Chapter 2
TWO
Before she could unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth, he’d begun pushing her sleeve up until it hit the middle of her bicep. His expression darkened as he took in the tiny puncture wounds in the crook of her elbow. “An IV? Are you sick?”
She couldn’t exactly blame him for his alarm. The blood draws had badly bruised her, not because the nurses didn’t do a good job but because she’d always bruised easily. A symptom, she’d learned, of her rare blood type.
Without thinking, she covered the hand holding her arm with her own. His knuckles were rough with scars under her fingers. “It was just a blood test,” she assured him. “I’m fine.”
His attention snapped to her face. She stiffened, suddenly tense under the weight of his scrutiny. “Tell me what’s going on.” As if it had only just registered, he quickly demanded, “You’re leaving? Where are you going?”
Francesca blinked, taken off-guard by the sudden shift in his demeanor.
Casanova had never been anything other than playful and flirtatious with her.
A mite pushy, perhaps, in his charming way, but never demanding.
It was unnerving to realize that she’d only experienced a part of his true personality dialed down so far she couldn’t perceive it.
Worse, she was deeply alarmed to find her knees going watery under that hard, authoritative stare.
“I’m… I’m just going away for a little while,” she answered, embarrassingly breathless. He still hadn’t released her arm, and she hadn’t let go of his hand, and it was all spiraling in a dangerous direction. “To my parents’. It’s no big deal.”
He didn’t look like he bought it. “You needed to get a blood test before you went home?”
“Coincidence,” she fudged. “Can I do my job now?”
His fingers slid down her arm to grasp her hand. Her breath hitched. “Depends. Are you gonna lie to me some more, sugar?”
“I just clean your house,” she replied, unable to find a better excuse to explain why she hesitated to tell the truth. She was a terrible liar on a good day, and when he stared down at her with that stern face, something in her leapt to give him anything he asked of her.
Using her hand, he turned her away from the counter. Away from her job. Away from good sense and all the complicated, dangerous turns her life had suddenly taken.
“I thought we were friends,” he murmured, stepping closer.
Friends. The word hit her square in that soft, vulnerable core he so effortlessly touched.
She almost wished they were true friends. That would make everything a little more tolerable, including her feelings.
But they weren’t.
They were friendly, certainly, and the gods knew she enjoyed his company way too much.
That didn’t make them real friends, though.
He was one of her many clients. She cleaned his barely-used penthouse.
He flirted with her relentlessly, but if she’d ever thought she was special, that dream was thoroughly dashed that night at Georgio’s.
Perhaps more tellingly, she’d seen his bedroom.
It didn’t matter that he appeared to barely use the penthouse.
He’d still had what had to be a custom bed installed, one that came with rings and straps that tucked neatly out of sight when not in use.
There were drawers she’d been warned not to peer into, and it didn’t take a genius to guess why he had a collection of ropes hung artfully on the wall.
She didn’t judge him for any of it. If anything, she was painfully intrigued by what she’d seen. But she also knew that a man who did those sorts of things as regularly as his set-up suggested…
Maybe Casanova was a lovely, caring man, but he wasn’t her man, and she owed him no answers.
Especially when she had a feeling he’d disapprove, if only because it meant she might never come back.
Keenly aware of that fact herself, she decided that she didn’t want to ruin the last moments she spent with him. Francesca gave his hand a gentle squeeze when she said, “I promise, everything is fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“That’s strike two,” he warned. “Keep this up and you’ll see where it gets you.”
Francesca’s eyebrows lifted. Pulling her hand out of his, she reached for her rag. “Oh, so we’re doing that now?”
“I prefer to reward good behavior rather than punish the bad, but if needs must.” Casanova jerked his chin toward the rag. “You’re done for the day.”
“What?” Her back straightened. He’d never been like this with her before. It was annoyingly thrilling.
“I said you’re done,” he repeated in that same authoritative tone. “No more cleaning. You are going to sit that gorgeous ass on my couch and tell me why you’re avoiding my questions.”
“You think my ass is gorgeous?” The words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them. Heat scorched her cheeks. Lunging for her bucket, she began to throw her supplies in as quickly as possible. “No, no! Don’t answer that. I’m just gonna— If you don’t want me to clean, I’ll just—”
Speaking was proving difficult, so she abandoned the effort in favor of scurrying out of the room as quickly as possible.
A muttered curse followed her out, alongside the tap of his expensive shoes on the shiny floor.
“Frankie.”
She stopped abruptly in the entryway.
He hadn’t raised his voice. He didn’t even sound angry. In that split second, it was simply impossible to disobey him not because he terrified her on some level but because the urge to please him seemed to always win out against her common sense.
The heat of him warmed her spine, but he didn’t touch her. “Stay.”
Her throat spasmed, almost like her body fought against what she knew she had to do — say no.
“I can’t,” she rasped.
“Why?” He sounded truly confused now. All the bravado and flirtatiousness was gone, leaving a strange boyishness she’d only ever glimpsed before.
Forcing herself to turn, she looked into his baffled expression when she explained, “Look… I’m sorry. I wish we could really be friends. But I think we both know that’s not possible.”
The chemistry was too alive between them, snapping like an unanchored current, and they were just too different to make that work. Casanova was a wealthy vampire who she doubted wanted anything even close to serious, and she was just… Frankie.
Overworked. Tired. Tragically inclined toward monogamy.
And now there was a new complication: as of last night, she was contractually obligated to stay single.
