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True, a vampire didn’t need excessive amounts of oxygen to survive, but there were still vital functions necessary to sustain the undead, despite what pop culture had to say about it. Even the slow beating of a heart was crucial to maintaining a vampire’s existence. How else would the blood they drank circulate through their systems and, in Drake’s case, give him the erection he had now?
In addition to Shana eliciting a primal response from him, he found Jane’s excitement erotically stirring. So much so, he gave up on his work, stood and crossed to the fireplace.
For so long, it’d been fortuitous that he and Jane found each other physically appealing. She was five-foot-three and deceptively waifish, with straight, shoulder-length blonde hair. She had a tight body and an even tighter pussy. One finger in her narrow cunt was enough to make her come. His thick cock inside her made her scream in ecstasy. The memory of that sound echoed in his head now, giving him some very lascivious thoughts as to how this evening could play out, especially with Shana unwittingly serving as an additional sexual stimulant—obviously an unexpected one for Jane.
Yet touching Jane now that he’d been outed didn’t sit right with him. He’d be channeling his desire for Shana into his “arrangement” with Jane. And though she professed to not mind there being no more between them than hot sex, he wasn’t comfortable lusting after one woman and pleasuring another. No matter how sensible and realistic Jane was about the situation.
He tried to rein in his tumultuous emotions, but Jane’s gaze was riveted to the flat panel, causing him to say, “I didn’t know you were attracted to women.”
Unfortunately for him, that sentiment made an image flash in his mind of prim and proper Jane getting naked with sexy and sensational Shana. His cock strained behind the zipper of his Armani suit pants. Definitely not a good thing.
This new fantasy was doubly forbidden…and so very dangerous. For him to obsess over Shana was bad enough. It was twice as hazardous for Jane to do it at the same time. The two of them being so intuitively bonded together because of their decades of friendship made it more difficult to avoid the landmine lying outside the safety zone that was his office. Temptation had never been so great…or so potentially disastrous.
Jane told him, “I’m attracted to souls, not genders.”
“And you find hers appealing?”
“Very much so.”
Jane possessed a rare gift unlike any other vampire he knew. She connected with souls, but only the truly pure ones. Likely the reason she didn’t have much use for the visitors who crossed the threshold of Body Scenes. Not that she considered those with uninhibited sexual tendencies tainted—she had her own fetishes and was intrigued by human mating rituals. But most of the club’s guests were shrewd in business and lax in scruples—the secret of their overwhelming success. He knew this because he researched everyone he issued an invitation to and had found a shocking number of them stored a heap of dirty laundry in their closets. Not that he cared. Everyone had a cross to bear, including him. He didn’t pass judgment.
For Jane, however, there had to be something inherently good deep within someone—mortal or immortal—in order to catch her attention. A trait Drake admired as much as he respected Shana’s integrity, but which also provided him a small measure of comfort. Jane never would have given him the time of day in a professional or a romantic capacity if there wasn’t something buried within him that appealed to her.
Being a vampire wasn’t all rainbows and roses, that was for damn sure. And Drake had committed his fair share of sins. Yet he still believed in the greater good and humanity. A tricky conviction to maintain, given the nature of the beast and the fact he’d lived this particular lifestyle for two hundred and thirty-five years—a good deal longer than the twenty-eight years he’d been human before being turned during the American Revolutionary War in the late 1700s.
For Jane to latch onto whatever purity he possessed was a huge relief to him
, because it told him he’d retained an above-average level of civility when he’d been changed, against his will, over two centuries ago.
Jane stepped around the chair she’d been using as support, still staring up at the flat screen. She frowned as she wrung her hands.
“I sense lonesomeness within this woman,” she said of Shana.
Her green eyes drifted closed. Drake always found it captivating when she mentally or metaphysically or just plain mysteriously searched another’s soul. She didn’t always discover pleasant things, as was clearly the case this time.
“Shana has led a very solitary existence and it’s humbling to her,” Jane told him. “Actually, it saddens her, but she can’t break free of it. There’s a great deal of self-doubt within her that makes it difficult for her to express herself except through writing or music. In fact,” Jane continued, “she has no idea how to connect with other humans unless it’s through those avenues…or how to embrace her own sexuality. She pretends to be comfortable with her body, but she’s not.” She paused a moment, drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “She’s completely oblivious as to how desirable she is.”
“Then she doesn’t own a single reflective surface,” Drake said in a dour tone. “How could she not see how striking she is?”
Jane shook her head, her eyes still closed. “People see what they want to see. Or what someone else tells them to see.”
An ominous thought that lingered between them. Had someone told this woman she wasn’t attractive—and she’d believed them? The thought infuriated him, which, in turn, alarmed him even more. He couldn’t afford to take a personal interest in Shana White. Yet he was buying into everything Jane said about her and he found her revelations troubling and deeply disturbing. Fool that he was.
“Oh dear,” Jane mumbled, drawing his attention. Her brow furrowed in apparent consternation. “This truly is painful. She’s very, very alone, Drake. But how could that be? We’ve read her articles and we’ve listened to her music. She’s brilliant and thought-provoking. Emotionally stirring. And yet… She’s completely closed off.” Her eyelids fluttered open.
Drake studied her closely. He knew better than to fall down this rabbit hole, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. “Explain to me what you mean. How can she possibly doubt her self-worth and yet express herself so eloquently in both literary and musical forms?”
“I don’t know. Except to say that perhaps they’re channels for her emotions. Meaning she can pour herself into her music and her writing and pretend it’s not personal. She does it on a professional level and can therefore justify she’s simply giving the masses what they want, rather than admitting she’s revealing anything about herself.”
He thought of the iTunes tracks he’d purchased and downloaded when he’d discovered she’d been a musician in her younger years. “You’re saying she hid behind her violin when she was a child and a teenager and now she’s hiding behind her computer?”
“Tragic, isn’t it? For someone so beautiful—and not just physically—to be so distressed internally.”
Jane seemed entranced by her encounter with Shana’s soul. She reached a hand toward the screen and Drake was convinced she had no idea she’d made the gesture.
“What is it?” he asked in a low voice, so as to not break the trance.
Jane pulled her hand back and pressed two fingertips to her lips. She stared at the monitor until Shana was admitted into the club and disappeared from the camera’s view.
