Page 15 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Jasper

When I return from meeting the contractors at Silver’s place, I find the second bay in the garage open, which is my bay.

“Milly!” I shout as I realize my Bugatti is missing.

“Yes, Master?” she asks, stepping out from the empty pantry with a duster in her hand.

My rage is simmering just below meltdown level, and I try to keep it at bay as I look over the elderly housekeeper.

I made her, and it’s well within my rights to kill her, but I like her.

I keep reminding myself of that fact as the image of my missing Bugatti flicks through my mind.

“Where is my car?”

Her brows pinch together in confusion. “Which car?”

With the way she looks at me, I know she’s faking it.

Her undead heart isn’t at its usual rhythm.

“You know which car?”

“Sir, let me explain,” she starts with, and the rage I’ve been controlling by a thin thread snaps, and I rush her.

She scrambles inside the pantry, placing the duster between us as if it will protect her.

“Where is it, Milly?!”

“The lady of the house has it, Silver,” she blurts, wincing and turning her face away. “She wanted coffee, and I told her she wasn’t confined to the house. I tried to warn her that the car was yours and that she should take another.”

My breathing is already erratic, and then I picture Silver driving it. Her lithe body sank into the teal blue and black leather bucket seat. Her foot arched over the pedal. Her hands gripping the steering wheel…

Fuck.

A shiver worms through my body, and I let it pass, popping my neck as I stretch it from side to side.

“She was going for coffee?” I ask.

“Yes,” she reiterates.

I nod, spinning on my heels to exit the pantry, stopping at the threshold.

“Order a coffee machine, the best one you can find. And fill this fucking pantry. We have a human to feed.”

“Yes, Master Jasper! Right away!” Her voice’s thrill at having a task worth doing isn’t lost on me as I race into the garage and slide into the Thunderbird, getting the keys down from the visor to crank it.

It purrs to life, and I head into town, where I know I’ll find Silver sipping coffee with fear racing through her body.

She has to know she’s got it coming, and after the tingle she left behind last night as she offered me her wrist. She has to know she shouldn’t have pushed me.

I’m wrong.

Silver’s sitting in a booth at Spellbinding Coffee when I rush through the doors, looking wholly unaffected by the look on my face.

“I was about to call you,” Karen tells me, the fear that should be on Silver’s face laced in her tone.

I flick my wrist at her, and she nods, backing away through the kitchen doors and making herself scarce.

Three other vampires find the exit, and the door chimes to tell me that Silver and I are alone.

“Must be thrilling to have such power at your fingertips,” she says, lifting her massive latte to her lips.

Why someone needs that much caffeine is beyond me, but I can’t deny how beautiful she looks with the autumn light splayed across her face through the windows of the coffee shop.

I slide into the booth across from her, flattening my palms on the top of the table. “You stole my car.”

Her head shakes in denial. “I didn’t. Milly said as the lady of the house, I could drive one of them.”

I smirk. “She also warned you whose car that was.”

“You talked to her? Of course, you did. You didn’t hurt her, did you?

She did warn me, but you have to understand, I’ve wanted to drive that specific car for so fucking long.

I’ve wanted to own one since I attended a luxury car show in London for a brokers’ conference.

God, the way it handled.” She sighs, contentment and happiness lighting her face as she reminisces about her drive here in her stolen ride as if she’s just crossed something off her bucket list.

“Well, I’m glad you had fun.” It’s out of my mouth before I realize it, and Silver eyes me narrowly.

“Are you? I thought you’d drag me back to Thorngray by my ear or publicly flog me or something.”

“Yet, still, you took it.”

She shrugs, and her off-the-shoulder sweater slides down, exposing her creamy flesh. “Worth it.”

There’s this element to Silver that I can’t quite put my finger on. There’s this airy demeanor that astounds me.

She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before.

“I figured while I was your captive, I might as well have a bit of fun,” she adds when I’m too awestruck to say anything back.

“You didn’t hit anything, did you?” I ask her, turning my attention out the window to my car parked diagonally in one of the four spots before the coffee shop.

“Boys and their cars. No, I didn’t hit anything. I can drive.”

Rolling her eyes, she sips her coffee a bit dreamily.

“I’m well over the age to be considered a boy.”

She laughs. “Yeah, I guess you are. Aren’t you?”

“So,” I settle back into the booth, “Public flogging, huh?”

Her smile lights up her face, and a small part of me wants to keep it there for the rest of her days. “I figured something of the sort.”

“Could be arranged.”

Her pallor changes, and a laugh cascades out of me, the likes of which I haven’t heard in years. “I’m kidding. Oh, your face was priceless.”

Our laughter dies down, and the mood between us shifts.

“We should get back,” I tell her.

She looks at her half-drunk latte with eagerness filling her eyes. “Why? You have meetings or someone to torture or something?”

