She’d have to get a new job, but she’d already decided on that, so it wasn’t too much of a shock. There were many shops open at night. She’d worked retail in the past. Surely she could get a job at one of them. Until then, she had a healthy savings account for emergencies. She could take a couple weeks to get her bearings before she threw herself into real life again.
Her rent would still be paid. She’d still have food — synth, now. School would start up again in a few weeks. She could easily switch to being fully online, though she’d miss being in a classroom.
The rest… well, the rest she’d just have to figure out in time.
Feeling marginally more calm, she’d just finished carefully aligning her shoes and bags on the floor of her closet when the knock on her door came.
Dahlia heavily considered not answering it. She hadn’t ordered anything, and there was no reason for her landlord to come around. The gods knew he avoided the rundown apartment building like the plague, lest one of his many disgruntled renters corner him and demand improvements.
It was most likely one of Felix’s deliveries. When she ignored him for long enough, he tended to get more and more extreme in his bids for attention. A phone was just the start. He’d once sent her a necklace with a diamond bigger than an egg. She’d been so terrified of having it in her apartment that she’d forced him to take it back.
In the past, the ploy had always worked. Whether she accepted his gifts or not wasn’t the goal. It was getting her attention.
Which was exactly why she’d been refusing everything. She wasn’t about to bend this time. She wouldn’t give in.
She was done with the game Felix played.
Not that it matters now. He won’t want a vampire.
A staggering pang of loss struck her as another knock came, more insistent this time. It’d been one thing to decide to cut him out once and for all. It was quite another to knowhewouldn’t want anything to do with her now.
Vampires don’t date other vampires.
They couldn’t. Or at least, she’d never heard of any of them doing so.
Vampire venom was poisonous to them, and they couldn’t feed without releasing it.
And vampiric relationships were all about feeding. Especially the shallow ones.
Felix wouldn’t want anything to do with her if he couldn’t fuck and feed. He’d toyed with her for years, and though she’d grown feelings for him, she’d never been delusional enough to think he wanted more than those two things from her.
Her throat went painfully tight. Gods, they’d never even gotten close to dating. And she’d broken things off withhim!So why did it hurt so much to think that there was no possibility of anything between them now?
Dahlia stood there in the middle of her apartment, her silk pajama shorts and flowy top fluttering in the cool breeze, frozen by the prospect. A part of her didn’t want to see whatever outrageous thing Felix sent her, but another, bigger part was compelled by the fact that it would probably be the last gift she ever received from him.
She padded across the floor. If it was too much, she promised herself that she’d return it anyway. But if it was tolerable, she’d make it a keepsake for the strange, dangerous era in her life when she entertained a vampire suitor.
It was a deeply unpleasant shock to find no delivery man on the other side of her door.
Dahlia’s grip tightened reflexively on the door handle as she fought the urge to step back. “Devon?”
EIGHT
He stoodon her little welcome mat, his blond hair disheveled and his eyes just a little too wide. He was dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him. Instead of his tight shirts and slacks, he wore joggers and an oversized coat, like he’d thrown on whatever he could grab before running out of his house.
Devon sucked in a sharp breath. His pale eyes skimmed over what he could see of her from between the partially open door and the wall.
“Hey, Dahlia.” He laughed, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry for dropping by unannounced.”
Dahlia wasn’t really surprised he showed up. If anything, she’d expected him when it became clear she wouldn’t be returning to work. But something about his body language made her instincts scream an alarm.
When he braced his hands on the door jamb and leaned closer, his scent became overpowering in a way it never had before. It was cloying and burnt, like brown sugar and cigarettes and clothes a day overdue for the wash.
Stomach rolling in a too-familiar way, Dahlia curled her suddenly cold toes against the cheap flooring. “Um, what are you doing here?”
“I heard you’re not coming back to The Lush,” he answered. His gaze flicked over her shoulder. “Can I come in? I was hoping we could talk.”
Her nails bit into the wood of her door. Every instinct warned her not to let him inside, and not just because he was a threat. Her skin crawled at the idea of letting this man into her private space.
