Page 40 of Fangs with Benefits

Molly: LATER. Plz send any photos of him you may have.

My knee bounces while I wait for a response. If he is a vampire, surely he wouldn’t show up in photos, right? Or is that just mirrors? Two long minutes later, seven photos slide into the text thread, all featuring the man of the hour. A few of him grinning next to his friend and Luke, one where he listens intently to someone telling him a story, and two more where he looks somewhere outside the frame.

It’s not the time, but he really did look hot in that costume.

I type back a quick thank you thank you thank you, but I’m a little disappointed that my theory wasn’t proven. Or relieved? I still don’t feel like I can rule out vampirism entirely, but I have no idea how else I could test this. Maybe someone here carries holy water around? Or garlic cloves?

I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to keep from wincing too hard at how ridiculous my thoughts sound.

‘I’m losing it,’ I mutter.

‘Molly,’ Ryan says from beside my desk, startling me. I drop my phone on my desk with a clatter.

‘Hm?’

Ryan raises a single eyebrow at me. ‘I’m taking Elijah around with me today. Could you pick up a couple extra tickets in his stead?’

My head snaps in the direction of his office, where I spot Elijah peeking around the door frame. He disappears quickly, caught. When did he sneak in? Probably when I was zooming in on his teeth in the photo Devi sent, looking for sign of sharp incisors.

‘My schedule’s already pretty full today.’ It’s true, my schedule is always full. Ryan is the one who makes it that way.

‘Ah, come on,’ Ryan says.

‘I’ll do it,’ Kenneth says. ‘Tomorrow’s her birthday.’

I am as touched by this offer as I am surprised. ‘Thanks.’ ‘Way to be a team player, Kenny.’ Ryan snaps with both hands and doesn’t say goodbye before striding back to his office to have a fun day with his new bestie. Doesn’t help me with my plans of sussing out Elijah’s status as a mortal, but I can be patient. If I don’t lose my mind in the meantime.

Chapter 15

Elijah

Friday night was a close call.

If I learned anything from kissing Molly it’s that, no matter how much I may wish to do it again, being near her is not safe. Not for me, not for her. Which I knew.

I knew I shouldn’t have gone to that party; I should have kept avoiding her, compelled my way into a different department on a different floor–or, better yet, at a different company. I needed to keep my distance; it was foolish to go to the party to begin with, and fatally unwise to follow her onto Devi’s balcony.

But most of all, I shouldn’t have kissed her, because it makes keeping my distance now feel like a torture. It would be easier if I could simply crave her from afar, if I had never found out what she tastes like, what the little sounds at the back of her throat sound like. I’ve been possessed by the memory of her mouth on mine, a horny ghost haunting me down to my very molecules.

I am old enough to know better than to do what I did. I’ve seen what happens when I let myself get too close to a beautiful human–they get hurt, I get heartbroken. I pile the guilt on my overflowing dossier of sins and am forced to stare at them in my ghostly reflection each evening and confront them at night when I do not sleep.

Molly is a light in this world. At the party, she shimmered and sparkled, her skin, her hair, her dress reflecting the orange and purple lights; she puts on a cool exterior for someone so radiant and wonderful. I’m foolish to hang around her any more than I have already.

I won’t endanger Molly further. I should quit, I know, but if I do that, then I can’t even be near her, can’t watch her stalk across the office or bob her head to music from her headphones. I won’t be able to glimpse a sliver of stomach when she stretches her arms above her head, won’t be able to protect her from anything. What if she meets another vampire?

With a renewed clarity about my situation, I determine that the best plan of action is to keep my job but ignore Molly for all I’m worth until she forgets we ever kissed on a cold evening in October.

To that end, I’ve studiously avoided her–professionally, even–all day. Thus far I’ve managed to spend a whole four hours locked in Ryan’s office by compelling him to believe he’d scheduled me to shadow him this morning. I’ve learned lots about Ryan in these hours, and very little about Drummond and his responsibilities here.

I compelled him to walk me through a normal Ryan morning and determined that he does a small fraction of the work Molly completes in a day. He loves baseball and spends the better part of an hour regaling me with details of the World Series, which does not interest me in the slightest when he talks about it. If Molly was interested, it would interest me. Kenneth, even; I like listening to Kenneth, he is the least old soul I’ve ever met. It endears him to me intensely.

Come lunchtime, Ryan has grated on my nerves enough that I leave him be for my own sake. I thank him for his time before exiting as discreetly as I’m able. To stay out of Molly’s path for the rest of the day, I’ll tour the building’s closets with a clipboard. The clipboard and badge will make it look like I’m on official business instead of hiding from an often-frowning blonde woman. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll take my first sick day. When I look both directions in the hall I don’t see Molly, who has otherwise been hovering about like a hawk waiting to kill, so I set a brisk pace towards the office exit.

As I do, though, an arm snakes out from the door marked Storage Closet and snags me by the shoulder, pulling me back. I let out an undignified squeak as I’m tugged into the cramped and dark space.

‘Hey!’ I say as the door clicks shut behind me. I’m met immediately with the fresh summer scent of Molly, who wears a blood-red jumper with a high collar. She’s got on the tight black skirt that stretches so prettily over her hips, but now is not the time to be distracted by her looks–not when her eyes are wide and her lips turned down into a tight frown.

She’s raging mad. If I had to guess, it’s because I quite literally abandoned her on Friday night mid-kiss when I’d been making it very apparent that I liked what we were doing. If there’s something that doesn’t change, it’s people’s distaste for mixed signals.