“You think everybody is hot,” I snapped.

Violet laughed, but Livvy shook her head, tasting the chocolate batter from her spatula before pinning me with her narrowed gaze. “Isadora. You can’t pretend he isn’t. Even you with your no-man-is-worthy attitude can’t pretend he isn’t panty-melting.”

I sniffed and straightened on the couch. “Whether he is or isn’t means nothing. He’s an arrogant ass who hit me with his car.” I pulled down the faux why chinchilla throw on the back of the sofa and draped it over my legs. “Besides, a man with that kind of conceited personality and driving a car like that must be suffering from small man syndrome.”

Violet’s throaty laugh burst out hard and loud. “Are you kidding me?” She sauntered around to Livvy and tried to dip her finger into the bowl. Livvy slapped her hand. “If anyone is swinging around BDE like a fucking pro, it’s that vampire, Devraj Kumar.”

Livvy grinned, her red lips widening as she turned to Violet. “Even his name is sexy.”

“Right?”

Traitors.

I wanted to scream with joy when Clara rushed in, carrying the shopping bag with the pansies inside. She set the bag on the coffee table and knelt down beside me, eyes glittering with excitement. “He said he carried you inside?”

I shrugged. “So? I couldn’t walk.”

“Oh, my goodness, Isadora!” She clasped her hands at her breast, a dreamy glint in her sky-blue eyes. “It’s just like Willoughby and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility when he rescued her with her sprained ankle on the down.”

“Willoughby didn’t hit Marianne with his car,” I protested.

Violet chimed in. “Willoughby was also a total douchenozzle who dumped Marianne for a rich sugar momma.”

Clara frowned. “Oh, right.” Then her expression brightened again. “Then he’s like Colonel Brandon when he rescued Marianne from the rain.”

“This Marianne was a bit of a klutz,” Livvy added before disappearing into the kitchen. “Eighties movies are better, Clara,” she called back.

Exhaling a growling breath, I said through gritted teeth, “I am not Marianne. And that, that man—”

“Vampire if we’re going to be technical.” Violet lifted my foot and stuffed another pillow underneath.

“Whatever.” I huffed out a breath, blowing a strand of hair out of my face. “I don’t need rescuing.”

“Says the Conduit who didn’t use her magic to heal herself at the scene of the accident.”

“Violet,” Clara chastised her twin, “don’t make Isadora feel bad when she’s been injured.” They were polar opposites in just about every way. They both had platinum-blond hair, but Violet dyed hers constantly. Right now it was a vibrant turquoise.

“I don’t feel bad,” I assured Clara. And Violet’s snarky comments never bothered me. Too much, anyway. “I just want to rest here on the couch a bit while I heal my ankle. I just need some quiet.”

She nodded. “I’ll get you some hot tea. That’ll make you feel better.”

I smiled as they both went off to the kitchen, leaving me alone. I heaved out a sigh of relief. I wasn’t about to admit to anyone that Violet’s remarks had bothered me far more than they should’ve. That vampire had unsettled me enough to throw off my magic. Men didn’t throw me off-kilter. Honestly, they barely registered on any kind of barometer of mine at all. Whether for needs, desires, or just plain semi-interests. I didn’t dislike men. I just had no need of them. I could handle all of my needs by myself. Which is why Devraj Kumar shouldn’t have gotten under my skin at all. But he so had.

No worries. At least now he was gone for good.

Chapter 2

~DEVRAJ~

I stood in my new laundry room, holding the white shirt in my hand, staring down at it like it was a bomb. Or venomous snake. Or crack cocaine. Honestly, it might as well have been all three in one.

“Don’t do it,” I muttered to myself.

The mere fact that I was even standing here having this conversation with my shirt was a sign that something was terribly wrong. Hitting the witch on her bicycle hadn’t just tilted my world on its axis. It had blown a city-sized hole in it.

Why?

Because Devraj Kumar never lost control. Never succumbed to temptation. Hell, I never even felt temptation. As a Stygorn, an elite vampire warrior, I’d trained for decades to cull all basic weaknesses. I’d honed my special abilities to razor-sharp precision so the smell of blood or the scent of a woman didn’t send me into a downward spiral that culminated in sweaty dreams of orgasmic proportions. But her scent had.

“Just once.”

Then I would wash it.

I’d stripped off the shirt the moment I’d stepped into my new home two nights ago, right after the accident. Strangely, the compelling need—no, the desperate desire—to inhale her scent from the small stains of her blood on my shirt hadn’t started until the day after. Yesterday.

