Page 32 of Hot Blooded

Amos couldn’t be glad that she was so stressed all the time, but he was grateful that he could be a quiet harbor for her. “Alright, if you’re sure.”

“I am.”

The tension eased from his shoulders. “How does a movie sound, then?”

“Perfect.”

He pulled out his phone, controlling his entertainment system from it. He brought up a streaming service and scrolled through titles, insisting Tessa pick.

She settled on a comedy Amos remembered hearing good things about, but had never actually seen. He got it started and set his phone aside. As soon as he had settled back against the couch cushions, Tessa scooted up next to him, curling against his side.

Amos went totally still, surprised by the easy intimacy. He looked down at her, arm held aloft like a seagull with a broken wing. Tessa glanced up, alerted by his stillness. Whatever she saw in his face must have reassured her. She relaxed against him, wrapping one arm around his midsection. Her free hand reached up to pull his hovering arm down around her shoulders.

He could feel her breasts pressed against his side, the warmth of her body seeping into his. It took a moment, but he finally managed to relax. Contentment rumbled in his chest with every breath. He tried to suppress it, but the purr wouldn’t be silenced. In any case, Tessa didn’t seem to mind. She laid her ear against his sternum, listening.

The movie ended up being fine. Not particularly memorable, but not unenjoyable. The real pleasure though, came from the easy, unhurried conversations they kept getting into, instead of paying attention to the TV.

“Have you ever courted anyone before?” Tessa asked during the opening credits.

Amos tensed. “Yes.”

“Do you not want to talk about it?” she asked gently.

He ought to. If he was going to court her, if he was going to ask her to accept a permanent bond with him, he needed to be honest with her. “There’s not much to tell. There was a woman I met in… 1952? Mary Catherine Donovan.”

Tessa snorted. “You have a thing for Catholics?”

Sudden alarm seized Amos’s heart. “Are you Catholic?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

She shot him a questioning glance. “I mean, I’m Italian and Mexican, so my family is all Catholic, and I was raised Catholic. Baptized, CCD, Confirmation, the whole thing. But I’m not really religious. The only time I go to Mass anymore is for weddings and funerals.”

“So you don’t have any, er, spiritual objections to…me?”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh, no, Amos. No.” The arm around his midsection squeezed tighter. “Let me guess—Mary had some objections?”

“Yes. But, you don’t need to feel too bad for me. I wasn’t irrevocably in love with her. She was just… she was kind. And we got along very well. And I thought there was a possibility there. But—” he shrugged “—there wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry.” She was quiet for a moment. “Was there ever anybody else?”

“There was one other person.”

Tessa waited.

“His name was Michael Delacroix.”

“Oh.” She paused, and in that pause, Amos became acutely conscious of the precariousness of his relationship with Tessa—the newness of it, all of the unknowns between them, the weight of its potential. “How did you meet him?” she asked, sounding merely curious—not disgusted, not angry, not confused.

He didn’t realize how tightly his jaw had clenched until then. He relaxed, letting the tension ebb away. “We met in 1965. He and I worked together—nights, of course—at an investment bank. A.G. Becker & Co. It doesn’t exist anymore. I was a computer programmer, he was the custodian.”

“Workplace romance,” Tessa mused, still draped against him. It felt incredibly strange to lay entangled with a woman and tell her about a past lover—and a man, at that. He’d told Etta all about it, of course, but Etta was different. She knew what it was like. Her sympathy was guaranteed.

“I suppose,” he said, a hint of bitterness inadvertently creeping into his tone.

“Not a romance?” Tessa asked, picking up on it.

“It was, for a while. But when I revealed to him that I was a vampire… things went badly. He was afraid. Many people—especially men—lash out when they’re afraid. He tried to kill me.”

Tessa gasped, her fingers fisting in the front of his shirt. “What?”

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