Page 88 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

That earns me the small real smile I was after. He walks me to the car without a coat. I get two feet away before I turn around and come back.

“Penny.”

I kiss him because I can. Because he knows he’s welcome. Because I know exactly what that means now. His hand slides to the back of my head and I forget about Mercy Rood and the customs house and four hundred years of carefully erased names for a very solid thirty seconds. When I pull away, I remain against him.

“Go home,” he murmurs. “You are working in the morning.”

“That is a horrible thing to say to a woman.”

“It is nearly eleven.”

“I know.”

I don’t move. Neither does he. There is something I’ve been thinking about since Monday night. Something I asked about before I understood enough to know why he answered the way he did.

Feeding from a person is not a meal.

What is it?

It is intimate.

And later, when I asked what it felt like:

It is not unpleasant.

The phrase he had chosen and intended to keep. I smile against Julian’s collar, and his hand stops moving on my back.

“That expression concerns me.”

“What expression?”

“The one you’re making right now.”

“You can’t even see my face.”

“I don’t need to.”

I pull back.

“Are you busy Saturday?”

His eyes narrow.

“Why?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No. I am not busy Saturday.”

“Good. Then you’ll spend it with me.”

He gives me a look. “Penny.”

“Goodnight, Julian.”

I kiss him once more, get into my car, and leave him standing in the drive looking suspicious.

Everything I have ever gotten from that man, I got because I asked. Dinner. Coffee. A kiss. The truth. Tonight, the whole basket. There is one more thing I want. And Julian is never going to offer it.