Page 60 of Suck This

Though, I wasn’t nearly as entranced now by the TV as I’d been only minutes before.

Now all I could do was absently flip pages and wonder if Con was watching me or not.

I couldn’t chance looking at the man. He’d see me and immediately know that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him.

And the man didn’t need any more ego stroking. It was plenty big enough already—just like other parts of his anatomy.

His arms.

Yeah, those were big.

“Almost done,” Tracy said. “Let me have the ball.”

I released it to her grip and allowed my eyes to flick up, only for my heart to fall when I didn’t see him watching me anymore.

Though, I knew that to be a lie.

I couldn’t see him anymore, but that wasn’t to say that he wasn’t watching me in some way. Likely he was watching by way of the security cameras that I could see sitting in the very corner of the room.

Why a blood donation place would have security cameras, I didn’t know.

Then a story popped into my mind from a couple of months ago. People were stealing the blood that’d been stored at the center, convinced that the blood wasn’t going to the hospitals like Worth Enterprises had assured the general population. Instead, they were convinced that the vampires were using it illegally for their own consumption, and the new human activists’ criminal population had resorted to stealing blood to prevent anything untoward happening with the blood.

The only thing they’d accomplished, though, had been causing a missed shipment of blood donation going to area hospitals, and two people dying when they couldn’t find the blood that they needed—blood that’d been supposed to be arriving on the truck that never came, thanks to the criminals.

“All righty, ma’am,” Tracy said as she unplugged and unhooked me. “All done. Now, I want you to make sure you grab some cookies and juice before you leave.”

Yeah, no. I didn’t like the cookies, nor the juice that they offered.

I’d pick something up on the way to work.

Or would have had I not gotten to the parking lot and felt a wave of lightheadedness roll over me.

I had to catch myself on the car beside mine, and would’ve fallen forward had something strong and unyielding not gripped my arm to keep me from kissing the pavement.

Looking down at the arm, I realized very quickly that the arm didn’t belong to anyone that I knew. It belonged to a well-dressed man in a pin-striped suit, and he looked really out of place in between the blood place and the McDonald’s.

“Hi,” I said. “Thank you.”

His smile was warm but calculating.

“You’re most welcome, ma’am,” came his syrupy sweet reply. “Do you need assistance to your car?”

I pulled away and would’ve backed up, but I ran into something immovable.

This time, I had no need to look up at the man at my back. I knew this one about as intimately as anyone could know someone.

And I instantly relaxed.

Whatever part of me that had been up in arms about the man that’d caught me from faceplanting was instantly at ease with Constantine at my back.

“Amari.”

That rumbled reply was directed to pin-striped guy, and I shivered at the cold look this ‘Amari’ shot Constantine.

“Hello, Mr. Worth,” Amari replied coolly. “I’m surprised to see you actually doing something for once.”

I blinked, surprised at the vehemence in the man’s voice that was directed toward Constantine, and of course, I was in the middle of it.

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