Page 14 of Flirting with Darkness

“You’ll have to be patient.”

“I’m not a very patient man.”

“I don’t lie, Lord Vale. They’re special. I promise.”

“You can just call me Vale,” he grumbled. “I suppose that once someone has seen my bare ass, we can drop the titles.”

He dropped heavily into a velvet chair next to the window. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here. Is that a problem?”

I glanced again to the bed, and he let out a low, silken chuckle.

“What? Are you really so distracted by sex?”

It was distracting, but I wasn’t about to admit that. I dropped to my knees before him and withdrew my equipment from my bag. When I took his arm to guide the needle into his veins, I was acutely conscious of every patch of my flesh that touched his.

He laughed again as I thrust the needle through the resistance of his skin.

“I can hear your heartbeat. Is that nervousness or excitement?”

I could hear my own heartbeat, too, and I wished it would calm down. Even I wasn’t sure which it was, but neither was welcome.

“I think it’s amusing that you wandered into my house without a care in the world,” he said, “but the sight of fifteen seconds of sex triggers your nerves. I will never understand humans.”

“I’ve had plenty of sex.” And the minute I said it, I cursed myself for it—why in the gods names did I just say that?

Vale now looked very, very amused, and I absolutely despised it.

“Have you now? Did some gawky farm boy from next door take you for a ride?”

My lips thinned.

Eron had been gawky, and he was a farm boy, and that summer when I had been sixteen and curious, we had indeed explored each other in the deserted moments behind the barn, when no one else was around. I didn’t want to die a virgin. I was certain then that I wouldn’t live to see the winter, so I saw all of Eron instead.

But fifteen years later, I was still here, and six months ago I swept Eron off of the church floor after his funeral, when his mother was too hysterical to do it.

“You know, I did wonder at first,” I said. “Why you didn’t kill me when I came into your house. Now I understand it’s because you’re a bored, lonely man, desperate for any kind of company.”

I didn’t look away from the vial, his blood dripping and rolling against the glass. But I felt his stare, and in the moment of silence, I wondered if I hit my mark.

“As you just witnessed,” he said, coolly, “I can get all the company I want.”

“Company that got what she wanted from you and then left without saying goodbye.”

“We got what we wanted from each other. It wasn’t conversation that I was looking for.”

And yet… he was sitting here talking to me.

“What do you need this for?” he asked. “The blood?”

“As I told you—”

“My blood isn’t a cure for anything, I promise you that.”

“It appears, L—” I caught myself. “Vale, to be a cure for death.”

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