A Touch of Crimson by Sylvia Day

watch him date other women. She’d never lived with a lover before, let alone with a former lover who had a new girlfriend. Just thinking about Adrian looking at another woman the way he looked at her incited a possessiveness that startled her with its intensity, especially considering how short a time she’d known him.
    She poured herself a cup of coffee and sweetened it, needing her brain cells to hurry up and start firing.
    “You do realize,” Adrian began, “that you can’t continue to straddle your two lives? If you want normalcy, I can see that you have it. Raguel Gadara takes the safety of his employees very seriously. I can arrange for you to move into one of his residential properties. Between work and home and the cessation of your killing, you should be fine.”
    “I can’t quit. Not until I find who I’m looking for. Maybe not even then. I can’t imagine going through life knowing those things are out there terrorizing others, and me not doing something about it.”
    Something flashed in his eyes. Triumph, maybe. “The alternative is for you to stay here, train hard, and focus on hunting.”
    “Isn’t there some sort of compromise? Can’t I live off-site, train on the weekends, and call you for backup when something sets off my freak-o-meter?”
    “Even if I could afford to reserve one of my men for the purpose of identifying classification for you, we don’t hunt indiscriminately. We police the vampires, but we can’t exterminate them.”
    Lindsay’s blood went cold. “Why not?”
    “Their punishment is to live with what they are.”
    “And we humans are . . . what? Collateral damage? We have to live—and die—with what they are, too.”
    The airborne angels began to land. She watched them with both wonder and fury. These beautiful creatures seemed so magical and powerful, yet they were allowing the parasitic vampires to live.
    “We hunt every day,” he said. “We kill every day. Is it such a bad thing that we focus on the ones causing the most damage?”
    She looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Fair enough. Maybe I can join you on my days off.”
    “Raguel hired you for a reason. What position did he hire you for?”
    “Assistant general manager.”
    “A big job at a big new property. I’m certain you’re extremely qualified, but I imagine it’s quite a step up for someone your age.”
    Lindsay licked coffee from the corner of her mouth. “And he’s paying me too well.”
    “Because he expects you to be ambitious, hungry, and willing to put in some long hours.”
    She nodded, resigned. The new job alone would take up all her time. That was one of the things that had made the position so appealing—she might actually get to have a regular life, using her livelihood as an excuse for why she wasn’t hunting as much. A cop-out, yes, but she’d convinced herself that she was taking the best option open to her.
    As angels alighted all around him, Adrian remained the calm center of activity. But he wasn’t the eye of the storm. He was the storm. He was the dark clouds on the horizon, beautiful from a distance yet capable of great violence.
    Lindsay realized she was sitting in the midst of angels, drinking coffee and talking about her new job. Normal, she was not.
    “Okay.” She took a fortifying sip. “Wow . . . All those hours of studying. For what?”
    “I can’t believe you would give up your dream so easily,” Damien said, examining her. “Mortals wither without dreams.”
    “Hospitality wasn’t her dream,” Adrian explained, sounding so sure. “An ordinary life was, or at the very least, a semblance of one.”
    “Is that so wrong?” she asked. She wanted a steady man in her life, the chance to fall in love, hang out with friends, and clock in at a job where she didn’t get coated with ashes. But she also felt guilty for wanting ignorance. What kind of person would rather not know about other people’s suffering just so they could be happy themselves