Page 11 of Road Trip with a Vampire
I winced. “Sorry. Um…so you really have amnesia, then?” I asked as gently as I could.
A curt nod. “So it would seem.”
“I didn’t think that was a real thing,” I admitted.
“Apparently it is.”
“I’m sorry,” I said on instinct.
“It’s fine.” He didn’tlookfine, though. His brows were furrowed, the corners of his lips turned down into the beginnings of a frown.
I softened my tone before continuing. “Reg was right. Iama witch. Or I was. I’m not anymore.” I gestured expansively to my living room. “I keep my few souvenirs from my old life out of this room so no one finds out.”
He looked at me. “Why hide that part of yourself?”
“It’s…complicated.” I didn’t owe him an explanation.
He opened his mouth to ask more questions, then closed it again, seeming to think better of it. He gestured to my sofa. “May I?”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
He crossed the room with the same effortless grace he’d shown the night before when he’d helped with the trash. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a vampire move with this kind of confident supernatural fluidity, like gravity didn’t affect them the way it did everyone else. But watching the ease with which Peter moved, those confident strides…
Well.
It may not have been the first time I’d seen this sort of thing, but it was stillhot.
“So,” Peter said. “If I’m not sleeping in your apartment—”
“You’re not,” I confirmed.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But if not, why couldn’t we have had this conversation downstairs?”
“You’re hungry,” I said.
He peered at me. “How do you know?”
“I know a hungry vampire when I see one,” I said. “When I smell one, too. You smell like you haven’t eaten in a week.” I moved closer and made a show of sniffing him. The joke was on me, though. This close, his scent was potent, enticing—and it was pouring off him in waves. He smelled like sex and the promise of almost unbearable pleasure. I could all but feel it reaching inside me, tugging me towards him.
Despite myself, I squeezed my thighs together, doing my best not to imagine the ecstasy that would come if I just gave in and let him drink from me. Vampire venom worked like an aphrodisiac, making victims experience a kind of pleasure unlikeanything else in the world. Thank gods Lindsay hadn’t gotten any closer to him than she had. Who knew what might have happened.
Most humans didn’t recognize a hungry vampire’s pheromones for what they were until it was too late, but I wasn’t most humans. And I was smart enough—and experienced enough—to know that the worst possible thing I could do would be to succumb to this nonsense.
Gods, vampires were such fuckers.
If Peter recognized the effect he was having on me, to his credit he seemed uninterested in acting on it. “You needn’t have worried downstairs,” he muttered. “I can control myself.”
I snorted. “Sounds like something a vampire who struggles to control himself would say.”
“I haven’t attackedyou, have I?” He spread his arms wide. “Here we are, all alone. No witnesses. And yet I am calmly sitting on your sofa and engaging in entirely rational conversation, rather than…”
He trailed off, eyes tracing along the slope of my neck with naked hunger.
Aha.“Rather than what?” I smirked.
He shifted in his seat. “I wouldn’t have bitten those people downstairs,” he mumbled instead of answering.
“Whatever,” I said, not certain I believed him. “Anyway, listen. It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. And I have questions.”
