To my surprise, a smirk spread across his face.

“Oh darling,” he said. “Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

“What? No!” I said. I clawed harder, but nothing seemed to affect him, and I was starting to feel dizzy. I didn’t want Colin to fuck me here. Not in the cemetery. I realized how messed up it was that I was more concerned with where we fucked than the fact that it might happen. He was hands-down the hottest vamp, but he was also the cockiest. I didn’t think I should like him. He was an asshole. He was mean. He was ridiculous.

He’s not my type, I reminded myself, but being choked did something to my lady bits. It made me more turned on than I thought possible, and I hated myself for that. The guys I’d been with before, the human guys, they’d been so careful and gentle. I didn’t want gentle. That wasn’t what got me off. When I touched myself alone, the fantasies I had were always exactly like this.

Rough.

Hard.

Fast.

Fighting.

Colin dropped me, and I landed in the mud.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” he said. “Although judging by your scent, you wouldn’t be unhappy if I did.”

“My scent?” I asked, rubbing at my throat. I gasped for breath a little.

“You smell aroused,” he told me. At least I had the decency to blush when he said that. Okay, vampires could smell people? They could smell things like arousal? I supposed that made sense. Maybe that was why they were such good hunters. Vampires were like cats, in a way. They were calm and calculating, but they still needed to be around people sometimes. Even the meanest vampire wanted attention from time to time. If they could scent a human, they could tell what kind of mood that human was in and what their chances of success might be.

“That’s rude,” I said.

“You’re rude,” he countered.

“Look, what do you want from me?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said. He crossed his arms

across his chest. “I want your blood,” he told me.

“I donate every month,” I sighed. “If you want my blood, you can order some.”

“I placed an order, if you remember correctly, and my order was denied.”

“We thought it was an error!” I snapped. How many times could I tell this guy that it had been a mistake? It had been a big, fat ugly mistake. Apparently, I was going to spend a lot of time paying for it, too, which was annoying to me.

“I don’t care what you thought,” he said. “I have a guest coming, and I don’t have enough blood to feed him.”

“Not my problem.”

“It’s entirely your problem,” he said. “And you’re going to fix it.”

I stared at Colin, waiting for him to explain what exactly it was that he wanted. Okay, so he wanted my blood, he said. I understood that. I thought he was being a fool, but the message was clear. He was pissed and I was here. I was the scapegoat. Well, and he wasn’t wrong, either. It had been my fault. Running an organization that catered to the needs of vampires wasn’t easy. Not by a long shot. It was hard and terrible and the hours totally sucked. Still, the pay was good, and the benefits were nice, and I liked my little apartment.

“You’re going to be my dinner,” he said.

“I don’t want you to kill me,” I told him. “There’s nobody to replace me, and training someone to take my position would be difficult for you.”

“A negotiator,” he said. “I like it.”

“I do what I can.”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“Good.”


Tags: Sophie Stern Vampires