Page 97 of Taste of Blood

“A few of us are heading over to the fights. Wanna come?”

Ordinarily I’d be down for a little mindless violence, but after spending the last two days in a cell torturing vamps, my appetite for bloodshed is sated.

“Not tonight. I’m just going to head home and get some sleep.”

“Suit yourself. See you tomorrow.”

He runs off toward his car as I roll up the window. Is that what I’m doing? I turn the key and bring the engine to life, then pull out of the parking lot.

I don’t question where I’m going. At this point I’m pretty much on autopilot, so I’m not really surprised when I find myself parked down the block from Asher’s apartment.

“This is getting ridiculous,” I mutter as I dash through the rain to get to the building.

The doorman seems a little put out by the fact that I’m dripping all over his floor, but he must recognize me because he picks up the phone and calls Asher.

“You can go up,” he tells me after hanging up.

I still don’t know why I’m here. So what if he wants to talk. He could’ve just said his piece on the phone. Or better yet, in the text.

But no, he had to leave me hanging. To summon me.

As if anticipating my appearance, Asher is waiting for me at the elevator with a towel. I accept it without a word and proceed to get most of the dripping water off my head and back.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”

I roll my eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He grins and leads me down the hall toward a laundry room. “Take off your jacket and throw your clothes in the dryer. I’ll get you a pair of sweats.”

I can see in the light that my clothes are splattered with blood and body matter from the cell. “If it’s all the same to you, these are kind of a mess.”

He looks me over and nods. “Fine. Throw them in the washer. You want to shower?”

My mind immediately goes to the divine pleasure that is his shower, and I can suddenly feel every knot of tension in my body melting away at the touch of those heated jets. “That would be nice.”

I strip out of my wet clothes so I don’t track up his apartment and follow him to his bathroom. He lays out another towel and points to the robe, then leaves me to it.

Asher’s shower is just what I need. I try not to think about how this is getting to be a habit. After about fifteen minutes in the steamy enclosure, I start to feel like myself again. It is with supreme regret that I finally turn off the water and step outside.

After drying off and slipping into the robe, I wander out to the living room, where Asher is bent over his laptop with an open file of papers on the coffee table.

He looks up when I enter and closes the laptop. I glance over at his bar.

“Mind if I make a drink?”

“Help yourself.”

I grab a glass off the shelf and pour three fingers of vodka into it, taking a long sip and savoring the warm bite as it slides down my throat. It’s enough to take the edge off the lingering remnants of the headache from earlier.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt your work,” I say, indicating the laptop as I lower myself to the opposite couch.

“Just catching up on a few details.”

I take another sip and set down the glass. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“We got an address for Thalium. Well, actually two.”

“You could’ve just texted it to me.”