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And now we’re… partners.

I try to catalog all these facts objectively. Professionally. Unemotionally.

It’s fine. This is fine. Everything’s fine.

Even though I probably shouldn’t have accepted his offer for a ride.

Even though I still don’t really understand how everything changed so quickly.

Even though, with every beat of my heart, I can still feel Casimir’s mark pulsing faintly on my neck.

It’s fine.

We’re on this case together now, and though I don’t have a ton of experience working with a partner, it’s probably not outside the realm of acceptability to agree to something as simple as hitching a ride home.

Because we’re partners.

That’s it.

The mark on my neck twinges again, and my fingertips ache with the restraint it takes to keep myself from reaching up and running them over the two small, round, inexplicably healed-over punctures at the side of my throat.

When we got in the car, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from flipping the visor down to take a look in the mirror. It had made my breath catch, the stark red against the pale of my skin, the shock of electricity that ran through me when I saw the evidence of just what I let Casimir do to me in that alley.

Though I hadn’t been able to meet his eye as I examined that evidence, a prickle of awareness at the periphery of my vision made me certain Casimir was watching while I did. Waiting, maybe, for me to say something about it, though he didn’t utter a word before he turned the ignition.

And now, like it did when I first saw the marks, the dark, stirring memory of what it felt like to receive them echoes through me unbidden.

Whatever I expected a vampire’s bite might feel like, nothing could have prepared me for… that.

The tenderness of Casimir’s touch as he held me, the sudden, fiery pain that melted almost immediately into something else.

An alchemy of blood and magick, he called it.

I don’t know much about magick, or alchemy, or what the hell happened between us, but I do know one thing.

It can’t happen again. Not ever. Not with what that magick, thatalchemy, did to me.

Maybe it was different for him, but what I felt was… sex. Pure, clawing, undeniable lust. The kind that sent my heart racing and my pussy throbbing, that made me feel like I might burst into a million burning pieces if I didn’t get more. More of his bite, more of his touch, more, more, more.

I had been ravenous. Out of my mind for him. Completely lost to his bite.

It wasn’t until he stepped away and let the cool night air wash over us that my sanity returned and the magnitude of the mistake we made crashed into me.

Casimir seemed unbothered by the whole thing. Because of course he did. Unflappable and flippant as always, I’m sure biting a hapless human is no big deal for him. Business as usual. Nothing to write home about or get too worked up over.

So maybe I can get over it, too.

Scratch that. Ihaveto get over it. Forget it. Erase it from my brain and get with the program.

What happened in that alley was a blip. A misguided attempt to neutralize a threat to our cover story.

And everything after that…

I’m still pissed we got absolutely nowhere with Marcus, and frustrated this one good lead fizzled back out into nothing. At the same time, though, I’m re-energized, more certain than I have been in weeks that we’re on to something here.

And, also for the first time in weeks, I’m strangely comforted to find I’m not alone in all of this.

We might have gotten steamrolled tonight, but there was also something exhilarating about going undercover with Casimir.