Page 12 of Hot for Slayer
“An entomologist who is afraid of spiders.” He turns to face me. “How unusual.”
Shit.Fuck.I straighten and collect myself. “It’s a very rude assumption,” I say haughtily, “that just because I study insects, I have to like all types of—”
“I have a lot of scars,” he interrupts, conversational. “All over my body.”
“ . . . Okay.”
“Some are big.” He points at a thick, knotty line that bisects the middle of his abdomen. “I wonder how I got this one. It must have been deep.”
Unless I’m mistaken, I gave it to him in Bath during the 1800s. I was having a grand old time choosing ribbons for my bonnet when he galloped into town and forced me to move to France, where Napoleon was still pursuing his military dreams.
I clear my throat. “Pest control is a dangerous profession.”
“Must be,” he says, meaning:No, it isn’t.
“Does it hurt?”
“No. But since you asked, something is bothering my left rib. Could you check?”
Absolutely fucking no,I plan to say. But just like all the other noes I should have said today, it remains stuck in my throat, and I’m somehow sliding my fingers up his flank and over his flank.
For a split second, we both freeze, and I’m not the only one who’s not breathing. The room falls into an unnatural layered silence. Lazlo glances down at me with that inquisitive, slightly accusing expression that seems to chew at the lining of my stomach, and I try to return the stare without looking too wide-eyed and guilty, but there is something here. Something that jumps from me to him, that flows from him to me. A current, a heat, a moment of confusion and deluge that clogs my senses, and ...
You’re just not used to touch,I tell myself.
Yes. That’s it. It must have been a handful of years since the last time. I like to choose very bad people as meals, so I limit my physical contact with them, while Lazlo ... He is notfood. He is a person, an immortal just like me, surprisingly solid in a world where everything drifts past, disappearing too quickly.
It’s disorienting, is all.
“Why are your hands so cold?” he asks, voice curt and gravelly.
“Bad circulation,” I mumble, hurrying to bend my neck and search for the wound he mentioned. “Vitamin deficiencies. Gets chilly at night outside.”
“You just gave me three different excuses.”
“I gave threereasons, all valid, so get off my— Shit. There’s a shard of glass stuck between your lowest two ribs. I think you may have healed around it.”
“Can you take it out?”
“I’d have to cut it open a bit. You’d bleed again.”
“That’s fine.”
It’s not fine at all. But I do it, taking one of the thirty switchblades hidden around my place, carving a small cut over the one already healed.
I’m not an unfledged youth. My bloodlust is long quenched, and I can control my impulses even when I’m injured or hurt or approaching starvation. The scent of Lazlo doesnotmake me lose my mind, because I’m better than that.
But God, it’ssweet.
Always has been. Every time we fought, every blade I sank into his flesh, every breakneck chase, the allure of his blood was there, calling. I’ve injured and killed plenty of slayers before him, and they all repulsed me, but Lazlo ... I have no idea why his specific blood feels so overpoweringly, mouthwateringlydelicious, but now that the glass splint is out, I should probably take a step back.
Yeah.
I’m gonna.
Any second now.
“All new,” I say, not meeting his eyes. My voice trembles. The wound is already closing, and I’m scurrying to the sink to wash the drops of his blood off my hands, but once the faucet is on, I cannot help staring at the running water like it’s my enemy, because it would be such a waste to give up this precious—
