"It means I'm hungry." His smile was predatory at best, and I swear his eyes lingered on my neck. "They'll turn completely red when I'm at the end of my rope."
I waved to the waiters still standing like statues in the corner. "There's dinner. I'm not on the menu."
Hey, I wasn't about to become meat for a hungry vamp. Selfish I may be, but stupid I was not.
He threw his head back and laughed, the sort of laugh that made me think all naughty types of thoughts that I knew he could hear. Damn his mind reading! I'd need to wear one of those foil hats.
"Won't help."
I sighed and reached for a piece of bread, too hungry to go back to sucking the red off candy. "Can we get on with it? You said you'd tell me what I am. So, tell me."
I jammed the piece of bread in my mouth and paused when the flavors hit my tongue. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn't eaten in more than twenty-four hours, but the bread was practically orgasmic.
He picked up his wine and downed it in one fluid gulp. "That's not what I said, Peaches."
I paused mid-reach for another piece of bread and some sort of nut butter. My voice dropped so low I sounded like a dude. "What do you mean?"
"Simply?" He beckoned one of the waiters over with his finger and asked for a to-go bag for the bread, and whatever they could whip up in the kitchen for me. My knee started jumping again before he turned back around. "I have no clue what you are. You are a mystery."
That was it.
I slid my chair back, hard wood scraping against wood, and started to pace the length of the restaurant. If it kept on this way, I was gonna be so skinny because of all my damn pacing. "Are you telling me"—my voice could've frozen Hell over—"that I just let you drive me to another state in the middle of the night when I could have died! And you don't even know what I am?"
"I know what you aren't."
See, Bane was one of those talk softly, hold a big stick kind of guys. He didn't talk a lot, but if he did, it was usually to make fun of me, order me around, or make a point. Yup, less than twenty-four hours with the man and I had figured him out.
I batted my eyelashes at him and smiled sweetly. "So, I'm not a vampire? Is that right?"
He leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table. The move was both relaxed and intimidating, but it only made me think of those flexing, hot muscled arms roving over my—
Damn! I corralled my wayward thoughts and stuffed them into the deep, dark recesses of my mind where fourth grade bullies and failed sleepovers wandered. Bane smiled at me like he knew where I’d just hidden my dirty thoughts, and he was prying them open.
"Yes, habibi. That's right."
At that moment the zombie wait staff came back with a large brown bag that smelled delicious and no check. I raised an eyebrow at Bane. "You're going to pay."
He raised a brow and then slapped down a few bills that looked curiously like Monopoly money. It took me a second to realize the blue bills were real and all hundreds. Nice.
Bane shuffled me out of the restaurant with a hand at the small of my back and my doggie—more like grocery—bag of food in his other hand. The minute I was back in the car, I buckled in before my door even closed.
Bane rounded the car with a burst of inhuman speed and was buckled in the seat with his hand on the wheel and the car in drive before I could blink. "Copying Twilight, are ya?"
He shrugged a shoulder as we went from zero to sixty in half a second, then started to swerve in and out of traffic. I was in crash position for the entire fifteen minutes it took us to get to the hotel.
“You can relax now.” Bane hid his obvious laugh behind a cough. “We’ve arrived.”
“Uh,” I began as I carefully unlocked my muscles and climbed out of the car onto the sidewalk. I stared up at the Four Seasons hotel in front of me, then glanced around the area. There was a bridge to my left, a small old looking gas station slightly behind me, and a collage of restaurants to my right. I stared down the street and rolled my eyes. “I’m guessing choosing a hotel right across the street from another Le Pain Quotidien wasn’t just a coincidence?”
Bane threw me a killer smile over his shoulder as he passed off his keys to the waiting valet, then grabbed my food bag and moved to the trunk. “They make their breads first thing in the morning and the smell is to die for.”
I watched him pull out two duffel bags, and I tried to help but he staunchly refused. He gave me the sort of look that said he’d die before he let a woman carry anything heavy. Maybe it was his era, whichever one that was, but there was something to be said about a guy carrying a woman’s bag and opening a door for her. That being: holy fucking hell, that’s hot.
Maybe it’s just me, but there is nothing like a man with manners to really make a girl’s panties hit the floor. Rob wasn’t the most gentlemanly guy, but then again, he wasn’t a lot of things. He wasn’t honest, he wasn’t super hot, and he wasn’t straight. I swear that some divine being was playing a cosmic trick on me because the first guy in freaking forever to be hot and have manners (albeit a little bit of a racer behind the wheel) also happened to be a vampire. A girl just couldn’t catch a break!
“Come on, Peaches,” Bane called out from the doorway. I didn’t realize I’d been standing in the driveway dealing with my own thoughts until his deep voice hit me. Man, there was something seriously wrong with me.
I hustled inside the building, muttering a thank you to Bane as he held the door wide. A few minutes later, we had a room key for yet another overly expensive suite, and I was diving into downy soft sheets and goose feather pillows. Luxury was so luxurious.
