Chapter 6

When his lips touched mine, things flashed before my eyes that I didn’t understand. I saw red wine splatter across the marble floor, followed by the green glass bottle which shattered on impact. There was anger and fear and hunger for something that wasn’t there. Looking up it was Leo’s face plastered with shock, guilt, and even a little terror.

Then I was pulled to a scene of me watching people dance from the balcony in a dark club. I could feel that this wasn’t my body but then the gaze shifted and I could see myself standing next to this person in a dress that clung to me yes hung off me as if it had been a sheet that was barely managing to cover the private parts of my body.

The eyes through which I looked took in the curves of my body and the sparkle of the light brown liquid that I was swirling in a highball glass. I looked disappointed by it for a moment then looked up from the glass to meet the eyes I was currently looking through. The smile that crept onto my face in this vision confirmed that the eyes I was seeing through could only be Leo’s.

Then I was pulled again to a physical fight that I was losing, the eyes watching my muscles this time and the half-crazy expression on my face. I didn’t recognize the man that I was fighting but he was strong and familiar, but not at all taking it easy on me as we fought.

Grunts and growls and snarls rumbled through the silence as I fought this other man. I didn’t know what reason I would have to fight him but in this vision I was throwing everything I had at him. I had no training but I wasn’t fighting to be nice, I was like a feral cat that had been let loose and was fighting against the animal control officer who was trying to catch me.

Then I pulled away from the kiss, feeling dizzy and confused. What had just happened?

Were those memories or was this something that hadn’t happened yet?

How could I be seeing into the future at all? It wasn’t like I was a witch now as well as a vampire. That wouldn’t happen, would it?

The women from my dream had said that witches don’t turn unless they didn’t know that they were a witch, but that was a dream, wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been real if I was a vampire living under Warren’s overprotective watch.

My breath came out slightly ragged and I blinked to try to clear the haze that covered my eyes. Leo was too close to me for comfort but I couldn’t move to add space between us.

I was looking directly into his eyes and I was terrified of the feelings that were running all through my body. I could pick outrage and lust but the rest were too blurred together to understand. The dark brown of his eyes was drawing me in and threatening to drown me in their depths but teasing at the same time with the gold flecks that caught the light. I was hypnotized until he spoke.

“Raven, are you okay?”

I pushed out of his arms suddenly but he caught me again when I was too wobbly to stand on my own. I didn’t feel okay. I didn’t feel like this was right but I didn’t know what else there was to make this all make sense.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have surprised you like that.”

What had I seen and how did I see it in the first place?

The only thing clear in my mind was that I wasn’t going to tell anyone that it had happened until I knew what it was. Not even Leo.

I turned away from him, not needing his help to stand after a moment, and took inventory of myself, standing on my own feet and taking a deep breath before being more or less calm again. “I’ll be okay. I just need some air.”

He nodded and led the way out, back through the security guard’s office, and out into the rain-filled alley.

“I’m so sorry I surprised you like that,” he said, standing outside the cover of the umbrella and becoming speckled by the drops. In another moment or two, he would be soaked through and his shirt would cling to his muscular chest as one instead of in patches.

I shook the image of his chiseled chest from my mind and waved him toward me. “Come under the umbrella. You’re getting soaked.”

He obliged, though hesitantly. “I don’t know what I thought would happen if I did that. I didn’t want to scare you away. I just want you to remember me and I guess that we were in love before.”

“I’m sorry I freaked out,” I muttered, hanging my head so that I wouldn’t look at him and get lost in his dark eyes again. Why was it so easy for him to do that to me?

We stood there in silence for a long moment, my feet starting to chill since we were standing in the rivulet again. I didn’t want to move, though, because I didn’t know what was going to happen next or how I might react if he kissed me again. On top of that, there was what I had seen. Had they been memories? How could they be memories?

“Do you want to go someplace dry? I’m guessing you still have questions,” he sighed suddenly.

I looked up at his eyes as a knee-jerk reaction, but instead of hypnotizing me this time, I could see his concern for me. Something about the expression was familiar. It was something that I trusted.

After a short nod, he led the way back to the parking garage, careful not to touch me more than the few times his hand brushed my arm.