Page 334 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

He felt Kate moving closer to comfort him. He stroked her hair. “I think that vampires…vampires don't… I don't know,” he sighed.

“Don't what?” Kate prompted softly.

“Don't answer to the same God? I don't know. Do vampires serve a different master? I don't really believe that, but ever since I was turned, when I cast my mind out to listen to divine guidance, all I see is a blackness instead of light and my head feels like it's going to split in two. And afterward I throw up.”

“But do you receive guidance?”

“Yes. Usually. But I don't go there often and I don't stay for long.”

Kate was silent for a moment. “Maybe it has nothing to do with God, but it's about your new biology. Maybe your brain works a little differently as a vampire than it did as a mortal. And it changes the way you experience receiving guidance. Because it seems to me like if God cast you out, you wouldn't still be receiving information.”

Dom's eyes burned with tears. He'd been in an existential crisis for almost five hundred years. Hearing a new opinion on the matter—hell, just being able to discuss it, was clearing a film from the lens through which he'd been viewing life.

“Are you all right?” Kate asked sharply.

“Shh, yes. Don't worry—vampires cry blood. It looks frightening but it's normal.”

Her fingers wended through his hair again and he felt a blast of her love surrounding him.

Kate woke still snuggled against Dom. His skin did not look as red as it had the day before and when he opened his eyes and blinked at her, she could tell he was focusing.

“Can you see me?” she asked, stroking his hair back from his face.

“Mmm.” He sat up on his elbows and blinked, looking around the room. “Yes, it's better. It's like trying to see in a room with no lights. If I wait a moment, the shapes come into focus.”

“Dom, I'm so sorry…”

“Enough. No more apologizing. You're forgiven, remember?”

“That doesn't mean I'm not still sorry,” she said, kissing his temple to show her gratitude.

“Let's see how your bottom fared,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her down into what was becoming their favorite position. He stroked her bottom, inciting a delicious shiver through her. “I can't see that well, but I think I left marks this time,” he said matter-of-factly. For some reason that matter-of-fact tone gave her another shiver. It was because she'd deserved those marks—a reminder that she'd had a real punishment at his hands. He let her up and gave her a kiss.

“Kate, do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Run and see if the mail has come yet. It gets dropped through the slot in the front door.”

“I know!” she said brightly, happy to do his bidding.

She returned with the letters and dropped them on the bed. He picked them up and fingered them, not able to read the writing.

“Let me help. Do you want me to read who they're from?”

“No, I've got it,” he said, holding up an envelope from Citibank. He ripped it open, peeled a credit card off the paper and handed it to her. It had her name on it.

“What's this?”

“It's for all the errands I have you run. It's also for you to use for anything you need or want, so long as you text or call me to report what you spent it on when you use it for yourself.”

She blushed at that. She was not going to use his credit card for herself. Although the idea of his willingness to be her sugar daddy made her feel a little giddy.

And she found him ingenious with the way he put limits on it. It was the same as his rule about the wheat. By handing her self-governance with the only qualifier that she must be prepared to justify her actions, he effectively ensured she would never be frivolous about any purchase she made, or pastry she ate. But she would never use his credit card for her own purchases.

He seemed to know that, because he tried again, “I don't care what you buy—I won't question it, so long as you've told me it was important, capiche?”

When she just shrugged, he said, “You can simply text me that you need gas in your car. Or that you want to buy your friend lunch. Okay?”

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