MaryJane Davidson - Undead and Unpopular

“I've been thinking,” I murmured, licking his throat, his lower lip, the tip of his right fang. “This fast. It didn't prove anything. It didn't make me a better vampire.” If anything, it made me a bitchier one. “It's not where and when you drink blood, it's—” I couldn't think of the rest of the platitude. How you drink it? Who you drink it from? If you have it in a fancy glass with a cocktail umbrella? Whatever. I was distracted. Possibly because he had bitten me, was sucking on my throat so hard he'd pulled me to my tiptoes. “Anyway,” I managed, trying not to flail and gasp, “I'm going to drink again, but only from you. And you'll drink only from me. Right?”

“Mmmm,” he said, his mouth busy on my throat.

“And we'll have a better life together than most, I bet.”

He pulled back and looked at me. There was a spot of blood just below his lower lip in the shape of a comma. “No one, ever, could have a better life together. Not if they have you, Elizabeth.”

“Well, then, aren't you the lucky fella.” I laughed and kissed away the bloody comma. “Let's see if you say that three months from now.”

“Er, three months?”

“Sinclair!”

“Right. Ah, the magic of three months from now. I await breathlessly.”

“Very funny. We already don't breathe.” I tried to wrestle out of his embrace, but he held fast. “Unf! Ergh! Sinclair: youhave put this on your calendar, right?”

“Darling, it's been there for ages, I swear! Stop wriggling. Our magical, culturally meaningless evening looms before me like a sweet hippopotamus of joy.”

I was soothed by his tone, then digested his words and redoubled my efforts to get away. “Dude! I wouldn't marry you if you begged for it.”

He laughed and let me go. “But I would, you know.” He looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes, that considering look I knew so well. “Beg for it.”

I loved that look. I loved him. I started to step back into his embrace, but he seized me before I could, yanked me to him, and thrust his mouth into my neck with the speed of a striking snake. His teeth were so sharp I barely felt them penetrate. Well, I felt them penetrate, but not in my neck, if you know what I mean.

He had thrust his fingers into my hair and was holding me by the head, the other arm so tightly around my waist it was a good thing I didn't need to breathe. He drank from me like a man just out of the desert, squeezed me to him with desperate hunger, and I loved it, I would have let him hold me like that all day, take from me all night.

We were almost wrestling, moving in a tight little dance in the hallway, and I struggled free enough to bite him back, to feel his cool blood on my tongue like a rich dark wine, to feel it racing through my system, making me stronger, making me better, making me more.

Vampire.

“The party,” I groaned.

“Fuck the party,” he growled back.

“We can't stay out here making out.”

“Exactly so. Let's go to bed.”

I managed to wrench free—mostly because he let me—and stood back, wiped my mouth, and checked my shirt for blood stains. His tongue darted out and caught a rill of blood, and I fought the urge to leap back into his arms and bite it.

I remembered there were more than a dozen people less than ten feet away. Thank goodness for thick doors and walls! Yay, old houses! Like I said. “We'd better get back to the party.”

“In a moment. I wanted to ask you. Will you tell me the entire story? The tale of you and the zombie?”

“Oh. I thought I—”

“You gave Tina and me the Cliff Notes version. And we both pretended not to notice that you nearly had a breakdown—and then there was Alonzo to deal with. But I want to hear everything.”

“You'll laugh at me.”

“Yes, of course.”

I smiled; I couldn't help it. “Okay, but later. And with all the lights on. In our bed. And when I start to freak out all over again, tell me something that pisses me off.”

“I will.”

He picked up my hand—the one with my glorious engagement ring—and kissed it. “With me it's spiders.”

“Really?”

He almost shuddered. Eric Sinclair, badass vampire king, afraid of Charlotte! “All those legs,” he muttered.

I hugged him. “I won't tell a soul,” I whispered. “But for crying out loud, we've got to get back to my party. It's the only thirty-​first birthday I'm going to have, you know.”

I stepped back to straighten my clothes, which didn't last long; he snatched me back into his arms so quickly I couldn't dodge, much less keep away. “Oh, the party. Never mind the party.”

“Mind me, then,” I said, and kissed him.

“I do mind you,” he replied, and we got busy in the closet under the stairs, and it was only later that I thought about what he said and got pissed, but he just laughed at me.