There were still nights when Derek would come back home after feeding on another gift from Vivienne or from some other vampire paying him homage. I tried not to talk about it. I figured the less I knew, the better – for both him and me.

The time came when we finally finished what I liked to call the Sun Room. It took longer than I thought to finish, but I was more than excited to show it to Derek.

I could never forget the look on his face when I pulled him into the room and flicked the lights open.

“You told me that you haven’t seen sunlight in five hundred years,” I explained. “I could swear from the look on your eyes that you missed it.”

“So you did this?” He looked around the room, a mural of a beautiful sandy beach painted on one wall, large mirrors on the other walls to make the room brighter and reflect the light projected by the recessed LED lights on the ceiling and the walls. At the center of the ceiling was a sun roof, mostly composed of LED lights over a glass window, creating the illusion of sunlight streaming through the room.

We chose outdoor furniture that would create the feel of being outdoors.

I smiled at Derek. “It wasn’t just me. Vivienne was more than happy to get us everything we needed. The girls and Sam and Kyle helped too. I guess it’s not just you who misses sunlight, so thanks for giving me the idea.”

To my surprise, he gently pulled me against him. He took my arms and laid them over his shoulders and around his neck. He then held my waist and led me to a slow dance.

“There’s no music,” I reminded him.

He grinned. “In my head, Sofia, there’s always music.”

I found the thought funny. “That must be interesting. It’s like you always come with your own background music.”

He nodded, smiling down at me. “Exactly.”

He then pulled me closer and placed a soft kiss over my forehead. His kiss then fell on my cheek, then to the corner of my lips. I knew he was going to kiss me and if I were to be honest with myself, I wanted it to happen, but I pulled away.

“I’m sorry...I…I can’t.”

I was expecting him to ask why or assert himself and insist.

Instead, he just nodded and looked away from me. “I understand.”

For some reason, that irritated me. How could he understand when I myself didn’t? I realized then how much it irked me that he could see me as so soft and fragile. It made me feel weak, but it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t ready for that kiss. That night, just before I could escape to peaceful slumber, I realized why. It was because I was certain that if I ever gave in to him in that way, if I surrendered to that kiss, I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from falling for him. If I ever allowed myself to fall in love with Derek Novak, I was certain that I would forever be a captive of the Blood Shade.

CHAPTER 22: DEREK

That moment in the Sun Room haunted me as I watched her sleep beside me. She backed away when I tried to kiss her. Had it been any other woman, I wouldn’t have hesitated to force my way to get that kiss anyway. But it was Sofia. She wasn’t just any woman.

I wanted her to want me, but after all she’d seen, after everything she’d been through, I couldn’t blame her for shying away from me. I understood, but it didn’t change how painful it felt.

She shifted on the bed, her blanket getting tossed to her side, showing a generous amount of skin on her soft legs. My gut clenched and I swallowed hard. Nights with Sofia were practically torture. To have her there, beautiful and so damn close to me, always reminded me of how much I wanted her. Her night wear would almost always get displaced and show her neck and shoulders, practically begging me to take a bite.

I rose from the bed, unsure of myself and what I was feeling for her. It made me sick to think about the danger she was facing. Gwen’s murderer still hadn’t been found, though in my gut, I knew who it was. I just couldn’t bear to admit it. The familiar sick feeling settled inside my stomach as I walked toward the large windows leading to the balcony that overlooked the Pavilion’s magnificent view. The night was as black as a crow, no trace of the moon’s rays anywhere. I felt as dark as that night.

I remembered seeing Lucas earlier that day whispering something in Sofia’s ear. I noticed how her entire body tensed and how she was obviously attempting to hold back her anger. I didn’t do anything about it. I pretended as if I didn’t see anything.

When Sofia approached me, she acted the same way I did. Like nothing just happened. She smiled and held my hand. She told me she had a surprise for me. Her fiery red hair and her radiant smile reminded me of sunshine more than the sun room ever could.

“Derek?” Sofia purred from behind me. “Do you ever sleep?”

I shook my head as I turned around. “Not as much as you do.” I caught my breath at how stunning she looked with those deep green eyes of hers set on me. I felt like a boy talking to his first crush for the first time. Sofia always managed to make me feel quite unhinged.

As I approached her, a pensive expression replaced the smile on her face. I sat over the edge of the bed and rubbed a hand over her hip.

“Hey… something wrong?”

She placed her hand over mine, brushing her delicate fingers over my skin. The motion sent chills running through my body. Our eyes met and for a moment, nothing else mattered other than to have her there with me. I realized at that moment that I couldn’t even think of a life without her. I felt selfish and guilty for keeping her there, even when her life was in danger, but I reasoned to myself that there was no other way.

“What’s on your mind, Derek?” she whispered.

“You…” I saw no reason to lie “…how I can’t imagine life without you.”

She sat up on the bed and brushed her hand over my neck. There was no tension, no apprehension between either one of us. We remained guarded when around others, but once alone, there was a familiarity, a rhythm, almost a dance between us. It was one of the reasons she made me feel so… known.

“I don’t know if this means anything to you,” she began to say, and then hesitated as if she were trying to weigh her words very carefully.

I inwardly scoffed at her statement. It was rare for any word coming from those sweet lips of hers not to mean something to me.

“What?” I coaxed her.

I doubted she could’ve possibly known how moved I was by what she said next.

“From the moment I got here, all I’ve wanted to do was escape and go back home, but Derek…” she placed a gentle kiss over my cheek “…you’ve begun to feel like home.”

Home.

The word and all the sensations it lent me the moment it escaped her lips were still circling my mind the next morning as I sat on the living room couch, my eyes glued to one of the members of the Elite – Claudia, a capricious and vain female vampire who managed to convince my father and brother that she had our family’s best interests at heart.

I still wasn’t sure about her true motives. Before my sleep, she made more than one attempt to foster a relationship with me. I found her very presence, beautiful as she is, repugnant. Still, she requested my audience and I had no reason to deny her that request. I could barely hear what she was saying – meaningless pleasantries that meant nothing to me, because my mind was still so wrapped up in what Sofia had implied last night.

Did she mean that I was the reason she would want to remain here at the Shade?

Claudia just finished her babbling and was waiting for some sort of response. A social cue. Considering how I wasn’t really listening and didn’t actually hear a word she said, I simply eyed her from head to foot and ignored everything she’d just been jabbering about.

“I see you’ve done quite well for yourself, Claudia,” I commented, noting her designer outfits and the aura of extravagance surrounding her.

“It’s all thanks to you, isn’t it, my prince?” she smiled.

“Let’s not lose ourselves in small talk, shall we? Why did you want to see me?” I asked her, eager to get to business and get rid of her.

I momentarily eyed the young man standing behind her by the door, waiting on her. Blonde, gray eyes, well-built – very much the type Claudia enjoyed exploiting. My jaw tightened, remembering why I detested being around the vampire who was at least thirty years older than I was, though she was turned at the tender age of seventeen.

Claudia’s long lashes fluttered as she straightened on her seat. “Other than to pay my beloved prince homage, of course, I’m just really curious.”

“Curious about what?”

“Curious about whom, you mean. Well, I’ve been hearing so much about your beautiful, redheaded pet. I was curious to find out what kind of girl was able to get Derek Novak himself all up in a knot.”

I grimaced. Claudia’s interest in Sofia was not exactly something I had reason to rejoice over. Before I could even open my mouth to answer, however, I heard Sofia’s laughter coming from outside. She and the girls had gone out for a walk, escorted by Sam and Kyle. It seemed they had quite a good time – a feeling I didn’t really share considering how my gut clenched as I rose to my feet.