Hot Blooded

famous Arabella Armand. Can't say I'm terribly
impressed."
    "She's usually more charming," Mariann said tightly. "She saves the Hyde side
of her personality for her friends."
    Heather laughed, but Mariann made a sound like a hiccup and ran into the
kitchen.
    "Stay," Bastien said when Heather would have followed. "I'll make certain she
is all right."
    He put a touch of thrall into the command. The girl fell back like a doll.
    "Careful," Emile said as he caught her shoulders.
    Bastien knew the warning was meant for him.
    He would listen, just not right then.
    Â 
    MARIANN'S kitchen was bigger than her cafe, with stainless steel cabinets and
a terra-cotta floor sloping to a drain. Everything about it was oversized: the
overhead lights, the counters, the convection ovens and range. The refrigerated
walk-in required a stepladder, and was stocked with hunks of chocolate and
butter better fit for giants. That such a tiny female ruled this domain filled
him with amusement—not that Mariann ever seemed less than up to the task.
    He found her at the butcher-block island, splitting what had to be a real
vanilla bean with a knife. As she scraped the seeds the smell overwhelmed his
senses: a pungent sweetness that managed to combine homey kitchen and jungle.
His body hardened as only an
upyr's
could, in the space between mortal
heartbeats, with a gut-punching thoroughness that nearly buckled his knees. His
formerly modest Italian trousers lost their perfect drape, while the itching in
his gums warned him his fangs were very close to shooting out.
    "I'm fine," she said curtly before he could speak, lifting her elbow high
enough to blot her eyes. "I have work to do."
    Standing behind her, seeing the prideful stiffness of her spine, he felt as
he had been creeping toward her across her yard, desiring contact so badly he
would risk frightening her away.
    He put his arms around her, gently, slowly, stilling her wrists with his
hands. Her fingers were scarred from years of kitchen work: cut, dinged,
callused, burned, dried from constant washing and cracked along the seams. He
knew she was proud of every imperfection. Many times, when she did not know he
watched, he would see her turn them back and forth and smile.
    "You're not fine," he said, his nose nudging softly behind her ear. This
close to her, with their auras mingling, he could not help but sense her
troubled emotions. He had always respected her privacy, but he was too good a
mind reader not to catch a wisp of her feelings now. "That woman upset you."
    Mariann sniffed out a laugh. "Arabella would be terribly insulted to know you
didn't recognize the Cooking Channel's newest darling."
    Bastien acknowledged no darling but her. Humming at the pleasure of finally
having her in his arms, he drew his lips across the silken skin where his nose
had been.
    Mariann began to tremble. "You shouldn't be doing this. You're my landlord."
    He didn't see what that had to do with anything, but humans did sometimes
have strange rules. He slipped his fingertips between the knuckles of her
battered hands, which caused her little knife to clatter to the floor. Her head
sagged back against his shoulder, baring the line of her throat. Among his kind,
this was a gesture of surrender, sexual and otherwise.
    His voice sank unavoidably to a growl. "I've been wanting to get close to you
since we met."
    Her answer was a broken sigh. "You're making it worse."
    "How can my holding you cause any harm?"
    He kept his tone as soothing as he could, but her neck snapped up again. "The
harm is that I don't want to cry!"
    He let her turn in his arms, but did not release her from the cage they
formed. True to her words, her face was streaked by fresh tears. In spite of
this, or possibly because of it, her soft blue eyes blazed with defiance, her
passion an aphrodisiac to one like him.
    Only her vulnerability called to him more.
    "You haven't been held in a while," he said, his blood surging at the thought
of everything else she might not have done. "That's why my touch makes you
weep."
    Sheepish, she ducked her head. "Tom never was much of a hugger."
    "An unfortunate trait in a husband."
    "I thought so. I mean, I wasn't asking him to hug the world. Only me." She
had been gaining in composure, trying to joke, but her voice cracked on the last
and she made a face. "Honestly, I don't care. He's a jerk, and I'm better off
without him."
    "You are," Bastien agreed. "By a