Page 33 of Bleed

His nostrils flare, his brow quirking. “The thought of that arouses you.”

Goddamn vampire senses.

There’s no point in denying it when he can apparently smell my pheromones or whatever supernatural bullshit is happening right now, so I just square my shoulders, doubling down. “What if it does?”

He’s quiet for a moment, his gaze slowly raking over me again. It lingers on the swell of my breasts, the curve of my hips, the strip of exposed skin above the waistband of my shorts. Then it climbs back up to meet mine, the look in his eyes distinctly predatory.

“You may enjoy flirting with danger, little mortal,” he murmurs, tongue dragging slowly across his lower lip as if he’s tasting the thought of me. “But I don’t.”

For one insane second, I think he might lean down and kiss me anyway.

Instead, he abruptly turns on a heel and starts toward the floating staircase like physically removing himself from the room is the only solution.

“Hey!” I call after him. “Where are you going?”

He ascends the stairs without looking back. “To work.”

I huff out a breath, irrational disappointment stabbing through me. “Can I at least still get a tour of the second level?”

“Tomorrow,” he replies, not breaking stride. “Goodnight, Beatrix.”

“It’s Bex!”

He doesn’t respond, just disappears down the upstairs hallway, leaving me alone with the sound of the television and the lingering scent of his cologne still clinging to the air.

For a second, I consider going after him, demanding to see what he’s hiding up there. It’d absolutely be on brand for me. But my blanket nest on the couch looks way too inviting, and I’m pleasantly drunk, and antagonizing a six-and-a-half-foot vampire while three sheets to the wind is probably not the best move, even for me.

So, I flop back onto the couch instead, pulling the blankets around myself as the reality show contestants continue screaming at each other on the TV.

Still, long after Dr. Faulkner disappears upstairs, I can’t stop thinking about the way he looked at me.

And somehow, that feels even more dangerous than if he’d kissed me.

Chapter

Nine

Waking up with a hangover in a luxury penthouse is still waking up with a fucking hangover. The pounding in my skull doesn’t care about the thread count of the sheets I’m wrapped in or the plushness of the mattress beneath me. It’s relentless, drilling behind my eyes with all the subtlety of a jackhammer. The sound of my phone vibrating on my nightstand only makes matters worse, rudely yanking me out of whatever whine-soaked coma I’ve been in.

I blindly grope for it, knocking over an empty wine glass in the process. It clatters onto its side, rolling across the wood with a sound that feels ten times louder than it actually is.

“Jesus,” I groan, bringing the phone in front of my face and squinting one eye open.

The screen’s lit up with Taylor’s name and a picture I took on her birthday at our favorite dive: a grin on her face, a margarita in her hand, and an oversized sombrero on her head. I stare at it for a long, wistful moment before swiping the screen to answer her call.

“You alive?” she asks, her voice loud and criminally cheerful for– I squint at the screen again– 1:37 p.m.

Damn.

That wine put me into a twelve-hour coma.

Rolling onto my back, I sling a forearm across my eyes to shield them from the sunlight pouring in through the windows. “Define alive.”

She snorts. “Well, your sarcasm’s still intact, so I’ll take that as a yes. Did the move go okay yesterday?”

“It went,” I croak, forcing myself upright.

The room immediately tilts.