THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

job description.”
    Her mind jumped back to that first night at Delano’s house in St. Cloud, after the attack, when Eli nursed her. She’d asked him what else he did for Delano. His answer echoed in her head now.
    Whatever he asks me to.
    She rounded on Delano. “Oh, this just gets better and better, doesn’t it? That’s why he took me out for that romantic little carriage ride through Old Montreal.”
    “I wouldn’t know about any carriage ride.” He pulled the robe on and tied the sash with what seemed like excessive force.
    “Well, doesn’t that beat all? I’ve been squired around town by a paid escort. I think I can safely say that’s an all-time low.”
    “Ainsley, would you please—”
    “Please what? ” She gathered the sheet tighter. “Please stop griping about little details, like how you paid someone to pay male attention to me? For pity’s sake, Delano, you could have just told me you didn’t want me that way.”
    “No. No, dammit, I couldn’t.” He grabbed her wrist in a painful clasp and dragged her close enough to see the turmoil in his eyes. Then he released her just as abruptly and turned away. “I couldn’t.”
    She blinked at his silk-clad back. “Oh.”
    “Yes, oh ,” he said, his voice tight. “God, Ainsley, the night in the lab when Eli interrupted us… I knew I couldn’t take the chance that we’d get carried away like that again. Your blood…” The muscles of his shoulders bunched beneath the silk of his robe. “To be so close, so intimate, and not take your blood … I just couldn’t trust myself.”
    “But you couldn’t tell me this, because then you’d have to explain why we couldn’t scratch the itch. And you knew I desperately wanted you to take my blood.” She twisted the knotted sheet at her breast. “Well, okay, I also wanted wild sex.”
    “Yes.” He ground the word out through gritted teeth.
    “ Shit .” She massaged her forehead and sighed. “This doesn’t make it okay, you know.”
    “Believe me, I know. Nothing about this is okay.”
    Nothing? “I don’t know about that. I kinda liked the sex part.”
    His back did the bunched-muscle thing again. “That can’t happen again.”
    “Why not?”
    “Why not?” He turned to face her. “Because it might kill one of us.”
    She paled. “Are you saying what we did just now … there could be lethal consequences?”
    He shook his head. “Highly unlikely.”
    “But not out of the question?”
    “Nothing is out of the question, since we know so little about how this works.”
    Her heart stumbled. “I thought you said the only way I could be infected was if you … I mean, if the vampire in question were to bite my jugular vein and infuse his own blood.”
    “Correct.”
    “So the fact that you…”
    He arched an eyebrow. “Ejaculated inside you?”
    Ridiculously, she blushed. “That doesn’t pose a risk of infection?”
    “No. Nor of pregnancy.”
    His tone rang with a certainty that reassured. Then it clicked. “So, I’m not at risk, but you’re not so sure about the other way around?”
    “We know so little. I mean, we have a fair idea what happens when your blood is infused directly into the venous system, but the rest…” He shrugged. “We have centuries of experience that says the vampirism virus is not sexually transmitted, but no such data on the Merzetti Effect.”
    “So my crawling into bed with you…” She swallowed. “What we did … what I let you do … it might kill you?”
    “Very unlikely.”
    “But not impossible?”
    “Nothing’s impossible.”
    Her vision narrowed alarmingly and her ears started to buzz. Tinnitus. Vision disturbance. Anxiety. Jesus, she had to calm down before she stroked out.
    His voice cut through her panic.
    “…even in the unlikely event of transmission, who’s to say it would harm me? Maybe it would effect a reversal of my mutation?”
    Reversal? “Omigod, you’re going to have to type and crossmatch your meals for the next while, aren’t you?”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “Oh, I can’t believe I let this happen.
    “It’s not your fault. Once you knew you carried the Merzetti blood, I should have been explicit about the risks of intimate contact.”
    She blinked. “I should have figured it out myself. Dammit, I’m a nurse! But any thought I did give to it was about my safety, and you’d said I couldn’t be infected… Oh, hell, I just didn’t think.”
    To her dismay, she burst into