Page 47 of Fangs with Benefits

Molly leans back in the booth, her back hitting the pleather seat with a light thud. She looks at the table, mystified. She still wears my hat, her blonde curls peeking out beneath the brim, and I want to see her wear it every day. I’d like to see her wear all sorts of my clothes.

‘Can you turn into a bat?’ she asks.

‘I can.’

‘No fucking way.’

I laugh again, so thoroughly amused by this woman; I don’t know the last time I laughed this much. ‘No, I lied. I can’t.’

‘Jerk.’

I reach across the table and swipe a bit of sauce off her chin with the pad of my thumb. She watches my movements, a flush on her cheeks, as I lick it off. Just the taste won’t make me sick, I think. I hope. I’m not sure if it’s the taste of the tangy Thai sauce or the fact that it was on her skin that makes me think it all the more desirable.

‘Do the thing with your teeth again.’

‘Later, if you ask very politely.’

Molly blinks, refocusing on my words. ‘Politeness is one of the traits I’m known best for. Shouldn’t be a problem for me.’

‘Yes, your gentle disposition is second only to your patience.’

‘I did say I’d help you with human stuff,’ she says.

‘I didn’t ask for your help with human stuff.’

‘That’s what makes me so generous. What, you don’t want my help?’

If Molly knew just how much I want from her, she would never speak to me again.

I dip my chin and shake my head. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Seemed like you wanted a lot from me on Friday night,’

she says, in obvious challenge.

My capacity to lie is great, but I will not lie to Molly about this. ‘Yes,’ I say simply.

‘Why’d you leave then?’

I hope my stare doesn’t look like I want to eat her–I don’t, of course not really–but the burning desire to have her and hold her again, kiss her again, feel her hot breath again, is extreme. I crave her more than I crave her blood, and I fear it shows on every slope and slant of my face, this want for her, the way I’ve been hungry for four centuries, but she makes me feel starved.

I didn’t want to hurt you, but I fear I already have; irreparable damage done just by revealing this secret.

‘Sometimes my fangs are difficult to control,’ I explain. ‘I didn’t want you to see.’

‘Are they always so volatile?’

‘Not always,’ I say. Vague, but better than telling her that the effect of her body against mine, her skin beneath my lips, was basically a fang boner, as Dylan so eloquently called it once after he’d hooked up with a young vampire a few years ago.

‘Were you afraid you’d bite me?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I say. I don’t know how to admit without scaring her that when I am around Molly I feel exceptionally out of control. It’s like I am all instincts and inevitabilities, my mind telling me to be by her side, smell her skin, touch her hair, taste her lips, and that feeling is frightening. Especially when for the last hundred years I’ve maintained significant distance and isolation to escape feeling much of anything.

‘Why did you kiss me?’ she whispers.

‘I wanted to,’ I admit. ‘Badly.’

‘And did you like it?’ she asks, so bold even with her cheeks flushed red.