But the finer points of vampire-human laws were not really relevant at the moment.
The man whose arm I was holding might very well know what had happened to Sig, and if that was the case, I needed to figure out how to get that information out of him.
I doubted he’d share what he knew with me if I were to ask politely.
Guess I might need to force it out of him. I didn’t feel even the slightest bit bad about that prospect.
Davos guided me to a big leather booth, where he sat down and slung his arms on the backrest, looking as leisurely and cool as if he were a king observing his subjects.
If this dude thought I was going to kneel, he had another think coming.
Instead I sat close enough to him that our thighs touched, and I took a sip of my drink, avoiding his gaze like I thought a nice, shy girl should. Pretending to be shy was about as far outside my comfort zone as I’d been in a good long while.
I was usually more punchy-kicky and less flirty-blushy.
“Is this your first time here?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.” This was almost the same line the first vampire had given me at the bar, but for some reason it was more effective coming from Davos.
“My first time,” I replied honestly.
“I thought so. I would have remembered a face like that.” He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand, and I shuddered, which I hoped he registered as excitement rather than repulsion.
Were there only a finite number of pick-up lines available in the world? Sometimes it seemed like it, and that the success-to-failure ratio for men depended entirely on how well they wielded the weapons of their craft.
Davos was skilled.
I could see women falling at his feet, eager to open a vein for him. He was basically the vampire ideal, the perfect story to go home and share with your girlfriends over a bottle of merlot.
If you made it home.
I thought of the two dead girls in the park and suddenly wanted to get his hands off me very, very badly. More than being a potential source of information, this man was a killer, and a historically prolific one at that. When someone was capable of leaving that kind of violence in their wake, they weren’t a person to take lightly.
Once again I was aware of how human I was and how many women before me Davos had gotten his hands on and killed. I had to be really careful here, because a silver knife in my boot wasn’t going to be much use against him if he decided to snap my neck.
Vampires were fast. I was not on that level anymore.
Apparently Davos was done with small talk. Instead, he pressed his body against mine, his nose grazing my exposed throat. When he placed a gentle kiss beneath my earlobe, I stood up suddenly.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I spit out.
We’d gone from chatter to canoodling way too quickly, and my head was spinning. A welcome side effect of my time as a vampire was that their thrall didn’t work on me, even as a human, but it was small comfort right now as the shark next to me had smelled potential blood in the water.
Basically it meant he wouldn’t have the power to make it painless when he bit me. Not the best superpower to have at a time like this.
“Leaving so soon?” He gave a sad, languid pout and casually touched the seat I’d just been in, as if inviting me back.
I smiled and held up my little clutch. “I want to freshen up a little. You know.”
His nostrils flared, and I was so icked out by the idea of whatever he might be sniffing for that I struggled to maintain my composure when all I wanted to do was have a hot shower and scrub off any memory of this interaction.
“Bruno can show you the way. Bruno, escort the young lady to the washroom.”
Bruno was the bald guard, the young one who just couldn’t wait to take a bite of me when Davos was done. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have any quality alone time with him. It didn’t escape my attention, either, that Davos wasn’t letting me go to the washroom on my own. He was having me followe
d. He intended to bring me back.
Evidently he had found what he wanted for the night, and it was me.
Lucky gal, wasn’t I?