Sleeping With the Entity (18 page)

“Trust your gut,” Nick told her.

“How do I know you won’t suck out my gut?”

“Zombies do that, not vampires.”

“My instincts never told me you were a vampire,” Daniella pointed out.

“What did they tell you about me?” he said.

“That there was something strange about you.”

“Exactly,” Nick said. “Your instincts were correct.”

The problem was that her instincts warned her that while he might not want to physically harm her, he remained a powerful temptation. Instead of being turned off by his admission of being a vampire, she was strangely honored that he’d trusted her enough to share his deepest secret with her.

Not that she could be sure being a vampire was his deepest secret; she just couldn’t imagine anything else that would be as big a headline. And he hadn’t exactly trusted her. He had threatened her brother if she told anyone. But at least he hadn’t threatened to suck Gordon’s blood. He hadn’t threatened to suck her blood, either.

She should not be finding him sexy at this point. No way. She wasn’t into the vampire lust stuff. Really, she wasn’t. At least she never had been in the past, although the canceled TV show
Moonlight
was a guilty pleasure of hers.

Okay, maybe she
was
more into vampires than she realized. Did that explain her attraction to Nick? Was it because she’d somehow sensed that he was a vampire?

She supposed that made as much sense as anything else she’d seen or heard today. It was all pretty outrageous stuff. So how would Nick staying with her 24/7 work out? She wasn’t about to sleep with a flamethrower, despite him thinking that sounded a little sexy.

She did have a small butane torch that she used to brown the top of crème brûlée. She supposed she could stash that on her bedside table. Along with condoms.

Whoa, where did that thought come from? No way she was having sex with a vampire. It probably wasn’t even possible … or was it?

“Okay, you can stay,” she told Nick. “For
one
night. After that … we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Stiffer. You’re not stiff enough.” Daniella glared at the contents of the bowl as she spoke directly to it. “You’re frosting. You need to be stiffer, not all gloppy.” She resumed frantically beating the contents. “Stiffer and stiffer.”

Daniella’s admonition was enough to make Nick stiff and as hard as her granite countertop. Her focus remained on the bowl of frosting, however. She was clearly in cooking mode.

Bruce and Pat had cleared out an hour ago, promising to secure Daniella’s pink Vespa for her. The second they left, Daniella had leapt up and headed for her kitchen. She’d started grabbing ingredients and mixing bowls.

“What are you doing?” he’d asked, still concerned that she might have hit her head when they fell and that her actions therefore could be confused.

“I have to bake,” she’d growled. “Do not try to stop me.”

“You might want to rest…”

She gave him an icy glare.

“Or maybe not,” he’d allowed.

Nick was still trying to recover from a day that had gone to hell and back. When he’d seen that huge Hummer heading straight for Daniella, he’d felt a stab of fear. Only now was he able to identify it as such because it had been so long since he’d experienced it.

He’d felt a moment of terror that he wouldn’t be able to reach Daniella in time to save her. He’d gone vamp full throttle and in doing so had saved her life but exposed his secret. Not just
his
secret, but the secret of the entire neighborhood.

Looking back and reviewing his actions, Nick couldn’t think what else he could have done. He supposed Daniella had taken the news well, all things considered. Once she realized she wasn’t in a coma and imagining everything, she seemed to handle his confession without too much hysteria.

Yes, there was the incident regarding her mother’s death, but they’d handled that. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said that vamps had nothing to do with her mother’s tragic accident.

Even then, she’d gotten furious and somewhat scared, but hadn’t totally freaked out. No tears or fits of the vapors.

All this logical introspection was intended to distract him from her comment about being stiff. Hearing those words from her lush lips had a ridiculously powerful effect on him. Even now, his attention was drawn again and again to her mouth.

She paused in her vigorous beating of butter and sugar to stare at him. “Can vampires eat? Real food I mean.”

“No.”

“So you lied when you said you’d sampled my cupcakes.”

