Page 69 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

They’re all at sea, when it comes to sex.

And even more so when I see what he’s doing now.

I take one look at him practicing sword moves in the space behind the couch while he seems to believe I’m asleep, and my insides drop three feet.

And really, can I be blamed?

He swings that thing like he was born with it in his hand. His moves look more like dancing than any kind of fight training. But worst of all: he’s completely nude as he does all of this—just absolutely no clothes on at all. Not a single stitch anywhere on his body, and of course for the first time in my many lives I can actually appreciate what said body looks like.

Beautiful.

His thighs are practically longer than my whole body, and so big I can barely imagine straddling them. Though, naturally, I am not imagining such a thing at all. And I’m not thinking about him lifting me into those massive arms and having me up against the wall, either. It just pops into my head when I see his biceps slide and bloom. He brings the sword up over his head, and the muscles sort of ripple.

It’s really something.

I have to look away.

Though I think he catches me anyway.

“I am readying myself in case we are wrong about threats,” he says, like he thinks he needs an excuse. And what he adds confirms it. “Should I put on some clothes to do so? I would not wish to offend your eyes.”

Because clearly, he is completely bonkers (thank you, Mathilde).

“You’re not offending my eyes. There’s just a lot of you going into said eyes right now, and I’m still not recovered from two days of … whatever that was.”

“And by that you are saying it makes you want to do more of it.”

“If I do more of it right now I think my vagina will fall off.”

“That was not a denial.”

“I don’t see how I could deny it when there’s drool running down my chin,” I mutter as I turn away. My face is too red for me to keep facing him. I’m just not used to being attracted to someone, and it shining out of me so obviously, and then even when I try to suppress it or hide it, it just doesn’t seem to want to go.

Usually I’m great at seeming casual.

But every time I look at him, my casualness just collapses.

It caves in on itself like a dying star, and makes me do all kinds of ridiculous things. I can barely force myself to get up and say to him that I’m going to put a spell around the apartment. “So you don’t have to worry,” I add over my shoulder. But god, it sounds so false and hollow.

I don’t even believe there is a threat.

I think it was just the wind. And the sense of dread I have is simply about all of this. Everything I keep doing—I mean, it takes until I’m outside to realize I’m still only in my nightdress. Harry the hat-store guy sees my bare legs and dashes back inside, scandalized. But I can’t do anything about it now, unfortunately.

If I go grab some clothes before I do the spell, he’ll know I’m a flustered mess. I just have to stick it out and suck it up, enduring the stares as I make the moves for a barrier. I probably look absolutely mad to everyone in town—and it’s all for nothing, anyway. He looks so amused when I go back upstairs.

Because he knows.

He understands what he does to me.

It’s the reason I seal my bedroom door shut before I sleep for the next three days. So I’m not tempted to do anything else with him, I think—though in truth all that does is make the nights so much harder. I dream of him, I dream of him, and when I wake he is everywhere.

He’s watching shows on my couch and cooking food in my kitchen and taking baths in my bathroom. And that’s not even the most annoying part. No, the most annoying part is that I want to join him. I do join him. I am dating him, I realize, I am actually dating this man; we are a couple, we are living together.

“Can you just not,” I end up yelling when he makes space for me on the couch. And that’s bad, it’s real bad, because he seems to understand what the problem is. He looks at me steadily, softly, with those large and luminous eyes.

Then he says, as calm as you like, “If you bid me leave, I will go.”

Like he did before, like he’s said before.