Page 39 of Pucking Vamps

The rest of the night goes by in a blur. I get to Leander’s place very late, the dim light in his bedroom the only part of the house that’s still awake. Quietly, I slink inside the building, shutting the door gently so I don’t wake him up in case he’s fallen asleep.

Shoes off, I just stand in the hall, feeling the luxurious hardwood under my feet and taking in the paintings hanging on the walls. All of them are familiar now, the closest to me a landscape from a trip Leander went on to Rome. The canals of Venice spy from the next one. Then a country house in Zagreb. The clock tower in Novi Sad. That’s as far as my eyes can see in the gloomy corridor. But I know what follows. I asked him one night, and he told me about every one of them, his expression softening toward the last of the paintings.

I walk over and stand in front of the bridge painting of Bucharest, though my attention inevitably shifts to the magnificent Bran Caste near Brasov. It’s where Leander’s family is originally from, before his parents immigrated to the States.

Tracing my fingers along the canvas, I close my eyes and open up my other senses. Everything is so familiar. The bumps of paint, the hint of breeze from an open window somewhere on this floor, the smell of night and sea mixing in and clinging to my skin. I inhale deeply. This feels so much like a home. Like a place where I could belong. Where I’d like to belong. And that’s terrifying because I don’t know if I have any right to want something like that.

Me, a poor and currently homeless nobody, who is only good at skating on the ice and chasing after a black disc with a stick in my hand… Okay, and guitar too, but I’m not nearly as impressive as when I’m playing hockey.

Someone like Leander is way out of my league.

I pad up the stairs and enter my room. I don’t think it’s a good idea to sleep with him today, not after how right it felt to wake up in his arms in the morning. I shouldn’t get used to it.

A shower later and I lie in my bed, staring at the white ceiling as softness and warmth lull me to sleep.

Chapter 16

Leander

Practice keeps Hayden busy. He’s out of the house first thing in the morning and comes back late. I am never asleep when he arrives since vampires don’t need as much rest as humans, but I stay in my room, leaving the choice of whether he comes to me up to him.

My vampiric nature protests that. Growls and claws at me and demands that I drag my human here and tie him up to the bed and have my wicked way with him until whatever has been bothering him since I returned from my trip vacates his beautiful head.

Hayden is stressed. And it’s not because of hockey. It’s something else, something that calls out to me to comfort him and hold him and never let him out of my arms.

I purr at the thought. My entire being agrees with my vampiric possessiveness. Wherein lies the second problem of having found my mate and why I can’t just drop it on him—I want to turn Hayden. To make him like me, no longer a fragile human. It’s the only thing on my mind lately and the one which stops me from making my move.

He took the revelation of our existence quite well. He seemed to get along with Vivian and my friends. But that doesn’t mean he’d want to be like us. To give up his mortal life for one that can only be ended by copious amounts of garlic or beheading. I suppose silver can be unpleasant as well, slow down a vampire’s healing, but it is not lethal unless injected in a very specific way into our veins.

Sighing, I drop in my office chair at the company and swivel it around, gazing out of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the inner garden nestled between the four buildings that make up the ADU Pharmaceuticals’ compound. The structures are modern, their facades all glass and metal and their roofs housing beehives and greenhouses with plants we use in the development of various drugs. Auntie was the head of the company after my father’s passing and until I took over at the age of twenty-one, but since then I’ve grown our business tenfold. Money will never be an issue for me, yet what I truly want can’t really be bought.

I examine that thought as I turn back to my neatly organized desk and scroll through my agenda for the day. I suppose that’s not quite true—there are ways to persuade humans to do as told even if they are unwilling. Some vampires employ such methods, but I don’t wish to trick Hayden into being with me. I want him to choose it because it’s what he wants as well. A mate bond is strong, but it is not invincible until it is sealed. One side can always break it.

A knock on my door jerks me out of my head, my eyes zeroing in on the knob as it turns.

“Mr. Adetu,” Carlos, my PA, says, squinting his brown eyes at me in that evaluating manner that makes me feel like a child about to be scolded. “You are one button off. And your tie is a little crooked.”

I stare down at my shirt, realizing he’s right. How embarrassing. “I was in a rush this morning…”

He shakes his head, walking over to me as I begin undoing my buttons. “Let me. You’ve got a meeting with the shareholders from Brax Robotics in ten minutes and you must look impeccable.”

Carlos is nearing 200. He’s a turned vampire that I hired a decade ago after running into him in a dingy Norwegian village during a trip there. A local clan had been stirring unrest, killing humans left and right and threatening to expose our secret, so Annabel and I had been tasked with resolving the issue. Thankfully, it had gone smoothly and there had been minimal casualties, but I’d found Carlos locked up in a basement and almost starved to death. I’d taken him with me, fed him and given him an entry-level job here in the company, and then two months later he was already helping me run the place and stay organized.

“Something seems to be bothering you, Mr. Adetu. If you wish to talk about it, I am all ears.”

I stand up as indicated and square my shoulders, letting my assistant ensure I look presentable. “There is something that I want, but I am not sure whether I should.”

“Something or someone?” Carlos hums, his perceptive eyes meeting mine.

I allow a small smile. “Someone.”

“Ah. That explains your chipper mood lately. Are they aware of your true nature?”

My smile grows into a proud smirk. “They are.”

“What is the issue, then?”

“I want to turn him. I am afraid he might freak out and run away if I told him.”

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