Free A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole Page B

me cart around won’t do jack. Okay?”
    “I understood fifty percent of that,” he observed calmly.
    “I can’t afford this car,” she retorted, clenching the steering wheel as she directed the vehicle around other cars.
    Why this concern about money? Who would dare withhold funds from her? The vampires had always been wealthy and had just begun investing in seep oil when he was imprisoned. Obviously, the market had grown. Not surprising, since everything their king, Demestriu, touched turned to gold. Or died.
    Thinking of Demestriu made rage flare, nearly choking him. Pain radiated through his leg, and he clenched his hand on the handle above his head, crushing it.
    She gasped, then locked her gaze straight ahead, murmuring to herself, “How much can a handle cost? Really.”
    Her unnecessary worry over something that would have no bearing on their life irritated him. His wealth—their wealth—was in his, their home. They need only get to it.
    Their home . He was returning to Kinevane, his ancestral estate in the Highlands, with his woman. Finally. And if she weren’t a vampire, he might feel pleased about that fact.
    Instead of slighted.
    He wondered how the clan would react to the incredible insult of her presence.
    7
    « ^ »
    H ow fast are we going?”
    “Eighty kilometers an hour,” Emma answered in an offhanded tone.
    “How long is a kilometer?”
    She’d known he was going to ask that. Sad but true—she didn’t know. She was just matching the dial on her speedo to the kilometer-an-hour limit posted on the signs.
    Many of his questions over the last half hour were making her feel stupid, and for some reason she felt it vital that he didn’t think that.
    The questions accompanied the stockpile of news magazines he’d acquired, no doubt from “the man downstairs”
    who’d mapped out this journey. Emma had seen Lachlain flying through them, realizing he was reading them that quickly because he would ask her for definitions every few pages. Acronyms seemed to stump him, and though she’d nailed NASA and DEA and PDA, she came up short on MP3.
    After he’d read the magazines cover to cover, he took up the car manual and the questions resumed. As if she could define “a transmission.”
    Even with her limited assistance, she could feel him learning, could perceive how intelligent he was. And his questions indicated that he was deducing much, reasoning out his own answers as he soaked up knowledge in a way she’d never imagined was possible.
    The rental car’s copy of French traffic rules followed the manual, but he skimmed it, then tossed it away as if unimpressed. At her look, he explained, “Some things doona change. You still put on the parking brake on a hill, horse carriage or no.”
    His arrogance, his easy dismissal of things he should be awed by, rankled. A car would terrify her if she’d never been in one until she was an adult. Not Lachlain. On the road, he was too pleased with himself. Too comfortable in the leather seats, too curious about his window and air controls, flicking them on and off, up and down, and mauling the German technology with his huge paws. If he’d been locked away for so long, then shouldn’t he be discombobulated?
    Shouldn’t he still be shaken? She believed nothing could shake his colossal arrogance—
    Great, he’s found the control for the moon roof . Her patience was ragged. Open…close. Open…close. Open…
    Every minute closer to dawn found her more tense. She’d always been so cautious before. This trip to Europe had been her first real independence and only allowed because her aunts had provided so many safeguards. Yet Emma had managed to run out of blood, get kidnapped, and be forced out into the world with no precaution against the sun other than a car trunk , heading for who knew where…
    And still all this might be safer than not going with him. Something had been back at the hotel—possibly vampires.
    Just after they’d gotten into the car,