Serafina and the Silent Vampire - By Marie Treanor Page 0,79
own suddenly unpleasant world.
After locking the front door of the shop, she marched through the inner office to the open door of her flat. “Lock it, will you?” she threw over her shoulder. Blair followed and locked the door behind him.
From the top of the stairs, Sera turned and frowned down on him. “You were here all the time? Since I arrived this evening?”
Blair nodded. He wanted to impress her by leaping up the stairs faster than she could see and be sitting on the sofa waiting for her. It might give one of them a kick, but right now, he doubted it would be Sera. She radiated distress like a warning beacon.
“But I didn’t sense you. All I could feel was the echo left by the fact that you’d been here.”
“I was hiding,” Blair told her, coming to stand on the top step beside her. His body stirred at her nearness. There was an instant when he knew she felt it too, when her pupils dilated and he smelled the sudden musky heat of her arousal. But she brushed past him as if irritated by her own reaction.
“Hiding from me?” she demanded.
“No. From Smith’s vampires. From Smith himself, if he can sense me as you can. I don’t want you caught in the crossfire when they try to kill me.”
She scanned his eyes for a moment, then walked into the kitchen, throwing over her shoulder, “You really think they would?”
“Kill me? Sure, if they could. If I don’t join them.”
“Do you suppose Smith will let them kill me? If I don’t join him.”
“No,” Blair said truthfully. “I don’t think he’ll let them. But he knows it’s a risk. Which means his spell only protects himself. How the hell do I break that?”
Distractedly, Sera opened the fridge, rummaged briefly, and closed it again, only to begin the same process with various cupboards. “Why is there no food in the bloody house?” she exclaimed, slamming the final door.
“Because you ate it all for breakfast.”
For a moment, her eyes lightened, softened. “You made me breakfast,” she observed.
“I had an ulterior motive. I need you to replace the blood I took from you as quickly as possible.” He took a step closer, touched the fine, blue vein in her neck with the tips of two fingers. “So I can take some more.”
He felt her moist heat as lust surged in her. “This is perverse,” she said shakily. “Did you hypnotize me to make me like it?”
At least she wasn’t denying that she had liked it.
“No,” he said, caressing her throat. “Most people like it. If it’s done properly.”
For no obvious reason, the soft tenderness in her eyes vanished. “Most people,” she repeated dully and slid away from his questing fingers. “Just another bite. Just another willing blood source.”
“And a damned good fuck.”
Her smile was bitter. “Is that meant to lift my spirits?”
“I don’t know. It certainly lifted mine. What’s the matter, Sera? I was enough for you last night.”
She spun away from him but not before he saw her eyes closing. “More than enough for me. Too much.”
He followed her and put his arms around her. Ignoring her halfhearted push to free herself, he drew her back against his body and listened with pleasure to the drumming of her heart. She radiated some deep desperation that would make for intensely passionate sex. The jumble of her need and lust washed over him, urging him on. He buried his mouth in her hair, inhaled her scent, listened to the pumping of her blood.
The vampire in him was already tearing her clothes off and pinning her to the wall. And yet he said, “There’s no food in the house. Let me take you out for dinner.”
He had his reward in the stunned pleasure of her mind and expression. She turned in his arms, half smiling. “You don’t eat.”
“No. But it’s damned sexy watching you eat.”
“You’re weird, Blair.”
He drew back his lip to reveal his fangs and she let out a shivery little laugh before slipping from his arms.
Chapter Fourteen
He took her to a place Sebastian had gone on about during his last “state visit” to Edinburgh. Almost in the shadow of the castle, it was atmospheric and expensive, and Blair could see at once what had so appealed to the older vampire. With its thick, stone walls, low ceilings with dark, exposed beams and atmospheric lighting, the place looked and felt medieval, almost gothic—a fitting setting for ancient, dangerous beings to wine and dine their