Sleepless Beauties: A Rejected Mates Paranormal Romance (The Vampires Vendetta Series Book 1) by A.K. Koonce (best books under 200 pages txt) 📕

hand on the twisting metal railing. I watch him curiously as he stares out at the ground below. I come closer to the edge. I feel the bitter cold even more than Aston does, but I can’t help but gaze down to try seeing what he sees.

There’s nothing. Only shadows allude to the dark ground below.

What does he see down there?

“Come on,” he says once more. Quieter this time.

Striding out into the night with the wind in my hair and the world open to me on all sides feels like I’m about to walk into the sea. It’s as if nothing surrounds me, and there’s nothing stopping me from going into the ends of the Earth.

Those weightless thoughts are pulled away when Aston opens the door for me and I hold his gaze for only a moment as I walk by. His eyes are brighter than I remember, they feed on me as he gazes.

And then I look away. This building is much newer than the church. An open corridor is alight with silver fixtures that hang overhead. Three are placed throughout the long hall. We stop directly beneath the one in the middle and Aston turns there to go up a flight of stairs. It leads us up to a towerlike landing with a single door.

“This is it,” he tells me.

He steps back and gestures to my room. Kyra’s room.

I turn the knob without hesitation and the space that opens up before me isn’t at all what I expected. A writer’s desk faces the only window. Pale green curtains just like the ones in our bedroom back home frames the view. Pens are perfectly in order to the right side of the desk, and a notebook sits in the middle.

Many notebooks lay on top of one another on a shelf on the side wall, but… that’s it.

“There’s no bed.”

Aston steps inside, but only within the door frame.

“It’s her room, not her bedroom. Each vampire on the High Council has their own space. Rival’s is filled with collections of rare books he likes to display, but never read.” His pretty eyes roll dramatically. “Kyra’s was what she made of it. And I guess she liked to write? Or draw maybe?” He shrugs as he slips his hands into the pockets of his skinny black jeans.

“What’s in your room?” I ask. Mostly because I’m not yet ready to open the notebook staring me in the face.

What if it says… something worse than the name of her killer? What if… what if she mentions me? What if she says what she really thought about our strained relationship?

I don’t want to know about that, and Kyra wouldn’t want me to.

“Um. Records, mostly. I picked a room at the end of the hall here. It shares a wall with Zavia and I know she’s not a fan of… anything fun, really… so I don’t get to listen to them much.”

“She’s gone right now though,” I half ask, half state.

I look back at him and his dark eyebrows lift slightly. “Yeah,” he nods, his pink hair fanning across his forehead.

My heart does a strange pounding as if even it’s tired of me stalling.

“So, let’s listen to them.”

His eyes narrow on me, but for once since I’ve arrived here, it isn’t a hateful look someone is giving me. It’s one of confusion.

“Didn’t you want to be here?” He lifts his hands to the small amount of personality in this tiny room.

The way he searches my features, I know that he knows. How? How can he know so much with just a glance?

My lips part, but my brain stalls without a logical excuse.

“I got the soundtrack from Underworld I haven’t listened to yet.” His strange statement hangs between us.

“What?”

The excitement in his smooth features makes me smile weirdly. “The movie. I found the soundtrack to the movie.”

Still I stare at him, but my smile only grows.

“Why?” I can’t help but ask.

“Whyyyy? Because every good vampire movie needs a little hate fucking, that’s why!” His smile creeps up on one side, and it’s apparent to me that my sister couldn’t have hated him. He isn’t the cruel man she described as her killer.

He’s just a dork.

And she was just a broken woman.

Neither of them could see the other for what they really were.

His taunting with me is different than it was the first time we met. He wanted a reaction. He wanted to feed. I gave that to him freely, without even trying.

He wasn’t an asshole, he was just hangry.

“Then let’s hear it,” I say, grabbing the notebook on Kyra’s desk with one hand and his wrist with the other.

I guide Aston down the stairs and back to the floor we entered on.

I stop there and when I turn to him, he looks at me so much more intently. In fact… we’re much too close. I stare up at him, our chests brushing lightly.

And then I step abruptly back.

“Which one’s yours?” I motion to the doors, and it seems to take him a moment to realize I’ve asked him a question.

“Uh. Yeah. Right.” He motions to the left, and I follow after him.

We pass a few open doors. Acessa sits on a pale pink mat through one in a downward position as she stretches her long frame. Her curious eyes pass over Aston, and then myself.

Does she know?

She simply smiles quietly.

Aston opens the door at the end of the hall, and he stumbles when he motions me inside. He’s… excited, I think. And he’s a mess because of it.

An adorable vampiric mess.

I slip inside his room to find a velvet blue chaise just in front of the large glossy window. Two shelves frame it on either side, both filled with records.

I turn in a slow circle. Gold and silver records are framed along all the walls, from singers and bands that have long since passed.

“How did you get all these?” I point, and a smirk kisses his lips.

“Well, I have visited a lot of mansions over the years.”

I