about me, and that I didn’t have fangs on legs hunting me.
I reached up, brushing my fingertips against the rough beginnings of stubble on his throat, and he made a low, hungry noise. The sound reverberated through my fingers. His hand tightened in my hair as his dark, savory flavor filled my senses, and through a heady crush of desire, I heard myself moan. He went rigid against me, and then let go. I stumbled back and we looked at each other, eyes wide.
Half-formed thoughts fired through my mind. Would he ask me to go home with him? Was I supposed to ask him? Why wasn’t he still kissing me? What if there were vampires in the parking lot? That thought diluted the heat in my blood. I looked back into the bar, smiling as two broad, leather-clad backs disappeared out the front door. Hell, if they’d moved on, maybe I could actually turn this strange encounter into something like a real date. I looked up, practically giddy, but my “boyfriend” was staring off into the middle distance, his jaw clenched tight. My smile faded.
“I have to go,” he said stiffly. “If—”
“Well, goodbye then.” I turned and walked mechanically out the door. I was hot all over, embarrassed to the core by the fact that I had all but melted when he was only playing.
Chapter Two
I washed my hair five times, until the water went cold and stopped running blue, then pulled on rubber gloves and squished red dye through the bleached ends of my hair. I managed not to replay the kiss more than once every ten seconds, but the sharp end of the interaction refused to dull with time. I rinsed the gloves and set them on the side of the sink, then pulled a plastic bag over my head while the dye set. I left my sixties bathroom, with its globe light fixtures and gold wallpaper, and dropped into the pea-green plastic chair in front of the marbled red Formica table. Gotta love furnished apartments, even if they haven’t been updated in forever.
I woke my laptop and pulled up the most recent e-mail from the Realtor I’d been dealing with. The beach house of my dreams was still on the market. The price had even dropped a few thousand. Now all I had to do was give up my job, my car, every single person I knew, and I could sneak off to a retirement measured in glorious sunsets.
My hands hovered over the keys, trembling.
I’d have no income, no skill set that would be useful in the normal world. I’d be starting over, again, but I could be myself. Sean Oester had dummied my identification when I came to work for him, saying that allowing a vampire to know your true name was to give him control over you. For a girl living on the street because it was better than any home she’d had, the idea that I could deny someone else control was beyond tempting. It sounded like salvation.
Sean had given me a chance after seeing me being chased by the cops on a borrowed motorbike. I’d lost the cops, but a minute after I’d stopped Sean had pulled up, saying he could teach me how to drive so nobody could ever catch me. Months of instruction and games of pursuit later, and even he couldn’t keep up with me. He was the only runner I’d ever seen walk away from the job in roughly the same shape he’d arrived in. I don’t think he even planned it.
I’d rolled in, the last run of the night, to find him standing in the middle of the garage, staring down at his keys. Lost in the middle of the business he’d built from the ground up with old Terry Innsbruck. Terry had been dead almost five years after kissing a concrete barrier at full speed. Two weeks after I found him pensively impersonating a statue, Sean sold out. Two days after that he’d motored out of state, afraid that if he stayed he’d be drawn back in.
I’d resented him for a year after he left, blaming him for various couriers falling apart. Blaming him for my loneliness. We hadn’t been lovers, but we were friends, and he’d been proud of me. When he left, I’d fallen a peg. I followed his
I reached up, brushing my fingertips against the rough beginnings of stubble on his throat, and he made a low, hungry noise. The sound reverberated through my fingers. His hand tightened in my hair as his dark, savory flavor filled my senses, and through a heady crush of desire, I heard myself moan. He went rigid against me, and then let go. I stumbled back and we looked at each other, eyes wide.
Half-formed thoughts fired through my mind. Would he ask me to go home with him? Was I supposed to ask him? Why wasn’t he still kissing me? What if there were vampires in the parking lot? That thought diluted the heat in my blood. I looked back into the bar, smiling as two broad, leather-clad backs disappeared out the front door. Hell, if they’d moved on, maybe I could actually turn this strange encounter into something like a real date. I looked up, practically giddy, but my “boyfriend” was staring off into the middle distance, his jaw clenched tight. My smile faded.
“I have to go,” he said stiffly. “If—”
“Well, goodbye then.” I turned and walked mechanically out the door. I was hot all over, embarrassed to the core by the fact that I had all but melted when he was only playing.
Chapter Two
I washed my hair five times, until the water went cold and stopped running blue, then pulled on rubber gloves and squished red dye through the bleached ends of my hair. I managed not to replay the kiss more than once every ten seconds, but the sharp end of the interaction refused to dull with time. I rinsed the gloves and set them on the side of the sink, then pulled a plastic bag over my head while the dye set. I left my sixties bathroom, with its globe light fixtures and gold wallpaper, and dropped into the pea-green plastic chair in front of the marbled red Formica table. Gotta love furnished apartments, even if they haven’t been updated in forever.
I woke my laptop and pulled up the most recent e-mail from the Realtor I’d been dealing with. The beach house of my dreams was still on the market. The price had even dropped a few thousand. Now all I had to do was give up my job, my car, every single person I knew, and I could sneak off to a retirement measured in glorious sunsets.
My hands hovered over the keys, trembling.
I’d have no income, no skill set that would be useful in the normal world. I’d be starting over, again, but I could be myself. Sean Oester had dummied my identification when I came to work for him, saying that allowing a vampire to know your true name was to give him control over you. For a girl living on the street because it was better than any home she’d had, the idea that I could deny someone else control was beyond tempting. It sounded like salvation.
Sean had given me a chance after seeing me being chased by the cops on a borrowed motorbike. I’d lost the cops, but a minute after I’d stopped Sean had pulled up, saying he could teach me how to drive so nobody could ever catch me. Months of instruction and games of pursuit later, and even he couldn’t keep up with me. He was the only runner I’d ever seen walk away from the job in roughly the same shape he’d arrived in. I don’t think he even planned it.
I’d rolled in, the last run of the night, to find him standing in the middle of the garage, staring down at his keys. Lost in the middle of the business he’d built from the ground up with old Terry Innsbruck. Terry had been dead almost five years after kissing a concrete barrier at full speed. Two weeks after I found him pensively impersonating a statue, Sean sold out. Two days after that he’d motored out of state, afraid that if he stayed he’d be drawn back in.
I’d resented him for a year after he left, blaming him for various couriers falling apart. Blaming him for my loneliness. We hadn’t been lovers, but we were friends, and he’d been proud of me. When he left, I’d fallen a peg. I followed his