Zen and the Art of Vampires

I didn't wait to be told twice. I also didn't examine the wisdom of cuddling up next to a murderous vampire—I clutched my flashlight and scooted over to his bed, crawling in behind him, shivering as I carefully tucked the blanket over me. It didn't quite reach all of me.

He suffered through a good ten minutes of my teeth chattering and shivering before he swore in Italian, sat up, jerked off his leather coat, and slapped it over the top of me, on the outside of the blanket. He laid back down on his side, giving me his back.

"Oh, thank you," I said gratefully, and scooched in until I was pressed against his back, blissfully soaking in the warmth he radiated. It took a few minutes before I realized that he wore nothing but a thin black T-shirt. The blanket itself wasn't very warm, and with his leather jacket draped over me, and my cold body pressed against him, he couldn't be staying very warm in the cool summer night air. I sat up and peeled off the couple of extra layers I'd donned, draping them over our bodies on top of the blanket before curling up behind him again.

"You are a strange woman," he said after a few minutes.

Pressed against him as I was, I could hear his voice rumble around in his chest. It was an oddly pleasing sound.

"So I've been told. If you didn't kill Anniki, and Alec didn't, who did?" I asked, drowsy enough that my mouth operated without its regular inhibitions.

He was silent for a few minutes. "I don't know."

I opened my eyes and looked at the back of his head. There wasn't much I could see but a black outline, but I looked at it and wondered why he was lying, then wondered why I knew he was lying.

"Are you an Ilargi? One of the soul-sucking ones, that is?"

He stiffened for a moment, then spun around inside the cocoon of blankets and clothing, those beautiful eyes of his narrowed as they examined me. "Who exactly are you?"

I blinked in surprise at the question. "You know who I am—I'm a tourist from Seattle."

"No tourist knows about the soul reapers without having some experience with them."

"I spent some time with the Brotherhood people, so I'm not entirely clueless. I found out about the difference between their folk and the Ilargi."

"They're all reapers." He snorted derisively and rolled back over.

I listened to the sound of his breathing, slow and even and rather soothing.

"Was that man who attacked us really going to kill me?"

It took a few minutes for him to answer. "Yes. He was a reaper."

"But that can't be right. They knew I was the Zorya. Why would they want to kill me?"

"You were with me. Go to sleep and turn off that light."

"You didn't answer my question. Are you an Ilargi?"

His sigh was truly admirable, filled with martyrdom. "No."

I bit my lip. Did I believe him? I had believed it when he said he didn't kill Anniki, but everything was pointing to him doing just that. Only… I shook my head at my crazy ideas. He didn't feel to me like he had killed Anniki. Yes, he took down the reaper who attacked us, but that was a self-defense situation. Going on my gut instinct, I judged he was telling the truth.

"Go to sleep," he grumbled again.

I took one last wary glance around the barn, worried that a gang of rats might be stealing up behind me, but there was no sound but the wind. Even the rustling seemed to have died down. I turned off the light and snuggled tighter into Kristoff's back, not even bothering to try to figure out why I felt safe with him.

A soft, breathy groan slowly pulled me out of an erotic dream. I opened my eyes to find myself pressed against Kristoff. No, not just pressed—plastered. Our legs were tangled together, my arm wrapped around his torso, my mouth pressed against a bare patch of shoulder. Somehow during our few hours of sleep, he'd turned toward me, and I had draped myself over him like we were lovers. It was warm in our little cocoon, a lovely warmth that was filled with his scent. I breathed deeply, sleepily trying to analyze it, recognizing somewhere deep in my brain that what I was smelling was a man, sexy, dangerous, and at that moment, incredibly arousing.

His lips moved over my neck, soft little caresses that left me feeling boneless. I tipped my head back a smidgen and bit his earlobe, swirling my tongue around it, noting in an absent way that he tasted just as he smelled—masculine, enticing, and oh, so warm.

A dull wave of red hunger rose between us. My mind, oddly analytical, sensed that the hunger was coming from him, and I was just feeling it.

"You're hungry," I murmured into his ear, pressing a few kisses along it.

"Yes," he said on another breathy groan, his lips burning down my neck. A scrape of teeth had me arching my back, my breasts thrusting themselves wantonly against his chest.