Page 8 of Her Vampire

The days are okay, but at night when I close my eyes, I can’t help but picture his intense blues gazing into me, or feel the sudden warmth of his hands roaming all over my body.

My womb quivers when I let myself imagine silly, impossible things, like Torsten pushing me onto the hood of his Jaguar and burying his face in my neck, kissing, biting, teasing.

My voice quivers and my song cunts off when I look across the room to see him standing there.

Wearing a suit as dark as night, his eyes glint in the semidarkness of the lamps. One hand is trembling and the other is clenched into a fist as he gazes at me.

“Torsten?” I whisper.

“It’s true,” he says huskily.

“What’s true?”

He opens his fist and in a blinking moment the room floods with deep red light, every corner of it lighting up, but it’s a soft, warm glow, and somehow soothing. I stare at the crimson jewel as wonder crashes over me in unstoppable waves.

“Fancy stone,” I whisper, barely hearing my own voice, I’m so captivated by it.

He closes his fist and steps forward. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was listening to your singing. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of the way the bards would sing in the old days. You have an ancient quality to your voice, Tammy, an eternal note to it. You’re incredible.”

My head swims.

Bards.

Old days?

Is this six and a half foot rugged CEO a LARPer or something?

“Thank you,” I murmur. “I don’t usually sing in front of other people.”

“You should,” he says with passion flaring in his voice.

He stalks across the room until he’s standing over me. Heat radiates from him, fiery tsunamis of it, crashing over me, making me want to catch it, to steal it, to savor it.

“You have a sensational voice, and I’ve heard the very best this world has to offer. Is that your dream, Tammy, to become a singer?”

“It’s a pipe dream, sure,” I murmur, but the sarcasm in my voice flags, hard to sustain under his unflinching gaze. “What is that, Torsten? That jewel?”

“I don’t think you would believe me if I told you,” he mutters.

“Try me.”

He smirks and then stares intently at me.

“Perhaps I could show you,” he says.

“Um, okay?” I murmur.

“Watch me closely. Don’t look away. Okay?”

I never want to look away from you, Torsten.

I stamp down on that silly thought and nod.

“Sure.”

I stare at him, tracing his features with my gaze, the cut of his jaw, the blaze in his eyes, the way his black suit seems barely able to contain his goliath’s body.

And then—

What the—?

I let out a whimper of shock as I turn to find him on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall.

“Try not to panic,” he says.

And then—

Seriously, what the actual fuck?

He’s on the opposite end of the room, leaning casually against the wall as though he didn’t just teleport there.

Chipper looks up, head tilted, as confused about this teleporting billionaire as I am.

Again, he flashes by, a blur of movement and a whoosh of papers on the desk the only sign that he’s even still here, that he hasn’t disappeared.

He blips in then out of existence, leaping around the room, seeming to just vanish and blip into existence.

“Okay, how?” I whisper, my voice a faint ghost. “How the heck are you doing that?”

Chipper must sense the distress in my voice because he leaps up and starts barking, his floppy tan ears suddenly alert and perked up. He gazes at Torsten in confusion, baring his teeth in a growl when he finally comes to a stop just in front of the desk.

“Can I calm him?” he asks me. “We have simple charms, ways to manipulate mortals.”

“We? Who heck are we?”

“Vampires.”

I make a noise somewhere between a laugh, and a gasp, and a guttural choke.

“What?” I snap.

“Vampires,” he states again, as though it isn’t the most ridiculous thing in the world. “May I?”

“Will it hurt him?” I say, and then bring my hand to my forehead. “Wait, what the hell am I even saying?”

“No,” Torsten says, approaching Chipper slowly, hand extended.

He murmurs some words in a language I don’t understand and then waves his hand. Chipper’s bark turns to a goofy grin and he sits down, head tilted as he regards Torsten and then me, as though he’s trying very hard to work out why he was just barking.

“These work on people, too,” Torsten says. “But there’s no pleasure in manipulating a person. Some of my kind, when there were more of us, they delighted in using their powers in that way. But not me. Never me.”

“Torsten,” I whisper, wondering if any moment I’m going to wake up with my forehead resting against the Victorian spoon I just wrapped. “What the hell is going on? You’re not a vampire. Come on.”

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