Page 5 of Vampires Don't Give Hickeys
Once I blinked out of my horny haze, I followed. We entered a large circular room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. And by floor-to-ceiling, I mean to thefirstfloor, too. Wooden ladders on wheels leaned against several shelves, and I was suddenly reminded of Belle, my namesake, fromBeauty and the Beast. Never mind the bathroom; I would just live with the books.
A hole had been cut into the middle of the circular room, and a golden pole stretched from the ceiling to the ground floor. I supposed it was either for sliding down or pole dancing, depending on the vamps’ mood.
Eddie led me around the pole to a section near the far wall and slapped his hand against the shelf. “Demons and devils. There are about five hundred twenty books about them here, but I can pull some out to get us started.” He touched his finger to his lips while he perused the titles.
I tried not to stare at him, the soft way his lips caved under the pressure of his finger, the way his messy hair fell around his glasses, how his white button-up shirt had come untucked from his pants on one end. He had the whole wild bookish thing going better than anyone in the history of everyone.
Instead of eye-fucking him anymore, I studied the books. Some were old and brittle, their cracked spines flaking onto the shelves themselves, while other books seemed to be so new they’d never been opened. All of them laced the air with a paper and ink smell I couldn’t get enough of. I breathed deep a few times, letting the scent soak into my lungs, before I remembered I should be researching, not hyperventilating.
But there was another smell, too, like coffee and cinnamon. On a nearby wooden table sat a slice of apple pie bursting at the sides and a mug of coffee still spiraling steam.
Eddie caught me salivating. “Help yourself.”
“Is it...” I glanced back at him. “Did you roofie it?”
“No. It’s just for your sustenance. You’re going to need it.” The way he said it, with a teasing lilt to his voice, his gaze locked on mine, and a devious twist on his mouth, unfurled a slight shudder from my heart to my stomach. He crossed to the table with an armload of books and then plopped himself down in a large red leather chair.
I took the one next to him in front of the pie and coffee, dangling my black leather jacket over the back.
He leaned away slightly and pulled a book across the table toward him. “We’ll probably want to start with this one.”
“Does my smell bother you?” I asked.
“Not in the way you think it does.” His orange-yellow gaze dipped to my lips as he slowly turned pages with his long, agile fingers. “Besides, you’ve already saturated the entire house.”
I half smiled since I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “You make it sound like I marked my territory here.”
His eyebrow twitched as he frowned down at the pages.
“What is it that I smell like?” I asked, eyeing the pie and coffee. Was it worth the risk? My mouth watered. My stomach rumbled. Damn it, pie was like kryptonite. I took the fork and dug in.
“Entrails,” Eddie muttered.
I stopped the fork midair before I’d taken my first bite and stared at him. “I smell like entrails?” I tried to secretly sniff my armpit and pass it off as a shrug. “Still?”
Eddie turned his book toward me so I could see a drawn image of a woman lying on a stone slab with her entrails sliding out. Shaking his head, he turned the page. “No, these are virgin entrails, not slayer entrails. I’m trying to see why the devil wants you for his bride.”
“The demon said I owed the devil since he’s been sending me checks since I was nine years old. The demon also said that something dark is coming to kill me, and that the devil was offering me a way out of being the slayer so I wouldn’t have to. Any idea what that something dark might be?”
Eddie gazed at me for a long moment with his eyebrows drawn together. “I’ve heard rumblings, but I don’t have any specifics.”
“Hmm.” I sighed. Lots of things could be deemed “dark,” especially in my line of work. This was going to be a long night. “You can tell the difference between virgin and slayer entrails just by looking?”
He shot me a smile. “I read the caption.”
“Genius.” I leaned closer to peer at the book again. “What language is that?”
“Italian.” He turned his head, his lips now inches from mine. His amber eyes darkened into pools of honeyed hunger. “The language of love.”
My breaths hitching at his nearness, I sat back under his watchful gaze, memorizing the way he looked at me. The way it rushed my blood faster and thrummed a steady flutter in my lower belly. I pressed my thighs together and squirmed in the chair, the soft leather sliding over my body like a caress. Even those slight movements heightened the sensations coursing through me.
His jaw muscles grinded as he seemed to force himself to look away, breaking only a fraction of the spell I was obviously under. And I hadn’t even tried the pie or coffee yet, so I couldn’t blame this feeling on that. What the hell was wrong with me? He was a vampire. I was a slayer. I should fire myself for letting him get to me this way, then rehire myself just to make sure I didn’t really like what he was doing to me, and then fire myself again.
To distract myself, I dug into the pie. The cinnamon-apple and flaky, buttery crust exploded with flavor onto my tongue, and I moaned into bite after bite.
Eddie turned a page. “You’re making it hard to concentrate.”
“Did you make this?” I asked, pushing the empty plate away.
