Page 33 of Forsaking All Others

‘But that’s not something I’m going to talk about. Not now. Not ever.’

I shiver as if someone has walked over my grave at the remembrance of his bite.

I truly thought I was going to die last night.

I think he did too.

‘And the worst thing is that although it was agony, I didn’t want him to stop. I don’t know how he made me feel the way he did; I don’t want to know. And I wish I could stop re-living it.’

And anyway, it wasn’t just his bite that I had to worry about; it was the transfusion. I can’t have normal blood, and I’d lost so much of mine that I needed a top-up. Only, my kind are few and far between. My blood is as rare as hen’s teeth. Something the doctors discovered when they typed mine and immediately alerted my powerful family to my need.

When I woke I discovered blood had been flown in by private jet.

The fact that it was his blood now coursing through my veins makes me sick to the stomach. And the note left attached to the blood bag had only reinforced that:

“Puss, I’m inside you once more.”

Valentino.

I’d gasped when I read the note, fully expecting to be whisked away, drugged and dragged home to marry the beast I despise. But the bachelor had assigned vampire and human guards, many, many guards. I can only surmise that’s what saved me.

I shudder knowing my family will never give up pursuing me and are most likely right now going into overdrive to organise another way of extracting me. Now they know I’m alive, and where I am, they’ll use every means at their disposal — and they have it all.

Visits with royalty. Payments. Murders. Threats. Blackmail.

Nothing is beyond my kind.

“I’ll tell you why I’m here,” Sona chimes in, mercifully drawing me out of my thoughts.

“No one cares,” Aditi, the Indian contestant, says as she saunters through the kitchen and out the door to the Andalusian courtyard, adding over her back, “you twisted little creature.”

“Why are you such a rassgat?” Thorun shouts to her retreating back.

“Rassgat?” I give her my ‘please translate’ look.

“Asshole,” she shrugs.

“I wouldn’t be calling that one names, Thorun.”

I shake the spatula at her to reinforce my words and glance at the other contestants through the massive sliding glass doors facing the courtyard. I’m more comfortable here than in the US accommodation. This contemporary neo-regionalism style of architecture is very similar to what I’m accustomed to in Italy, with its smooth white surfaces, exposed timber and indoor-outdoor living. But I’m also aware that we have far less privacy for conversations in this style of mansion.

“Oh, yes,” Sona nods, speaking quietly as she notes where I’m looking, “military.”

“How do you know?” I frown.

“It’s obvious in her comportment,” she shrugs.

‘Yes it is. If you’re trained to see such things…’

I cock my head to the side and look, really look, at my Nepalese roommate. Her baby voice belies her intelligence, but the Indian’s correct; she’s a very, very strange girl. If any of the stories she tells about her past sexual escapades are even remotely true, she’s perhaps the most deviant person I’ve ever come across, and that’s saying something.

“I’m here because I wanted,” she says in her sing-song voice, “a different kind of love.”

“You can’t get more different than a vampire,” Thorun says, shrugging as she shoves a piece of toast into her mouth. “And he’s centuries old, so he’s probably been there, done that.”

“Oh, yes,” Sona nods, “he should be very interesting in bed. I’m quite hopeful he’ll bite me down there…”

Thorun chokes on her toast laughing, and I look back down at the eggs, blushing.