Vampire for Christmas Read Free Page A

was
affecting her. She could do this.
    It was
just one more mission.
    And then
she would be able to escape these feelings.
    She was
not going to fall for him.
    He was a
vampire. She was a hunter.
    Her gaze
snuck back to him, studying his noble profile, and her heart
thudded hard against her chest.
    There was
no love more forbidden than this.

    ****

    Chapter 2
    Shannon
jammed her hands into her jacket pockets and hunched up against the
wind. It had come out of nowhere when they had been halfway across
the small countryside town, near to the cemetery and stone church,
and it had only grown stronger when they had entered the hallowed
ground.
    Rafe
didn’t seem to care.
    But then,
he never seemed to care about much. Was that what being a vampire
was like? Carefree? Was that why they could kill a human without
even flinching, without a moment’s regret? She didn’t care about
the excuses every vampire spouted when she was about to sentence
them for murdering an innocent human. Liquid diet or not, it was
wrong to kill, especially since a vampire was perfectly capable of
feeding without indulging their perverse lust for tasting human
death.
    Rafe was
her un-living example of that and she took great pleasure in
pointing that out to every vampire she killed, so they knew that
they had dug their own second grave.
    Shannon
looked up at him where he stood on a stone sarcophagus, his long
black coat flapping out behind him in the gale and his short dark
hair flat against his head. He grinned into the wind.
    “ Having fun?” she hollered up at him but the wind carried her
voice away. He frowned down at her and touched his ear, as though
asking her to repeat herself. The wind wasn’t that strong and his
hearing would have picked her up if she had only whispered. The
cocky smile on his handsome face said that he was waiting for her
to say something more polite before he answered. “Can you see
anything?”
    He
shrugged and shook his head, and went back to challenging the wind.
She didn’t know how he could bear it when he was only wearing a
black shirt and jeans beneath his unbuttoned coat. She knew that he
could feel the cold, and that it drained his body heat. Last
winter, he had complained during every mission about how long it
would take him to regain his normal body temperature. From the
number of times he had bound her wounds during their partnership,
she could say that normal for him was cold for her. Somewhere
around room temperature. Right now, he had to be freezing. She was,
and her coat was buttoned up.
    Rafe put
his booted foot out in front of him, bracing himself against the
wind, and leaned into it. He outstretched his arms, splaying his
fingers, and grinned, revealing short fangs.
    The sight
of them didn’t bother her anymore. When she had first started
working with him, she had been surprised to see that his canines
were always slightly extended compared to hers. She had asked the
demon-hunting agency about it, curious because all the vampires she
had previously encountered had already been in their true guise,
and they had told her that it was a sign of his age. A young
vampire could appear completely human. The older they got, the more
their true nature began to shine through. How old was Rafe? He
looked to be in his late thirties, but that was misleading since
vampires didn’t age. She hadn’t asked the agency how old he was. It
seemed rude to ask them such things, even if Rafe was a vampire and
not someone she was likely to ask about himself.
    At least,
she had felt that way back when they had first met.
    Since
then, she had asked him things about himself from time to time, but
only small things, worded in careful ways so she wasn’t directly
asking about him. She had danced around so many things, and he had
done the same in return, leading her in circles, as though he knew
that she wanted to know about him but wouldn’t tell her until she
asked outright.
    Shannon
ran her gaze down his lithe figure. He looked