His mind flew back to their first meeting, when she’d tried to coax him to sample her wares. He’d known then that she’d be more than he’d bargained for. But he’d been confident in his ability to manage her.

“Yes, I lied.”

She slid a batch of chocolate cupcakes into the oven before turning to face him. “That must be hard. Not being able to eat food. Don’t you miss it?”

He shook his head. Another lie but he was good at that. He’d had centuries of practice.

“So how ancient are you?”

He took her hand and placed it on his chest. “Do I feel ancient?”

He could hear her heartbeat increase, and her voice sounded husky. “I thought vampires were supposed to be pale and skinny.”

“Some are.”

Nick knew he was playing with fire but he couldn’t seem to stop.

*   *   *

Daniella knew she was playing with fire but she couldn’t seem to stop. She could feel the warmth of Nick’s muscular chest beneath the thin cotton of his Henley T-shirt but she couldn’t pull her hand away.

Would it be easier to cope with all this vampire stuff if she wasn’t so darn sexually attracted to him? She wished she could go back to that first day in his bar before she’d fallen under his spell—
spell
being the operative word here. “You’re sure you can’t compel me?”

He nodded. “I tried really,
really
hard.”

“And you’re not compelling me right now?”

“Compelling you to do what?”

“Anything.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “Why? What are you feeling?”

“More affectionate than I should with a vampire,” she muttered, pulling her hand away.

“Have you heard of Waterloo?” he abruptly asked.

She nodded. “The song by Abba.”

“No,” he said curtly. “The Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon versus the Duke of Wellington.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

“I fought in it.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Fought and died. To be more precise, I fought and was mortally wounded, on the verge of death. Then I was turned.”

“Turned into a vampire?”

He nodded.

“Did it hurt?” she asked hesitantly.

“Being hit by a cannonball? Yes. It hurt like the hounds of hell had devoured me.”

She gulped. “And being turned? Did that hurt?”

“I was surrounded by corpses and the stench of blood when I heard this voice ask if I wanted to live. I thought she was a nurse or something.”

“She?”

Nick nodded. “Her name was Magdalene Dolyn. Not that I knew it at the time. Or knew she was a vampire. She asked me if I wanted to live and I whispered yes.” He paused to look at her pale face before saying, “You don’t want to know the details.”

She kind of did. Not because she was into bloody gore or anything. But because she wanted to better understand Nick, if that was possible. “Please tell me.”

He paused as if he was going to refuse her request. Then he said, “She drained me of what little blood I had left.”

“She bit your neck?”

Nick nodded. “Then she cut her own wrist with her fangs and put her wrist to my mouth. She had me drink her blood, replacing my blood with hers.”

“Her vampire blood?”

“That’s right.”

“And that was it? That turned you into a vampire?”

“Yes, but the entire process is not an easy one. The transition period is hell.”

She could tell by the look on Nick’s face that he was not going to say more than that about the process. “Did she turn a lot of wounded men on the battlefield into vampires that day?”

“No. Only me.”

“Why?”

“Because dealing with a fledgling vampire once you’ve turned them is a full-time job. Like I said before, it’s complicated. There’s a lot to learn. She taught me everything.”

Daniella couldn’t decide if it was a little twisted that she felt jealous of Magdalene. “Why did she pick you out of all the dead bodies that day?”

“
Nearly
dead,” he reminded her. “If I’d died it would have been too late. You can’t turn a dead human into a vampire.”

“Did you ever ask her why she picked you?”

His sudden smile was wolfish yet charming. “She’d only say that she thought I was very handsome. She liked the look of my face.”

So Nick looked sexy even with a cannonball shot through his body. Why was she not surprised?

Daniella redirected her questioning slightly. She’d heard enough about Magdalene for now. She didn’t want to hear any details about what exactly she’d taught him.

“So you were alive during the Regency period? What was that like? I love reading Regency romances,” she confessed. “Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, Amanda Quick.”

“I don’t read them.”

