Page 25 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

She nods once. "Good. Because I'm not sure where this can go, Sebastian. But I crave to find out with you."

She is different, that's what's dangerous. For weeks the worst my enemies could do was guess. Tonight I let the untouchable side of me learn her.

She reads it off my face. "The storm out there's about to feel very small, isn't it."

"Yes," I tell her, and draw her closer to the only window in the world I'd let her stand at, while the real one gathers somewhere I can't yet see.

17

JASMINE

Six days later, the city feels sharper. The car door opens before I touch it. A man I've never met waits on the curb, one hand out, his eyes already moving past me to read the dark street. I take the help, because refusing would take longer than accepting.

"You're new," I say.

"Tomas, ma'am." He doesn't smile. He seals the door, then settles half a step off my shoulder, where he stays.

Sebastian comes around the car, his fingers resting just above my hip, light, certain. "This place hasn't managed to make you look small," he murmurs.

"I feel like I'm being delivered somewhere."

His mouth shifts, and he doesn't admit or deny it. The house is nothing like the gala rooms — no cameras, no press line, no executives trading the same opinions. This is older. Candlelight instead of spotlights. Voices hushed because of secrets they hold. Every face turns toward us as we enter, and then, deliberately, turns away.

"They're staring," I say.

"They're counting," Sebastian says. "How many of them I brought you in front of? What it means that I did?"

A woman in gray steps aside to let us pass and does not look at me once. A man facing a window looks at nothing else — not my face. My throat. I lift my chin and let him.

"Don't," Sebastian says quietly.

"Don't what?"

"Don't challenge the hungry ones for sport."

"I wasn't aware I was the sport."

His hand squeezes mine, just slightly, and Tomas drifts closer without being told.

An older man approaches, and the air reorganizes like water trickling around a stone. Silver hair, a distinguished feel to him. Even Sebastian straightens.

"Greg," he says. "May I present Jasmine Carter."

"Chairman Ashford." I put my hand out before anyone can decide whether I'm allowed to. He considers it.

"Miss Carter." He takes it. "You're calmer than they said you'd be."

"What did they say?"

"That you'd either faint or run." A thin, careful smile. "You've done neither. Yet."

"The night's young."

He doesn't laugh, but something old and entertained flickers deep in him. "You understand where you are."

"I understand that everyone here has been alive longer than I was ever brought into this world."

"And you understand what we require." Not a question. "We have kept ourselves unseen longer than most empires keep their names. One careless mouth undoes it."