Page 69 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“You are the first thing in four hundred years, I have not been able to be reasonable about.”

He kisses me, and this time there is none of the fierce edge to it. Just the two of us in the quiet room. I want to stay here until the sun comes up and I don’t care that he can’t face it directly. I would rather have the dark and the sea and the feeling of his body next to mine.

But after a while he stirs, and I make a disappointed noise.

“I have to move,” he says.

“But you don’t want to.”

“Very much not.”

He shifts and eases out of me, and I regret it immediately. He does too, from the sound he makes. Then he stands, and I get the first real look at him in the light, naked and beautiful and mine, and my breath goes for entirely different reasons.

“Where are you going?”

“To get you a robe. You’re cold.”

He walks across the room, and I take my time watching him go. I had plans for this part, and now that he’s here and there’s nothing but the two of us, I can’t remember what they were. I just know I want to know everything. All the time he’s had. Every story he’s ever stopped himself from telling because he thought it would be the end of something.

Because I am done with being good, and I am never going to let him be lonely again.

He comes back with a black silk robe that looks like it belongs in a magazine, and he wraps it around my shoulders before he sits back down on the edge of the bed.

“So,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow.

“You’re a vampire.”

“I am.”

“Four hundred years old.”

“Approximately.”

“Did you know Vlad the Impaler?”

Julian gives me a look.

“Not personally.”

I smile.

“Where are you from?”

He thinks for a second.

“There was a village. It no longer exists. It was very small and mostly poor and extremely far from anywhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head.

“It was a long time ago. I was born in winter, and they were certain I wouldn’t survive. I did.”

I run my hand down his arm.

“You told me you’d lost people. Was your family⁠—”