CHAPTER 6 - CALM

Hesitantly, Shannon looked at him. He had turned back to her and his eyes were brown again, almost black. They were also much too close. She thought again of how sick she’d gotten whenever she thought of a naked man, and had to fight down a rising tide of nausea. From the degree of her revulsion of nakedness, her shrink had suspected sexual abuse, but his diagnosis couldn’t have prepared Shannon for what she’d just relived.

“What are you going to do with me?” she whimpered. She remembered the chains and cages in her parents’ room, only a few feet away, and immediately started to hyperventilate again.

“Calm,” he warned, his eyes flashing sunny again. “Yes, I know what’s in that room. I’ve been in it too many times to count. No, I’m not going to use it on you.”

So wretched was her relief that she leaned against him and ducked her head to his naked shoulder and cried.

The man gave an awkward grunt, but didn’t let go of her wrists. “I am Masaaki Yatagarasu. I was a samurai for the Heishi clan before I was captured in the year thirteen-thirty-six. Please. Tell me. What year is it?”

Shannon flinched at the need in his words. “Two thousand and nine,” she said.

Masaaki’s eyes widened. “Ancestors be merciful,” he whispered. “It was closer to seven hundred.”

“I’m not a vampire,” Shannon pleaded with him. “Please, I’d never do anything like that.”

He peered down at her for a moment, searching, then said, “I know.” He almost sounded surprised at the fact. “Though all that will change the moment you take a man to bed. The innocent boy will die in a pool of his own blood and you’ll awaken to your true nature.”

Her mother had mentioned something similar in her letter. “I can stay celibate!” Shannon babbled. “I swear! No sex for me. Huh-uh. Even the thought of sex makes me sick to my stomach, okay? Like really sick. It always has. I never wanted to get close to a guy. Hell, the fact that you don’t have any clothes on is making me wanna puke. I can’t even get close to a guy without puking, even if they wanted anything to do with me, which they don’t. Please believe me. I’m not a vampire. Just let me go, okay?” When he didn’t let her go, and instead just continued to frown down at her, Shannon felt her lungs starting to work again, her fingers going tingly.

“Calm.”

“I’m calm,” Shannon lied.

Masaaki snorted. “You are as calm as an emperor’s tiny stupid dog.”

Shannon blinked at him, startled out of her panic by the disdain in his voice. All she could say was, “I’m not stupid.”

“You just lose all your sense when you’re scared.” It wasn’t a question.

“Um.” So he had noticed. Whoops. Better luck next time, Shannon-Rose. Enjoy that trip to the cemetery. “Are you going to kill me?” she squeaked. She felt that fear once more rising in her chest, threatening to overwhelm her.

“Calm,” Masaaki warned. “And no.”

“Uh,” Shannon said, swallowing. “Okay. That’s good. What are you going to do with me?”

When he looked at her, however, his brown eyes were quizzical. “Why did you free me?”

She frowned up at him, trying to make sense of one of the stupidest questions she’d ever heard. “Uh…because you were hanging from a beam in my psychopathic parents’ attic?”

“But you did so knowing full well I could kill you.”

She didn’t like the direction the conversation was headed, and started twisting her wrists in his grip unhappily, despite the sensitivity she’d always had in her forearms. She found herself glancing over his shoulder, down the hall, at the staircase she wanted to be running down.

“Calm, wan-ko. Answer me.”

“It crossed my mind,” she blurted. “You’re bigger than me and built like a damned tank. And can you let go of my wrists? They’ve always been sensitive and they’re starting to hurt.”

“Stop twisting them,” he said indifferently. His gaze was way too intense. “So you freed me simply because you could.”

Shannon kept twisting her wrists. “Why the hell else would I do it?”

“Because you were trying to trick me.”

“Trick you into doing what?” she snapped. “Pin me to a wall and tell me I’m a tiny stupid dog?” She kept struggling, trying to work her hands out of his strangely loose grip. A girly grip. He was probably weak from being a captive for so long, so if she could only get her hands free…

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“You keep agitating your forearms and you’re going to force the fangs out,” Masaaki said flatly.

Shannon stopped twisting her wrists. Her heart began hammering like thunder in her ears, she said, “Please tell me that was a joke.” But she remembered her mother’s tongue, licking the ivory spikes protruding from the base of her palms… “Oooohhhhh shit.” She started to wrench in deep, fast breaths again.

“Calm.”

“Okay,” she whimpered. Though her body wasn’t cooperating with her. She started sucking in faster and faster breaths.

“That is not calm, wan-ko.” The bastard almost sounded amused. “Take a deep breath and hold it. Then let it out slowly, then hold that. Breathe again only when you have to.”

“I…have…to…” Shannon panted. He had just told her she had fangs in her wrists.

Growling, Masaaki released one of her wrists and slammed an open palm into the wall beside her head, making her flinch. With the wall still rattling with his blow, he leaned down until their noses almost touched and said, “Calm yourself or I will do it for you.”

