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The camera snapped.
"Next!" Jonas yelled.
That night, when Jonas took out the entire crew for dinner at an outdoor restaurant, Bliss found herself seated next to Morgan, the seriously cute photo assistant. Morgan had been paying her a lot of attention all weekend. He was a sophomore at RISD, nineteen, and had an arsenal of bad jokes that kept Bliss giggling despite herself. He poured her drink after drink, not realizing that Bliss was immune to alcohol's effects.
Bliss leaned back on her wicker chair and draped her feet over his lap. After months of winter in New York, she felt free here, with the cool ocean breeze blowing through her hair, no parents to nag her, and even better--no nightmares since she'd arrived on the island.
"Wanna take a walk?" he suggested.
Bliss nodded. A "walk on the beach" sounded pretty suspicious. Wasn't that just a nice way to say "Wanna hook up?"
They walked hand in hand on the beach, Bliss dipping her feet into the rolling waves and feeling the cold water over her skin.
The lights of the hotel grew fainter and fainter. "Morgan's a girl's name," she teased.
"Oh yeah?" he asked, hugging her and pulling her to the ground.
Bliss pretended to struggle as he pinned her arms down. "You're not getting away from me," he said.
"No?"
The boy began to kiss her, and Bliss kissed him back. This was different from kissing Dylan, or from kissing Kingsley, she thought. This was a human. A Red Blood. She could feel his heart thumping in his chest, smell his ripe human scent. And suddenly, she knew what she was about to do.
He lifted up his shirt and tossed it to the side. Bliss helped him unbutton her blouse. Her whole body tingled as he slipped a hand underneath her bikini top and untied the strings. He was moving so fast...but then, so was she.
She rolled him over so that she was straddling him, her knees pressed on the sand on either side of his hips.
"Nice," he said, ever the frat boy, admiring Bliss sitting astride, topless in the moonlight.
"You think?" she asked coyly. Then she bent her head down, kissing upward from the dark line of his torso, up to his chest, then to his neck, to the warm spot underneath his chin. She kissed him slowly with her tongue.
He sighed and held her head with his hands, pressing her closer to him.
And that's when she bit him with her fangs and began to feed....
nspiration for the photo shoot was "Talitha Getty in Marrakesh." Lots of gauzy, linen djeballas, jeweled caftans, and the occasional turban oh, and the tiniest string bikinis possible. But somehow the fashion assistant in charge of travel had misunderstood and booked them to Montserrat instead, so the Caribbean island would have to stand in for the North African enclave.
Not that anyone seemed to mind--everyone loved a beach.
Bliss had gotten the call from Farnsworth Models on Thursday, she was on a plane on Friday, and had arrived at the beach at sundown. Schuyler had been chosen as well, after Chic's first choice of models two Russian beauties--had discovered that their visas had expired and they wouldn't be able to return to their country.
The fashion director of Chic, Patrice Wilcox, was a stern, no-nonsense woman dressed in head-to-toe black, even in the tropical heat. She welcomed the models and crew with a smile as thin as her figure. "This isn't a vacation, people. This is work. I expect everyone to be on set at eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
However, even with Patrice's dire warnings, there was no denying it--the photo shoot was a vacation. While she was giving her lecture on punctuality, Jonas Jones, the famously incorrigible Blue Blood photographer, winked behind her back. "Margaritas at the bar in five minutes," he mouthed.
By midnight the entire crew, aside from the fashion direc- tor, including Jonas's two assistants--cute guys from the Rhode Island School of Design--a gaggle of models none of whom were over eighteen and Schuyler and Bliss were at the beachfront bar, knocking back shots.
Bliss and Schuyler impressed the Red Bloods among the gang with their ability to drink everyone under the table. Vampire genes, natch.
Schuyler looked out at the dark beach, the full moon shining over the long shoreline, and the gentle rumbling of the surf. It was gorgeous. She had arrived early, half expecting to be greeted by Jack Force. But he was not among the male models, and she felt a pit of disappointment at his absence.
But as she wished him there, she felt a soft nudge on her elbow, and there was Jack standing at the stool next to hers.
"What are you drinking?" he asked. "Nothing too absurd, I hope," he said, as if it had been just yesterday that they had spoken in the Repository. "It's a pretty awful concoction. Some kind of coconut rum and pineapple juice, but it isn't a pi?a colada. Taste?" she offered, handing him her glass.
Jack took a sip and made a face. "It's awful."
"Told you."
