Page 36 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“And I don’t know how I’m supposed to sit next to you and pretend I don’t want to do it again.”

The whole room suddenly feels too small.

“Then don’t.”

His gaze sharpens. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t pretend.”

I close the distance between us.

CHAPTER 9

Julian sleeps on the sofa. I want that on record, because at three in the morning I lie awake in my own bed, with only a floor between me and a man I have finally kissed. I think about the fact that Julian Volkov is on my sofa with a blanket that stops at his shins and his boots lined up by the door.

I offered him the bed. He declined. I offered to take the sofa. He looked at me with an expression that suggested I had proposed removing a load-bearing wall.

“I don’t sleep much,” he said, which I’ve noticed is how Julian answers a question by not answering it.

So I lay in my bed and he lay on my sofa, and we did not do anything other than kiss, which we did a great deal of, right up until the point where continuing would have meant a decision neither of us was ready to make out loud. Then he pulled back, pressed his mouth to my forehead, and told me to go to bed before he stopped being a gentleman.

I have never wanted a man to stop being a gentleman so badly in my life.

At some point after three I sleep. At six twelve I wake up because something is banging outside. My first thought is shutter. My second is Julian. My third is Julian’s mouth, which is not useful to anybody.

By morning the storm has downgraded to a grey, dripping, sullen thing that can’t decide if it’s finished. I come downstairs in yesterday’s sweater to find the blanket folded into a precise rectangle, the fire rebuilt and lit, and Julian standing at my kitchen window with last night’s cocoa mug in his hand.

“Good morning,” he says, and I stop in the doorway.

“You’re very cheerful for someone who claims not to sleep.”

“I did not claim not to sleep.”

“You said you don’t sleep much.”

“Those are different statements.”

“Of course they are.”

I find the percolator Gran used during outages, fill it from the water I drew before the pump died, and put it over the gas flame. When I turn around, Julian is still holding the mug.

“You know you can put that down.”

“I know.”

“How long have you been holding it?”

He looks at the mug as if he’d forgotten it was there.

“It gives my hands something to do.”

Something in my chest aches. Last night I told him that sometimes putting food in front of someone has almost nothing to do with whether they’re hungry. Apparently sometimes holding a mug has nothing to do with drinking from it either.

I cross the kitchen, take it gently out of his hands, and put it in the sink. Then I kiss him. I don’t plan it. I just do it. Up on my toes, my mouth against his.

He goes still for half a second. Then his hand settles at my waist and he kisses me back, slow and cool and thorough enough that I briefly forget coffee exists. When I pull away, he’s looking at me differently.

“Good morning,” I say.