The Assignment Ch. 01

He sighed again and opened his eyes to look at her once more. She was biting her bottom lip nervously and her big brown eyes were wide with apprehension as she searched his face.

"Is this a new tactic, Demetri?" she asked quietly.

He sat up awkwardly and slid from the cot, reaching for his jeans and pulling them on quickly. He turned back and looked down at her, his hands raking through his unkempt hair.

"You can have ten minutes to get dressed and perform your bodily functions," he told her curtly. "The bathroom plumbing mostly works though there is no hot water. It's the second door down the hallway to the left." He pulled on his shirt and boots and headed outside to let the cold air wipe out the fog in his mind.

Mara watched him intently as he dressed and then left. For a moment he had been almost human and then he had reverted back to the cold, hard man of the night before. For one brief moment she had luxuriated in the feel of his hard body pressing against hers and she shuddered, full of self loathing. This man had kidnapped her, terrorised her and almost killed her. How she could even think of responding to him was beyond her. He was a cold bloodied killer and a vampire too.

She scrambled from the cot and ran into the other room to gather up her clothes and get dressed then she headed to the bathroom to wash and do her necessary business. Demetri was back inside when she arrived back into the main room.

The cot was made and pushed back to it's original position and he was brewing a pot of coffee on the small gas stove. He didn't look up when she entered.

"That cupboard over there beside the fire has some human food in it. Nothing fancy but it should be sufficient to break your fast with." His tone was clipped and devoid of all emotion. He was once more back in control of himself and focused on the job at hand.

Mara walked over to the cupboard and stared at the biscuits and fruit inside. He hadn't lied to her the food wasn't fancy but it would settle her growing hunger for now. She pulled out an apple and banana and a packet of plain biscuits and moved quietly over to the folding chair set nearest to the newly made fire.

She bit into the apple as she watched him pour out two mugs of coffee. He set one down at her feet and retreated to the other folding chair and settled his long frame into it gracefully. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that he hadn't lied to her so far. Okay, so he fell asleep and left her too long last night but that wasn't exactly a lie, more of a mistake. Any other question she had asked he had answered truthfully so far and his subsequent actions had backed that up.

Which made his avoidance of her question in the early hours of the morning even more frightening. If he truly didn't want to lie to her then his refusal to answer her spoke volumes. She wasn't going to get out of this rundown building alive. She felt tears well up in her eyes and she looked down at the floor, her hair hiding her face from him. She didn't want to die in this horrible, filthy place. She didn't want to die full stop. She tried to eat some more of the apple but it just stuck in her throat and she ended up putting it in an empty plastic bag lying on the floor.

Demetri watched her intently as she sat silently eating her apple. He could almost see her little mind whirling away as she tried to hide her expressive face from him with her hair. He could guess what she was running through her mind when she tossed her uneaten apple away.

He felt a slight tinge of pity for the girl. Last night she had been too terrified to think about things rationally. This morning her keen intelligence was kicking in and she was really beginning to understand just how much danger she really was in. The acrid scent of her fear was back cutting through the sweet honey of her unique scent and he didn't like it but knew it was unavoidable given the circumstances.

"We seem to be at a bit of an impasse, Mara," he said quietly and her head snapped up and her big brown eyes looked at him fearfully. "I need to get inside your head and you seem to be unconsciously shielding from me. I can't let you go until I am sure you no longer pose a threat to my people and you seem to be unable to assist me in achieving that end. You're really only leaving me with one option here, Mara, unless you can come up with some other solution."

He watched her fear ratchet up another notch and he felt a little tug inside his chest which caused him to frown slightly in confusion. He had no idea what the feeling inside him meant but he did know he didn't like.

"If what you say is true why don't you just get it over with, Demetri?" she asked her voice shaking with fear. "If you're going to kill me then please do it quickly. It's cruel to let me think there's some hope of getting out of this alive. Just do what you have to do and stop torturing me."

Her words rocked him to the core and he sucked in a deep breath as he looked into her beautiful face. Had he really thought she was merely pretty last night? Pretty was such a bland word for someone as beautiful as she was. Her big brown eyes looked beseechingly into his and in that instant Demetri Bozic knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he could never end this beautiful woman's life. This assignment had just taken a turn for the worse.

To be continued...