Alone Read Free Page A

with Conall to tell him that I didn’t feel comfortable with Tim. Only time would tell.
    That night Conall crawled into bed with me and had another sip from me as he called it. Turned out he could have a few small drinks from me a day, but all I needed was several drops of his blood a week to be at the top of my game.
    “Why is that?” I panted as I came back down from my orgasm. “I mean, how weird is it that you need our blood to survive but your blood is like our cure-all?”
    “Why does a carnivore need both nutrients from plant life and animals but plants only need the sun and water?” he chuckled, running his fingers through my long blonde hair as he laid on his side, smiling down at me. “Or that carnivores get sick if they only have meat or only have plants? I do not know, my Nina. I only know that this is what it is. I am the yin to your yang as you are to mine.”
    He leaned down like he was going to kiss me, and I so wasn’t ready for that. Call me crazy but this was still way too precarious of a situation for me to let it become any more sexual.
    Yeah, any more sexual. I beat him to the punch and kissed his cheek before rolling over, already uncomfortable enough that he was sleeping in my bed. He was at least a gentleman and took the hint and moved to his side of the bed. Moments later, I fell into the best sleep of my life—even if it was with a stranger in my bed.
     

2
     
    The next few days there was a lot of noise outside but none of it bugged me. Conall had a whole new shed put in, when the old one could have just been fixed. He had it filled with wood when winter was a ways off, and the log rack on the patio stacked. He had the entire two layer porch redone even if the stairs and some boards only needed replacing.
    I figured the owner would have been okay with all of that even if I hadn’t warned him first. It upped the value of the house after all.
    Conall had every plant and bush that attracted wasps, bees, or yellow jackets pulled, after he heard I was allergic, and something hummingbird-friendly planted. He also had a team of guys scour the place checking for nests, the woods sprayed for them and bugs of all kinds. My neighbors must have thought—I didn’t even know what and honestly I didn’t care. I kind of wrapped myself in a work bubble. No one came in my space and my garden was done, so I was happy as a clam.
    And my author cave was clean and pretty so that was just the icing on my cake. Screw the noise. I had the prettiest landscaping ever, and when I stepped outside, I swore every hummingbird in Nebraska was visiting, and I loved those, so yeah, it was awesome.
    But then one morning I woke alone, and while that had been normal for me, given what had been going on lately, it worried me. That probably meant Tim was back and god only knew what was going on in my house now . I hurried out of bed and went through my normal morning routine, stopping only to weigh myself as I did every week, almost falling over.
    I was down fifteen pounds. That couldn’t be right. I stepped off the scale and stepped back on. No, twenty pounds. No one could lose twenty pounds in one week. I raced out of my room, grabbed my contacts, and put them in before darting back to my scale in my closet and got back on it.
    Yeah, I was really down twenty pounds. I pulled up my shirt and saw there were stretch marks missing. I checked other spots on my body and sure enough more were gone as well.
    Holy fuck, his blood is a miracle cure for real!
    Wow. Okay, back to the probable invasion of my house. I’d have to ask him that later. I walked out to my kitchen, and sure enough, it was full of people.
    “Conall, I don’t let strangers in my house without closing up my office and making them sign confidentiality waivers,” I ground out. “Please talk to me before people come into my house.”
    “All my employees sign confidentiality waivers as well, my Nina,” he assured me with a deep nod. “I apologize. I simply