Then reality intruded again, reminding me that nothing had been resolved. I mean, in Burlington I had an apartment, family, friends, and a job. What would happen to all of that now? Who would cover the lease? And how long had I been dead anyway? Was it a day? A week? Ah! Too many questions.
I was about to start pulling my hair out when Bane called out from the other room, “Peaches. Come here.”
Again, I’m a dog. Just get me a tail and a pair of ears and plant me on all fours. “That could be arranged, habibi.”
Every single time. I’m not sure why I wasn’t used to the whole mind reading thing by now. Almost twenty-four hours with the vampire was plenty of time to get used to him picking out whatever he wanted. I just barely stopped myself from stomping my feet and jutting out my lower lips as I entered his bedroom.
“What do you want?” I eyed him cautiously. His back was turned to me, but with a ripple of muscle he stepped aside and waved his arms.
“You want answers? So do I.”
I looked at the assortment of objects on the bed: a wreath of garlic, a wooden stake, the whole shebang. My face dropped, I cocked my hip, and suddenly adopted a cockney accent. “Oy, what’s all this, then?”
BBC America, my pride and joy. My mom used to hate when I watched it because hours after the shows ended I was still talking in a British accent. She said I sounded stupid. I think I sounded bloody brilliant.
Bane’s lips twisted. “Your mom was right.”
“Will you stop reading my mind?” I practically screamed at him, throwing my arms out. “Not only is it rude, but it’s also an invasion of my privacy!”
He just barely stifled his laugh, dark brown eyes raking over my form like he wanted to do all kinds of naughty things. “Are you ready to start?”
I approached the bed with all the bravado I could muster. “I was born ready.”
Chapter Five
Red-Headed Slut
I picked up the mirror and saw my reflection. Then I turned it toward Bane and saw ... his reflection too! I whirled on him and poked him in the chest. “Are you trying to make fun of me?”
I felt his chest rumble beneath my finger before he doubled over, laughing uproariously. I couldn’t help what I did next, but I wasn’t a bit ashamed. I started pounding away at his shoulders, shaking my head wildly. “You asshole! Mocking me! Laughing at me!”
Of course the big, strong vampire didn’t even feel my attack, and after awhile my hands started to hurt. My hands. Not his shoulders or his back, but me.
Bane slapped his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. He wiped at the tears leaking from the corner of his eyes. “Truly, habibi, I didn’t think you would fall for it. But you are just so...”
“Gullible? Naive? Stupid?” I supplied without hesitation, just jonesing for another reason to hurt my fists hitting him.
“Young.” Bane shook his head ruefully as he stuffed the mirror, garlic, and other vampire lore crap into a bag and tossing it near the door. “You are not jaded like so many others. It’s refreshing to see through your eyes.”
I nearly blushed, but suppressed it with every fiber of my being. “Can you really see through my eyes? Is that one of your vampire talents?”
Bane shook his head slowly and sat on the edge of his bed. “No. Only half of what you know about vampires is true, Peaches. I only say half because your generation has truly gone above and beyond to romanticize us.”
“Ah, so you don’t sparkle in the sunlight?”
His eyes darkened, and I could see even more of that red color. “No. Neither do we turn to ash or explode.”
I plopped down next to him and kicked off the flats he’d bought me on our mad dash down to D.C. Outlet malls were great things, my favorite invention since Shazam. “What happens, then?”
He cocked his head and smiled. “Nothing.”
I rolled my eyes so far back, I thought they might get stuck for a second. “You’re shitting me. So you can go out in the sun and nothing happens?”
He shrugged lightly and reached over to pull my hair back over my shoulder. “Yes. It is just easier to feed with the cover of darkness. People tend to overlook an entwined couple in an alleyway at night.”
I swatted at his hand and pointed a finger at his red-brown eyes. “Ah, ah, ah. Didn’t I say I wasn’t on the menu?”
His lids lowered and his tongue snaked out to wet his bottom lip. "I was thinking about eating you in another way."
Whoa! Bane was hitting on me, and not just a little, but, like, full-blown-sensual-attack-on-the-senses hitting on me. I backpedaled both mentally and physically, and ended up falling off the bed and landing hard on my ass. I rubbed the small of my back and glared/blushed up at him.
Did I want to have raw animalistic sex that even Jeaniene Frost's Cat and Bones would blanch at? Hell yes. Triple, quadruple, and the next number after that—yes! But would I? To quote rap artist Drake: Hell Yeah, Fucking Right. Just not at that moment; there were too many things still floating in the air between us, things that he'd either avoided or I'd been too distracted to ask.
"None of that, vampire." I wagged a finger at him and used my most stern voice, the one I used when the kids I babysat acted up.
Bane gave me a patient look and helped me up. I didn’t sit on the bed again, because, well, I’d rather not tempt fate. Instead, I went to the living room, sat down in a chair that looked like it cost more than all the furniture in my apartment plus my rent, and nodded to the chair across from me.
