back or the sudden increase in anxiety that radiated from her like an explosion.
“Blair?” she repeated, clearly appalled. Her head moved, and Blair knew she was taking in the rumpled state of the bed, adding it to her observation that Blair hadn’t been wearing shoes when they’d met and multiplying the whole by Sera’s sleepiness. “Sera, you bloody idiot, you didn’t, did you?”
The smile faded into something like guilt. The other girl pushed Sera’s head ungently from side to side as if looking for puncture marks. Blair curled his lips. Any wounds created by him would have healed long since.
“Get off, Jilly,” Sera muttered. “I’m getting up. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
The girl—Jilly—stood up. “What about him?” she asked aggressively, jerking her head in Blair’s direction. “Shouldn’t he go away?”
“He can’t, can he? It’s daylight.” At least she didn’t sound disappointed.
With quite obvious bravery, Jilly stormed up to him, her eyes narrowed and spitting with anger. “If you’ve hurt one hair on her head,” she began.
“For God’s sake, Jilly, he hasn’t,” Sera fumed. “Stop the mother-hen act! I can take care of myself!”
She couldn’t, of course. Not against him. And neither could Jilly, although he suspected that together they presented a pretty formidable opposition to the rest of the world. But at least Sera recognized that he was not, at this moment, a threat to either of them. Jilly barged past him.
He glanced over at Sera, twitching his eyebrows, and she gave him a slightly shy, rueful smile. “I need to shower and dress,” she said.
“I think you should eat first. You’ll be dizzy.”
“Don’t be daft,” she scoffed, swinging her legs out of the bed and wriggling forward. “Woo.” She held on to the bed to steady herself. “Shit. What’s the matter with me?”
“Blood loss. I took too much.”
She touched her forehead, rubbing it gently. “Bastard,” she said without heat.
He walked over and lifted the fruit juice from the bedside table where he’d left it earlier. “Drink that. I’ll get you some sweet tea and breakfast. You’ll be okay then, if you take it easy for a couple of days.”
Obediently, she took the glass from his hand and drank half of it down without drawing breath. Then, lowering the glass, she glanced up at him. “You don’t seem very apologetic,” she observed.
In truth, he wasn’t. But the implication of her own regret hurt far more than it should. “Should I be saying sorry?” he asked lightly.
She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. Something like a laugh spilled from her throat. “No. Just don’t do it again.” She lifted the glass to her lips once more and drained it.
Blair left the room to make tea, but he discovered Jilly was before him, banging about in Sera’s kitchen. He watched for a few moments. When he came right in, she shrank away from him and frowned in obvious incomprehension as he spooned sugar into one of the cups.
By this time, the sounds of the shower could be heard from the bathroom. Blair politely handed Jilly the cup for Sera. She seemed almost mesmerized as she took it and scuttled out of the kitchen.
Blair rummaged for a suitable breakfast.
****
Some of it was probably blood loss, but Sera felt oddly numb as she showered and dressed. Somewhere, although her body ached from all the sex it had enjoyed last night, a warm, cozy glow burned, but she was too tired to analyze it. What she’d done last night, what Blair had done to her, almost felt like someone else’s story. But he was still here, in her flat. It had still been dark when she’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t far to his own place, and at the speed he moved, he could easily have made it home before dawn. He’d chosen not to, and she liked that. She liked it too much, considering he was a powerful, murderous being who’d drunk her blood without compunction and to whom one night of sex among centuries was a mere drop in the ocean.
Oh, but it had been good sex. And he’d liked it. He’d kept coming back for more. Was that why he was still here?
Her body flushed all over at the possibility, and she had to sit down on the edge of the bath to finish drying. Overcome with a shyness that was ridiculous after last night’s uninhibited debauchery, she’d taken a pair of jeans and a shirt into the bathroom with her.
“Sera, there’s a cup of tea on the table,”