Guilty Pleasures   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

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” He took Catherine's hand and raised it to his mouth. A mere brush of lips. Catherine blushed.

He kissed Monica's hand as well. He looked at me and laughed. “Do not worry, my little animator. I will not touch you. That would be cheating.”

He moved to stand next to me. I stared fixedly at his chest. There was a burn scar almost hidden in the lace. The burn was in the shape of a cross. How many decades ago had someone shoved a cross into his flesh?

“Just as you having a cross would be an unfair advantage.”

What could I say? In a way he was right.

It was a shame that it wasn't merely the shape of a cross that hurt a vampire. Jean-Claude would have been in deep shit. Unfortunately, the cross had to be blessed, and backed up by faith. An atheist waving a cross at a vampire was a truly pitiful sight.

He breathed my name like a whisper against my skin. “Anita, what are you thinking?”

The voice was so damn soothing. I wanted to look up and see what face went with such words. Jean-Claude had been intrigued by my partial immunity to him. That and the cross-shaped burn scar on my arm. He found the scar amusing. Every time we met, he did his best to bespell me, and I did my best to ignore him. I had won up until now.

“You never objected to me carrying a cross before.”

“You were on police business then; now you are not.”

I stared at his chest and wondered if the lace was as soft as it looked; probably not.

“Are you so insecure in your own powers, little animator? Do you believe that all your resistance to me resides in that piece of silver around your neck?”

I didn't believe that, but I knew it helped. Jean-Claude was a self-admitted two hundred and five years old. A vampire gains a lot of power in two centuries. He was suggesting I was a coward. I was not.

I reached up to unfasten the chain. He stepped away from me and turned his back. The cross spilled silver into my hands. A blonde human woman appeared beside me. She handed me a check stub and took the cross. Nice, a holy item check girl.

I felt suddenly underdressed without my cross. I slept and showered in it.

Jean-Claude stepped close again. “You will not resist the show tonight, Anita. Someone will enthrall you.”

“No,” I said. But it's hard to be tough when you're staring at someone's chest. You really need eye contact to play tough, but that was a no-no.

He laughed. The sound seemed to rub over my skin; like the brush of fur. Warm and feeling ever so slightly of death.

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