The closer Siobhan grows to Ruthven, the more intense her crush on the quirky volunteer police-constable gets. Unfortunately, he’s too enigmatic to be true relationship material. Why’s he so inexplicably averse to midday coffee-dates in sunny cafes, anyway?
However, one intimate evening, a household accident changes everything. As Siobhan’s blood drips from a shallow cut, Ruthven’s self-control shatters just like the broken wineglass. Suddenly, he cannot hold back his own desire for her. The ensuing sex is wild, playful, multiply orgasmic, and … bloody good.
But as Siobhan now realizes Ruthven’s true nature, her passion mingles with alarm. Can she really trust this vampire enough to love him? Or is she in danger of becoming his next meal?
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“Take a nap if you want.” Ruthven shrugged, generous. “There’s a bed entirely free. I told you, it’s mostly just there because the room looks weird without it. I’ll be in the coffin. I don’t sleep in the bed.”
“Yeah? Do you do anything else in it?” Siobhan couldn’t help asking, raising an eyebrow.
“No, I reserve that for old couches with upholstery I dislike,” he murmured, his voice suddenly lower by a half-octave.
She flushed, breathing a little harder. That memory. Jesus. It wasn’t really time for that when he had just said how exhausted he was. Either it would happen or it wouldn’t, right? She did not want to rush anything. Even so, now he was here in front of her again, pale and gorgeous and strong, she found her desire hadn’t abated at all.
Through in the (huge) main bedroom, it turned out Ruthven was right about the trendiness of the coffin-as-furniture. It was part of an artful little coffee-table setup. There was a two-seater couch and stylish vintage chairs arranged on either side of it. The coffin itself was centered on a tasteful vintage Turkish rug. It was disguised but not. There was even a neat stack of books and a recently drained coffee mug beside it, like he had been reading in his coffin a while before falling asleep. If anyone questioned it, it could all be passed off as eccentric décor, an eldergoth’s idea of a kitsch sitting-nook.
The bed Siobhan climbed into was from a later era than the rest of the house. It had a squarer wooden headboard in a more honeyed color. It was slightly musty with disuse but by no means damp or uncomfortable, though it seemed to have old-fashioned layered blankets and square sheets rather than modern duvet covers. The pillows were a dense authentic feather—pity the ducks, Siobhan shuddered—but comfortable.
“Not going to eat me, are you?” she asked, about to fall asleep in a vampire’s bedroom.
“Can’t. Never get the blood out of these sheets. I’m such a messy eater.” Ruthven winked at her. “Plus you’ve had three coffees. All that caffeine in the bloodstream? I’d never get to sleep.”
He made sure she was comfortable and then went to his own hard-looking coffin. How could it be comfy? Siobhan supposed he was used to it. Perhaps it was great for his back.
“Do we say ‘good day’?” she chuckled, through another yawn.
“I don’t usually say anything to anyone,” came his voice from the coffin, which would take some getting used to. “But good day.”
“Good day, Ruthven.”
Siobhan slept. It was dreamless and restorative, just what she needed.
God only knew how much later she rose to the surface of her slumber, breaking the meniscus of consciousness and blinking up into the dim bedroom light. Ruthven was supposedly solar-sensitive, not just generally photosensitive. But he could’ve fooled her with these dimmed atmospheric lightbulbs.
She woke to find him perched on the side of her—his—bed, offering her a mug of coffee.
She accepted gratefully. No comedy mugs, thank god. ‘Fangs for the memories’ in Comic Sans font or ‘World’s Best Bloodsucker’ would’ve been the icing on the very weird cake that was today. From the look of things, he had already gotten up, showered, made coffee, and cleaned his … fangs? This seemed to be his ‘first thing in the morning’. He was freshly-washed, handsome, and slightly damp in an autumny burnt-orange dressing-gown with seemingly nothing beneath but a pair of black pyjama trousers.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“About 2 PM. Plenty of time before I need to be at the station to start the night patrol. Just a nap, not a full day’s sleep, but I’ll be all right on it.”
Siobhan stretched, conscious that she’d slept fully clothed and probably left makeup smudged all over his pillow. Her hair must be absolutely trying to abscond her scalp by now. “Do I look like shit?” she asked casually.
Ruthven snorted into his own coffee. “Yes. A literal gargoyle. No, ‘course not. You look lovely. Did you sleep well?”
Siobhan nodded. She was brightly awake. Warm. Relaxed. And in Ruthven’s bedroom. There was a brief, companionable silence whilst they sipped their drinks together. She looked him up and down in open appreciation.
“S’ nice.” She poked at his fleecy dressing-gown cord with a slightly sleepy toe. “Pumpkin-colored. Halloweeny. I like it on you.” She was not sure quite what she was doing, but it was quite irresistible to poke a little more at the loosely-knotted cord and catch at it between her first and second toe. She yanked it undone with a naughty foot.
“Apparently not,” Ruthven chuckled. “Since you seem to want it to come off me?” He set his coffee aside, and after a significant look at her, obliges. She wasn’t about to object. He slipped it off his slender shoulders, and whoa, whatever police work he’d been doing, Siobhan was struck again at the good things it had done to his body. For all his complaints about the amount of paperwork involved, there was clearly still enough periodic running about to give him that flat middle and subtly-muscled shoulders.
“Everything. Take everything off,” Siobhan heard her own voice telling him.
