I rolled over him, settling my weight on his hips, easing his zipper down. I shook out of my little cardigan sweater, dropping it to the floor. He dragged his mouth across my throat, nipping on the sensitive area just below my ear. His hands stayed busy, fingers tracing and touching and testing. He slid two fingers inside me, plunging in, twisting up to nudge at that elusive spot inside me. I yelped and threw my head back as I convulsed around those cool digits, whacking my head against the wall. His thumb circled, using the right amount of pressure to tease. He spread my thighs farther, hitching my free leg over his hip as he entered me in one swift stroke.

I pressed my hands against his chest, stilling as I adjusted to him. He glided his hands over my face, his eyes sweeping over me as I slowly squirmed over him.

Cal kissed my lax mouth as he moved again, thrusting gently at first, then building as I angled my hips in time with his. I dragged my nails down his back, sliding my hands around his butt as the muscles clenched and released. I felt the pressure coiling inside and knew I was close. I raised my hips so he could slide against that spot and cried out when he struck home.

He nuzzled my neck, his fangs scraping the skin over my jugular. I tilted my head, offering up my vein, but he trailed kisses down my chest. He worried the skin above my left breast. I guided my hand around his head, pressing his mouth against my neck.

“It’s OK.”

The whispered words seemed to echo across the empty room. His dark eyes locked on mine, he pressed a kiss over my heart. Then he sank his canines through the skin. I gasped, a pulse of pleasure rippling through me as the blood welled into his mouth. He drew at the wound, and it felt like a pleasantly rough little string linked my core through my belly to the wound, chafing and tugging with every pull. He timed his thrusts with each tugging sip, increasing his pace. My legs tightened around him as the first flutters of my orgasm began.

I thought he would follow. I was waiting for it, for quite some time, relaxed and happy as he manipulated my body into different angles and positions. In fact, I was waiting so long that kisses were exchanged, buttons were pushed, and I ended up falling over the edge again. My muscles tensed to the point of pain, clutching him close as a low purr built in his throat.

Clearly, this was why so many humans were having sex with vampires.

He gave a hard thrust, breaking his grip on my neck to shout out in a language I didn’t understand. I tipped my forehead against his as my own release settled over me.

He slipped his hand up my neck and cupped my jaw. I took his thumb into my mouth and sucked hard. Cal yelped, and I grinned at him. He thrust one last time, and I bit down on his thumb. He gave an exaggerated frown and tugged his hand away.

I snickered as he lowered my back to the floor. “Hey, you bit me first.”

“Yes, but my bite was finessed and served a purpose.” He growled, nuzzling the mark he’d left on my chest. “Your bite was meant to tease me and to remind me how I’ve ignored your apparently talented mouth.”

“Teasing implies that I wouldn’t follow through,” I reminded him, pressing my teeth against the skin just over his nipple.

“You’re going to be the death of me, woman.” He sighed as I wrapped my hand around his neck and pulled him down to me. “The final death of me.”

—

I woke up feeling weak-kneed and sore, which made a certain amount of sense. I’d been drained of blood and treated to a vampire sex marathon. A stay at a four-star spa it was not.

Cal was likewise sprawled on the floor in some sort of postcoital coma. I had ridden him and wrung him out like a sexy washcloth, a thought that made me giggle ridiculously. He looked so big and male, but not out of place, naked on my living room carpet.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t want me going to the Council office on his behalf. So far, this whole ordeal had been pretty tough on Cal, as a vampire and a man—particularly one raised in his time period. I understood that it stung to rely on me so completely, but honestly, why did he want to do things the hard way? The longer his investigation took, the more people would be in danger. He was at risk, and so were Gigi and I. It made more sense to get all of the resources he needed as quickly as possible.

I glanced at the clock. It was only nine-thirty. Gigi was still studying at Ben’s. The Council office was open until two A.M. And if the blissed-out, slack condition of Cal’s face was any indication, he was going to be out for a while. He probably wouldn’t notice if I slipped out …

Better to apologize than to ask permission, I mused. I could get into the office more easily than he could. And I could probably get back before he woke up. I grabbed my purse from the table and stepped silently toward the door.

I looked down at my nakedness and did an about-face toward the stairs. First, I needed pants.

9

When vampires manage to form emotional attachments, they tend to be very intense. Be prepared for possessive behavior and sexual attentions that keep you from contacting the outside world for days at a time … That’s not really a drawback. Just an observation.

—The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

I decided to complete this mission without the Bluetooth. I didn’t want Cal to be able to call and yell at me while I was trying to be all covert. I was, however, carting the largest “Beeline” tote bag I had, which Gigi assured me was the largest mom purse she’d ever seen. But the Council employees were used to me acting as my own sherpa, so no one batted an eye as I lugged it through the staff entrance.

The Council offices used to be housed below a Kinko’s just after the Coming Out, before the upper echelons of the Council were sure that the locals wouldn’t torch their facility. Ophelia had recently moved to a low-key office building in the Half-Moon Hollow Industrial Park, between an insurance claims office and a company that made garden gnomes. Nothing about the building screamed “vampires work here,” which meant that few Hollow residents even knew it was there.

I moved down the gray-carpeted hallway on quiet feet. The halls were empty. Vampires tended to be task-oriented, so they stayed in their offices—it wasn’t like they had to go to the bathroom. And Ophelia wasn’t about to put security cameras in the halls. They might record something.

