Dancers in the Dark by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

see it in his rare smile. The corners of his thin mouth turned up; his eyes warmed.
    â€œTell me,” he said, in a voice less imperative and more coaxing.
    What decided her against speaking out was fear for his safety. Sean was strong, and she was beginning to realize he was ruthless where she was concerned, but he was also vulnerable during the daylight hours. Rue followed another impulse; she put her arms around him. She spoke into his chest. “I can’t,” she said, and she could hear the sadness in her own voice.
    His body stiffened under her hands. He was too proud to beg her, she knew, and the rest of the way to Rue’s apartment, he was silent.

Chapter 5
    She thought he would stalk off, offended, when they reached her place, but, to her surprise, he stuck with her. He held her bag while she unlocked the front door, and he mounted the stairs behind her. While she sure couldn’t remember asking him up, Rue didn’t tell him to leave, either. She found herself hoping he enjoyed the view all the way up both flights. She tried to remember if she’d made her bed and put away her nightgown that morning.
    â€œPlease, come in,” Rue said. She knew the new etiquette as well as anyone. Vampires had to be invited into your personal dwelling the first time they visited.
    Her cat came running to meet Rue, complaining that her dinner was overdue. The little black-and-white face turned up to Sean in surprise. Then the cat stropped his legs. Rue cast a surreptitious eye over the place. Yes, the bed was neat. She retrieved her green nightgown from the footboard and rolled it into a little bundle, depositing it in a drawer in an unobtrusive way.
    â€œThis is Martha,” Rue said brightly. “You like cats, I hope?”
    â€œMy mother had seven cats, and she named them all, to my father’s disgust. She told him they ate the rats in the barn, and so they did, but she’d slip them some milk or some scraps when we had them to spare.” He bent to pick up Martha, and the cat sniffed him. The smell of vampire didn’t seem to distress the animal. Sean scratched her head, and she began to purr.
    The barn? Scraps to spare? That didn’t sound too aristocratic. But Rue had no right, she thought unhappily, to question her partner.
    â€œWould you like a drink?” she asked.
    Sean was surprised. “Rue, you know I drink...”
    â€œHere,” she said, and handed him a bottle of synthetic blood.
    She had prepared for his visit, counting on it happening sometime. She had spent some of the little money she had to make him feel welcome.
    â€œThank you,” he said briefly.
    â€œIt’s room temperature, is that all right? I can heat it in a jiffy.”
    â€œIt’s fine, thanks.” He took the bottle from her and opened it, took a sip.
    â€œWhere are my manners? Please take off your jacket and sit down.” She gestured at the only comfortable chair in the room, an orange velour armchair obviously rescued from a dump. When Sean had taken it (to refuse the chair would have offended her), she sat on a battered folding chair that had come from the same source.
    Rue was trying to pick a conversational topic when Sean said, “You have some of the lipstick left on your lower lip.”
    They’d put on a lot of makeup for the dance, and she thought she’d removed it all before they’d left the Jaslow estate. Rue thought of how silly she must look with a big crimson smudge on her mouth. “Excuse me for a second,” she said, and stepped into the tiny bathroom. While she was gone, Sean, moving like lightning, picked up her address book, which he’d spotted lying by the telephone.
    He justified this bit of prying quite easily. She wouldn’t tell him anything, and he had to know more about her. He wasn’t behaving like any aristocrat, that was for sure, but he easily suppressed his guilt over his base behavior.
    Flipping through the