Page 61 of Let Sleeping Vampires Lie

He returned with a damp cloth folded neatly in his hand.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he said.

“Why not?” I whispered.

“Because if you do, I’m not convinced you’ll open them again.”

Drama. That was my job.

I managed a half-smile. “You’re stealing my lines.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and pressed the cool cloth gently to my temple. The contrast between my skin and the water was so stark it sent a shiver skimming down my spine.

He moved the cloth slowly, brushing it across my forehead, then the other temple, then along the curve of my jaw. The contact was soothing in a way I hadn’t expected. Intimate, but not sexual. It was a kind of care I didn’t know what to do with.

My eyes fluttered closed on instinct.

“Cass,” he warned.

“I’m just resting them,” I murmured. “Not dying.”

“Those two things are usually related where you’re concerned.”

I exhaled, a sound that might have been a laugh. “You’re not funny.”

He shifted the cloth to the back of my neck, lifting my head carefully with his free hand. “You’re still hot,” he said.

“Flattering.”

“In the medical sense.”

“Bummer.”

My body gradually started to feel less like it was filled with lava and more like I’d been left too close to a fireplace. The core heat remained, but the worst of the burning began to recede. My thoughts untangled by degrees. The spin of the room slowed.

Con’s movements slowed with it. The harshness in him softened, leaving behind something more dangerous—unfiltered worry.

He wrung the cloth out once more in a small bowl he’d brought from the bathroom and returned it to my brow. His hand lingered there, resting lightly, thumb brushing along my hairline in a motion so gentle it nearly undid me.

I cracked one eye open.

He was watching me.

The anger that had burned in his gaze earlier was gone now, replaced by a fear so stark it made my chest hurt.

“You can stop glaring like I scared ten years off your life,” I muttered.

“Try a hundred,” he said quietly.

I studied him. The set of his mouth. The tension still pulled tight across his shoulders. The tremor in his fingers when he adjusted the cloth again.

“You’re more scared than mad,” I said.

“Yes.”

No hesitation. No protest.

Just that one word.