She thought perhaps she might catch a bit of a reaction in his expression. Rejection, maybe, or resignation. Neither made an appearance. The only change she noted was an alarming sharpening of his features, as if he truly was the predator she fondly compared him to when she came in that day.
“You’re right,” he replied, surprising her. “We shouldn’t be friends.”
In what seemed like another studied movement, he tucked his hands into his pockets. His jaw worked beneath the dark shadow of his close-cropped beard, belying some of his tension, but if she hadn’t been looking for it, he would’ve appeared utterly unconcerned.
“I’m taking you out,” he declared, flashing that bright-white smile.
Francesca had never been so disappointed to be asked out by a crush in her life.
Something in her withered under that glittering gaze.
Even if she could’ve, she realized that she never would’ve taken him up on it.
Not because he was a vampire, and not even because she suspected he was something of a womanizer.
It was because she saw nothing except heartbreak in that smile.
She scrutinized him for a moment, trying to see through the charmer, the outrageously handsome shell.
Her chest ached. Casanova was kind to her.
That was far more than she could say about most of her clients.
She’d miss him, and that soft part of her wailed at having to refuse him when all she wanted to do was earn a glimpse of the real man behind the fanged smile.
Francesca set her bucket down.
Her shoes squeaked against the floor as she closed the small distance between them. He watched her, smile fixed in place but eyes narrowing, as she came to stand directly in front of him.
Tilting her head back, she tried to memorize the shape of his high cheekbones, that strange slash of white in his beard and hair, and the spiky fringe of his black lashes. The silence stretched. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears as she placed her hands on his broad shoulders.
His muscles hadn’t exactly been loose to begin with, but they seemed to snap into place under her tentative touch. The look in his eyes darkened as he waited for her to make the next move.
I probably look ridiculous to a man like him, she thought, biting her lip. Like a kitten strutting up to a lion.
She’d never been particularly bold to begin with, but her knees threatened to give out under that scorching stare. Curling her short fingernails into his button-down, she stretched onto her tiptoes to press a featherlight kiss to his lips.
A sharp intake of breath nearly startled her enough to release him, but heavy hands on her hips held her firmly in place. The prickles of his beard tickled her cheeks when he tilted his head and surged forward, deepening the kiss.
She’d expected the electricity. She even anticipated the rush of flame that consumed her being and melted just about every bone in her body.
Kissing him was luscious and soft and demanding, with those hands pulling her tight to him and his tongue darting out to stroke hers like he’d done it a thousand times.
Francesca just didn’t expect it to knock her brain out of her ears.
Whatever misgivings she had and whatever she’d intended to do with what was supposed to be a small peck were wiped from her mind as soon as his fingers delved into her hair.
Casanova plucked the hair tie from her bun and tossed it aside.
His fingers, tipped in claws, raked through the wavy strands until he found the base of her skull.
He tightened his grip there, using it to arch her neck and angle her exactly as he wanted.
She barely registered the way he walked her backward until her shoulders hit the door.
Francesca gasped. Her hands flew to the powerful cords of his neck and down, past the gaping lapels of his barely buttoned shirt. Blazing hot skin met her palms.
A deep, thrumming growl vibrated his chest. His kisses intensified, his tongue delving deeper and his fangs scraping her lips, bringing a sharp bite of pain to her pleasure.
He gently kicked her right foot aside, making room for one muscled thigh.
He wedged it between her legs and arched his foot, rocking the rigid muscle there against the rapidly dampening gusset of her work pants.
Not entirely sure if she was trying to get away from the shock of friction or get more, she threw herself forward, arms twining behind his neck. He tasted like something she couldn’t put her finger on. It was sweet but complex, almost like caramel — her favorite flavor.
She wanted to lap it up at the source, but she also wanted to see if the rest of him tasted just as good.
A warning bell, faint at first, began to sound when he untied the apron from around her neck. It fell around her waist first, but he managed to take care of that just as quickly despite his preoccupation with sucking on her lip. It pooled at her feet in a cleaner-scented heap.
Stop, her good sense, suddenly returned, demanded. Stop, Frankie!
She wanted to think she would’ve listened, but the truth was she really wasn’t sure she would’ve if not for the disruption of his phone going off.
Casanova hissed into her lips. He didn’t let her go right away. Instead, he hung there, holding her cheeks and nibbling at her swollen mouth, until the call nearly went to voice mail.
“Don’t move a muscle,” he commanded, his voice almost unrecognizably hoarse.
He stumbled back half a step and reached into his pocket. She took a moment to stand there, compelled to follow his order, and admire the flush in his cheeks and the shiny gloss of his lips as he raised the phone to his ear.
She wished she could stay right there, doing as he told her to, so she could get more of those drugging kisses and those fingers in her hair and hopefully that tongue everywhere. But she couldn’t.
Francesca’s hand slid across the door. Finding the knob, she gave it a sharp turn just as he opened his mouth to greet whoever was on the line.
“No,” she told him, firm despite everything. “I won’t go out with you. And this is goodbye.”
A voice came through the line, but he didn’t seem to register what they said. Casanova stared at her, uncomprehending, for the split second she needed to flee.
Deciding that she probably wouldn’t need her cleaning supplies anymore, anyway, and definitely not thinking about how running away made her a bit of a coward, she bolted through the open door.
Running was a bit melodramatic. It wasn’t like he’d chase her. A man like him didn’t do that sort of thing. But she did it anyway.
Francesca jogged down the hall and down the emergency exit stairs, his shout echoing behind her, and promised herself she’d never, ever see him again.
She didn’t think she’d survive it.