Page 39 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

They plonk themselves down right between his legs.

And it’s only the towel he’s covering his bits with that spares me.

I get a lot of his enormous hand, and almost all of one endlessly long and strangely plump-seeming thigh, and quite a bit of the very bare-looking stretch of skin between his abdomen and his groin. But nothing too bad. Nothing so horrifying that I shouldn’t be able to shake it off.

I don’t know why I’m suddenly frozen.

I have to force myself to move toward the tub. “Okay, so this is the faucet,” I say as I gingerly reach for it. At which point, I see why this is an issue. He just doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t move. He lets me get even closer to his bare body, without so much as flinching or moving away.

I could stab you now, I think.

But he doesn’t appear to understand this.

He lets himself be this vulnerable with me. He even leans down, closer, closer. The back of my hand almost brushes that soft slide of skin at the side of the towel. I get a wave of his heat—though this time I have no idea if it’s just sunlight scorching. That sliver of air between us is so, so thin.

And it feels strange, supercharged.

I’m grateful when he abruptly speaks. “The water appears to be steaming. Is that your magic?” he asks, so innocently curious, so unaware of what’s going on in my head. It snaps me out of it quick.

“No,” I say in a voice that almost sounds normal. “Just a water heater.”

And he shakes his head. He shows off that unnervingly sweet smile.

“Truly the modern age is filled with surprises. First herds of metal horses and birds streaming across the roads and the skies, everywhere lit by not flame but a kind of lightning, by elect-wrist-city, barriers that are invisible, structures made of stone and as tall as trees, color, color, color everywhere—and then that magical shield, those wonderful drawings within it, those images that come alive…” he says.

Though says isn’t really the way to describe it.

He breathes out every word. He speaks it like poetry.

Phone has to buzz in my pocket to get me to answer him. “Must be pretty disturbing to be thrown into all of this,” I say, with a little forlorn and forced laugh. Truthfully I have never felt less like laughing in my life. I am consumed by a kind of sincerity I didn’t know I could feel.

Just because for a moment, I see the world through his marveling eyes.

I still can, in fact. I sense the embers of it, as he replies.

“Disturbing is not the word,” he says, and I can’t help myself.

“Tell me what is,” I insist, then watch him turn to me.

Those luminous eyes. That guileless expression.

The way he whispers, “Almost as wondrous as you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Phone is the one who wakes me—much to my utter astonishment.

A few hours ago I could barely sleep at all, just thinking about him.

Now he’s actually roaming around inside my apartment, and I’m dozing off like it’s no big deal. You could have woken to find him standing over your bed, fangs bared, I chide myself. But somehow it just doesn’t stick. It rings false now, and once I get up and go look for him I understand why.

He isn’t in some dark corner, planning my untimely demise.

He’s just sitting there, on my couch. And not even in a macho, threatening sort of way. His knees are drawn up to his chest. One of his arms is around them, as if they needed a hug, and the other is holding a blanket in place. To cover his nakedness, I assume, but at the same time it looks an awful lot like he just wanted the comfort.

Especially when he’s got his face turned up to the television like that.

The glow from it illuminates his soft, marveling gaze, his gently parted lips. The way he follows it all—even something as simple as a car commercial. Even just a rerun of Mork & Mindy. Though I suppose the fascination with the latter makes sense in some ways. Mork is learning how to exist in a world he doesn’t fully understand. Mindy is there to guide him.