Your Coffin or Mine? (31 page)

“So no atheist bimbos.”

“Exactly.”

“How about a Catholic bimbo?”

He shrugged. “That would work, as long as she behaves herself in public. Oh, and she ought to be demure. My mama likes demure. And she has to be Italian.”

“Those sort of cancel each other out, don’t you think?”

“You’d better hope not. Otherwise, you’ll be getting a one-way ticket to hell along with the rest of the blood drinkers and weres and Others.” He held up the stake. “Make no mistake, I know how to use this. You’ll be my five thousandth kill in the born-vamp category. That’s a record, you know. One whack straight into your heart, a twist to the left, one to the right. The blood spurts and runs all over the floor, and it’s adios afterlife.”

A major rush of ickiness went through me. FYI—while I might be a blood-drinking vamp, I don’t really do the bite-and-suck part all that well. I’d rather uncork a bottle of the imported stuff in the comfort of my own living room. No spurting. No running. No
ick
.

“I take you out and I make SOB history,” he added. He pushed to his feet and rounded the desk.

My feet thawed at the speed of light and I inched backward.

“Go ’head. Run. You’ll get away. For now. But when you come back, I’ll be waiting.”

“And if I skip the country and head for Reno? Or Switzerland? Or the Bahamas?”

“You move into someone else’s territory. Someone who might not have a saintly mama who wants grandchildren.”

Which meant I could go somewhere else and get whacked (
ick
). Or I could stay in Manhattan and eventually get whacked (
ick
). Or I could match up Vinnie with his ideal and NOT get whacked (not so
ick
).

Number three won hands down.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I told him. “Just put down the stake and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

He dropped the piece of wood on the corner of my desk and grinned. “I never had a doubt.”

Also by Kimberly Raye

published by Ballantine Books

Dead End Dating

Dead and Dateless

Your Coffin or Mine?
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2007 by Kimberly Groff

Excerpt from
Just One Bite
copyright © 2007 by Kimberly Groff.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
B
OOKS
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming mass market edition of
Just One Bite
by Kimberly Raye. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming novel.

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50238-4

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