Page 3 of The HalloQueen

“Oui,” I said, dropping some of the bite from my tone. Her curled purple hair was half up on the top of her head and held in place with a black scrunchie. Were scrunchies back? She had distinctive black eyebrows that, along with her eyes, seemed to have a line drawn around them to accentuate them. Monique no longer had to apply makeup, which had overjoyed me when she was able to stop powdering that thick lead shit all over her skin and subsequently getting it all over me. “How can I help?” I asked, giving one more glance down to her enormous bust.Merde.

“I just wanted to introduce myself since I will probably be in here a lot.” The woman said, extending her hand, “I’m Annabel Williams. I own an online boutique that specializes in alternative fashion and I use a lot of Halloween decor as props. I have no doubt I’ll be in here a million times to try and get everything I need for the season.”

Her hand was warm, and she flinched slightly at my cool skin when I placed mine in hers. “Bonjour, Annabel, I am Thomas Corbin. Welcome to my shop.”

She arched one of those black brows slightly and gave me a closed-mouth smile, “You’re not Andrew. He’s been running the Halloween store here for years - you run him out of town or something?”

I smirked, remembering how his end had felt like crushing an ant, “or something.”

She laughed sweetly and reached behind her to pull her hair to one shoulder, exposing a tantalizing neck that somehow didn’t smell of the sage she brought in with her. A new scent of ginger and citrus wafted from her skin and my cock immediately twitched in my pants. Well. That was unexpected.I hadn’t come to attention in a very long time.

“You’ll let me know if you should require any assistance, Annabel?”

She nodded and a slight flush spread across her pale cheeks, “Yeah, absolutely.”

I tilted my head slightly, following her gaze to my jaw, and released a smile, allowing my two faint dimples to indent my cheeks, wondering if I could work out a different kind of frustration with her. “Forgive me, Miss Annabel, but you are quite beautiful. I am having a hard time not staring.”

Her eyes widened in shock and she took half a step back, laughing, “well, it appears they don’t lie about French men being flirts, huh?”

“Depends, who isthey?” I leaned forward, placing my tattered book face down between us, which she glanced at.

“You like Edgar Allen Poe?”

“He knew how to set the mood,non? The man understood the importance of ambiance.”

She smirked again, “that’s very true. Well, nice to meet you, Thomas. I’ll be right back with far too many goodies.”

“Looking forward to it, Annabel.” I tracked her as she disappeared into the stacks, heading toward the back of the store, and by the stars above, that peach of an ass looked juicy enough to bite. I tried to go back to my book, as boring as it was, seeing as I was with the bastard when he wrote most of it, but the girl. The scent. The ginger and citrus attacked my senses like a dinner bell, causing my fangs to elongate and my mouth to salivate.

I jumped up and quickly moved behind the wall of curtains that separated the Halloween area from the giant shell of the department store, and took a quick selfie. Sure enough, my eyes had darkened and my teeth were visibly sharper.Merde. I couldn’t remember the last time that my body reacted to a mortal. I hadn’t even met anyone that aroused me other than Monique and Yusuf, and they…well, they certainly kept me busy enough to hold my attention for two centuries. Since they disappeared eleven months ago I hadn’t had any desire for companionship, let alone the desire to slake the needs of the flesh.

I took a few deep breaths, hoping to soothe the urge to go slam the woman, Annabel, into the stacks and ravage her body and blood, but her scent continued to fill my lungs despite knowing she had to have been at the other end of the store by then. Her fragrance was pushing my senses to go into overdrive and for the first time in hundreds of years, I felt the beast vibrating within me, pulling my body in her direction, causing my feet to move on their own. What he wanted with her, I could only hope was manageable during these daylight hours when I had a part to play, but he did tend to have a mind of his own. The ginger and citrus had woken that feral piece of me like smelling salts, and he’d made it clear that we needed to talk to Annabel.

3

ANNABEL

Holy fucking shit-on-a-stick. Frenchie was hot. Slimmer than what tended to draw my attention, but defined muscles were apparent on his trim figure and his hair was so shiny. Like, ridiculously shiny. Would it be weird to ask a hot guy what conditioner he used? Dear God.

I walked to the back of the store, making sure to sway my ass a little more than usual. My initial plan had simply been to flirt with Andrew as I had in the years before I moved. Andrew had been awkward around women, mean around men, and impatient with children. His wonderful attitude was accompanied by him frequently glistening with sweat and having very poor teeth and thinning hair. I’d gone to high school with the guy, so I knew I could seal the deal with a couple of boob shirts and slight touches to his arm since he had zero game. Now I needed a new plan. No way was a Frenchman going to be seduced by a glimpse of decolletage. I came to the wall of skulls and stared absentmindedly. What was a guy that looked like that doing running a Halloween pop-up store? Even sitting I could tell he was tall and his inhumanly shiny brown hair had subtle waves that framed his chiseled face. That very distracting face housed piercing brown eyes so deep they were almost black, perfectly thick and groomed brows, and a delectable dusting of stubble along his jawline. He should be a model, or an actor, not…replacing Andrew.

What in the absolute fuck?

I picked up each skull, feeling its weight for quality, and assessing the textures. For photos, it was important not to just have coordinating colors, but the texture of it mattered as well. I didn’t want to spend hours editing out reflections and smudges in photos, but I also didn’t want them to get covered in lint. The amount of time I spent thinking of these things was truly exhausting and slightly ridiculous considering it was hotter than hell in the stuffy store, and my overactive mind was assessing the merits of velour skeletons. Shopping for skulls with boob sweat was not for the faint of heart.

I grabbed one covered in spikes and held it at different angles to see if they would even be noticeable in photos or if it would just look like a shiny silver ball, before putting it back and grabbing a black rhinestone one.

“You take your skull shopping very seriously,mon coeur.”

I jumped and turn to see Thomas leaning against a rack of fake candles and squeaked, “Jesus, you scared me. I didn’t hear you coming.”

He moved his long arms to put his hands in his pockets and gave me a sly smile with a small shrug, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you, I just…why are you fondling my inventory?”

A laugh erupted from me, “I’m not fondling them, I’m…assessing them.”

He raised a single brow, “is that what the kids are calling it nowadays? Your hands are all over them,non?”

I put the black sparkly skull in my cart along with several solid-colored ones in various sizes. “At least I’m taking them home with me?”

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