Free Sweet Last Drop by Melody Johnson

all the vampires to attack and abduct me, I’d found the comedian this time. I shouldn’t complain. Last time, I’d found the serial killer.
    “It’s not you, it’s me,” I said, and the vampire snorted. “If we crash into a tree at this speed, you’d survive just fine, but I’d be dead.” I gave him a long look. “The police would have another murder to investigate, and the last thing your coven needs with a serial vampire on the loose is more attention.”
    The vampire sobered. “We don’t know who’s responsible for the murders, serial vampire or not. Bex will be busy tonight finding out, but despite the murders, I think she’ll make time for you.”
    I blinked. “You’re bringing me to Bex?”
    “You know Bex?”
    I nodded.
    “That’s impossible,” he dismissed. “I know every night blood here.”
    “I’m not from here.”
    A slow smirk widened his lips. “That I believe.”
    The wind whipped my hair around us, smacking him in the face. A deep rattle vibrated through his chest as he breathed in my scent. I watched his fangs elongate and his lips thin like a dog with its hackles raised.
    He looked away, ignoring me to focus resolutely on the path in front of us.
    I gaped. “You haven’t fed yet, but you’re resisting me.”
    He didn’t meet my eyes this time when he spoke. “You’re not intended for me. You could be just what my Master needs to find herself again. I can’t take that from her.”
    “How could I possibly do that?”
    “She hasn’t found a willing night blood in years, not since Walker refused her.” The vampire spat Walker’s name like it was something vile. “She must accept what can’t be hers and be content with finding someone else, anyone else, before it tears us apart.”
    I opened my mouth to correct him, to let him know that I wasn’t what Bex needed. I already had a Master, and I wasn’t willing. But it dawned on me that the only thing preventing him from feeding from me was his intention to bring me to Bex.
    “What’s your name?” I asked instead.
    “You may call me Rene.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “Just Rene?” I needed to know his first and last name to have a hope of entrancing him.
    “Knowing a vampire’s full name is earned, not given.”
    Damn it. “Oh. Why is that?”
    He smirked. “Asking to know my full name is tantamount to a man asking to see your breasts on a first date. I don’t know you well enough to reveal all of myself, and it’s rude to ask.”
    Rene described it like a social nicety, but I suspected the real reason he wouldn’t give me his last name was survival. Knowing and saying a vampire’s full name increased my hold on its mind when I entranced it. Most night bloods couldn’t entrance vampires, but Rene didn’t know that I wasn’t like most night bloods.
    “Sorry,” I muttered. “Far be it for me to be rude while I’m being abducted.”
    Rene laughed. “Valid point. My name is Rene Roland. What’s yours?”
    “DiRocco,” I murmured, deliberately only giving him my last name and determined not to feel guilty for my deception. I was food to him, nothing but meat and blood with a sence of dry humor that he apparently appreciated, but this piece of meat was not being eaten. Not tonight. “Most people call me DiRocco.”
    “It’s lovely to meet you, DiRocco. My apologies that our paths couldn’t cross under more favorable circumstances.”
    I couldn’t imagine a favorable circumstance in which we could have met, but I kept my lips sealed and simply nodded, not trusting my smart mouth to remain polite.
    We stopped in front of an overgrown cave imbedded on a hillside. Vines spread over the embankment and grew along the edges of the cave’s mouth, blurring exactly where the ground ended and the cave began. Rene set me on my feet, but between the thick, impenetrable darkness of the deep woods and my fear of the coming confrontation with Bex, I could already feel the confines of the cave’s walls closing in