Page 100 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

And Victor.

In nothing but a low-slung towel.

All of the many hours she’d spent thinking about him without his clothes on had clearly been a waste of time. Her imagination had nothing on the reality.

The breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his chest, the definition of his abdominal muscles – neither too faint, nor too etched – and, she realized with a choked little whimper, those little indents of his Adonis belt that dared you to follow, to seek what was hidden beneath the towel.

“All yours,” Victor said.

It took Pandora an embarrassingly long time to realize he wasn’t referring to his body, but the bathroom.

“Oh, right, thanks,” she said, but she made a beeline for the bedroom, closing the door, then leaning against it as she tried to ease the chaos thrumming through her veins.

There was a knock at the door, making her jolt and whip around. “Yeah?”

When he didn’t answer, she pulled open the door. She didn’t know if she was disappointed or relieved that he’d changed into a T-shirt and jeans. “Hey, want to read some more of that book?” he asked, giving her a sheepish little smile.

“Really?” she asked, brightening.

“Really. We can’t leave the heroine hanging. She’s about to uncover who stabbed her husband.”

“I think it’s the brother,” Pandora said, rushing toward her luggage to find the book.

“The brother? No,” Victor said, shaking his head. “I think it was the priest.”

“Thepriest?” Pandora asked, shocked. “No way.”

“All the signs are there,” Victor said, plucking the book out of her hands as they both made their way to the living room to curl up on the couch.

Victor read long into the night, until his voice grew hoarse and they were forced to both head to bed.

As Pandora lay alone in bed, she wasn’t sure if she was upset, or grateful, that the book they were sharing was a slow burn.

But they had one more night in Morocco.

Who knew what could happen.

26

“What do you mean,nothing?” Lucy asked after the private jet had landed back in London, and she had scooped them up.

After they’d dropped Victor back at his flat, Pandora had filled Lucy in on everything that had transpired in the Blue City, while she sipped the blood her friend had procured.

“Nothing,” Pandora said, slamming her head back into the rest twice.

“But the book had to get spicy, right? Or was it closed door?”

“Oh, it got spicy all right,” Pandora said. “But Victor called it a night before we got to it.”

“How soon before you got to it?”

“I didn’t know at the time, but when I couldn’t sleep and looked at it, it was literally the next page.”

“So, chances were, he saw the spice and just called it quits so things weren’t awkward.”

Pandora grumbled.

“I still can’t believe there was only one bed,” Lucy said. “And then he slept on the couch.”