arguing with me, and he’d obviously had other hopes for how the conversation would go.

Tough.

“So, I’m worried.” At my arched brow, he acceded, “Fine, I’m irrationally angry with you.”

Damn him for looking good. Time stops bothering with you when you become a vampire, and Nathan was frozen at thirty-two. Despite the pallor that comes with seventy years of avoiding sunlight, he remained just as young and handsome as he’d appeared in the photographs he’d saved from his prevam-pire life. More so, actually, because this Nathan was in my bedroom, in living color. Dark hair, gorgeous gray eyes, a body so toned and hard he looked like he’d been a statue of a Greek god in a past life. But it was his eyes that had made me fall for him. Even though he’d been acting tough, and threatening my life the first time we’d met, I’d seen the kindness and sorrow in them. His eyes weren’t just windows to his soul. They were doors that let out things he wouldn’t have been able to hide from me even without a blood tie between us.

I’d turned back to my computer, where my latest dissertation on vampire physiology had waited with an impatiently flashing cursor. You can take the human out of the doctor, but you can’t take the doctor out of the vampire. Or something like that. I’d been working on A Case Study of Blood Type Compatibility for Metabolic Efficiency to kill time and distract me from the craziness of the past two months. But it had inevitably caught up with me, so when Nathan had burst in I’d been typing “Crazy Yellow Tube Socks” over and over again. “You said irrationally, not me.”

“I can’t help it.” His embarrassment was evident through the blood tie, but it didn’t quell my annoyance. “What’s going on?”

“Well, for one, I’m tired of this stupid research project—”

“You’re tired of it? I was the one drinking AB negative all damn week.” Though he chuckled, there was a wearing note to the sound.

“And you’ve been watching me sleep, which usually means something major is about to happen. Plus, I’ve been having these nightmares.” I covered my face with my hands, massaging my tired skin. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like ‘nothing.’” The bedsprings squeaked as he stood.

I dropped my hands and gave him a withering look. “Oh, he listens as well as watches.”

The ghost of a sarcastic smile crossed his face as he knelt beside my chair. “You make it sound so dirty.”