Page 33 of Hot Blooded

“I was never in danger from him. A stake through the heart won’t actually kill us.”

“He tried to stake you through the heart?” Tessa asked, aghast.

Amos shrugged. Had Michael set fire to his home while Amos was in his daysleep, or even just dragged him out into the sun, he would’ve had a much better chance of ending him. A stake in the back was a mere annoyance. Nothing, really, compared to the emotional pain.

“I’m sorry, Amos. That’s terrible.” Tessa laid her head against his chest, stroking her hand over his heart in soothing circles. While the hurt of Michael’s violent rejection had long since passed, small scars remained in his psyche. The conviction that he would never find a willing bloodmate. The suspicion that who he was as a person—predictable, introverted, subdued—was not appealing enough to overcome the detractions of being with a vampire. The knowledge that his predatory inclinations would always horrify potential partners.

Well. Tessa had upended that last one. And he dared to let himself hope that she would prove the other two wrong as well.

“So… you like men?” Tessa ventured after a brief silence.

“Sometimes,” Amos answered easily, no longer afraid of her reaction. “More often women. But occasionally men, too.”

“I’ve only ever been with men,” Tessa said. “I’ve had crushes on women, but nothing ever came of any of them.”

The peaceful feeling of being understood, being accepted, had Amos nearly glowing with contentment. But a small worry suddenly crossed his mind, dimming the glow somewhat. “Is that something you would want to explore before… ah… before…”

“Before committing to you?”

He nodded.

She gave it a moment of thought. “No. Intimacy isn’t about gender. And I want intimacy. It’s not like there’ll be this un-fillable void in my soul if I never get to eat pussy.”

Amos nearly choked on his own tongue.

Tessa flashed him a devious look. “Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re, like, a hundred and fifty. How would a Victorian woman say it?” She fluttered one hand to her heart, drawing his eye back to her impressive cleavage again, and the other to her brow. “Oh! My dear sir,” she warbled in some kind of mangled transatlantic accent. “Prithee do not trouble thyself over my lascivious needs. I am but a simple woman who seeks only the genitals of her truest love.”

Once again, Amos nearly choked. Laughter like he hadn’t experienced in years burst out of him. He clutched his chest as he fought with it, trying to remember how to breathe. “We did not talk like that!” he managed to wheeze.

His laughter had set Tessa off. She cackled at his discomposure, giving him a playful poke in the ribs. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said firmly, struggling to get a hold of himself. “Very sure.”

“Hmmm. If you say so.”

She curled against his side again and as their breathing evened, they lapsed into a comfortable quiet, both vaguely watching the movie.

“Do you want to watch another?” Amos asked when the movie ended, wishing he had something more exciting to offer. It’d been eons since he’d hosted anyone other than Etta and Fran. He was out of practice at entertaining guests. He was even more out of practice at courting.

“Yeah,” Tessa said definitively, easing his uncertainty. “But this time you pick. Put on a movie you loved that was made before I was born.”

“How old are you again?”

“Thirty-three.”

He thought on it for a moment. Several films occurred to him right away, but he discarded each of them. He wanted something that would appeal to Tessa and as he remembered his favorite films over the years, especially the older ones, he doubted they’d appeal much to a woman of the twenty-first century.

“Er… have you seen Doctor Zhivago?” he finally ventured.

“No, what’s it about?”

He explained the premise while he searched for it. When he found it and got it playing, he leaned back into the couch, and Tessa curled into him again. She reached across him briefly to pluck up another one of the snacks he’d brought in and it suddenly dawned on him that humans had to eat full meals on a regular basis. He checked the time on his phone—it was close to when Tessa usually took her lunch break at work.

“Are you hungry?”

“I’m fine. You’ve got all these snacks.”

“You need real food. What do you like? I’ll order takeout.”

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