A Venetian Vampire. Michele Hauf

about women from tidying rooms in the morning while the courtesans slept off their nightly efforts in rumpled bliss?

      “Were you born, uh...vamp?” she asked.

      “I was not transformed until my twenties.” The doors opened, and this time he allowed her to walk out first, following her to her room. Once inside, he kicked off his soggy shoes.

      “So, how were you made?” she asked, toeing off her flats. They did nothing for her shapely gams. He’d prefer to see her in stilettos.

      Dante strolled into the small but tidy room and unbuttoned his shirt. It took some finesse to peel off the clinging fabric. He dropped it in a pile near his shoes. After pulling down his trousers and stepping out of those, he turned to stand in nothing but his boxer briefs, which were also soaked and clung to his cock, which quickly hardened when he noticed Kyler’s eyes alight there like heat-seeking missiles.

      “How was I made?” he posited, barely keeping amusement from his tone. “Same as you were. One long bite, the sharing of blood until my heart almost burst and voilà!”

      “Yes, but, that’s not exactly what I meant.” She ran a palm up her neck and glanced away from his crotch. “You can keep your undies on. Maybe I’ll hop in the shower while you...dry off. You can tell me the whole story when we’re both dressed and dry.”

      “You don’t like me wet?” he asked as innocently as he could manage. Anything to distract from her wanting to learn more about his transformation to vampire.

      Kyler shook her head and chuckled. “You try all you like. Those chiseled abs are not going to make me fall to my knees again. I’m over you, you sneaky bastard.”

      “I don’t think I like being called such a thing.”

      “Too bad. You earned it.” She began to pull up her shirt as she strode into the bathroom. “Don’t sit on my bed in those wet boxers. Here!”

      A towel flew out from the bathroom and landed on the floor two feet away from him. The bathroom door closed, and muffled sounds from the fan came from within.

      “A sneaky bastard, eh?” He peeled off his wet briefs and tossed them aside. He wrapped the towel about his hips. “I’ll show her sneaky.”

      Scanning the room, he sought her suitcase and personal items. There were a few things hanging in the open closet. A pair of black pumps sat on the closet floor. Nice.

      She had to keep a purse and passport somewhere. As the patter of the shower began, he eyed the safe inside the closet. A safe cracker he was not. Though if given the proper impetus he’d give anything a go.

      He bent before the square safe and rubbed his fingers expectantly before the dial. But, no. He wasn’t that convinced he’d find any damning information on Kyler Cole. She’d come to steal the Fabergé egg. For a friend? He could understand the monetary reward, but selling the thing would be a bitch. She didn’t seem the sort who had such connections as a fence.

      Yet he knew next to nothing about her. Save that when he suckled her nipples she arched her back and squirmed as if possessed by an exotic goddess. Mmm, he had to do that again.

      No.

      Yes?

      Most certainly he would not avoid the temptation if offered again.

      Pushing aside the sheer curtain, he looked out over Saint Mark’s square and focused on the campanile, the bell tower that stretched more than three hundred feet into the sky. The hotel room offered an excellent view of the entire square, which now bustled with a rainbow of tourists and a mad feeding frenzy of pigeons. He liked a crowd, getting lost among humanity. All those warm bodies rubbing against one another, most never aware that a man who survived by drinking their blood lurked close by.

      It had been a week since he’d had a drink of blood. He didn’t need it any more often than every other week, but he indulged whenever he desired. And much as he could use a long drink of human blood, he would starve himself of that treat for the pleasure of Kyler’s blood.

      And what was that about? It had been a long time since he’d been with a vampiress. More than a century. And he seriously wanted to taste her. To hold her close and feel her heart beat against his chest as her blood slid across his tongue, imbuing that pounding pulse into his taste buds.

      If only she were not vampire.

      Drinking from his own kind was intimate, and some vampires bonded in doing so. It wasn’t necessarily a rest-of-their-lives thing, but it did connect them deeply. And he was about as willing to make that connection with another vampire as he wanted to take another dip in the canal.

      Unless he found the right woman.

      Never going to happen. Dante D’Arcangelo give up all women to settle for merely one? He chuckled at the madness of that thought.

      Pulling the curtain across the window softened the light in the room. He eyed the television remote but shook his head. Instead he sat on the bed and closed his eyes. It took a while, but eventually he could move his hearing beyond the bathroom fan and pick out the individual water droplets that pearled on Kyler’s soft skin. They spattered from her head, dribbled down her glossy hair and then glided across her full and heavy breasts. He should be in there, licking them as if she were drenched with wine.

      But he’d given her reason to distrust him when she’d caught him going through the empty backpack. Now, to earn back that trust, or simply play with her naivety for as long as was necessary until he got what he wanted?

       Chapter 4

      Kyler pulled on the oversize T-shirt that she’d tossed over the towel bar. She should have brought a change of clothing into the bathroom with her, but she’d wanted to get out of the main room as quickly as possible. The sight of Dante standing in wet briefs that clung to his hard-as-steel cock had almost undone her.

      She had only to remind herself of the empty backpack sitting on the closet floor to lose all interest in the sexy bastard. Sneaky and sexy made a terrible combination, so she would remain on her toes. Because...damn. She’d made a promise to another man to bring the egg to him. She wouldn’t renege. He’d given her so much. And he offered her so much more than Dante ever could.

      Stepping out of the bathroom in a mist of steam, she found Dante sitting on the bed, a pillow supporting his back, his hands clasped behind his neck. The position beckoned her gaze to his chest and abs. Tight and hard, a landscape that demanded an assessment from her fingertips. And then she noticed the white towel had a gap right...there.

      “Your turn,” she said, walking briskly to the table by the window and trying to look busy by opening the room service folder. “I may have used all the hot water. I’m not sorry.”

      “That shirt,” he said as he stood.

      “What about it?” She tugged out the frayed hem from the thirty-year-old rock concert T-shirt she’d inherited from her mother. It was one of the very few things Kyler had kept after she had died.

      “Def Leppard?” He shuddered. “I was around when they were in their prime, but I can’t imagine you were even a thought in your parents’ minds then.”

      “Trust me—I was a thought. What do you think inspired my parents to have the sex that produced me if not ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’? Got a problem with it?”

      “I think they’re an excellent band. But the thing is four sizes too big for you. It doesn’t show off your attributes.”

      “Suck it, vampire.”

      He gaped at her, but too quickly that familiar smirk tugged a corner of his mouth. “I’ve said you’re not ready for me to suck on you.”

      “No, I meant it as—” She gestured dismissively. Did the man not recognize an insult when he heard one? Probably had never been insulted in his lifetime.