The BMW was a terrible idea. Not the car itself. I liked the car, apart from the electronic bullshit. No, it was the close quarters I regretted. It was impossible to ignore her scent, especially with the heat on. I couldn’t exactly allow her to freeze to death. Hunger burned my throat, but it wasn’t Thea’s delicate neck I was thinking about. It was something else–something forbidden.
At least, for me, it was.
I didn’t want to taste Thea’s blood. I wanted to taste every inch of her, starting with her smartass mouth and her full lips. I wanted to drag my fangs along her tongue until she couldn’t scrounge up any more combative responses to my demands. I would reward her then and sate myself. I’d start with her breasts. Then, I would move lower and show her what I’d learned after centuries of pleasuring females–vampires and mortals alike.
I shifted in my seat, hoping she couldn’t see my erection in the car’s dim interior. Glancing over, I caught her staring at me with downturned lips. Thankfully, she was looking at my face.
“What?” I asked when she didn’t bother to turn away.
“You said you had a better idea,” she said, fiddling with her seat belt.
“Don’t do that,” I snapped.
She froze, her eyes darting up in confusion. “Do what?”
“It’s there to keep you safe.”
“My seat belt?” she asked. She smoothed it down on her shoulder dutifully, but as I returned my attention to the road, I caught her rolling her eyes.
It was a wonder that humans lived long enough to learn how to walk. Even after a couple of decades on this planet, the fragility of her body seemed a surprise to her. And every moment I spent with Thea suggested she had the survival instincts of a gnat.
“So?” she pressed. “What’s your idea?”
“I’m still working on it.” This time I actually had an idea, but even I knew it was crazy. Was I simply responding to her nearness? That had to be it. It would be rash to make a decision without getting to know her first.
Thea huffed, her breath fogging the window. She stared at the city lights for a few minutes in silence before she swiveled in her seat. “Are you going to compel me to forget?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Why?” she demanded.
“I’m not entirely certain.” I flipped on my signal as the map on the screen told me to turn.
“Why did your mother ask you to do that?” she asked.
I glanced at her, getting the sense that she was trying to help me decide what to do with her. She was a strange, tiny creature. “Vampires are very selective about who they share private matters with. Usually, we know a human for years before we consider telling them the truth.”
“Private matters?” she giggled. “Are you seriously suggesting that vampires have a don’t ask, don’t tell policy?”
“No, I’m suggesting that a human usually finds out about us when we make them our snack,” I growled.
“Oh.”
A low rumble caught my attention, and it took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from the delicate woman in the seat next to me. A second later, her intoxicating floral scent shifted, growing slightly sweeter. I studied her for a moment before I realized what it was. “Are you…hungry?”
“No,” she said too quickly.
“Your stomach is growling,” I pointed out, “and your blood sugar is low.”
“How on earth…?” She stared at me as if that was the strangest thing she’d heard this evening.
“I can smell it,” I explained.
“My hunger?” She shifted closer to me. It seemed like an odd reaction until I realized that she looked absolutely fascinated.
“That’s one way to put it.” My head throbbed a little as I tried to block out her changing scent. “You’re hungry, so your body released glucose. It made your blood smell sweeter.”
“You can smell my blood?”
Finally, something freaked her out.
“That’s amazing,” she said after a moment of thought.
Or not.
“The point,” I said through gritted teeth, “is that you need to eat.”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her. “I could use a coffee.”
“You could use food.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to eat?” she asked pointedly, “because you’re a little hangry.”
“Hangry?”
“Hungry and angry,” she explained. “You really have a lot to catch up on.”
“Yes, I can’t wait to learn all the ways humanity has butchered the English language.” I pulled to a stop in front of a diner and parked. It was shabby, its paint discolored from pollution, but well-lit. Inside, a waitress darted between blue-vinyl booths, smiling warmly. It looked like the sort of place a human might like. “Is this okay?”
“They’ll have coffee.” She reached for her door.
I was faster. A second later, I opened it from the outside and offered her my hand. Her mouth fell open, but she quickly clamped it shut. “How do you do that?”
“I’m a predator.” I helped her out of the car. “I’m built to hunt.”
Her throat slid, drawing attention to her porcelain neck. Her skin was so pale that it was nearly translucent, making it far too easy to see the blue veins running through it. I hadn’t bitten a woman on the neck in decades. Marking a human there only said two things among vampire circles. Neither were messages I wanted to send.
“Are you going to bite me?” she whispered, and I realized I’d been staring at her long enough that she had noticed.
I grimaced, wishing her question hadn’t been so on the nose, and shook my head. “No. I’m not going to bite you.”
“So you aren’t hangry?” she pressed.
Goddammit, did she want me to bite her? It was bad enough that my fangs had yet to fully retract. It made my mouth ache for attention.
“No, I am not hangry,” I said harshly.
