Free Must Love Vampires by Heidi Betts

the tip of his tongue. Worse, he was picturing her tonguing his fangs, and later his cock . . . and that was not good.
    Though he knew better than to think she could read his thoughts, her gaze went unerringly to his mouth and he both saw and felt the hitch in her breath.
    Dammit, how did she do that? Why did she do that? It was as though every time he had an erotic thought about the woman sitting next to him, she had it, too. Which was impossible, of course.
    When she seemed to have her breath back, she lifted her face to meet his eyes rather than staring almost wantonly at his lips and teeth.
    Her words, when they came, were airy and unfocused. “I just thought that since you’re a vampire . . . if you’re a vampire,” she added in case that wasn’t entirely a given, “you might know about other preternatural beings, like werewolves or fairies or—”
    “Elves?”
    She inclined her head.
    “Sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t have an Encyclopedia of Paranormal Creatures.”
    Her brow lifted, and a small smile played across her lips. “I do. Of course, as far as I know, it’s complete fiction.”
    And then she fell serious, those violet eyes darkening as they drilled into his. “But you aren’t, are you? Fiction, I mean.” Her attention flicked back to his mouth and the overly long incisor she’d spotted there earlier. “You really are a vampire.”

Straight
    Chuck couldn’t believe it. She was sitting on the sofa beside an honest-to-goodness vampire. A vampire!
    She was almost giddy with excitement. Sure, there was a fair amount of trepidation roiling in her belly, too, but mostly she was just too darn pleased with herself.
    Even if Sebastian went all feral and ate her for his supper, she figured she’d die happy in the knowledge that she’d been right ! She wasn’t crazy, and she hadn’t let the wild imaginings of her previous stories for the Tattler get her all whipped up over nothing. Sebastian Raines was definitely something.
    Whoo-howdy , was he ever. Was it wrong to be sitting here, drinking his wine, silently writing up bullet points for her article, and lusting after him like a sailor on shore leave? Well, like the female version of one, anyway, whatever that might be.
    “I want to interview you,” she blurted out suddenly, bouncing up on her knees on the soft sofa cushions.
    It had never occurred to her before—probably because she’d never intended to actually come face to face with him. Follow him around his own casino, dig into his past and present, and sneak through his penthouse looking for clues to his otherworldliness, sure. But actually sit down with him and ask him questions directly? It was an underpaid tabloid reporter’s dream come true.
    Careful not to spill her wine in all her sit-up-and-shake puppy dog excitement, she asked, “Would you let me?”
    His dark lashes fluttered over his even darker eyes. “I’ve never been interviewed,” he replied slowly. “Get more requests each week than you can imagine, but I’ve never granted a single one.”
    “I know.”
    And she did; she’d scoured the Internet, old newspapers and magazines, even microfiche, for God’s sake, for any hint of something personal about Sebastian Raines in Sebastian Raines’s own words. She’d found nothing. Oh, there had been plenty of articles written about him—about his properties, his multimillion dollar corporations, even a few with a where-did-this-guy-come-from? tone—but always from an outsider’s perspective.
    With a small inclination of his head, he said, “I told you I’d tell you everything, so I will. But my frankness comes with a price.”
    Chuck’s heart leapt. Whatever it was, she would pay. Did he want actual cash? Probably not, since he had about nine thousand, sixteen trillion more dollars in his bank account than she did, but she was still willing to offer.
    If he was more in the market for a live-in maid, or even a live-in mistress . . . well, she was up for that,