Bad Vampire by Lauren Dawes (read aloud books txt) 📕

may have had breakfast there too.”

I held my hand up, the one brandishing the croissant, and said, “Argh. No. Don’t tell me all the details.”

Leaning her hip against the counter, she grabbed a pastry for herself. “So how are you feeling?”

I looked down at the sling. “Better than I was yesterday. I guess you’ve heard what happened then?”

She nodded, her silky black hair shifting off her shoulders. “I did. I’m sorry about your truck.”

“Yeah, me too.” I loved that truck. Shoving the rest of the croissant into my mouth, I swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of coffee and stood up. “We should probably get to work, huh?”

“The boss said we could come in at nine.”

“That’s only forty minutes away.”

“I guess you’d better start getting ready then.”

I showered in record time, holding back the yelps as the water stung my cuts once more. Half an hour later, I rolled back through to the kitchen, finally dressed in a pair of black slacks and black blouse. It had taken me twenty minutes to get into them, but I did it, damnit.

Take that, Sawyer.

I found Faline was curled up on my couch, flipping through a year-old shooting magazine.

“I missed this issue,” she said absently, not taking her eyes off the page. She looked up at me. “There’s a great article on cutting and crowning a barrel with hand tools in here.”

I nodded. “If only I had a workshop of my own,” I said wistfully. “Are you ready?”

Standing up in one smooth movement, she eyed my clothes. “No uniform today?”

“I already stand out as a human in our department. Why draw any more focus?”

She smiled and made a smug little noise under her breath.

“What?”

“You said our department.”

Shit. “Slip of the tongue.”

“Or the truth? You like it with us.”

I snorted and folded my good arm over my chest. “Yup, you got me. I love getting attacked by vampires, totaling my truck, and traipsing into Wonderland by accident.” I hope she caught my sarcasm, because my words were dripping in that shit.

“Don’t forget Reaver, who seems to have really taken a liking to you.”

“Ah, yes, can’t forget the sentient sword who’s made it its mission to pop up at the most random times.” I looked around and found it on the kitchen counter. Stalking over to it, I slid it into my belt loop. Damn, I needed to get something better to carry it in.

Faline studied me. “They always say less is more.”

I grimaced. “I might as well take him back to the station this morning. No doubt he’ll pop up again later anyway.”

“True enough. Are you ready?”

Grabbing my badge, I drew it over my head, then looked for my side arm.

“Sawyer told me to tell you he has it. When you got to the hospital, they stripped the weapons off both of you, and he collected them afterwards.”

“Good to know. Are you ready?”

She nodded, and we walked down the stairs together, our footsteps in sync. I sighed. I wished it was the nineties band.

“How’s the neck feeling?”

“My…” I placed my palm against the bite there and winced. “Still sore.”

“A baby vamp gnawed on your neck, but it should heal pretty quickly.”

“You’re sure? I don’t want people getting the wrong idea about me and Sawyer.”

She snorted, and even that sounded sexy. Bitch. “Sawyer wouldn’t ravage your neck and leave you bleeding.”

I raised a brow and pushed open the front door of my apartment building. “Oh?”

Faline gestured to a hot pink Fiat 500. “No. He’d also make you come. He’s considerate like that.”

If I’d been drinking coffee, I would’ve spat it out. As it was, all I could do was gape. She gave me a coy smile. “What? You are attracted to him, right?”

“Only in a platonic way.” I was hedging and doing it badly.

She unlocked her car, and I slid into the soft cream leather seat. “Well, these don’t come as standard,” I commented, looking around the cream-on-cream interior.

“I like what I like,” she replied with a flick of her hair.

“You know what? For a succubus, you are not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Leather, whips, and chains.”

She laughed, and it was a beautiful sound. “Oh, that’s what my spanking room is for.”

“You have a…spanking room?” I swallowed. Now, why did I like the sound of that? “Do tell.”

Faline pulled out into traffic easily, sliding into the flow without so much as a horn blaring at her. “Some men enjoy being spanked. Some women do too.”

“I thought you said you could only feed on male energy.”

“That’s right, but I just happen to like sex with women too. I don’t feed off them. Sex with them is just my guilty pleasure.”

“You sound like you’re breaking all the rules.”

She shrugged. “Not really. I’m old—”

I gave her a look, since it seemed like she was barely twenty-five.

“I look a lot younger than I am.”

Flicking a hair from my slacks, I asked, “So how old are you?”

“I was born just before the breakout of the first World War.”

I gaped at her. “Hot damn, woman.” I shook my head. “Okay, how old is Sawyer?”

“If I remember correctly, he was born in the sixties.”

“Flower child. Got it.”

She grinned. “No, not the nineteen sixties. The eighteen sixties.”

Shock rippled through me then I cleared my throat and asked the question I’d been wanting to know the answer to for ages. “Have you two ever…?”

She looked horrified. “Had sex?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, you’re hot. He’s hot. You could feed off him, right?” Faline still had that deer in headlights look on her face, and I rushed to add, “Forget I mentioned it.”

“I kind of can’t now,” she replied, then sighed. “As much as I would totally love for him to fuck me into oblivion, I wouldn’t let him.”

“Got a boyfriend?”

“No. Argh, could you imagine how hard it would be to feed if I had a boyfriend?”

“I thought it would’ve been easier?”

“We can feed from one source, but that’s like asking you to only have one meal for the rest of your life.”

“Ah, yum, mac