“You don’t have to read them.
You
were there. The regent was known as the Prince of Pleasure.”

“A nickname of mine also,” Nick said with a slow grin.

Daniella’s imagination went wild with that bit of information. The rarity of Nick grinning at her again also had a huge impact. She could easily imagine him as a rake or a rogue or both. Closing her eyes, she could envision him loosening his cravat, undoing her stays, lifting her petticoats … oh
yeah.

She already knew how talented Nick was at the art of pleasuring a woman. Her head was filled with the image of him carrying her to a huge bed in some drafty castle or elegant manor house.

Or maybe he’d take her on his mahogany desk in his library the same way he’d lifted her onto her stainless-steel worktable in her shop. Only in her ongoing fantasy he continued his seduction, loosening the fastening of his ultra-tight Regency buff breeches and freeing his manhood before sliding into her slick vagina. No, her slick womanly passage that tightened around him with each powerful thrust.

The kitchen timer going off abruptly brought her back from her fantasy. She could feel her body responding to the seductive images of her fertile imagination. If her response was this powerful without him being able to compel her, she was afraid to think what it would be like if he could intensify her urges and make them reality.

Hell, the cupcakes could burn. She needed to kiss him. Just one kiss. She deserved it after the day she’d had. Just one kiss.

She pulled him to her. She could see the surprise on his face and in those sexy gray eyes of his. Then she closed her eyes and parted her lips. Lips that she pressed to his.

Despite being startled, Nick responded quickly and intensely. Tongue-to-tongue, he welcomed her and beckoned her to further intimacy. Their kiss was raw and elemental. He quickly took control, doing things to her that made her want to beg him for more.

He gave her more. He cupped the back of her head with one hand while sliding his other hand down to cup her bottom and squeeze. His touch was hungry and desperate. She could feel his arousal against her. He clearly wanted her as much as she wanted him.

The piercing wail of the smoke detector above them made her ears ring and was the only thing that could make her step away from him. She rushed to the kitchen and the oven, but there was no saving the crispy cupcakes. She turned on the vent fan over the stove to get the smoke out.

She welcomed the baking disaster as a distraction. Otherwise she could be having sex with a vampire right now. Was that even possible?

It had certainly felt possible. In fact, it had felt downright probable.

Okay, the truth was that it had felt inevitable, out-of-this-world meant-to-be kind of stuff. She was talking fireworks and exploding stars with the tantalizing promise of the best orgasm
ever.

Instead piercing alarms had gone off over her head. It was fate’s way of telling her to step away from the sexy vampire before she did something she’d regret.

Daniella tossed the blackened cupcakes into the trash, which was where she should be dumping her naughty thoughts about Nick as well.

If only it was that easy.

“So how are we going to handle this bodyguard stuff?” she said, rather proud of how matter-of-fact her voice sounded considering the R-rated thoughts recently racing through her mind.

“You just go to bed like you usually would,” he said.

“And forget there’s a vampire in my living room?”

“That would be good.”

“That would be impossible,” she said. “You must have a plan.”

“Of course I have a plan.”

“Okay.” She waited. Nothing but silence. “So what is it and why are you so reluctant to tell me about it? It’s because I’m not going to like it, right?”

“No, not right. You go to bed in your bedroom and I stay here in the living room,” he said before adding, “You keep your door open.”

“In your dreams.”

“Partially open.”

“Why? So you can spy on me?”

“So I can detect the scent of a vampire before he enters your bedroom through a window,” he said,

Daniella sank into a dining room chair before reaching for her laptap on the table.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Googling. I thought I heard someplace that vampires can only go where they are invited. I realize I invited you and Pat and Bruce into my apartment. But I don’t intend to invite any other vampires in,” she said, before adding, “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Here, look.” She pointed to the screen of her laptop. “It says right here that one of the old folklore legends is that a vampire has to be invited across a threshold to enter a house.” She paused to look at Nick. “Is it true and does an apartment count?”