Dead and Gone

that today. I couldn’t pump another strong emotion to the surface if I had all night. “Eric, I like to work,” I said mildly. “I need to get out of the house every day and mingle with people. If I stay away, it’s like a deafening clamor when I get back. It’s much better for me to deal with people, to stay used to keeping all those voices in the background.” I wasn’t explaining very well. “Plus, I like being at the bar. I like seeing everyone I work with. I guess giving people alcohol isn’t exactly noble or a public service; maybe the opposite. But I’m good at what I do, and it suits me. Are you saying . . . What are you saying?”
    Eric looked uncertain, an expression that sat oddly on his normally self-assured face. “This is what other women have wanted from me,” he said. “I was trying to offer it before you asked for it.”
    “I’m not anyone else,” I said. It was hard to shrug in my position on the bed, but I tried.
    “You’re mine,” he said. Then he noticed my frown and amended his words hastily. “You’re only my lover. Not Quinn’s, not Sam’s, not Bill’s.” There was a long pause. “Aren’t you?” he said.
    A relationship discussion initiated by the guy. This was different, if I went by the stories I’d heard from the other barmaids.
    “I don’t know if the—comfort—I feel with you is the blood exchange or a feeling I would’ve had naturally,” I said, picking each word carefully. “I don’t think I would have been so ready to have sex with you tonight if we didn’t have a blood bond, because today has been one hell of a day. I can’t say, ‘Oh, Eric, I love you, carry me away,’ because I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Until I’m sure, I have no intention of changing my life drastically.”
    Eric’s brows began to draw together, a sure sign of displeasure.
    “Am I happy when I’m with you?” I put my hand against his cheek. “Yes, I am. Do I think making love with you is the greatest thing ever? Yes, I do. Do I want to do it again? You bet, though not right now since I’m sleepy. But soon. And often. Am I having sex with anyone else? No. And I won’t, unless I decide the bond is all we have.”
    He looked as if he were thinking of several different responses. Finally he said, “Do you regret Quinn?”
    “Yes,” I said, because I had to be honest. “Because we had the beginning of something good going, and I may have made a huge mistake sending him away. But I’ve never been seriously involved with two men at the same time, and I’m not starting now. Right now, that man is you.”
    “You love me,” he said, and he nodded.
    “I appreciate you,” I said cautiously. “I have big lust for you. I enjoy your company.”
    “There’s a difference,” Eric said.
    “Yes, there is. But you don’t see me bugging you to spell out how you feel about me, right? Because I’m pretty damn sure I wouldn’t like the answer. So maybe you better rein it in a little yourself.”
    “You don’t want to know how I feel about you?” Eric looked incredulous. “I can’t believe you’re a human woman. Women always want to know how you feel about them.”
    “And I’ll bet they’re sorry when you tell them, huh?”
    He lifted one eyebrow. “If I tell them the truth.”
    “That’s supposed to put me in a confiding mood?”
    “I always tell you the truth,” he said. And there wasn’t a trace of that smile left on his face. “I may not tell you everything I know, but what I tell you . . . it’s true.”
    “Why?”
    “The blood exchange has worked both ways,” he said. “I’ve had the blood of many women. I’ve had almost utter control over them. But they never drank mine. It’s been decades, maybe centuries since I gave any woman my blood. Maybe not since I turned Pam.”
    “Is this the general policy among vampires you know?” I wasn’t quite sure how to ask what I wanted to know.
    He hesitated, nodded. “For the most part. There are some vampires who like to take total control over a human . . . make that human their Renfield.” He used the term with distaste.
    “That’s from Dracula , right?”
    “Yes, Dracula’s human servant. A degraded creature . . . Why someone of Dracula’s eminence would want so debased a man as that . . .” Eric shook his head disgustedly. “But it does happen. The best of us look askance at a vampire who makes servant after servant. The human is lost when the vampire assumes too much