Page 14 of Luna

“How could I forget?” She takes a sip of whiskey, maintaining eye contact over the rim of the glass.

Is she flirting with me? Her hands are caked in her ex-boyfriend’s blood. Remnants of him are on her clothes, and beneath her fingernails, and she was almost eaten by a pack of hungry vampires.

But she is not so terrified that she can’t flirt?

This woman is an enigma. A code I need to crack. A delicacy I need to taste.

Without meaning to, I allow my eyes to graze her throat, the swell of her breasts, that spot where her shirt reveals the soft flesh of her side.

How I want to drag my tongue over that spot. Bite it. Tease it. Hear her whisper my name as I draw blood from it and suck, and suck.

“Are you going to explain the box?” She sits in the armchair next to the fireplace and taps her short fingernails on the whiskey glass.

“The box…” I take the chair opposite her, lean back, and cross one leg over the other. “What would you like to know?”

She frowns and adjusts her glasses on her nose. Catching sight of her blood-stained fingers, she turns her hand over, studying it in the glowing light of the fireplace.

“You killed Steven.” Her voice is strangely calm.

“I have already admitted as much,” I reply slowly.

Luna takes another sip of whiskey, still wincing at it. “Did he really run away with that woman?” She seems more curious that afraid, and this is not what I expected.

I do not answer her. I do not need to.

She nods in understanding. “Did she even exist?”

“She did not.”

“But the police… Steven’s car?” She takes a bigger sip this time.

A chuckle builds in my throat. She has no comprehension of who I am or of the hold I have on this city. “I have contacts. I can make things happen.”

She leans forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. Then sits back again. She does not seem comfortable.

What must it be like to never be comfortable? To always feel something never nothing?

“So, you... kidnapped him?”

I tilt my head in answer to her question.

“Why?” She meets my eyes as she asks this.

“Because he deserved it.” I stand and walk over to the fireplace, resting my glass on the mantlepiece. “He disrespected you one too many times and, unfortunately for him, I was there to witness it. In all honesty, I should have done it sooner. And for that, I apologize.”

Luna raises her eyebrows. She has a defiant expression on her face, and it makes me wonder why she looked so different when she spoke to Steven. How can she stand up to a vampire and not to a weak, pathetic human? Perhaps because she can tell that while I could hurt her – end her life in a second if I chose – I would not. I could not ever cause her harm.

“You’re a vampire,” she says. “Why do you care what happens to me? A human?”

I’m staring into the flames, remembering the way she cried. My gut twists with displeasure, but I cannot answer her because, honestly, I have no idea why I care.

When I started watching her, she meant nothing to me.

She was a job.

Now, she is something I cannot name.

Because I have been on this forsaken planet for five-hundred years, and no one – vampire or human – has ever intrigued me the way she does.