Never Been Bit by Lydia Dare Read Free Book Online

difficult? She wasn’t anything to him, not really. Friends, neighbors. Nothing more. Was it simply that he didn’t wish anyone else to find the happiness that had eluded him?
    Well, that wasn’t terribly charitable of him.
    Or was this just the way of vampyres? Did they enjoy ruining everyone else’s plans? She hadn’t known Lord Kettering when he was a vampyre. And she’d only briefly met Lord Blodswell when he was still a vampyre, though the man had seemed most agreeable even in that state. Of course, since then, both gentlemen had found their true loves, the women for whom their hearts beat once more, and been restored to the men they had once been, albeit in a time period much later than when they were born.
    Alec slid into the spot beside her, and she couldn’t help glancing at his profile. She could tell that he was unhappy with this new life of his. He frowned more than he used to, and the warmness that had once exuded from him had been replaced by cold, vacant emptiness. Sorcha folded her hands in her lap. They drove past The Knight’s Arms and the merriment within, headed straight for the darkness past Folkestone.
    She wished that Alec could find the same peace Kettering and Blodswell had discovered, that he could be transformed back to the man she’d once known. But that was never to be. His true love, Cait, loved another. Poor Alec was doomed to spend an eternity without the one woman he’d always assumed he’d love, marry, and have children with.
    Thinking of him that way made it much more difficult to be annoyed with him. Could she do something, anything, to make him smile the way he once had? Something that might return the old twinkle in his eye?
    “You are completely out of control.” His irritated voice bit into her thoughts.
    Sorcha’s head snapped up to meet his gaze, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were trained on the road before them. She wasn’t out of control. She knew exactly what she was doing. So her plan hadn’t gone as… well, planned. She wasn’t out of control, and it wasn’t very nice of him to say so. “Ye have become quite opinionated since ye’ve become a vampyre, Alec.”
    “I thought I was a nursemaid,” he grumbled.
    “Aye, that too,” she agreed. “I think I liked ye better before.”
    He scoffed. “Aye, me too.”
    Well then why was he behaving this way? He was in control of himself, after all. “I doona ken why ye have appointed yerself my protector.”
    “Perhaps because you need one and I’m around.”
    Sorcha rolled her eyes.
    “I can’t believe, Sorch,” he continued, “that Seamus Ferguson would be happy with you chasing after men of their ilk.”
    Men of their ilk ? Sorcha somehow managed not to snort.
    “Ye mean Lycans, do ye no’? They are noble beasts. No’ ‘men of their ilk.’”
    Finally, he shifted his midnight gaze to her and she almost shivered from the intensity of it. “I’m barely keeping my temper at bay. Don’t provoke me.”
    “Or what?” she muttered to herself. But she knew he had heard her because he clenched his jaw even tighter and a muscle twitched right beside his eye. “Doona pretend that this is about me, Alec. We both ken better.”
    “I beg your pardon,” he growled.
    Sorcha sighed and shifted away from him on the bench.
    “We both ken this is about Cait, no’ me. But she doesna need or want protection, and neither do I.”
    Alec’s frown deepened as he returned his eyes to the road before them. He was quiet for the longest time before he finally made a sound. “Cait’s lost,” he said quietly. “I know that. But you don’t have to be.”
    But Cait wasn’t lost. She was happier than she’d ever been. Though Sorcha couldn’t bring herself to say those words to Alec. No matter how infuriating she found his sudden overprotectiveness, she could never purposely hurt him worse than he already had been. Doing so would be cruel, and she’d always adored him. He was kind and honorable. Intelligent