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The lie feels heavy on my tongue.
“Ooh, is it hot vampire sex?” she asks. Before I can respond, she straightens. “Oh, my God. I haven’t talked to you since the big reveal. Can you believe this shit? Vampires are real? I feel like I’m living in an episode of The Twilight Zone, or something. Do you think any vamps live in Asheville? I mean, I know there’s probably a bunch in Atlanta, but do you think they come out here to the ‘burbs?”
I shrug, unable to tell the truth, but I can’t lie to her, either.
“Aunt Bernadette is convinced it’s all a hoax,” she says when I don’t speak.
“Really?” I say, my eyes widening. “But there was that footage with the president. He wouldn’t be involved in a hoax, would he? He’d never get re-elected once the truth came out.”
Steph shakes her head, her glossy brown hair waving around her shoulders. “She’s just old and set in her ways.”
“I heard that, Stephanie.”
We both look over to see the woman in question behind the bar, filling a disposable plastic cup with cold-brewed coffee as she glares at her niece. Steph chuckles before calling out an apology, and Aunt Bernadette huffs, turning back to her customer. Her salt-and-pepper hair probably reaches her knees, but I don’t know for sure since it’s always tied up into a bun on top of her head. She’s wearing her usual uniform—a brightly-colored maxi dress paired with white sandals, rings on almost every finger, and several necklaces around her neck sporting different-colored crystals.
Bernadette is a throwback to the sixties, a flower-child in appearance and personality. She meditates every day, believes in the healing power of things found in nature, and smudges the coffee shop regularly with burning bundles of sage, cedar, or sweetgrass, depending on her mood.
“Anyway,” Steph says, turning back to me, “I think it’s real. I mean, if the government was going to lie to us, it would be more likely they’d call the big reveal a hoax and try to cover it up, right?”
“I guess,” I say, nodding.
“I hope I meet one, and when I do, I hope he’s as hot as Sebastian,” she says with a grin and an eyebrow waggle.
I return her grin. Sebastian Drake is the hero of my most popular romance series. Hot, broody, and bossy in the bedroom, my readers gobble up his books.
But he has nothing on Jesse Lee.
And I’m still no closer to deciding what I want where he’s concerned than I was earlier. Maybe I can tell Steph about him and not mention his name? Does it even matter anymore, now that his father apparently knows exactly where he is? Probably not.
But it doesn’t feel right, talking about him without his permission.
“Well,” Steph says before draining her coffee and smacking her lips, “I should get back to work.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding distractedly. “It’s good to see you.”
“Next time, text me back,” she orders sternly, then grins when I nod in acquiescence. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I say.
I finish my coffee and, with a wave goodbye to Steph and Bernadette, head back out into the warm Georgia sunshine. My awareness of my surroundings is seriously lacking as I walk home, my mind running through the pros and cons of getting close to a vampire.
Which is why a shriek like a banshee when the vampire in question suddenly falls into step beside me. His nose is buried in a book, and his deep chuckle rings in my ears.
“You have quite the imagination, Eden.”
As my name passes his lips, I realize the book he’s reading is mine—the very first Sebastian Drake novel. I gasp, my hand snapping out to snatch the book from his grasp, but he’s too quick. Of course, he is.
He holds it out of my reach as he continues to read. I’d never be able to make out the words on the page from that distance, but apparently, he can. Vampire vision.
“His throbbing cock was warmer than the rest of him, pulsing as he pounded into her at an impossible speed,” he reads aloud, his deep voice sending a shiver through me before my brain registers the words.
“Oh, my God,” I mutter as my face heats.
Pulling to a stop in front of our building, he closes the book and peers at me as I grind to a halt beside him.
“It can be like that, yes. But I would take my time with you. Draw out your pleasure until you think you can’t take it for another minute, then prove to you that you can. I’d make you come again and again until your bones melt, then make you come once more for good measure.”
That burning in my cheeks intensifies as his words make my heart pound in my chest. “You shouldn’t talk to me like that.”
