“You cheated on me,” I said, irritated. I struggled, pulling at my restraints.
“They aren’t going to break,” he said. “I had a vampire design them myself.”
“You fucked a vampire?”
“I did.” He seemed proud of that. “I had her design a set of restraints we could use while the two of us were playing.”
“And then you killed her,” I said, finishing his story.
“Of course, I killed her,” he said. “You think I want to fuck a nasty vampire and keep them around to tell their friends? No. That story had to die when the night ended. She’s gone now.”
“Did you eat her heart?”
“I sold it,” he smiled. “It paid for the entire date and then a little extra. I have to cover my expenses, you know.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
Inside my head, though, I was continuing to panic. I hadn’t told anyone where I’d gone. I hadn’t explained to Liam that I just wanted time to clear my head. I hadn’t really been running away. I just wanted some time to myself so I could think about where our relationship was going and what it meant for us.
I wanted him to know that I still loved him, and that I had accepted my fate as a vampire. More than that, I’d accepted my place by his side. He was a good vampire, and as much as I had thought, for years, that he was evil and horrible, I knew that wasn’t true. He might have captured me, and he might have turned me, but he’d been very gentle with me, and very kind, and he’d treated me in ways that Hank never had.
“Time for you to get ready,” Hank said, drawing me back to the present.
“What are you talking about?”
He whistled, and suddenly, two women appeared. They came into the room, cut off my clothing with knives, and started giving me some weird sort of sponge bath.
“Why didn’t you just undress me while I was passed out?” I asked, irritated that he’d had my clothing cut off.
“Where’s the fun in that?” He asked. “The fun is in seeing you become uncomfortable. I like to see my women squirm, Kimberly. You remember that.”
I didn’t.
I didn’t remember a lot of things about Hank because apparently, I’d never really known the guy. In all of the time we’d been together, I never had a bad vibe about him. He hadn’t seemed sexy or wild. That was why I’d been so caught off-guard by the cheating. He’d just seemed...innocuous.
He’d seemed sweet and a little boring, and at the time, he had been exactly what I wanted: sweet and a little dull.
He’d been safe, I realized, and that had been a problem. I’d been so busy with my own stuff that I hadn’t even realized what was happening before my eyes. All of the nights he’d said he had to work late I had later attributed to cheating. Now I knew there was more to it than that. Now I knew he was doing things like catching vampires and carving out their hearts.
It was a messed-up thing.
And now I was going to die, and I wasn’t going to be able to say goodbye to Liam.
He’d woken up by now. Did he realize I was gone? Did he think I’d run away because I hated being with him? Somehow, that thought hurt more than anything else. I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t like him. I didn’t want Liam to live for the rest of eternity believing that the person he’d taken as a mate had somehow given up on him or their love.
He couldn’t think that.
Somehow, I closed my eyes as the buyers were brought in. I had imagined there being like a big sort of stage, but one of the girls working whispered to me how the process worked. The buyers would go from room to room, bidding on the vampire they wanted. That was easier for them, and then, once they’d won the auction, they could be left alone in the room so they could consume us on-site.
It was a messed-up sort of situation, and I hated it.
“Blindfold her,” Hank said.
“No,” I whispered.
“It’s for your own good,” he told me, and I didn’t think that was true.
“I’m not scared to look these assholes in the eye.”