Bane poured himself into the chair, actually draping himself over the piece of furniture like it had been made especially for him. I just barely resisted rolling my eyes again. “Question time: are you a vampire?”
“Obviously.”
“Am I actually dead and not like a zombie, mutant, or other TV show monster?”
He frowned at me and leaned forward in the chair. “Didn’t we already do this, habibi?”
We had, but I trusted his answers about as much as I trusted a hungry shark not to bite me. Still, I’d watched enough CSI and Law & Order to know that if a criminal was asked the same question long enough, they eventually told the truth. True, this wasn’t an interrogation and I was by no means an interrogator, but fish out of water adapt.
“No, they die.”
I snapped my head up to him and enunciated every syllable: “Stop. Reading. My. Mind.”
His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “What do you want to know, Peaches? I haven’t hurt you or done anything against your wishes, so what is it you’re afraid of?”
Everything. Change. The unknown. The list went on and on and on. One of the reasons I liked movies and TV shows was that I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that they were fake. At the end of the day, the actors got to go home, kiss their babies, make love to their spouses, and do whatever they wanted. My situation was different, super-duper different. I couldn’t just click the remote and change the channel on my life; I had to live with this.
Wow. Shit just got real.
I felt the blow like a physical punch to my stomach. My mom, my family, my job: all of it was just ... gone. Even back-stabbing Rob was gone. And I was with a vampire who knew I wasn’t a vampire, but not much else.
I stood up so quickly my chair teetered on the verge of toppling over. I glanced at Bane, who raised a brow at my abrupt rise. “You want a drink?” Speedy Gonzalez would have been impressed with the rush of words. “I’m dying for a drink. Something strong. Scotch? Never had it before, but I heard it’s strong. What do you want? I don’t think the mini-fridge has—”
“Super speed.” Bane interrupted me like I was supposed to know what the hell that meant.
“Huh?”
He moved from the chair to the mini fridge in less time than it took me to exhale. He had two glasses in his hand, a battalion of little bottles on the counter above the fridge, and was mixing something as he spoke. “Super hearing. Mind control and mind reading. Super healing. The ability to—”
“What are you talking about, Bane?” I snapped as I marched over to him and his little potion making station.
“The powers of a vampire. You were wondering about them, weren’t you?”
I had been, but I never thought he’d answer me. Wasn’t there a vampire code or something that forbid him from spilling secrets? I was just about to ask him when he turned and handed me a glass that looked like it had tea in it.
“A Red-Headed Slut.” Bane’s lips quirked at the death glare I shot him. “I think you’ll enjoy it.”
I did love the drink, but the name I could’ve done without. I downed the concoction in two swallows and slammed the glass back on the counter. “What’s your point?”
I eyed him up and down, lingering on spots I shouldn’t have. Then I remembered something very important, something I’d forgotten. I was a super lightweight, and a very horny, touchy-feely drunk.
“Don’t worry,” Bane said as he poured me another drink, handed it to me, and ushered me to the couch. “I prefer my women sober and consenting.”
I snorted, but sipped at the drink instead of just chugging it like I wanted to. “Why’d you tell me your powers?”
He shrugged as we sat on the white-leather sectional, and I tried to be very careful and not spill my drink all over the place. This was one of the reasons I’d never been a bartender: I couldn’t hold my liquor worth a damn. I blamed it on the fact that my parents hadn’t let me drink until I was twenty-one. I never built up immunity.
I could feel that warm sensation that came with drinking moving through my body. Whatever Bane had made was strong, like, really strong. That, or I was super weak. I was thinking the former, given the number of mini bottles of liquor he’d used.
I was getting tired, too. My thoughts were starting to blur together in that nice haze before a sort of twilight set over me and everything made me horny. Clothes—oh, they were so constrictive, like boa constrictors around my body. It would be so nice to shed them, throw them away. I reached for the hem of my top. My drink shook in my other hand and my head spun like I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl.
“Time for bed,” Bane announced as he took my drink out of my hand, placed it on the coffee table next to the couch, and yanked my top back down.
I giggled like a shy schoolgirl in a B-rated porno. “Oh, good, I was wondering when I’d get to see that disco stick of yo
urs.” Did my words sound slurred?
“Uh huh.” Bane stood up and picked me up, one arm under my knees and the other under my neck. The world tilted and everything was upside down. Then it started bouncing. Bump. Bump. Bump.
“Ya know.” I raised my finger but couldn’t see what I was pointing at. I hoped it was Bane, because I was talking to him. “I thought vampires would be old. Talk with like a Pennsylvanian”—that wasn’t the right word, but I had forgotten it—“accent and wear capes and stuff. But you’re Black. Is that racist? Am I a racist?”
My whole left side tingled and it freaked me out until I realized Bane was chuckling. Then I was free floating, falling, a bird crashing down onto a soft mattress. I rubbed my body against the comforter, dying to feel it against my naked skin.
So I'm Not a Vampire? (Peaches - A Paranormal Shifter Romance Book 1) Page 3