Page 42 of Bite Me

SIREN BLOOD

RUSSEL

“Can’t you just…not cause any then?”

I had prepared a plan. I was going to admit that what we were doing looked wrong from the outside, but since we could both be discreet, it wouldn’t hurt anyone. I was going to assure him that saying no to me in bed would never affect our dynamic at the office. We would have talked about boundaries and rules. I would have invented an entire fucking campaign around why our sexual relationship would even become a good thing for him and his career.

Then I was going to bring him to my place and spend the night exploring how much of my venom he could take before he passed out orgasming.

But Eddie asked me not to hurt him.

I went home alone and spent the weekend working and feeling sorry for myself.

On Sunday evening, I sat at the downstairs bar of Levi’s hotel, drinking his best wine. It was late, and the lobby was nearly empty. Aglio was closed today. Levi looked relaxed in a dark-blue shirt, his jacket hanging over a chair.

“Your irises are nearly red,” I observed. “What did you do?”

“Friday was a private party at Aglio, and a couple of lovely girls I met there accepted my invitation to stay at my beach house for the weekend. I might have overfed. You know how much I love bisexual women.” His wink said he didn’t regret a thing.

“I know how much you love to objectify bisexual women,” I grumbled.

Levi just grinned, unrepentant.

Sometimes, I envied him for the ease with which he consumed pleasure. He was very much like my mother in that respect, free of guilt and the existential angst I seemed to carry with me everywhere for no good reason.

“What about you?” he asked. “You look better. When did you feed?”

“Nine days ago.” And I wouldn’t give him details, but something else occurred to me that a vampire of Levi’s age and experience might know about. “I have a question. Has any human ever tasted significantly better to you than anybody else?”

“Sure. It’s pheromones, nutrition, and sometimes just personal taste.”

“This isn’t just some blood that is better than other blood. Imagine a sort of blood so far removed from everything you’ve ever tasted that you won’t want to drink anything else again. It makes you want to grab the person and keep them locked up in your home so you can have them for yourself for the rest of your life.”

Levi gaped at me, his eyebrows arching almost comically. “What happened to you?”

“Have you heard of something like that?” I pressed.

“Folks say all kinds of crazy shit, butyouusually don’t. What’s up?”

“Can you keep your mouth shut?”

My friend gestured to himself, looking slightly offended. “Who do you think you’re talking to, Greenwood?”

“Okay.”

I threw back the glass of wine, and Levi immediately refilled it.

“I’ve met a man,” I began. “It was at a club on Twenty-third Street.”

“What? You sneer at the clientele at my club, and then you go and feed at a dive bar?” I rolled my eyes, and Levi waved his hand. “Sorry. Continue.”

“He was a newbie. He had never been bitten before, so it took some convincing, but in the end, he let me feed from him. And he blew my mind. I’d never tasted anything like it. It was like a drug, like he’d hypnotized me.”

My friend was looking at me with concern.

“I’m not exaggerating, and I’m perfectly sane. So far,” I added.

“I believe you.”