I started to relax a little as I moved around the familiar space. The soft gray walls were blank, undecorated, except for the bulletin board displaying employment-law information. It could have been any office for any company in the country. The only difference was the suspicious “questioning room” down the hall … and the break-room vending machine that dispensed packets of donor blood.

I crept past the cubicles of the “underlings,” the lowest of vampire administrators who handled meaningless paperwork and ordering office supplies. In general, they were newer vampires who were either desperate to move up in the Council hierarchy or had done something to publicly embarrass the undead community. There were four of them jammed into the little office, which I suspected was Ophelia’s way of winnowing her employees down to the strongest and most cunning.

Cal said that his office was the last on the left in the “visitors” wing for vampires on temporary assignments. It was locked, but Cal was helpful enough to leave his keys in his laptop bag. I popped the door open and snapped it quietly shut behind me.

Even in the dark, I could see that Cal’s office was devoid of personality. There was nothing but a desk, a desktop computer, and a stack of file folders. I flicked on the desk lamp and reached under the lip of the top desk drawer, where there was a flash drive duct-taped to the underside of the desk. I tucked that into my shirt pocket. The file folders went into my tote bag. There were some sample vials and few other odds and ends that I thought he would need, so I snagged them, too.

I turned off the lamp and listened at the door, then eased into the hallway. Cal’s office was the easy part. Ophelia’s office, the last door on the end of the hallway? Not so much. She rarely sat at her desk, but knowing my luck, she was having some sort of meeting in there, and I was going to interrupt a PowerPoint presentation on vampire recycling efforts.

I stood outside the door, my hand on the knob, debating whether I should go in. Did Cal really need those files?

“Suck it up, Scanlon,” I said to myself, sighing. “You’ve come this far.”

I stepped inside and once again was unnerved by the number of Hello Kitty accessories Ophelia had, from the stapler to the mousepad to the phone. It never failed. Even after working with vampires for years, this setup was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen.

Shuddering, I crossed the room and slid into Ophelia’s black captain’s chair. I’d never seen her desk from this angle. I glanced at her computer … Hello Kitty glared at me from the screen. The only thing that didn’t fit the bizarre theme was a small portrait of a sweet little girl with gray eyes and golden curls. Her cheeks were as white and smooth as ivory. She was wearing a little red sweater and a plaid dress. One adorable little ringlet hung in the middle of her forehead. But either the artist hadn’t liked the little girl, or he was really bad at painting eyes. They were cold, calculating, a patch of ice on a lonely country road, waiting to trip up unsuspecting prey. I shook off the little shiver that rippled up my spine.

I turned to the stacks of file folders neatly arranged on the table behind Ophelia’s desk and narrowed down which of her “file piles” I needed. I found files marked “Calix” and “Blue Moon Incidents.” I pulled out the small, portable scanner Gigi had given me for Mother’s Day the year before. It was one of those digital wonder devices meant to save space by eliminating the need for paper records. You moved the wand over the document, and it quickly scanned a copy into a memory card.

Gigi had run out of good gift ideas for me sometime around eighth grade.

I methodically copied each page, placing them back in order so they wouldn’t seem rifled through.

Hearing a thump down the hall, I froze. I heard a muffled male voice and then a closer thud. I tried to shuffle the folders into the right order, but my hands wouldn’t move as fast as I needed them to. I stood and moved away from the desk. Scanning the surface, I looked for anything out of place. I heard another thud, and the voice was farther away this time, fainter. My hands seemed to relax, to still, and I was able to draw my tote over my shoulder.

And when I turned, my bag knocked another pile of files off the table.

“Shoot!” I hissed, falling to my knees to gather the dropped papers. They were neatly stapled and clipped, so it wasn’t difficult to sort which papers went into which folders. I found another file folder marked “Blue Moon, Analysis” and “Vee Balm—Testing.” Another file was marked “Calix.”

On the bottom of the stack, in the very last folder, marked “Beeline,” was a neatly typed dossier. I read the top page aloud: “Iris Scanlon, 29, owner of Beeline daytime concierge service. Owns home and acreage at 9234 Olivet Drive. Marital status: Single. Children: Custody of a minor sibling, Gladiola, age 17. No clear religious ties. Debts … What the hell is this?”

I skimmed over the handful of pages, which included a credit report, my college transcripts, my (blank) criminal record, my personnel history with the Council, and a picture of me unloading blood from the Dorkmobile. The final page was labeled “Observations.”

No good could come of reading that.

My hands shook as I closed the folder. Cal knew me. Or at least, he knew about me. All of those questions he’d asked me about Gigi, my parents, my background—he’d already known the answers. But for some reason that I couldn’t begin to fathom, he’d pretended otherwise. From the moment I found him on the floor, he’d been lying to me.

Why? Was he testing me? Playing with me? Was my personality profile be so boring that he simply forgot who I was? I glared down at the folder in my hand.

“Screw it.” I whipped the folder open again and flipped to the final page, where I saw Cal’s now-familiar bold block handwriting. I huffed an unsteady breath before reading: “Observations: No lasting romantic attachments per Ophelia. Dress: Conservative to the point of chastity belt. Spinster? Lonely? Financially unstable. Looking for an escape from sad little life? Likely starving for any sort of attention, male or otherwise. If confronted, turn on charm. Not a threat.”