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“Tom,” Madame Matase scolded. “We need Adam thinking clearly, not passed out on the floor.”

“He’s fucked. I’m not a miracle worker. I used what I have at my disposal, and he needed a pick-me-up. Don’t you feel better, Adam?”

“I feel great!” I hiccuped again and clung to the bar.

“See.” Tom gestured. “Excessive amounts of alcohol fix everything.”

Madame Matase remained unimpressed. “I don’t believe that’s true. Adam, are you alright, darling?”

I waved them both off and left them arguing, stumbled from the bar, into the clattering elevator, then up to Reynard’s floor and rapped on his door. “Lord Reynard?” Did I slur? I bumped my forehead against the door. Zee was missing, Reynard had been shoved out a twelfth floor window, and there was a mean sorcerer trying to ruin my life. I’d had better days.

“Come in, Adam.”

After clicking open the door, I peered into the gloom. Why weren’t the lights on? “Just so you know, I think I’m a teensy-bit drunk.” I showed the dark room a tiny gap between my finger and thumb. “Tom fixed me a drink, and I’m not entirely sure it was legal—Oh, hello.” Reynard was right there, in front of my face, looking all sharp, a bit serious, and super gorgeous. “Mercy, you have pretty eyes.” He was also really pale. “Did you explode into a thousand bats?” That seemed logical, didn’t it? I spread my hands. “Poof.”

“No, I landed on a car. Flattened it, in fact. It was most . . . uncomfortable.”

“Bats would have been better.”

“Adam—”

“A man could get lost in your eyes.” I touched his face like I was touching the forbidden. As though he were a piece of art that should be kept locked behind glass, not for the likes of my grubby fingers. Goodness, he had flawless skin. Of course he did. There wasn’t a hair out of place on his head or a pimple on his face. The man was exquisite, and I wanted to pinch his cheek and ruffle his hair.

“There is a reason for that falling sensation you’re experiencing.”

“Hm.” And he had soft lips too, which I was apparently now touching. Lordy, what had been in that drink? And fangs. Look at those sharply pointed fangs—those were surely stabby.

“I had planned to propose⁠—”

I snickered. “We’ve only just met.” I could kiss those lips, and fall into those eyes, and be free of all the worries and concerns, even if he now looked annoyed.

“—a trade. My help for your blood. But you are too intoxicated, and I’m exceedingly hungry.” He caught my wrist, stopping my hand from tracing the lines of his lips. “Adam, I’m about to take advantage of you.”

I grinned. “Is the big scary vampire going to bite me?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Are you?” He still had hold of my wrist, and even I could feel how my pulse throbbed in his grip. I leaned in. “Because I’m kinda into it.”

“You’re into it because I’m enthralling you.”

“No, nope, I’m into it because you’re hot, and the closest I’ve come to getting my hands on another man was Zee in the elevator and he shrugged me off, and I’m having a really shitty day, I don’t want to be alone, and can you just bite me already because I feel like that’s where this is going and all this talk is exhausting⁠—”

I didn’t see him move, just felt his arm clamp around me at the same time as his warm mouth settled almost painfully gently on my neck. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a tiny voice screamed how this was a terrible and dangerous idea, but it was already happening and it felt nice to be held. Then Reynard’s whole body—a body I was trapped against—tensed. Mercy, he was hard. All over. Not hard hard, not there, unless he was hard there? Was he? Did vampires get hard when they fed, because that’s what he was doing, feeding on me, on my neck, right now, with his teeth. In my neck. Drinking me.

Oh.

“Wait . . .” No. This was bad. “Uh . . . hold on.” I shoved at him, but the growl that rumbled up from his depths was a primal warning. He did lift his head, then as our gazes met, with me cradled in his arms . . .

“Adam, you are forbidden.”

“Er, that’s nice.”

“What in the celestial heavens are you?”

“Just a perfectly average human.”

“No.”