“You’d better not let them hear that. They’ll take your head off. They’re warriors, all of them. Their jobs are dangerous, and occasionally one of them gets injured. I’ve been on some missions with them. We were attacked many times. There were casualties.”

Portia shook her head. Oliver was probably embellishing to make himself and Scanguards look more important. “You’re trying to tell me that vampires are assigned as bodyguards to your human clients and will take a bullet for them?”

Oliver nodded, his expression serious. “We guard all our clients with our lives. And that goes even more so for the vampires. They will fight to the death.”

She snorted. “Easily said when they’re practically indestructible.”

“Believe what you want to believe, but I warn you not to underestimate any of us.”

“No need to be rude! I guess protecting a client and being polite at the same time is too much to ask.” Not that she could really blame Oliver. He was probably just paying her back for her own rudeness earlier.

Oliver bent toward her, never taking his eyes off the traffic in front of him. “Your father is our client. You, my dear Portia, are what we call a charge. We’ll take care of the charge, but we only take orders from the client.”

At the mention of her father, Portia expelled an angry huff. Like she wanted to be reminded of him right now! She spun her head to the passenger window, making it clear that she was done talking to him. Well, maybe just one more word. “You’re just a human, I could take you anytime I wanted to.”

Oliver didn’t oblige her with a comeback, so she kept quiet until they reached the little house in Noe Valley her father was renting for them. It was a two story home with a garage underneath and a flat yard out the back. Upstairs were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and downstairs was a large open-plan living and dining area with an adjacent kitchen with a small laundry room and a half bath. Portia had liked the house the moment she’d set foot in it for the first time, but at the same time she tried not to get too attached to the place. For all she knew, her father would be moving them again in a few months. He always did. And she would have to—hell no! She was going to be twenty-one, and soon her father would have no power over her anymore. Next time he wanted to move somewhere else, she could simply refuse and stay where she wanted to stay.

Portia jumped out of the car as soon as it came to a halt in the driveway. Her sudden epiphany lightened her steps as she sauntered to the entrance door and turned her key in the lock. Now all she needed to do was trick Oliver into thinking she was going to sleep early and then sneak out the back when he wasn’t looking.

With Lauren’s help, she’d made a date with Michael, the guy who’d thrown the party the other night. She didn’t want to give Eric another try. He’d suffered enough, even though she’d made sure to wipe his memory so he didn’t actually remember any of it. But she was sure he was still in pain from the injuries her father had inflicted by tossing him against the wall, and was probably scratching his head about how he’d obtained them.

Portia tossed her bag on the floor in the foyer. There would be no studying tonight. She marched into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

Oliver followed her and leaned against the kitchen island. “I thought you said you weren’t hungry.”

Without turning, she continued perusing the contents of her nearly empty fridge and chuckled, making sure Oliver understood that her next comment wasn’t malicious. “I also said I could always snack on you.”

A strange tingling at her nape signaled danger, but before she had a chance to turn, she received a reply to her remark, a remark that was merely meant to needle Oliver.

“I don’t think that would be wise.” The deep voice of a stranger sliced through her body as she spun around to face the intruder.

Before she even laid eyes on him, she knew he was a vampire, and she felt waves of power rolling off him.

When she lifted her eyes, the stranger standing calmly next to Oliver took her breath away. She’d never seen a vampire like him. His head was bald. Not a single hair graced his nicely shaped skull except for the thin eyebrows and the dark lashes that framed his eyes. Brown eyes; not ordinary brown though. There seemed to be a rim of gold around the irises and flecks of the same gold sprinkled all over.

His lips looked hard and unyielding, and there were no laugh lines around his mouth. His nose was long and straight. He was over six feet tall and lean, extremely lean. The stranger was dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeve black shirt, and he made the simple outfit look like a million bucks. The top two buttons of his shirt were open, revealing a glimpse of his chest. Apparently hairless too, just like his head.