Page 7 of Her Vampire, His Ruin

I watch her chest rise and fall, my gaze slowly tracking upwards as I follow the map of her veins illuminated beneath her skin and, once again, settle on her pulse thrumming at her neck.

Fuck, I want to bite her there.

“Do you come here often?” I ask instead.

She opens one eye like a pissed-off cat who’s been woken up from a nap. “Really? That’s your chat-up line?”

“I don’t do chat-up lines. It’s a genuine question.”

“Above them, are we?”

I shrug. “Don’t need them.”

“You’re terribly cocky.”

“I’m confident in my abilities.” Or at least I was until a few minutes ago.

“Uh huh,” she mutters, shifting slightly, and I’m rewarded with her skirt inching higher up her thick thighs, right before the heel of her foot digs into my balls.

Accidentally, I think.

“That’s enough for one night,” she suddenly says, slipping her legs off my lap and standing before I’ve even had time to acknowledge the fact that she’s just bruised my nuts.

“You’re leaving?” I choke out, forcing myself not to wince.

“Are you going to try and stop me?” she throws back, sweeping up her shoes and giving me a perfect view of her cleavage, and damn if it doesn’t make me want to drag her back into my lap and kiss the sass right off her lips, aching balls or not.

“If you were anyone else, yes. But you seem impervious to my charms, so I’m not going to try and embarrass myself,” I reply, standing, whilst making space for her to pass.

“You don’t seem like the type of man to embarrass easily,” she replies, squeezing past me.

“I’m not usually.”

“Ah, what you mean to say is that every woman you’ve approached before has done whatever you’ve asked, and every man has fallen in line, so you’ve never experienced said embarrassment, am I right?”

“Yes. Except not every woman,” I say pointedly.

She grins, and damn if it doesn’t send a jolt through my dead, frozen heart.

“I like knowing I’m the first to break your cherry.”

“Break my cherry?”

“Yes. Your ‘I’m not as all-powerful as I think I am’ cherry.”

“You’re a strange woman, do you know that?” I retort, swiping a hand over my face as I smother another smile.

“It’s not the first time someone’s said as much,” she replies, and I see another glimmer of hurt track across her features before she turns to leave.

I throw out my arm, blocking her exit. “Wait a minute.”

“I thought you were okay with me leaving,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.

“I never said I was okay with you leaving. What was that?” I ask, dropping my head a little so I can look into her eyes.

“What was what?”

“When I said you were a strange woman, that hurt you. Why?”