Page 1 of Suck This

CHAPTER 1

Was it normal to always want a cookie? Because there is never a time that I don’t want one.

-Acadia’s secret thoughts

ACADIA

I watched him from across the room.

I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t every day that you got to be in the same room with the Master of the City.

Constantine Worth was beautiful, and I wanted to climb him like a freakin’ tree… though I hear that’s not acceptable in today’s day and age. Or, well, in any day and age.

“Stop staring,” I muttered to myself, looking down.

My hands played with the loose threads in the hole just above the knee of my jeans, and I tried to will my heart to slow.

“Everyone is starin’,” Keisha said. “You’re not the only one. Just the only one that’s telling yourself not to.”

I glared at my best friend, Keisha, and stuck my tongue out at her.

“Why are we even here?” I asked. “This is a vamp bar. And I’m not willing to share my blood with anyone but the Red Cross.”

Keisha snorted.

“You don’t donate to Red Cross. You donate to Wentworth Blood Care,” Keisha said dryly.

I started to laugh.

She was right.

I did donate to Wentworth, religiously, every six weeks on the dot.

Also, because I was the universal blood donor, O negative.

They called me every six weeks to remind me, and I went because I remembered what it was like to need blood and not have access to it.

“We are at this particular bar because it was my turn to choose which one I wanted to go to, and this is the one I wanted to go to?” She batted her eyelashes at me, and I snorted.

“Thanks,” I drawled. “I’m glad you cleared that up.”

She shrugged.

“What do you want to drink?” she asked, changing the subject.

I let it lie. She went where I wanted to go, so I’d do the same for her, even if this place was giving me hives.

And not because I was scared, but because I was so close to the dead sexy man named Constantine Worth.

The man made my heart palpitate, even in pictures of him.

I didn’t know what it was about the man, but each and every time his name was mentioned in my hearing, or his face was pictured on the front page of the Austin Times, I had to stop and stare.

It was a compulsion.

Something that I was forced to do, whether I wanted to do it or not.

“What will you have, ma’am?”