Page 26 of The Vampire Kingpin
It took me a few seconds to realize he was searching for a weapon. I blinked. “You don’t trust Zayne?”
“I trust her, alright.” He dropped the clothes on the bed. “Just being careful. And if I didn’t, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Got it.” I blanked my expression. “Sorry if I overstepped.”
His mouth pressed into a tight line. Then he said, “Get dressed and help with dinner. You wanna eat around here, you work.”
I moved a shoulder. “Fair enough.”
He considered me like he couldn’t quite figure if I was gaming him.
“I mean it,” I said. “I appreciate you feeding me. And I’m no princess—I don’t need to be waited on.”
He grunted and disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later, I heard the shower go on.
I got dressed in a gray tee and black leggings, then stacked the rest of the clothes in a corner of the bedroom. By the time Spider came into the Cavern, I was in the kitchen slicing tomatoes for Croc, a short, bulked-up human with cropped hair and a wicked scar curving from his left eye to his cheek.
Spider frowned as Croc (short for Crocodile) gave a rusty chuckle at my lame tomato joke. (Why did the tomato cross the road? To ketchup with the other tomatoes.)
It was almost like Spider was jealous. His hand went to the handle of the dagger in his holster, and he actually took a step toward us before giving himself a shake. He turned on his heel and strode out of the Cavern.
I frowned after him, then shrugged and went back to my tomatoes.
“These babies are almost done.” Croc flipped the burgers he was broiling for the ten or so other humans and dhampirs who’d drifted into the Cavern. “You finished with those tomatoes?” When I nodded, he put me to work washing lettuce and chopping carrots for a salad.
That’s how things went for the next few nights. I slept in Spider’s bed each day, waking up first and waiting for him. We fucked. That part was incredible—easiest money I’d ever made.
Then I helped cook, and we ate family-style around the long wooden table, humans and dhampirs side by side. In addition to Croc, Zayne, Jacko and DeeDee, I met a couple of other dhampirs—a teenager with bright blue hair and a dark-skinned, silver-haired dude, among others.
No thralls.
When I asked Bliss, the blue-haired kid, about it, she said, “You’re the only one. Usually we feed from our humans, or hire someone for the night. We pay them as we go, or barter with them.”
“But then why did he?—”
“Hire you as a thrall?” she finished. “We’re all wondering that.”
“I guess he figured he couldn’t get you any other way,” said Monster, the silver-haired dude.
I swallowed hard. Even before I’d extracted the extra twenty-five grand from Spider, he’d been willing to take me in place of the twenty-five Grim owed him.
Somehow, it hadn’t hit me before now that Spider must’ve wanted me—bad.
And why did that give me that warm, fuzzy feeling again? I quickly smothered it?
Chill, Lark. He wanted in your pants, that’s all.
Everyone was listening now. From across the table, DeeDee sneered. “Soon as the month’s over, he’ll kick you to the curb.”
“That’s the deal,” I agreed with a shrug.
She looked taken aback like she’d expected me to be upset. But then, she didn’t know that I’d been the one to insist that my deal with Spider had an end date. She wasn’t finished, though.
“After he lost Amina,” she informed me, “he swore never to take a mate. Just so you don’t get ideas.”
“He had a mate?” That good feeling I’d gotten from hearing how much Spider had wanted me popped like a soap bubble. I’d assumed that like me, he’d never mated.
She widened her eyes in a show of innocence. “You didn’t know?”
