Page 57 of Hot Blooded

“It’s not your fault.”

But it was.

“Do you want me to take you back to your house?”

Tessa frowned, finally looking at him again. “Do you want to be alone?”

“God, no. But I’d understand if you needed some space.”

Her frown deepened. “Why would I need space?”

Amos sighed, hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Because knowing me has brought nothing but danger to your life.”

There was a stretch of silence that drew Amos’s nerves as tight as piano wire. Suddenly, Tessa laughed, sinking back into her seat. “Are all vampires this melodramatic?”

Amos didn’t know whether to be affronted or relieved. “Melodramatic?”

“O fragile mortal!” she cried, putting the back of her hand to her forehead. “How canst thou bear my insidious nature? Forsooth! Our picnic has been ruined by my dark and dangerous ways!”

“That’s not how you use ‘forsooth,’” Amos grumbled, but he was smiling now. Relief won out over pride.

Tessa abandoned her dramatic pose, grinning at him. “Look, I can’t say I’m eager to run into werewolves again. But we made it out okay. I trust you, Amos.”

That simple declaration hit him straight in the chest. He swallowed hard, keeping down the impulsive words that kept trying to rise from his throat. Accept my claim. Tonight. Now.

But he couldn’t. He’d promised Tessa a proper courtship. Etta had spent more than year courting before she’d asked Fran to be her bloodmate. Amos had only just met Tessa two months ago. And besides, he hadn’t even presented her to the Council yet. It was too soon. She deserved more.

“I’m glad,” he finally said, voice a little raw.

Hours later, in the minutes before dawn, Amos held Tessa outside her mother’s house and kissed her with all the want and hunger and desperation that he couldn’t yet allow himself to put into words. He kissed her until the tug of his impending daysleep was too strong to ignore.

“I have to go,” he told her, breathless and frustrated and aching with want.

She kissed him once more, a sweet, chaste little peck, and climbed the steps to the front door. At the top of the steps, she paused, lifting her foot to look at the sole of her shoe. Something dark was squashed into the tread.

“What the hell?” she muttered, gripping her ankle and angling her foot so that the porch light illuminated the bottom of her shoe. There was a stick protruding from the mass, and Tessa grabbed it, pulling it away from her sole.

It was a flower. A carnation or something like it, halfway decomposed. The delicate petals had probably once been red, but they were burgundy-brown now, and slimy with rot.

“More garbage,” Tessa groused, flinging it to the ground. Wiping her hand on her coat, she spared one last glance at Amos. “Sleep well,” she said softly.

He smiled. “Sleep well.”

Chapter 16

The day of the Council presentation had come, and Tessa was so nervous, she wanted to throw up.

Earlier that week, she’d spent half of a night with Etta, trying on dresses at an upscale vampire-owned boutique that was so obviously outside of her means that she felt like an intruder the entire time. Eventually, she’d calmed down enough to enjoy the process of trying on gowns and posing before the mirrors for Etta’s input. They’d both agreed on a sapphire-blue silk gown with an off-the-shoulder neckline and a floor-length mermaid skirt.

Tessa had stared at herself in the mirror as the seamstress pinned the gown for alterations, overwhelmed. It was the nicest gown she’d ever worn, and no doubt the most expensive. Etta had blithely told the seamstress—another vampire—to have the invoice sent to Amos Hansen. The seamstress’s eyes had widened a bit at Amos’s name, and Tessa had found herself wondering who he actually was outside of their cozy, quiet nights together.

By the time the Council night arrived, Tessa had mostly forgotten the seamstress’s reaction. Instead, her thoughts were occupied with the evening ahead. At Etta’s insistence, instead of having Amos pick Tessa up from her mother’s place, Etta and Fran met Tessa there and brought her to their house, where they got ready for the night.

Their home was on the top floor of a grand old Art Deco building in the Loop. Windows on one side had a beautiful, mostly-unobstructed view of the lake, while the other side looked into the bright lights, skyscrapers, and competing architectural styles of the downtown. The inside was no less impressive, and a stark contrast to the classical elegance of Amos’s home. Fran and Etta tended towards lush fabrics and rich colors, making their home feel like the inside of a very wealthy woman’s jewelry box.

Tessa was sitting on a velvet-tufted ottoman in the most luxurious powder room she’d ever seen, wearing a borrowed silk robe, her hair in rollers, trying not to blink as Etta applied winged eyeliner in a way that Tessa had never seen before.

“I saw this on the internet and I’m obsessed,” Etta said. “I swear, makeup tutorials these days are all made by fourteen-year-old girls who do makeup better than professional artists. I’ve been playing with makeup for over a century, and they’re still better than me!”

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