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“You shouldn’t leave those romance novels lying around,” she shot back. “I’m a teenage girl. We mentally tag and categorize attractive male specimens within ten seconds of eye contact. And stop with the distractions. I mean, he’s a vampire. You’ve always told me to be super-cautious around them, and now you’ve invited one to stay? I don’t know if it’s a great idea to leave you alone with him.”
“So you would rather stay, just in case, so he can kill us both?”
She glared at me. “Iris! I’m serious!”
“So am I!” I exclaimed. “Look, I’m sure I’ll be fine. But I think it would be a good idea for you to be elsewhere for a while, just until I have some idea how this is going to pan out.”
“All right, but I want you to write down this guy’s information and e-mail it to me, so I can offer the police some explanation for why my sister needs to be put on a milk carton.”
“Nice,” I muttered, smacking her arm.
“Child abuse!” she cried. Suddenly, she frowned and turned on me. “Is this all a very convincing act put on to get me out of the house so you can spend the weekend humping like deranged howler monkeys?”
My jaw dropped. “No!”
“Well, it would be clever of you.”
“I’m not quite that devious,” I said dryly.
She kissed my cheek. “I’m going. I’ll call you when I get to Sammi Jo’s.”
“Hey, Geeg?” I called as she moved away. She turned. “Why would the howler monkeys have to be deranged?”
She grinned. “If you have to ask …”
“Get out!” I huffed.
“Call me every day,” she said as she opened the front door. “So I know you’re alive. Love you!”
“Love you, too!” I called. The door closed, and I sighed, leaning my head back against the wall.
“We should never have taught her how to talk,” I mused. “I could have picked up sign language pretty easily …”
I closed my eyes and thought of the Twix bars I had stashed behind the encyclopedias upstairs. It was better than thinking about the fact that Cal was naked on the other side of the door. Cal happened to have a very nice body … and it had been about three months since Napoleon had “invaded.”
A thud from inside the bathroom wrenched me out of my historically inappropriate musings.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Are you OK in there?”
There was no answer.
I jiggled the doorknob. It was unlocked, but I wasn’t eager to open it unless I had to. “Cal!” No answer. I sighed. “I really don’t want to do this.”
After a few more beats of silence, I called, “If you don’t answer, I’m coming in. Try to cover up!” I muttered, “Think of the money. Think of the money. Think of the money.”
I slowly opened the door, billows of steam rolling toward me as I stepped through. Cal was sprawled on the floor, half in and half out of the shower stall. Suds laced over his dark hair like little tufts of icing. His eyes were closed, long lashes resting on his cheeks. With his lower half undressed, I could see everything I’d missed in his kitchen. Long legs. Flat stomach. Trail of dark hair that extended all the way to his perfectly proportionate—
“Oh, my gosh!” I cried, putting my hand over my eyes. “I’m sorry!”
But he was unconscious again and didn’t seem to care that I was ogling him.
Despite his griping about girlie soaps, the steam and the heat seemed to intensify his natural woodsy scent, diffusing it throughout the room. I felt it seeping into my skin, marking me, as I knelt over him.
“Cal?” I murmured, shaking his shoulders gently. “Wake up, Cal. I’m not sure what to do for an unconscious vampire.”
As my fingertips grazed his cheek, his eyes snapped open. He popped up into a crouch, or at least, he tried to, but his limbs were too weak to let him maintain the position. He stumbled, falling against me, knocking me to the floor. His lips drew back over his fangs as a rumbling growl echoed through his chest. The vibrations spread from his sternum to mine, sending a strange electric shiver zipping over my skin. I might have leaned closer, if not for the whole “bared razor-sharp fangs” thing. He closed the distance for me, brushing the tip of his nose down my neck to my collarbone, purring in anticipation.
Shrinking back, I realized that until this moment, I’d been dealing with the civilized version of Cal. This was Cal stripped of all those pesky human trappings. This is how our kitchen encounter might have ended, with him poised above me, ready to strike, to drain the life out of me. Or throw up on me … which he did … twice.
