Page 31 of Kept
Right in the middle of her brandy cake is half a cockroach, not even a whole cockroach, which really would have been preferable given the obvious conclusion to only seeing half of one in a cake you have already mostly eaten.
Her shrieks begin to escalate as she clutches her throat and makes gagging noises, and a series of waiters walk briskly to her and try to calm her down. She points hysterically at the bug, and I hear a collective gasp from the waiters as one quickly whisks her plate away and another offers her a glass of water.
I am still stunned, feeling like I might throw up at any moment; bugs in food is a personal phobia of mine, and I’m unsure of what to do to calm my friend, when I see her ever-so-slightly smirk.
‘Oh my God, she did this; she did this so we wouldn’t have to pay.’
By now she is telling the waiters how appalled she is, how she will never dine here again, how she will be telling all her country club friends about this, blah blah blah.
All the while, I don’t move a muscle.
Eventually though, the maître de ushers us out with profuse apologies and offers of another meal, completely free, which Margarita, of course, turns down, saying she would be too frightened to eat here ever again, more blah blah blah and we find ourselves out on the street amid the bustling foot traffic and garish neon signs.
“Do you love me? Or do you love me?” she smiles, linking her arm in mine and marching us down the street towards our hotel.
I snuggle into bed with the book, and smile.
My crazy friend had tracked down her boyfriend, apparently, and was now out on the town with him. How she could even move after the amount of food and drink we had consumed, I have no idea.
I have had a long bath, and now I am reading. I’m starting to really enjoy this book; I think this would-be author has a great story. Clearly this vampire is a murderous bastard, but he also has a sad past. And what is up with this landscape designer?
I almost laugh out loud as I think again about the cockroach.
I should be mad with Margarita, but I’m not. I’m excited. We have two more days here, and we plan to hit at least two more restaurants for free meals. I have turned into a criminal, a gourmet criminal, and try as I might to feel guilty, I’m starting to feel more excited than bad. One thing is for sure, though; I don’t think I will be able to date the cop.
New Entry.
The tea dynasty heiress was delicious, she had just a hint of spice about her, a little oriental surprise that I was not expecting from a tea magnate, although if I’d thought about it, most tea does come from India, so it is not unlikely that she would have some Indian lineage in her bloodlines. Still, you wouldn’t have thought it from her name or her looks, all very British upper class.
On the surface that is. Underneath she was an avaricious bitch, keen to dance with me when she heard I was a Lord, as they all are, the title is what wins most of my meals, I’m sure.
Oh, I mean she was flattering. Told me how deliciously handsome I was, and I am, there is no denying most of my life’s trials have been due to my looks. Had I been a less devilishly handsome man I might have lived a happy and normal life with the woman I loved. But that was not to be, and the tea mogul reminding me of this simply made me angry, and hungry.
It was amusing, actually.
She was keen to come to my room, but not so keen to give herself entirely to me, not her life anyway.
She tried to run, but there was nowhere to run, and then she tried to barter with me, offering me her luscious body, but it was not sex I wanted, it was blood.
“But if you plan to kill me,” she gasped as I held her pressed up against the balcony, the moon illuminating the whites of her frightened eyes, “at the very least you should enjoy my body first.”
“I don’t sleep with humans,” I smiled gently at her, “only my Kept, and I’m afraid you are either 30 years too early, or 30 years too late, to become one of those.”
“Your Kept?”
“Why yes, the women who agree to live with me, serve me, feed me, until such a time as I desire their hearts.”
“You want them to love you?”
“No, not at all. When I claim their hearts it is to completely drain them, squeeze them of every last drop of their precious blood – usually though,” I shrugged, “that does coincide with them saying they love me.”
“You are a monster.”
“Yes. Of sorts. But then so are you.”
That was when she tried to fly.
Jumping from a fourteenth storey balcony though, is hardly flying. I told her this as I pulled her back inside and bent her pretty wrist to my fangs.
