Page 38 of Sunshine and the Vamp

She snorted. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

Damyr frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

The sound of fingernails clicking away furiously on the line halted. “You know, I sometimes hate this job. You vam—”

“Roxie,” Damyr hissed. “Speaker phone.”

“Sorry. This is just a really late call, and I’ve finally got the baby to sleep. I don’t think I’ve slept for like twenty hours at this point.”

My jaw dropped. “Damyr! Are you telling me that you have this woman working for you when she should besleeping?!Are you insane? Do you know one of the leading causes of depression in new mothers is due to lack of sleep and you have her working on this foryou?!”

The clicking fingernails paused again. “Oh, Damyr. Can we keep him?”

“Not up to you,” Damyr grumbled. “And I don’t answer to you, Benjamin. I need Roxie because she’s the best.”

“Aww,” she sniffed dramatically. “I knew you loved me, Damyr. And don’t worry about me, Benji love, I’m used to working long days with little sleep. Caffeine is my best friend. Oh, and energy drinks and self-help books. They get me through the day.”

Well, that wasn’t healthy but who was I to judge? A few minutes ago, I’d been about to fuck a mafia don next to a corpse.

Damyr clicked his phone a few times. “I’ve just sent you the pictures. Can you identify what order the injuries were made?”

“Holy shit,” she muttered. Guess she got the pictures. “Is that Theo Montgomery?”

“Yes. Can you identify what order—”

“Yeah, yeah, give me a few minutes, doll face.” And with that she disconnected.

Well, she was a bit of a whirlwind. And interesting.

“I like her,” I said.

Damyr sighed. “Everybody likes her.”

Was that a touch of jealousy I detected? And why did I care?

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. What the fuck was I doing?

Oh, God.

I was the naïve girl in the rom-com movie who ignored all the signs and fell in love with the bad guy only to get their heart broken and trodden on a million different ways.

I’d always had good instincts, but a few hours with this intense, brooding man, and I didn’t know which way was north. What the hell was I going to do?

Chapter Twelve

Damyr

Iwas worried.

It was an alien sensation. I wasn’t normally burdened by it, but there I was, watching the emotions play across Benjamin’s beautiful face and I was unsure of what to do.

It wasn’t the dead body, he seemed comfortable with that. So that just left me that he could be uncomfortable with. I didn’t know why I cared, just that I wanted to care. About everything to do with him. If I was being brutally honest with myself, the whole dynamic between Benjamin and I unnerved me. I’d never had this kind of visceral reaction to someone I’d fed from before, so what made Benjamin so special?

“Look at this,” Banjamin said, holding the gift tag in his hand. He rubbed it between his finger and thumb. He had such lovely hands. Long, elegant fingers. Soft and caring. Not like mine which were scarred and showed signs of a brutal life.

Benjamin held out the gift tag. “It’s made from a thick parchment, and the ink looks like it came from a fountain pen or something. Doesn’t look like a biro made this. It kind of reminds me of old love letters you’d find in a museum.”

I took the tag from him, a shock of electricity zipping through my fingers as they brushed his. He was right. The tag looked old and there was something familiar about it. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what though. Why deliver Theo’s body to me? What did this Ronin want me to do with it?

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