Then he yanked himself backward and stared at me, eyes wide, chest rising and falling. His hair was disheveled, and his collar was askew.
“What was that?” he demanded, as much of himself as of me.
“Kissing,” I said wryly, trying to catch my breath. “With tongue.”
He shook his head, ignoring my joke. “I haven’t—you’re the first person I’ve kissed since—” He looked a little stricken. “And the curse. Who knows what the curse is doing to us? This is a bad idea.”
“Is it?” I was panting a little. My lips felt swollen, but in a good way. I looked at him, trying to untangle my thoughts. He looked at me.
And then we were kissing again. He pressed me against the door, and I grabbed his shoulders, and his lips moved from mine to my neck, and then he froze again. This time, when he drew back, he looked afraid.
“No,” he said with an anguished look. “I can’t. I can’t get involved with another one of Victor’s—”
He didn’t finish that sentence. He exhaled, looked at me, and scowled.
“I may be linked to you by a curse, but I shouldn’t let it go any further than that.”
He gently but forcefully moved me aside, yanked open the door, and disappeared down the hall without another word.
I stood in silence a moment after the door closed behind Dmitri. I was still tingling all over, feeling flushed and dizzy and extremely confused. I wanted to smile, but I was also concerned. This was a terrible idea. Making out with a vampire? Getting entangled in a complicated family drama that involved grief, anger, and possibly thoughts of revenge? I should be focusing on my job, which was to spy for SUN and earn money to take care of Lucy.
This was only going to complicate things, and I didn’t need any more complications.
But still, all I wanted to do was go after him and try to convince him to kiss me again.
My phone pinged from my bedroom, and I locked the door and went to check it. The message was from Brandy, asking how I was doing. I stared at the screen, wondering how to answer that question. I’d just made out with an unbelievably sexy vampire after he’d confessed that he was cursed to protect me—and we were maybe cursed to be attracted to each other as well. I was a spy for an anti-vampire organization. I was being adopted by a multi-millionaire.
I’m doing okay, I typed back.
I set the phone back down and glanced around the bedroom. The walls were blank, and besides the bed and a few other furnishings, the room was bare. Trace had said I’d need to spend a huge chunk of my allowance from Victor so he wouldn’t suspect I was squirreling it away.
Maybe tomorrow I’d get a few furnishings.
As I was thinking about what I might buy, the phone from SUN, which was still in the pocket of my gown lying on the floor by the bed, began to buzz. I lunged for it and pulled it out.
Trace was calling.
“Hello?” I said, my voice coming out husky and startled.
“Is this a bad time?” he asked. His voice had a low, soft pitch to it that he didn’t have in person.
“It’s a good time,” I said, feeling relieved to be talking to him after this insane day. He felt like a lifeline after everything that had happened.
“Good. I wanted to discuss your next mission.” Trace paused. “And I wanted to make sure you’re doing all right.”
“I think I’m okay,” I said. “I feel kind of dazed, like I’m in shock, but I guess that’s to be expected. Right?”
His laugh was low and soft. I could hear something in the background. A murmur—music, maybe. “Yes, I think so. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Were you in shock? When you first found out about vampires, I mean?”
“Well,” Trace said, and paused as if he were deciding how much he was willing to tell me about himself. I wondered if we were supposed to talk like this. If we were supposed to be friendly. “That’s not really a fair comparison. I’ve always known about them. My whole family is involved in SUN.”
That probably explained why he was working as an agent at such a young age. I’d wondered about that.
There was a short pause. I had the feeling that he wanted to keep talking about non-mission-related things, but couldn’t think of a reason. “Well,” he said after another pause. “Get some sleep if you can, because your next mission for SUN is going to be a tricky one.”
And as Trace explained what I was going to do for them next, I lay with the phone pressed to my ear, wondering how in the world this had become my life.
When we’d hung up the phone, I lay with it pressed against my chest for a moment, and then I rolled over and slid it underneath the mattress of the bed where no one would accidentally see it. I wriggled underneath the heavy down comforter of the bed and stared at the ceiling, planning what I was going to do next.
I had a mission for SUN coming up. I had a blood curse with an incredibly sexy vampire to grapple with.
But I was a vampire heiress now. I had more money at my fingertips than I could even fathom. I’d moved out of my run-down living situation with my addict mother and into an apartment so fancy I didn’t know what to do with it.
I closed my eyes and tried to relax enough to fall asleep as I contemplated my next move. There was a lot to think about, a lot to plan. I was completely overwhelmed.
Then, a smile spread across my face as I had an idea.
I needed to keep the reason for all of this firmly fixed in my mind. So first, before I worried about anything else, I was going to take my little sister to her favorite amusement park.
**Book #2 coming soon!**
A NOTE TO MY READERS:
If you enjoyed The Vampire’s Heir, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. Reviews spread the word because they help a book gain visibility in the store algorithms, and they help other readers decide if they might enjoy the book too! I’d appreciate it so much.
Much love,
~Ellery St. James
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