A Girl's Guide to Vampires

"What the hell?" I asked, pulling the blankets up over my goose-bumped arms. I stayed that way for a good hour, shaking with cold and starting at every noise in the old building, my mind chasing around and around as it tried to analyze the threat Raphael posed to me.

I fell asleep with the light on, not because I expected him to return, but because I succumbed to the childish fear of the darkness.

The soft knock at my door woke me with my heart in my mouth. I swallowed it back down, and croaked to Roxy that I'd be there in a second, glancing at the clock as I slid out of bed. It was just ten minutes after two. She must have stayed for the bands.

"You must be out of your mind," I said as I opened the door, intent on lecturing her for staying out so late dancing with a bunch of pierced teens.

"Probably," Raphael replied, filling the doorway. "But I was invited." His eyes widened as they traveled from my face down to my toes, and back up again. His Adam's apple bobbed a couple of times. He had a slightly stunned look around his eyes that would have pleased the feminine me excessively if, a few hours before, he hadn't been poised to damn me to eternal hell with his bloodthirsty desires.

"You stay away from me," I warned, stepping backward and making the sign of the cross with my fingers. "I don't care how much you want to seduce me and do all those wild, erotic things you were thinking about doing with me—and as I'm on the subject, I have to tell you that some of them are just not physically possible, although I must admit that one or two struck me as particularly interesting—still, you're not going to! You're bad! You're a bad, bad, bad man, and I've changed my mind about you."

Raphael stood in the doorway for a moment, then stepped into the room, leaving the door open. I reached behind me to find something to protect myself against him, but stopped when he held up both hands. There was something… different. He was different. There I was, trapped—helplessly—in a small room with a man who a couple of hours before had scared the bejeepers out of me, a man who wanted to take my soul and suck my blood, and yet he felt… right. Good. Desirable.

Maybe it was just all a nightmare? Maybe I had conjured up Evil Raphael to assuage the guilt I felt about falling madly in love with a man I didn't know? Maybe I really had gone insane, but the man who stood before me now, watching me with concerned amber eyes, was not a man who wanted to do me harm. I rubbed my forehead, too confused to figure it out, knowing only one thing: I trusted him. Despite the warning vision, despite the possibility that he was a vampire, I trusted him.

"Well? What will it be? Should I leave?" he asked, one hand on the door.

"I… er…" I swallowed and took a couple of steps toward him, waiting to see if my inner warning system was going to go off. It didn't. The cheerleaders woke up, though. "I'm sorry. I had a… thing. You can come in."

He closed the door, a little frown pulling his brows together. "I've never known a woman to run as hot and cold as you do. One moment you're stripping me with your eyes—"

"Oh!" I gasped, filled with outrage. "I never stripped you with my eyes! Well, OK, maybe just the once, but you were looking in the other direction, so don't tell me you could see me doing it!"

"—the next, you're recoiling like I'm a hair in your soup. Would you please just tell me what it is you want from me?" He ran a hand through his dark curls as he spoke. My fingers itched to do it for him, but I told my fingers to mind their own business.

"What do you mean, what do I want from you?"

He started to roll his eyes, but stopped himself, running his hand through his hair a second time. My fingers tingled in response. For that matter, so did the rest of my body. This definitely was not the same Raphael that appeared in my vision—this Raphael was tired, and a bit cranky, and sexy as hell. "It's not that difficult a question. You tell me you know who I am and what I'm doing, and invite me to your room in the dead of night. Since you're wearing a garment that molds to your body in a way that is illegal in three countries, I assume you want something from me."

"I don't know what you mean," I said with dignity, crossing my arms under my breasts. That just served to act as a push-up bra, a fact Raphael noted, and expressed his appreciation of by allowing his eyes to wander freely over the large amount of exposed flesh.

He took a step toward me. I took a step back. He might not pose the threat to me he posed in the vision, but that didn't mean I was going to give in to my inner strumpet and throw myself on him the way my body was demanding.

"What's the matter with you?" He frowned as I continued backing up, suddenly lunging forward at me.