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“So.” She took a small but firm step closer. Her pink tongue wet her glossy lips. One hand tucked a hank of hair behind an ear, the other, still clutching her phone, also tightened around the strap of her tiny bag. The beguiling aroma of sexual excitement wafted off her skin along with the warm vanilla of her blood. “Are you going to…I mean, did you want to…”
Kambyses arched a brow, encouraging her to continue. He had to tilt his face up to meet her eyes. People grew so tall now, even the women. This one—Monica—she was a long-limbed gazelle to his compact predator build.
“You know,” she prompted, suddenly shy. “My blood?”
His mouth went dry. “Are you…offering?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind getting to know you a little first.”
He tilted his head to one side, almost amused. “That is not the usual way of things.”
She caught her lower lip between bright white teeth. “Maybe I’m not usual.”
“That you are not,” he agreed.
The girl fingered her phone for a moment as though considering using it to capture his image or communicate the knowledge of him to someone else. No, he commanded silently. The phone disappeared in her bag.
The moment she took her eyes off him, he retreated deeper into the dark alley, but allowed a distant streetlamp to touch him. She took a moment to spot him, and a sharp gasp followed. When she realized just how far he had moved in an instant without a sound, her heart rate spiked and her lips moved in a hushed exclamation. “Holy fucking shit.”
Kambyses waited, resisting the urge to call her. What an unaccountably sweet pleasure to deny himself like this. How long could he draw this out?
To his delight, she followed of her own volition. Tentative at first, then with increasing resolve, she walked toward him.
Wonder lit her face. “How did you do that?”
“I like privacy.” Not for mere feeding. That he could do in the middle of any crowd with no one the wiser. For this novelty, however, he wanted to focus on her alone.
The first whisper of apprehension colored her scent. “You should know I have friends waiting for me.”
“You will return to them.” He didn’t add that this was not guaranteed, nor that if she did, she would remember nothing of this encounter, but for now, he would play her game just to see what rare delights might result. Even if it meant uttering the strangest words ever to pass his lips. “You wanted to…get to know me before you…allow me to feed?”
“Yes. Yes, I did. I mean, I do.” She looked just a little dazed now. As if for all her earlier grand statements to the contrary, it was only now that she believed what he was. “It’s just that I’ve imagined meeting someone like you for so long, and I’m not sure where to start.”
“Try. I’m curious.”
“Okay. Basics first then. Is it true you can’t go out in the sun?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re…immortal?”
“Yes.”
Her throat bobbed, drawing his attention to the pulse ticking there. “How…immortal?”
He met her eyes again.
She continued in a blur of words. “I mean, you look like you’re maybe forty-something? But if you’re immortal, that wouldn’t be true, would it?”
“No,” he said more softly. He didn’t think he had been anywhere near that old when he last walked the Earth as a mortal, but time—if there was enough of it—had a way of wearing down all things. Even immortals.
“So, how old are you?”
“I am eternal.”
He expected her to follow up this non-answer with another question about his age, and he was on the verge of being bored with the “small talk.” Instead, she only studied him. He felt his skin squirm under her careful regard.
“You’re alone, aren’t you?”
