Page 49 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

He does seem to have gone very still suddenly.

Very still, and very quiet. No more bashing at the door—and the remains of the table dangle from one of his hands, little more than one splintered leg. And the only sound coming out of him is his breathing, even though he doesn’t have to breathe at all. He’s just taking these long, grating drags in, all the same. These sort of low, almost animalistic sounds that make my stomach sink into my feet.

I can easily imagine him suddenly turning, fangs bared.

It almost shocks me when he doesn’t. Instead, he says:

“You will have to do it. I fear I am too weak from hunger.”

Then he holds out the splintered spike of wood in his hand. So casually, so calmly, like he’s asking me to make him some mashed potatoes. Even though I heavily suspect it’s nowhere close. I do not like the sound of that. I do not like the sound of this at all. Hell, even Phone doesn’t like it, and she hates him.

“Uh-oh,” she says from my pocket.

It makes me not want to ask him what he means.

But then he says, “Go on, take it,” so I sort of have to.

“Take it to do what, exactly?”

“The only thing that can be done.”

“So you want me to whittle you some kind of rudimentary lathe.”

He sighs, heavily. “This is no time for jest, Sorceress.”

“I thought you liked my jesting.”

“Of course I do. It reminds me of my most favorite of the friends, Chandler Bing. But even he would be serious in a time like this. He would take this weapon and do with it what must be done,” he says, as he thrusts the makeshift stake at me again. Fiercely, in a way that’s hard to say no to.

So I stall, instead.

“That just sounds like you want to have sex with him.”

“Whether I wish to or not is beside the point.”

“That totally means you do. It’s okay, though, I do, too.”

Who wouldn’t, I think.

Though it doesn’t seem like that’s the way he’s taken it. His face drops.

“He is the sort of man you desire, then. A sorcerer of numbers who lives in a giant metal beanstalk, amidst a great forest of them, with many powerful abilities such as sarcasm and maintaining his wonderful wife.”

“You sound disappointed by the idea that he might be.”

“Only in that I do not yet meet his measure.”

“I feel pretty sure that you do, if you’re wanting me to do what I think you are,” I say, then immediately curse myself for it. Now I’ve stopped the silliness and the stalling dead. I’ve made it clear what this is about.

And he seizes on it. He takes a step toward me, fierce suddenly.

“Then you know what I ask. Yet you use humor to delay this urgent act.”

“It can’t be that urgent if you’re talking to me this reasonably.”

“Do you think that doing so is not testing the very limits of my restraint? That because I seem calm I am not burning inside to take you in my arms and taste you? Oh, the very idea of tasting something so sweet is like a song in my soul, it has been with me since the moment I laid eyes upon you, growing stronger and stronger though I denied it was so. And now it is almost beyond my control, and still you refuse,” he says, voice so gruff by the end of it that for the first time, I take a step back.

Just a little one, but I see his gaze go to it.