“I run a few businesses. But, no, I have nothing pressing at the moment. The others will wonder where we are, especially when none of the others have ever wandered off the property, nor have we taken them off the property. Not until they’re ruled out, of course.”

“Stay, then. I’m with you. Tell them where I am.”

“Stay,” I repeat absently, digging my phone out of my suit pocket.

“Make a day of it,” she adds. “Karen!”

Karen appears as if she is waiting to be summoned all along.

“We’ll need another latte,” Silver tells her.

“Oh, no,” I wave her off, “I don’t need whatever that is.”

Silver doubles down. “Yes, we do.”

Karen looks between us before grinning and turning away to carry out Silver’s order instead of mine.

“First, you steal my car. Now, you’re forcing me to drink… what even is that?” I lean over and peer over the rim of her oversized mug.

“Pumpkin cheesecake latte. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

Karen walks over, placing two fresh mugs down, eyeing Silver. “I figured you’d want a top-up.”

Silver grins, pulling the new latte across the table and shoving the old over for Karen to dispose of. “Thank you.”

“Enjoy,” Karen says, leaving us and moving back into the kitchen.

“I don’t think you need any more caffeine,” I tell her, tentatively sipping from the coffee. I let the notes of the flavors slip over my taste buds.

It’s been so long since I’ve partaken of anything that wasn’t… Well, blood.

“Oh.” I pull the mug away from my face, looking at it in surprise.

“Told you. I’ll take my thank you now.”

Silver and I meander down Main Street together, the warmth from our coffees long gone. The chill of the coming winter is brisk as the breeze cuts through us, and Silver shivers, tightening her thin jacket around herself.

Shucking out of my suit coat, I place it over her shoulders as she’s peering out over the small lake beyond the gazebo to our left.

She startles, gazing up at me with a smile. “You’ll be cold.”

“I’ll be fine, I assure you. We feel the cold much differently than you do.”

Realization flickers across her face as if she just remembered what I am.

I outstretch my arm toward the gazebo. “Shall we?”

She slips her lips back into an easy smile as she leads me inside the wooden structure, painted white but chipping from the weather.

“It’s so beautiful here. The air is so…”

“Clean,” I finish for her.

She laughs softly. “You’ve been to the city, then?”

“A very long time ago.” Wind rustles through the spaces between the beams surrounding us, and she closes her arms around herself, snuggling further into my jacket.

“I’m sure it was much more beautiful and less… crowded when you were there.”

“Maybe.” I turn her, tightening my jacket around her and securing the button in the front. It takes a moment for me to realize she’s staring up at me.

“This town has such a magical feel that I don’t know if I’m getting swept up in that or if everything I’m feeling and experiencing is real,” she whispers up at me as I rub warmth into her shoulders.

She steps closer, pressing her chest to mine.

My arms wrap quickly around hers. Too easily.

“It’s all real. As real as a town full of magical immortals can be.”

“With witches and curses?” she jokes, but my eyes have wandered to her lips, tracing between their plushness and the space where a dimple drills into her cheek.

Her beauty is transcendent.

“We’re as real as you are.” My whispered words carry on the wind to her, and her pupils dilate.

“Prove it.” Her hands come from beneath my jacket, her hands bracketing my sides as I feel her heat seep through the thin fabric of my shirt.

I’m still riddling out what she means when she gets on her tiptoes and presses her lips to mine.

At first, I grow rigid.

Until her tongue parts my lips, and then I turn her, slamming her back into one of the pavilion’s beams, kissing her back as a growl claws its way out of my throat.

It doesn’t scare her.

Her heart speeds up, thrumming through my ears like the small pattering inside the chest of a hummingbird trying to remain in flight.

She moans, and I deepen the kiss, angling my face and opening to her more, letting her in where I have allowed no one to explore for nearly a century.

Her hands dig into my sides, and I cup her face.

My tongue brushes against hers, and her answering flicks send tingling sensations through my body that’s long dead but coming back to life beneath her expert spell.

I have to be careful. I know that better than any of us.

She hasn’t finished her testing yet.

Letting her go will hurt more if I don’t guard myself from her influence.

But she feels like… a new beginning, something magical.

I break away from her lips, pressing my forehead to hers as our panted breaths tango, causing a cloud of breathy steam between us.

“We have to stop…” I breathe.

“Promise me something,” she whispers back.

In this space, in this gazebo, just the two of us, it feels like we’re the only two people in the world.

I have to remind myself I’m no longer a person, and then the truth spreads in my chest like a growing sickness.

“Anything,” I answer, unthinking.

“Don’t erase today.”

I pull away, looking down at her with a brow quirked.

“Don’t erase anything from today. Today was perfect. When this is over, take everything else but this.”

I tip her chin up, pressing my lips to hers softly, closing my eyes as hurt wrings my stomach.

“I promise,” I lie, feeling as if the lie itself took a dagger and stabbed through my undead heart.