And, with dread, she knew he didn’t mean giving her a nice, soothing Chamomile tea. “Okay.” She gulped.

“You told me earlier we needed to figure out who was in charge, here,” Masaaki said. “Until you stop acting like an addlebrained woman, I am. And from this point forth, I would like to pledge my sword to you, but I can’t do that pinning you to the goddamned wall, you understand?”

“Yes,” Shannon said, even though she didn’t.

Masaaki searched her face and grunted. “Good. I’m going to release you and take a step back. Do not run. If you do, the next time I catch you—which I will—you will spend a day chained to something uncomfortable. My feet are bleeding and my hand is still throbbing from the glass.”

Talk about how to get a woman’s attention. Shannon swallowed.

“Do not run.” After another moment of holding her, true to his word, Masaaki stepped backwards. “Don’t run,” he repeated, eying her suspiciously.

“I won’t,” she whispered, though terror was making her limbs feel like Jell-O.

“Don’t,” he said again. Then, after a tense moment where neither of them moved, slowly, he started sliding to his knees on the floor.

“What are you doing?” Shannon whispered, inching away from him.

“Stay there!” the crazy naked man bellowed at her. She froze.

Glaring, he sank to his knees, sat back onto his ankles, and put his hands on his thighs. He closed his eyes and just sat there for a moment, his lips moving minutely.

“Uhhh,” Shannon said.

“Shh!”

He continued for some time with the deep breathing, his lips moving silently as he watched some scene behind closed eyes. Shannon had actually calmed down and was beginning to get bored when he unexpectedly leaned forward and put his hands and head to the floor in front of her feet. He stayed there, motionless, his brow touching the walnut floorboards, for long minutes, until Shannon began to fidget.

“Um,” she whispered, after her feet started to cramp from standing in place for so long. “Can I move now?”

Slowly, he lifted himself from the floor and gave her an annoyed look. “Do your parents have any swords in this cursed house?”

Shannon laughed. “The last thing I’m giving you is a sw—” At his sudden, darkening scowl, she squeaked, “They’re in the trophy room.”

With practiced ease, Masaaki got to his feet. “Show me.”

“Um, well, they’re right down that hallway,” Shannon said, pointing.

Masaaki glanced at her, then at the stairs where she had been planning on bolting to the still-purring car outside, then narrowed his eyes and took her by a wrist. “Show me, wan-ko.”

“Wan-ko?” she demanded, as he dragged her down the hallway, towards the trophy room. “Is that like vampire or something?”

His lip twitched in a smile as he looked back at her. “Something like that.”

“Dude, I told you I’m not a vampire.”

He didn’t respond.

“I’m not!”

“Is this the room?” He fumbled with the latch, tugging it the wrong way.

Shannon watched him, knowing it probably wasn’t the best idea to give the crazy naked man a two-and-a-half-foot blade. Though Shannon generally got the idea that, if he had intended to do something awful, he would have already done it, instead of yelling at her to stay calm and kowtowing on the floor at her feet. That was kowtowing, right? Why the hell would he have been kowtowing?

Then she understood his earlier questions. She had saved his life. He was thanking her, in that creepy Asian way. She’d probably committed some massive faux pas by not grunting in a manly manner and kicking him with her boot or something. Stupid Japanese. She’d never understood them. She had a Japanese teacher. He was such a hardass. One of those assholes that would’ve hit her with a ruler for passing out in class, if it wouldn’t have gotten his ass canned and made him lose tenure.

After a couple moments of the self-proclaimed samurai struggling with the latch, Shannon sighed, reached out, pressed the latch down, and shoved the door inward—two things that he had tried, but not in conjunction.

To her surprise, instead of yanking her into the room with him, Masaaki tugged the door shut and immediately repeated the process, then shoved the door inward, grunting.

“You’ve been out of the loop a long time, haven’t you?” Shannon asked softly, as he dragged her inside.

“What loop—oh sweet gods. They still have them.” She actually watched the man’s body go limp as his eyes caught on the katana and wakizashi that her father had been so proud of. “Oh merciful ancestors.” As if she no longer existed, he released her arm, abandoning her beside the door as he took three great strides across the room and reverently lifted the largest of the three swords off of the custom-built, subtly back-lit rack. He slid the blade from its sheath like a long-lost friend, and she actually thought she heard the big badass whimper.

No, she had heard him whimper, because a moment later, he was curling up over the blade, sobbing like a little girl.

“Oookaaay,” Shannon said. “I’ll just leave you with the long pointy objects and go shut off my car before I run it out of fuel.” She started inching towards the door.

As quick as a flash of sunlight, the man twisted and had the sword pointed at her chest. “You,” he said, scowling at her down the length of the gleaming blade. “Sit. There. Now.” He twitched the razor tip of the pointy object to the corner of the room away from door.

Because Shannon didn’t really want to be chased down by a sword-wielding naked creep, she went and sat in the corner, as directed.