Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Whether she liked it or not.
CHAPTER THREE
Roxy
Okay, fine.
Yeah, I should have had wards up.
A few low-level protection sachets.
Drawn a protective sigil on the door itself.
Hung a dark black tourmaline over the frame.
Something, anything.
To be fair, I’d been, you know, meaning to do it since I moved in. I just never got around to it.
Of course, though, by the time an evil spirit entered your home, it was too late for such things.
If I hadn’t been so caught off-guard, maybe I could have come up with some sort of spell on the fly. But this particular vampire had been, well, distracting.
By that, I mean he was gorgeous.
You know the kind of good-looking.
That masculine, yet aristocratic, facial structure with a cut-glass jaw, a brooding brow, a straight nose, and sunken cheekbones.
His inky hair was pushed back from his face, and his ice-blue eyes seemed to cut right through you.
That was the reason I hadn’t reacted.
Or, at least, that was what I was telling myself as he flew across the room, wrapping an arm around my waist, and pulling me back against his lean, firm body as his hand slapped over my mouth.
As I tried to make myself feel better for not realizing that the vampire would clearly have ulterior motivations for getting himself invited into my home.
Though, mostly, what I was thinking about as he flew me out of the apartment was how I hadn’t had a chance to pause my show, and now I was going to have no idea where I’d left off when I got back home.
If.
I was pretty sure this was an if I got home sort of situation.
The world whirred around me at the speed we were moving, my stomach swooping the way it might on a carnival ride.
Then, in one swift motion, the vampire was in the backseat of a town car. And I was situated on his lap.
The car flew away from the curb, but the vampire never released me during the whole ride.
I conserved my energy, figuring fighting him was futile in such a confined space. Vampires were, after all, notoriously fast and strong. My best bet was to wrestle away when he tried to get us both out of the car.
The problem was, I hadn’t anticipated how many staff members the vampire had.
The second the car slid into a spot on the curb outside of a massive, historic brownstone, the door was being opened, and we were gliding out, flying up the stairs, then having a door slammed behind us by yet another servant before I could even think of trying to get away.
One blessing, though, was that the second we were behind guarded doors, likely ensconced in soundproof walls, given a vampire’s special sort of diet that often involved a lot of screaming and pleading to have their lives spared, was that the vampire released me.
Not realizing how accustomed I’d been to being carried by him, my legs hadn’t been prepared to hold my weight, and I folded to the floor right there in the foyer.
I was in no hurry to get to my feet even as I watched the vampire’s back, as he gracefully made his way into a room off the foyer, likely expecting me to follow behind.
I went ahead and took a moment to look around.
It was an ornate, cozy space full of original wood with rosettes and intricate embellishments. There was a center staircase leading up to the second floor. The walls had been painted a deep forest green and all of the windows from my vantage point had richly colored stained glass.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the stained glass was a way for the vampire to move around during daylight hours without bursting into flame.
My gaze slid to the man standing just inside the door, burly and suit-clad with dark eyes. “I don’t suppose you would step aside and let me walk out of that door, right?” I asked.
He didn’t bother even to glance in my direction.
“Right,” I said, sighing as I got back to my feet.
Taking a deep breath, I decided I should at least figure out what the bloodsucker wanted from me to make him go through the trouble of impersonating my delivery guy.
My heart ached for the perfectly good Chinese food just sitting on the floor in my apartment, uneaten.
I moved into the front room, finding a study. Or, rather, given the number of built-in bookshelves, a library.
The walls and all of the shelves were painted in a deep slate gray, and the numerous lamps placed about didn’t quite light up the whole space.
There was a black Chesterfield couch situated under another stained glass window. A book sat open on the arm.
Directly forward, set up in front of a fireplace, was an executive desk with two barrel chairs.
The vampire stood behind the desk, patiently waiting for me as I moved into the room.