Page 29 of Ouch! My Vampire Doms Keep Biting Me
“The sunlight doesn’t hurt you?” Autumn asks in a shy voice.
I hold my hand out to the light. “I wear a really good sunscreen.”
Her mouth scrunches. She doesn’t know whether to take me seriously.
“It doesn’t hurt me,” I say truthfully, “but I also don’t like it. My eyes are sensitive to it, and the heat makes me sluggish.”
She nods, looks up and down the street. She’s barely listening to me. She’s already calculating her next move. Strategizing. My little love is a fighter. What is she fighting?
Turning to face me once more, she says, “Okay. Well. I guess this is goodbye then.”
“Wait,” I say, the oubliette bottle clenched in my fist, hidden in my pocket.
Her hopeful expression is sharper than a stake to the heart. She thinks I’m sayingwaitbecause I want her to stay.
And I do. More than anything.
I’m going to fucking murder Xander.
Autumn’s voice is gentle. “What is it?”
Just pour the oubliette into the glass. Hand it over. Give her a bloody good memory of a night she had with two enticing strangers. Let her believe that she left because it was best for her—the truth. Let her forget everything and live a happy, short, human life.
I clench the bottle tighter in my pocket.
I can’t do it. I can’t give her the oubliette. “You can stay.”
“I can?” She jumps a little on the balls of her feet.
“This is the last night,” I say. “And you won’t remember any of it afterward.”
“Xander said that, too. But I don’t believe you.”
“We’ll make you forget. It isn’t safe to remember, for us or for you.”
She shakes her head. She sounds naive and earnest as she says, “I could never forget this. I could never forget what we did.”
Every woman thinks so. For the first time since Elisabeth, I wish one was right.
“Go out today,” I say, gesturing down the busy street. “Find yourself a job, a place to stay. You can start a new life. Come back here before it gets dark. Not to the main library entrance, to this one. I’ll let you in when you knock. We’ll have one more night together.”
One more night. I can’t resist. I must have her lithe little body. I must feel her shuddering through pleasure in my arms.
“Is Xander going to be mad at you?” she asks.
“Probably. But I’ll deal with him.”
Autumn
Pride. Pride is the reason I’m out on these streets, pretending to look for jobs. I should’ve just told Will that I don’t have ID, that my cash is running out, that my stepfather is a murderer with the kind of connections that enable men with no morals to climb higher into political positions.
Will would’ve understood. He would’ve let me stay.
But worse: he would have pitied me. And that is the thing my pride can’t handle—his pity.
Well, that, and Xander’s derision.
I wander toward the less affluent part of the city. No respectable establishment is going to hire someone without ID, without contact info, without references. Eventually, the glittering, immaculate facade of San Esteban begins to fade. The streets bear more trash, the buildings more graffiti. I pass a diner, a karaoke bar, and some truly depressing-looking apartment buildings. The stench of garbage filters through the heat, wafting on a lazy breeze from neglected alleys.
