EVEN VAMPIRES GET THE BLUES

slightly to the side and nuzzled a spot behind his ear, where the tendons of his neck met his jaw. All reason, all common sense, all thought but that of the man whose presence drew me disappeared as I licked a spot, then gently bit it.

Paen sucked in air, shuddering slightly as I nibbled the spot behind his ear, swirling my tongue over it once more before withdrawing.

'That is how I would like to bite you. Well, just one of the ways.'

He didn't move, didn't pull back in disgust or triumph, either of which I half expected.

'You are a very honest woman,' he said after a moment's silence.

I frowned. That wasn't quite the response I had imagined to my nibbles. 'Yes. Half elf, remember? It pretty much makes it impossible to lie, what with that whole elves-can't-dissemble thing happening. Plus I've found it's just easier all around to tell the truth. Did you like it?'

'Yes.' Too much.

I smiled.

'Would you like me to reciprocate?' he asked, his breath hot on my skin. I shivered again, a delicious shiver of anticipation and excitement and arousal. Beneath that, a deep, endless need of my own burst into life, consuming me with its power.

'You know, I think I would.'

Heat flared along my neck as his tongue swept across the spot that had been scraped. Pleasure of a nature more profound than just sexual burst into being within me, setting my whole body trembling as his tongue caressed the sore spot, taking with it all the pain and discomfort, and leaving me strung tighter than a concert violin.

'You're hungry,' I said suddenly, wondering how I knew.

'I am.' His teeth nipped my skin.

'Then go ahead.' I waited, my body clenched hard.

'I don't normally—' He stopped, hesitating.

'Don't what? Drink blood?'

'No, I must drink blood to feed.' Paen's eyes had darkened until they were the color of clouds over the moon. 'I don't normally feed from women I respect.'

His words touched me in an oddly endearing way. 'Are you saying you like me?' I asked, wondering why it meant so much that he did.

'Yes,' he answered, his breath hot on my neck.

'Good. I like you, too.'

'It is for that reason that I hesitate,' he said, his lips caressing the skin on my neck. I melted. 'But if you're sure—'

'I'm sure,' I said, pressing myself against his mouth.

'I won't take anything you don't want to give,' he reassured, his tongue flicking across my pulse point.

'Dinner's on,' I said, my head lolling back as his tongue swept across my skin once again, sending ripples of excitement through me. Pain, red and hot and deep, flared from my neck for a second before it dissolved into a pleasure that seemed almost obscene in its quality. I twisted slightly so I could clutch Paen's head, my fingers tangling into his curls as he drank from me.

'Dear god, don't stop,' I gasped, my body seemingly one gigantic erogenous zone as he took life from me.

I won't. I can't.

A familiar rush of lightness raced through me. I struggled against it, clutching Paen's head even harder as my mother's blood kicked in and sent my consciousness flying out of my body.

'No, dammit!' I yelled silently as my ethereal being floated out of the car, Paen's head bent over mine the last thing I saw before I was caught on an astral wind and whipped away from the car. 'Dammit, this isn't fair! Why can't I stay? Nooo!'

I drifted down the road, past houses, up over trees, gaining speed as the wind carried me farther and farther away from my body. There was no moon, so I couldn't see where I was going, but as I was whipped along over fields, housing tracts, and stretches of untouched land, I had a feeling I was heading to somewhere specific.

I've found that time passes differently when you're an astral projection. Either it seems telescoped, running so slow a second seems to take minutes, or it's speeded up like a movie being fast-forwarded. In the time it took me to swear silently (in my astral form, I couldn't speak aloud), I found myself zooming up to a looming black structure, a castle, an ebony mass silhouetted against a midnight sky. Before I could blink, I was whisked through the castle, down stairs, and suddenly plunked down in a rectangular room lined with bookcases. At one end of the room sat a large desk, a man seated behind it, shadowed by the light that illuminated only one corner of the desk. He shuffled through papers, and occasionally peered at a computer monitor as he tapped a couple of keys. He looked vaguely familiar. For a moment, I couldn't place him, but in a flash of memory I realized he was the man who had been arguing with the antique shop owner.

'Huh. I wonder what I'm doing seeing him? It's certainly not the man I'd like to be looking at right this moment.'

Although the words I had spoken didn't make a sound, the man's head snapped up just as if he had heard them. He half stood while scanning the room, evidently startled by my interruption, but I knew that wasn't at all possible. My astral form was soundless and invisible. In reality, I wasn't really there, so how could he see or hear me?

'Uh… hello? Can you hear—whoa! Where did you come from?'

The small monkey named Beppo—at least, I assumed it was the same monkey; I couldn't get close enough to see if he wore the same leather collar—raced across the room and jumped onto the desk. The man had been in the process of sitting back down, but he shot up again at my words, his head turning back and forth as he scanned the room. A chill rippled through me as his gaze approached me. I was suddenly very, very afraid, and wanted nothing more than to be away from that room. There was an aura of something powerful around him, as if he suddenly presented a threat. I tried to tell myself that I was being ridiculous, that there was nothing anyone could do to me in astral form, but my brain didn't want to listen.

I froze when the man's eyes met mine, holding my breath as if that would make my invisible self even more invisible. He held out his arm for the monkey, going still when Beppo scrambled up to his shoulder.

Then he smiled at me. Slowly. With so much menace that a scream built up inside me. Just as it was about to burst from my formless lips, a voice in the distance called my name.

'Samantha!'

The man snarled something and lunged toward me, but my ethereal body was yanked out of the room, whisked back toward the voice that so imperiously demanded my attention. 'Samantha, you will answer me!'

The trip back to my body was conducted much more quickly than the journey out—the world seemed to shimmer and blur, shaking itself for a moment, then suddenly I was sitting in Paen's car, my neck tingling, my body tight and tense as if it had been on the verge of an orgasm.

'Welcome back,' Paen said dryly.

'Hi,' I said, touching my neck. There didn't seem to be any open wound, so I gathered he had some power to heal up any signs he had been dining at Cafe Sam. 'Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.'

'For what, boring you?' he asked, reversing the car, turning so we were headed back into the hills.

'Boring me? No, Paen…' I put my hand on his arm, slightly surprised to find that I was shaking from my encounter with the dark man. 'I was thanking you for pulling me back. I… there was someone I would not care to meet again, and you anchored me when I needed it, so thank you. But I wasn't bored with you—it's not that at all. It's just… I have… oh, it's a little difficult to explain.'

'Is it?'

I sighed, rubbing the chill from my arms. Just being near Paen seemed to drive away the nightmarish quality of my out-of-body experience. 'The truth is that it's all my mother's fault.'

His jaw tightened as he drove. 'Indeed.'

'I didn't mean that it's her fault I'm here, and thus with you—I meant it's my mother's fault because she passed on a couple of elf traits to me. I was born with her pointy ears, elf-tipped eyes, talent for finding lost things, and a really warped version of her ability to do out-of-body trips. Unlike Mom's skill with astral projection, however, mine only hits whenever I'm sexually aroused.'