Vampire Dragon by Annette Blair Page B

your blood.” He used a corny Transylvanian accent, his attention enough to make her remember the night just passed.
    “At Drak’s,” she said, trying not to be charmed, “we’re modern vampires.”
    “Do you count yourself among them?”
    “No, but you’ll meet actors, writers, giants of industry, people with clout. It’ll be a regular who’s who of vampires in Salem.”
    “So your vampires wear pinstripe suits and ear bugs to talk to invisible friends?”
    Zachary scoffed. “Ear buds .”
    “Ignore the boy, Darkwyn. Yes, some of my vampires are businessmen.”
    “Do they nibble on your neck?”
    “Of course not.” Though she’d let him nibble and nuzzle, lick and suck—oh the memories.
    “What the heck are you two doing?” Zachary snapped. “She’s offering you a job, not herself as a meal.”
    “Zachary, we aren’t doing anything,” Bronte said. “We’re—”
    “Drooling in your hearts!”
    Darkwyn looked from one of them to the other. “Do you two read minds?”
    Zachary slammed the box of cereal into the cupboard. “I know how a man thinks.”
    Darkwyn approached the boy. “Well, you don’t know how I think. Are you a man in a kid suit, or what?”
    Zachary whipped his head around.
    “Both of you, stop,” Bronte said. “Zachary, there’s no pretense with Darkwyn. He’s real—to a fault. What you see is what you get. You can’t blame him for having a gleam in his eye.” She stood to approach.
    “Don’t touch me,” Darkwyn said, raising his hands. “The loathing in Zachary’s expression scares me.”
    “Zachary, go watch cartoons,” Bronte said, and the boy left the apartment, slamming her door and another and another.
    “He’ll watch in Ogden’s apartment.” She grabbed Darkwyn’s lapels and slid them between her fingers. “I may be able to read you, a bit, sort of, sense your needs is more like it, but I still don’t know whether you’ll take the job that I so desperately need you to.”
    “I’ll do it,” Darkwyn said, capturing her hands, silently offering pleasure—at least she hoped that’s what his shuttered expression and bedroom eyes meant.
    “I’ll be Master Vampire to your Mistress Vampiress,” he said, stepping back, “but don’t torture me with those vampire movies. Point me to the nearest stack of vampire books and I’ll learn what I must.”
    “Yay.” She’d like to kiss Darkwyn, but with Zachary acting like a watchdog, she’d wait till they were alone. “I have to get you fitted for a tux and cape for tonight . You can’t spend the day reading. You’ll have to wing it.”
    Wing it! Darkwyn aborted a surprised laugh, grabbed his fire-warm chest, and belched smoke.
    “Now that’s a neat trick,” she said. “Don’t do it in public.”
    “No problem, like nobody’s business, I can wing it.” They flicked glances at each other, given the fact that Zachary had returned and stood in the apartment doorway, arms crossed.
    An hour later, on the way home from the tux shop, in her hearse with Drak’s and Fangs for the Memories advertised on the side, Darkwyn read the bag of vampire books she’d brought.
    “Read fast much?” she asked, truly impressed.
    “Always,” he said. “Little trick that surprised even Vivica.”
    “I can see why.”
    “What torture next?” he asked on their return. “I believe I’d take any kind of torture . . . if you wield it. Puck was wrong that first day,” he admitted. “If I had run, I believe my soul would have missed yours for eternity.”
    Feeling bemused, a smile forming in her heart, Bronte sighed. “I’ll take you through Fangs for the Memories, our fun/horror house tourist attraction, then I’ll show you the fairgrounds before we get you ready for tonight.”
    “No time for a quickie?”
    “You learned that fast. But you couldn’t be quick, given the size of your talent, if your life depended on it.”
    “My life might depend on it. Once you feed a dragon, he needs to eat more