She nodded, but he could see from the defiant glint of her eyes and the slight, stubborn rise of her chin that she would never ask. She might have been reluctant to accept his help before, but now she'd be damned determined to refuse anything he might offer.
If he'd wondered whether this encounter had been a mistake, the answer was staring him full in the face now.
"I'll see you around," he said, feeling just as lame as he sounded.
He didn't wait for her to tell him not to hold his breath, or something even more succinct. He turned away from her and left the bedroom, grabbing his T-shirt on his way out, and cursing himself as a first-rate ass**le as he closed the door behind him and headed up the empty corridor.
--------
With a self-loathing groan, Jenna let herself fall back onto the bed as the door in the other room closed behind Brock. She'd always had a knack for scaring men off, with or without a loaded weapon in her hand, but sending a formidable male like Brock--a vampire, for crissake--into a post-sex bolt out the door ought to win her some kind of prize.
He said he didn't want her to think getting na**d with him had been a mistake. Didn't want her to regret it. Yet the expression on his face as he'd looked at her seemed to contradict all of that. And the way he'd hightailed it out of the place didn't leave a lot of room for doubt, either.
"It was just sex," she muttered under her breath. "Get over it."
She didn't know why she should feel stung and embarrassed. If nothing else, she should be grateful for the release of so much pent-up sexual frustration. Obviously, she'd needed it. She couldn't remember ever feeling so heated and out of control as she had been with Brock. As sated as she was, her body still vibrated. All of her senses seemed tuned to a higher frequency than normal. Her skin felt alive, tingling with hypersensitivity, too tight for her body.
And then there was the tangle of her emotions. She lay back, awash in confusion about the still-ripe curiosity that had made her bite Brock--so hard, she'd actually drawn blood. The strange, spicy-sweet taste of him lingered on her tongue, as exotic and enigmatic as the man himself.
She had the fleeting sense that she ought to be appalled at what she'd done--in fact, she had been horrified immediately afterward--but as she lay there now, alone in the bed that belonged to him, some dark, twisted part of her craved even more.
What the hell was she thinking? She must be losing her mind to entertain thoughts like that, let alone to have acted on the impulse.
Or maybe what was driving her was something even worse ...
"Oh, shit." Jenna sat up, a sudden, sick worry coming over her.
Her blood work and DNA had begun to alter from the implant embedded inside her. What if that wasn't the only thing that was changing about her?
Dread sitting like a cold rock in her gut, she leapt out of the bed and hurried to the bathroom, flipping on all of the lights. Leaning over the marble counter, she peeled back her upper lip and stared into the large mirror.
No fangs.
Thank God.
Nothing staring back at her except her own familiar reflection, her own unremarkable, wholly human set of teeth. She'd never been so glad to see them since the day she first had her braces off at the awkward age of thirteen--a too-tall, too-tough tomboy who'd had to kick a lot of junior high school boys' asses for all the teasing she took about her metal mouth and training bra. A wry, half-hysterical laugh bubbled out of her. She could have saved herself a lot of effort and bruises if she'd been able to flash a pair of razor-sharp fangs at her schoolyard tormentors.
Jenna heaved a long sigh and sagged against the counter. She looked normal, which was a relief, but inside, she was different. She knew that, and she didn't need Gideon's latest test results to tell her that something very peculiar was going on under her skin.
In her bones.
In the blood that seemed to rush like rivers of lava through her veins.
She brought her hand up under the fall of her hair, brushing her fingers over her nape, where the Ancient had made his incision and embedded his piece of hateful biotechnology inside her. It had healed up; she felt no trace of it on the surface of her skin as she had before. But she'd seen the X rays; she knew it was there, burrowing deeper into her nerves and spinal cord. Infiltrating her DNA.
Becoming part of her.
"Oh, God," she murmured, a wave of nausea rolling up on her.
How much more messed up could her life get? She had something this monumental to deal with, and yet she'd gone and gotten na**d with Brock.
Then again, maybe she'd needed to be with him precisely because of everything else she was dealing with lately. What she didn't need was to complicate an already overcomplicated situation.
She sure as hell didn't need to sit there and worry about what he might think of her now. She didn't need to go there at all, but telling herself that didn't keep the thoughts of him from entering her head.
And as she peeled the bandage from her healing thigh and turned on the shower, she told herself that she didn't need Brock or anyone else to help get her through whatever lay ahead. She'd been alone for a long time. She knew what it was to fight on her own, to pull herself through dark days.
But knowing that didn't keep her from leaning on the memory of Brock's strength--the soothing power of his tender words and his gifted hands. His gently murmured promises that she wasn't alone. That with him, she was safe.
"I don't need him," she whispered into the empty echo of the room. "I don't need anything from anyone."
There was a small quake in her voice, a wobbly note of fear that she despised hearing. She sucked in a sharp breath, blew it out on a curse.
Jenna stepped into the shower and under the warm spray, closing her eyes. She let the steam envelop her fully, let the steady rhythm of the falling water swallow up her soft, shaky sobs.