I Am Lightning (Laurel Defense Series) by Melanie Miro Page B

great nuisance.
    I frowned.  He didn’t have a very easy existence.  “Drop your keys on the floor.  I don’t want to lift those quilts until it’s absolutely necessary,” I said and he did so.  “I’ll be back in a few.”
    Still wearing my PJ’s, I stepped into some rain boots and my raincoat, grabbed my purse and headed out.  The rain was coming down in buckets, and the red and yellow leaves on the ground made for a nice, slippery runway as I slid my way to the car.  The wind shook some larger drops of rain on me from the tree in front of my house and I cursed under my breath.  Rainy days were only good for one thing: sleeping.
    The drive was only five minutes long, but I wasn’t used to driving standard, so I stalled a couple of times, or five.  That made the drive ten minutes long.  Thankfully neither of those times was uphill.  When I got to HQ I bypassed the office and went straight to the infirmary.  Isabelle was at her desk typing on the computer when I entered her office.
    “Abby!  So nice to see you!  Are you feeling well?” she asked, taking in my disheveled, rain-soaked look.  The latest fashion trend, says me.
    “I’m fine.  Listen, Robert says he’s hungry for blood.  Do you have some I can take to him?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t the kind to gossip about her coworkers.  I didn’t tell her that Robert had spent the night at my house, but I was sure she could guess it.  Then I decided that I didn’t care.  I was single and Robert was single, so there would be nothing wrong with us spending the night together.
    Isabelle left me for a couple of minutes and returned with a small cooler.  “There are four pints here.  Put them in your fridge as soon as you get home.  He might need them all.”
    I frowned again.  I was doing that a lot lately.  “Why do you say that?”
    “Robert hasn’t fed as often as he should.  Vampires as young as him feed almost nightly.”
    “Really?   He said weekly…”
    “That’s because he doesn’t like to go out and procure, so he gorges whenever I can get him to actually drink.  He drank the most when you helped him,” Isabelle explained and handed me the cooler.
    “I’ll make sure he drinks,” I said, convinced I could.
    “If anybody can, it would be you,” she said rather cryptically.  I didn’t want to stick around and find out what she meant.  I had a hungry vampire at home, plus I myself was in need of some sustenance.
    For once I had my priorities straight, though.  I went home and managed to stall the car only once when I’d already parked.  I left all the rainy gear to drip on the foyer while I put the bags of blood inside the fridge.  Human blood looked no different than sprite blood, but still, to know that I was handling some human’s blood was a little creepy.
    “Robert?” I approached the small mountain on my sofa with a bag of blood.  “The blood is cold, should I heat it up?”
    “God, no!  That will bring out the flavor,” he said.  I closed my eyes and shook my head.  So gross.  No wonder he didn’t like it.
    “How do we do this, then?”
    “Help me sit up,” he said.  I put the blood down on my coffee table (yuk!) and rearranged the quilts as he sat up slowly.  I snuck in under the quilts holding the bag of blood and trying not to squeeze it.  I arranged myself on his lap with some help because I couldn’t see anything.  Robert held me like he’d done the first time I’d helped him and reached for the bag of blood.
    “I can hold it if you like,” I offered.
    Robert didn’t say anything and brought me closer.  I settled my head on his shoulder and felt his breath on my neck.  The soft sucking sound started and I relaxed.  I’d worried that he wouldn’t drink.  I closed my eyes and took short breaths.  It was beginning to get stuffy under the blankets, but I could deal with it for a little bit.  Robert’s gentle caress over my arm made me get goose bumps.  I reached up