Page 46 of Taste of Forever
I got ready for bed as quietly as I could to not disturb Justin, who was fast asleep. After crawling into bed, I fought the urge to snuggle up against him. He was a light sleeper and if I woke him too early, he’d be a grump the entire day. So I instead sent him a quick text.
Me: Thank you for the Danish. I needed it today. Love you too, and I miss you.
He really could pull through, sometimes. Lying next to him then, all my previous thoughts about confronting him about his job felt unfair. Of course he was still employed. He wouldn’t buy pastries if he wasn’t. Plus, he wouldn’t keep that from me.
With my mind finally able to relax a bit, I drifted off to sleep.
Laith removedhis fangs from my wrist, but kept his lips sealed over my skin while his tongue flicked over the puncture wounds to stop the bleeding. When he let go of my arm, it felt like the end of a kiss. A conclusion to an intensely intimate moment. The two of us were even a little breathless.
“Water?”
Laith’s magenta eyes focused on the coffee table in front of us, his whole body turned away from mine.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
He sprang up from the couch like it was on fire, hurrying to the bar across the VIP loft. I leaned my head against the back of the couch, fanning myself with my hand as I caught my breath.
This feeding had been intense. I might have even had a mini-orgasm, just a tiny spark of release that was nowhere near enough.
Not for the first time, I wondered what made my blood so special. I was fueled by coffee and late-night takeout food, andthisvampire was the poor soul who got stuck with me. Should I apologize or something?Sorry if you got heartburn. My fault for eating birria tacos at three a.m.
“Here you are.” Laith returned with a tall, chilled glass filled with clear water and the perfect amount of ice cubes.
“Thank you.” I gulped it down greedily while he sat a generous foot away from me.
“So.” He clapped his hands once after I set my water down. “You still want to get to know me in an emotional but not at all physical way?”
I couldn’t help but return his smile. “Yeah, if that works for you.”
His smile wobbled. “So you’re still with him, huh?”
“Well, yeah. It’s only been a few days.”
I’d thought Justin was finally making an effort to reconnect after surprising me with those pastries, but the next day he’d gone right back to gaming and emotional distance.
After running into Soren at work, I could have really used the support of a partner over the weekend. Instead I’d had Justin’s cold shoulder on Saturday, and counted down the minutes until Sunday evening when I could run to Sanguine and bask in the glow of Laith’s attention.
Platonically, of course.
And with the ultimate goal of Soren leaving me alone, of course.
“Fine, fine.” Laith raked long fingers back through his ash blond hair. “So what would you like to know?”
I pondered what to ask first over another sip of water. “Are any of the human beliefs about vampires true?”
“Most of them are not.” Laith tongued one of his fangs. “But you’ll have to be more specific.”
“Well, are you undead for one thing?”
“No. We’re like any other living creature. We’re born, then we die. We live a life between those two points. The prevailing belief is that we split off from humans somewhere along the evolutionary line.”
How I would love to send a vampire DNA sample to some old friends from grad school. A few were now pioneers in genome sequencing and would be frothing at the mouth for a research project like this.
Soren would probably appreciate such a sample, but I wasn’t eager to make things easier for that asshole. Thinking of Soren made me recall what he’d wanted to know in the break room.
“How long do vampires live?”
Laith frowned. “I’m very disappointed you’re asking a general question instead of one specifically about me.” His smile quickly returned, a sign that he was joking.