I’d filled the day with unpacking. A familiar feeling I’d experienced after doing this dozens and dozens of times over the years settled with a hollow thump in my gut. And yet, it wouldn’t be the last. The nature of my job kept me moving from country to country, continent to continent. Wherever the job required my skills and attention. So here I was yet again, stopping off in Ruben’s hometown, wondering if I’d ever fill that longing for a home of my own. A place to dig my roots deep.

My Lamborghini was in the body shop, her bike was being repaired, and Ruben said he’d let me get settled before we met. So what had I spent the day doing? In between unpacking, I’d stalked the laundry room like a crazed serial killer. I must’ve marched past it a hundred times, trying to avoid the temptation in my laundry basket.

“Fuck it.”

I finally, finally, lifted the stained part to my nose and inhaled deep.

Utterly. Divine.

Abort. Bad decision. Very bad decision.

I immediately threw it in with the wash, dropped in two pods of detergent, poured in three cups of fabric softener, and slammed the lid, setting it to heavy duty/hot cycle. If there was a whiff of her scent left on that shirt, I’d have to burn it.

The doorbell chimed.

I jumped like someone had caught me in a crime.

Shit!

Combing both hands into my hair, I laughed at myself. Maybe I’d spent too many months off the grid in Romania, tapping into my natural vampiric instincts. That must’ve been it. I’d gone too deep, living in the Carpathian Mountains, letting the beastly side roam free too long. I’d needed the time to track an elusive vampire gone rogue for the overlord of the Bucharest Coven. And yet, the time I’d spent in the wild seemed to tap into my uncivilized side.

I tilted my head and popped my neck. Time to come back to reality and focus on the new job at hand. The hiss of water filling the washing machine calmed me back to reason.

I heard the front door open and close.

“Dev?” Ruben’s voice and scent carried to me.

Shaking off whatever the hell had just happened, I sauntered through the kitchen and into the living room where he stood staring at my painting of Crann Bethadh hanging over the mantel. I’d commissioned the Celtic Tree of Life from an old Irishman on the island of Inishmore about sixty years ago. He’d made his own paint, mixing thirty different shades of green, and flecked gold-leaf into the brown for the trunk.

That painting along with a few other treasures, like my Grecian vase, my Icelandic wall tapestry, and my white marble statue of Shiva, always moved with me. When I’d gotten the call from Ruben, needing a favor, I’d left Romania immediately and then cleared out my apartment in Paris to make the move here.

It seemed a visit with an old friend for a few weeks was just what I needed before I moved on to the next job. There were other vampire overlords looking for Stygorn to hire in the United States. In the meantime, Ruben and I could catch up, he could show me his city, and I could lend a hand with his current case. Besides, my restlessness for something else, something more, was pushing me harder than usual these days. There was an itch I couldn’t quite scratch.

“Good to see you, Dev,” he said with a smile.

I met him in front of the painting, shook his hand, and pulled him in for a hard hug and clap on the back. “And you, my friend.”

“How was Romania?” he asked, turning back to study my artwork with intense focus.

Ruben Dubois was one of my oldest friends and one of the few of my kind I actually trusted. I shook my head at his three-piece tailored suit in midnight blue, complete with cufflinks and personalized vest.

Ruben and his eccentric vests. This one was the same blue as the suit with silver threading in a seemingly random geometric pattern. But I knew Ruben. Nothing was random with him. Ah. It was the subtle design of the DNA triple helix. Not double like humans. The DNA code for a vampire required a third strand.

“Romania?” I sighed. “Peaceful, if you can believe that. After I’d caught a rogue vampire for the Bucharest Coven. And gotten the book for you, that is.”

Ruben had asked me to find a witch and acquire a rare book in heavy werewolf territory in the Carpathian Mountains. After I’d gotten the book, I stayed on in a cabin for several weeks, finding the solitude comforting but also lonely. It had twisted a bittersweet longing in my breast, though I still wasn’t quite sure what that yearning was for. A desire just out of reach.

“Thank you for doing that job so last-minute,” he said.

“No worries. I was glad to help.”

He turned to the living room, giving me a bright smile before surveying the layout. “The place looks great though you didn’t need to uproot yourself to come here.”

The furniture was delivered yesterday and fit nicely in my new place. I probably didn’t need to rent such a big house, but its quaintness and charm called to me.

“I wanted to,” I said before admitting softly, “I needed the change.”