Page 10 of Hot for Slayer (Scared Sexy Collection #1)

L azlo’s response to the hordes of kids wearing costumes, adults sitting on their stoops giving out candy, and jack-o’-lanterns casting rich golden light across the neighborhood is a simple, unfazed, straightforward nod.

I’m not sure whether he remembers what Halloween is or just thinks that this is what goes on every night in the West Village, but he’s game, and I cannot help but laugh.

“What sharp teeth you have,” he tells a group of little vampires who hold out their baskets to him. Then he distributes some of the cash I found in the back pocket of his jeans before washing them—all one-hundred-dollar bills.

I mouth Sorry to the children’s baffled mothers and quickly pull Lazlo away.

My people are, unsurprisingly, highly represented in this year’s costuming choices. I glance at Lazlo, wondering if seeing them is jogging his memory, but all he says is, “I’m hungry.” He eats a hot dog. Then a candied apple. Not once does he ask me if I’m hungry, too, or if I want a single bite.

I think he’s done with my bullshit. And I think that he’d rather I stay quiet than lie. So I do. When a pack of sexy Slimers tries to step between us, he grabs my hand to pull me closer, and doesn’t let go, not even when a fortune teller tries to sell us a couple’s reading.

“We’re not a couple,” I explain just as he loftily proclaims, “I am a man, and I make my own fortune.”

The teller’s eyes fall pointedly to where his fingers are closed around mine. “No matter,” she says. “Your fates are already intertwined.”

I scowl and let Lazlo drag me away into the night, watching the crowd as it transitions from adorable children to adults in skimpy costumes drinking questionable alcohol mixes from poorly disguised cups.

“I like it,” he says when we dip into a narrow, semi-deserted alleyway to avoid the throng. “We’ll do this often.”

“Halloween is only once a year,” I say, leaning back against the wall. “By the next, you’ll have remembered enough of who you are to spend it with ... with whomever it is that you usually do.”

He stares down at me, patiently amused, arms crossed. Steps closer. “Just tell me, Ethel.”

“Tell you . . . ?”

“What we are.”

I straighten a little. “We are people . I thought you knew that.”

“What we are to each other,” he clarifies, a note of Come on, Ethel, don’t be obtuse in his tone that I should take more offense to.

But I am being obtuse. And he is being remarkably forbearing. “Should I redefine work nemeses for you?” I ask archly.

His smile just widens. “I think you’re tired, too.”

“Of what?”

“The lies.”

I look down at my shoes. Back up. “How are you so sure that—”

“I told you, Ethel. I know how I feel about you. And I know how you feel, too.”

“And what would that—”

He bends toward me slowly enough that I could conceivably stop him, but I don’t care to conceive of it—before his lips touch mine, or after.

I’ve kissed and been kissed by many people. None, however, who were, fundamentally, at an atomic level, like me. None whose feel and scent and body I’d learned over centuries, through endless battles and close calls. None who were anything like Lazlo.

That’s the problem, I think. After a while on this earth, one rarely experiences new sensations.

But nothing has ever felt as good as Lazlo’s leg slipping between mine and pinning me to the wall.

As the warmth of his hands closing around my lower back and my nape to turn me into him.

As his tongue sliding against mine with no hesitation.

I can’t make us stop. Instead, I reach up, fist his shirt, and deepen the kiss. I press myself to his body and listen to the faint, pleased groan he lets out. I rub my core against the meat of his thigh while his breath hitches inside my ear, and he says, “Ethel.”

It’s not my real name. Not the one the real Lazlo, the Lazlo who remembers, likes to use. And that, at last, is the bucket of ice I need.

I push him away, both my hands against his rib cage. He stumbles backward, breathing fast, his expression half delighted, half outraged.

Shit.

“No, I— No.” I shake my head. “This is wrong. I can’t do this to you.”

He frowns. “You don’t need to do anything. I do things. To you .”

“You—” I want to bury my face in my hands. “You don’t even know who I am. You don’t remember who you are. This is— I am basically deceiving you, and—”

“I know that. You are odd. And a terrible liar, and not good at being secretive. But I don’t care.”

“Well, you should care. You cannot consent to being with someone who hasn’t been open with you about their identity, and—”

“There is nothing that I could discover about you, or about myself, that would make me want to do this any less.” His tone is arrogant and self-assured, and brooks no argument.

I hate it.

Sadly, I could see myself loving it.

He steps closer once again. “I know we have done this before, Ethel.”

“No. No, we haven’t. How do you even ...?”

“I know your smell. I know your skin. Your hair. It’s all familiar.

I have it all memorized. And I dream of you—of this.

So many dreams, all so different, we must have done it a million times, in a million different ways.

Tell me what you’re hiding from me, let’s get this over with, and then let’s do it a million more times.

” He stops when a masked man trips drunkenly inside our alleyway.

“Not now,” he orders the intruder before turning back to me.

“Actually, sir,” I say, shrill, panicky, eager to end the conversation, “this place is all yours. My friend and I were just getting ready to go our separate ways.”

Lazlo rolls his eyes, but the man in the Edward Cullen mask nods his thanks and walks closer.

And that’s when something starts nagging at me. There’s an odd familiarity to his gait. To the grace of his movements. To the speed of—

“It’s you,” I whisper.

I barely have time to shove Lazlo out of the way before the vampire who tried to kill me two nights ago attacks me again.