Page 11 of Her Vampire, His Ruin

She shrugs. “It was a nice kiss.”

“Nice?” I grunt, fucking wounded. Stabbing me in the heart would’ve hurt less.

“Yes, nice. Well, I guess this concludes our little…” Her voice trails off as she waves her hand in the air between us, before slipping on her heels, “Tête-à-tête.”

“That’s it?” I ask, struggling to catch up with what’s going on here. I’m reeling at her dismissal.

“That’s it. Goodnight, Mr Crow. It was… interesting meeting you.”

And with that, she strides past me with a quick pat to my arm, then pushes open the door to the bar, saunters past my men and disappears into the lift without so much as a backward glance.

Chapter 3

Edie

“So you’re telling me you turned down a night of hot, steamy sex with a thirty-something gangster who rubbed your feet because you told him they hurt, then rocked your world with a kiss? Are you insane, Edie?” my best-friend and colleague, Henrietta, hisses at me the following Friday.

It’s taken me a whole week to pluck up the courage to tell her what happened, and I’m already regretting it.

“Shhh, keep your voice down,” I chide, eyeing a group of ten-year-olds playing nearby.

It’s lunchtime at Haverfield Primary School, where we both work as teachers, and not exactly an appropriate time to discuss my recent encounter.

“I honestly think I was having an out-of-body experience that day, fuelled by emotional upset, a surge of hormones and very expensive champagne. I was not myself.”

Henrietta grabs my arm and pulls me to the relative privacy of the bike shed. “I’m serious. You passed up the perfect opportunity for some revenge sex. I wish I was there. I would’ve forced you into his penthouse suite, which, of course, a man like him must have. He was an effing gangster, Edie.”

“Have you got a thing for gangsters or something?” I throw back, avoiding her piercing hazel gaze. Her eyes are not quite brown, not quite green. They hover somewhere in between like the bark of a tree caught between a canopy of leaves.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“In romance books, not real life,” I reply, flapping my hand at her, as though trying to swat at an angry wasp. “Besides, I don’t even know if he was a gangster. He just had the vibe of one.”

“Whether he was or he wasn’t is neither here nor there. If he carried himself like a gangster, I bet he was a god in bed.”

“Maybe,” I shrug, wrinkling my nose at the way she squeals with excitement. Henrietta is only three years younger than me, but she acts like an excitable teenager when she’s not in teacher mode. Most of the time, I find it endearing. Right now she’s giving me a headache.

“Please tell me you got his number.”

“Nope.”

“No? What’s wrong with you? He clearly fancied the pants off you, and from your description, was hotter than Scott Eastwood and Tom Hardy combined.”

“A little younger, actually. A lot younger, in fact.”

“You said he looked about thirty-five. That’s only nine years younger than you, Edie.”

“He had the plump skin of someone far more youthful, zero lines, and not one grey hair. He was younger than thirty-five,” I protest, my gaze slipping to Rosie, a sweet six-year-old who recently lost her two front teeth. Her gappy smile makes me grin. She waves and I wave back, watching her as she runs over to her group of friends and they start jumping rope.

“And? So what if he was? He was an adult, and hot-as-fuck. I can’t believe you passed up the promise of multiple orgasms. I know you love your vast collection of vibrators, but this is ridiculous. You need a real cock,” she says, flicking her gaze to Molly, a curious eight-year-old who just happened to pass us by at that very moment. Henrietta fixes her expression into serious teacher mode and says, “Ms Valenti is buying some chickens and a cockerel. She wants fresh eggs in the morning. Isn’t that lovely?”

“Yes, Miss,” Molly replies, giving us both a confused look before running over to her friends.

“You know I’m not capable of having orgasms during sex,” I mumble, getting back to her previous point.

“Horseshit. You didn’t have orgasms during sex with that prick you had the misfortune to marry because one, he couldn’t find a woman’s clit even if it was hung with a neon sign⁠—”

“He managed to find every other woman’s clit,” I interrupt.