“Look, if you needed to…um…” She stared at the ground as her cheeks flushed.
“To what?” I asked.
“Eat,” she blurted out. “I mean, I owe you, and I guess–”
“Never offer a vampire your blood again,” I seethed. Just the thought of a vampire–any vampire–drinking Thea’s blood was enough to make my fangs lengthen.
Her eyes widened as she got a glimpse of them. “But you’re hungry…”
It took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to pin her to the car and take her up on her offer. She wouldn’t resist, not once I was inside her. The only trouble was that I couldn’t decide what I wanted more: to sink my teeth into her or bury my dick inside her.
“Never,” I roared again and stalked toward the door. “Let’s eat.”
A bell tinkled as I opened the door. I held it for her. Following her inside, we paused at an abandoned hostess stand. A deeply lined face appeared in the pass-through window, summoned by the bell. He waved a spatula in the air. “Sit wherever you want.”
The diner was fairly empty at the odd hour–too late for dinner and too early for the late-night crowd. The few patrons here now weren’t the type to nose around in another’s business–probably because they wouldn’t want anyone to nose around in theirs. There wasn’t a speck of dirt on the checkered-tile floor or a single crack in the slick vinyl seats despite their age. Thea didn’t wait. She just walked toward a booth in the far corner away from the windows and the other diners.
Thea was quiet as she scooted into her seat, which squeaked under her petite body. Before I could apologize for losing my temper, a waitress delivered menus to us. They hit the tabletop with a plastic smack.
“Can I get you two something to drink?” she asked with a sugary sweet smile.
“Coffee,” Thea murmured.
“I’ll take one, too,” I said. As the waitress left, I nudged the menu toward Thea.
“I’m not really hungry,” she said quietly.
I raised an eyebrow, and she groaned.
“That’s not really fair.” She picked up the menu and flipped it open. “Why do you get to worry about feeding me when–”
“I’ll eat,” I said and grabbed my own menu.
“Wait, you eat?” she asked, peering over the top of hers at me. “Like real food?”
“Of course.” Not that there were a lot of tempting options here. Nearly everything was fried, smothered in gravy, or came with a side of pancakes. “Why do they put hash browns on every plate here?”
She ignored the question. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “I thought vampires only drank blood.”
“That wouldn’t be a very balanced diet.” I folded the menu and placed it in front of me. “You have a lot to learn about vampires.”
“About that…” she trailed off as our coffees appeared.
“You two want food?” the waitress asked.
“Two eggs,” I told her. “Basted.”
The waitress blinked at me, her pencil hovering over her order pad. “Let me ask.”
“Never mind,” I said with a sigh. “Whatever’s easiest.”
“Scrambled?” she asked.
I glanced at the line cook working the griddle and decided it was the safest option. “Yes.”
“Cheese?”
“No.” I handed her the menu.
“And you?” She turned to Thea.
“Same.”
I shot her a warning look. After the shock she’d experienced, she needed more than a couple of eggs. “She’ll have pancakes as well. The tall stack, please.”
Thea pursed her lips like she was annoyed, but she didn’t argue. “With chocolate chips.”
“You have questions,” I reminded her when we were alone again.
“And you’ll answer them?” she asked.
“Some.” I took a sip from my mug and refrained from gagging. It tasted more like the dirt they grew the beans in than coffee. Thea took a long swig from hers without complaint.
“Because you can compel me to forget?” she asked.
“I could, but I will leave that up to you.”
“Up to me?” Her voice pitched up with surprise.
“You were not given any other choices this evening. It only seems fair to let you decide whether you’d rather forget tonight ever happened.”
Thea fell silent, and I waited for her to speak. Finally, she raised her eyes to meet mine. “I’m not sure.”
“Because you have questions?” I guessed, and she nodded. “Ask me anything.”
She didn’t need to know that I couldn’t compel her. No one did. Not until I figured out why. There was only one way to get to the bottom of that mystery. I needed to know what made Thea tick, and there was only one way to learn that. Over the centuries, I’d learned a bit about humans. There was one thing in particular that always held true. You could learn more about a mortal from the questions they asked than any answer they might give to yours. Maybe it seemed safer to them to let their guard down when asking rather than answering.
“On one condition,” she said.
I hadn’t expected her to issue an ultimatum. Not when she could barely hide her curiosity.
“You answer any question I ask,” she said firmly, folding her hands triumphantly in front of her.
“There are rules–” I started to explain.
“You said you could make me forget it all, right?”
Was she calling my bluff? I nodded slowly, wondering where she was going with this.
“Then, there’s no reason you can’t tell me everything,” she smiled sweetly.
Thea Melbourne wasn’t as naive as I thought she was. But before I could decide what that meant for me, she leveled a no-nonsense glare at me and asked the last question I expected from her. “Why do you hate me?”
