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And the fucking sound I can feel building in my throat.

I know it’s going to be a moan of pleasure.

I think it might even be worse. That heated sensation that started in my hand—it’s now low down in my belly. It’s almost between my legs. Oh god, I might actually, I think. But honestly I don’t believe it can be true. I’m sure it isn’t, even as it trembles on the edge of breaking inside of me.

And then it does, and I can’t deny it.

I cry out in a way that makes it clear.

My immortal enemy drank from me, and all it did was make me come.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I tell him to fly ahead of me once Greg has let us out of the library. And I say it’s because I don’t want him to burn too badly. But I have an umbrella with me that I could easily use to prevent that. Most of the way is shielded by a series of shop awnings. Really I know he’ll be fine.

It’s just that I’m not fine.

I let a vampire taste me.

More than let him taste me. I practically talked him into it. Like I forgot every fear I ever had, and just fell. Which would be fine, it really would, I could more than likely cope with even something as questionable as that.

If it hadn’t also felt so fucking good I can still feel it now.

It thrums just under my skin, like a second heartbeat. Every cell in my body seems to be blooming and buzzing, as if I have some kind of secret flower garden inside. Picture yourself opening like petals, I find myself thinking, courtesy of some informercial about healing yourself I probably once saw.

And that’s pretty much the last straw.

I step into an alley, and have a little scream.

Much to Phone’s disgust. “Yeah, that will make what you did okay, you dirty bird,” she says. Like fucking what’s-her-face from Misery. Honestly I should really never have let her binge-watch every adaptation of Stephen King’s novels. I feel like she’s taken all the wrong lessons from them.

Unlike him, with Friends.

He’s in love with Chandler Bing.

“There’s nothing dirty about what I did,” I say firmly.

To which she makes a raspberry sound.

“You put your hand in his mouth.”

“Don’t say hand like it’s code for vagina.”

“Well, it might as well have been. I know what your reaction meant.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about it,” I say, though honestly I don’t know how I think I’m going to get away with that. I can still hear the sound I made ringing in my head, all high and almost frightened. I can still feel the way I shuddered—like my body didn’t know what to do with such impossible sensations.

It still doesn’t, truth be told. I’m just not used to feeling that way.

I can barely even admit what it was.

But that’s fine. She can.

“You had an orgasm.”

“Just a small one.”

“Oh, give me a break. That was ten times what you usually manage.”