Page 33 of The Vampire Kingpin (The Vampire Syndicate #7)
“A must-read!” ~ Paranormal Romance Guild
When Gabriel Kral, the Kral Syndicate crown prince, finds Mila trespassing on his family estate, he realizes he’ll do anything to keep her—including going against his vampire father’s express wishes…
A steamy forbidden romance!
GAbrIEL
The coffee shop was a cozy cave of a place crowded with humans both inside and outside at the tables lining the sidewalk. I arrived a few minutes early and went inside after ordering my chief of security to wait in the car.
Jozef didn’t like that, but that was too damn bad. What the hell could happen to me in a coffee shop? Vampires didn’t even drink coffee.
As for me, I could drink coffee although I had to add a lot of sugar. I got an iced cappuccino and handed the barista a twenty. “Keep the change.”
She grinned and tucked it into her apron pocket. “Thanks.”
I grabbed a handful of sugar packets and took the cup to a small bistro table in a corner where I could watch the door. I dumped three packets into my cappuccino and stirred them in.
Guilt prickled me. My world was too dangerous for a woman like Mila. I shouldn’t even risk meeting her, even though no one but Jozef knew where I was. I hadn’t even told my own mom I was back in Maryland again; she thought I was at my New York penthouse.
I sipped my cappuccino, my baser half fighting with my conscience.
The bells on the door jingled and Mila stepped inside, dark-eyed and tempting in a summer dress with a flirty little skirt, her chestnut curls tumbling around her bare shoulders.
My tongue glued itself to the roof of my mouth. My conscience lost the battle and slunk off to harass some other fool, while I stared at her, unmoving, like my ass had been nailed to the seat.
All around me, male heads swiveled in her direction. That brought me to my feet. I cast a hard glance around the shop.
Back off, you SOBs. She’s mine.
I didn’t bare my fangs. Father would have my balls if I caused a disturbance in a human coffeeshop. But the men all found something else to do.
Mila didn’t seem to notice the stir she’d caused. She headed toward me, a smile lighting her pretty oval face. “Gabriel. How are you?”
“I’m good.” I met her in the middle, wrapping my fingers around her shoulders and kissing her cheek. A small shock arced between my lips and her skin.
The blood craving awakened, dark and possessive, even though I’d fed earlier that day before leaving New York. I hadn’t fucked the thrall, though, a first for me. I might be only half-vampire, but like a pureblood, my appetite for blood and sex was intertwined, hard-wired into my DNA.
But I hadn’t even been tempted to take the thrall, even though she’d plopped herself on my lap and pressed her breasts to my chest as I drank from her.
All I could think about was Mila and how much I wanted her.
Her blood. Her strong, curvy body. Her smiles.
Mila sucked in a breath, a small, pleasured sound that made my dick twitch like she’d grazed it with her bare fingers. Her lips formed an O. She’d slicked lip gloss on them, a shiny red that made them look and smell like candy.
I couldn’t resist. Enchanted, I brushed my lips over her mouth.
The sounds of the coffee shop dropped away—the piped-in music, the other customers’ voices, the whir of the cappuccino machine. My fangs tingled.
I wanted to plunge my fingers into her dark cloud of hair and nibble her candied lips.
I wanted to bury my face in the curve of her neck and sip from the vein pulsing beneath her skin.
I wanted to drag her into a shadowy corner and fuck her, slow and hard.
Mila turned her face, rubbing her cheek against mine. Her thick black lashes had lowered, her breathing audible.
I captured her chin, holding her still, and sucked her full lower lip between my teeth. Underlining to the other men in the shop that she was taken.
Even if she didn’t know it yet…