I woke gasping. You know, same old routine. Minute the sun set under the horizon my body lurched into the waking world. At first it felt like getting tossed out a castle window. Or being thrown through a car windshield. But the initial shock of this wakeup call had long since dulled and been replaced with aggravation at being unable to sleep in. Ever.

Yet tonight felt different.

My bed was empty, but her presence lingered. A damp dent in the pillow from her wet hair. Platinum strands left behind. Mascara stains. Scents of mint and orange and cigarettes clung to my sheets. Soft and subtle and mingling with the plain freshness of soap and other, deeper notes of her. Without the shampoo or perfume or cigarettes. She was freshly turned earth, sweet flowers, rich wine, and incense snoke. Traces of her imprinted on my skin, my fangs, pores, in every vein. Her blood pulsed so warmly under my skin. I pressed my face into her pillow, breathing her in deep, aching to take her into my lungs as well.

Which wasn't good. Or good enough. Nothing would be good enough, not till I could taste her lips with my own mouth again. Press her hot body against mine. Bury myself six feet under her. There could be no substitute for this new addiction I found myself welcoming with an open casket.

You're in trouble, old boy.

It's fine. It was fine. I'm fine. It was good she'd decided to go home while the sun was up. Great. I needed time to think. To regroup. Formulate a plan. Itch in my veins soothed, thirst sated, I could finally think clear about this whole mess with the wolves and Dmitri and his barista. Even if the idea of her wandering home alone, weak from blood loss, with an angry pack of werewolves roaming the city streets made me nauseous.

...Oh fangs.

I'd taken so much blood from her it shocked me she could even stand last night. What was I doing just lying-in bed, I needed to check on—

Coffee. I smelled coffee.

Isla had made coffee. Before she left? No. There was music too. Cat Stevens. One of my records. An original Tea for Tillerman. A favorite. And beneath the notes of soothing folk, her voice. Low and husky and chuckling softly. She stayed.

The cocktail of caffeine and music and her roused me from my bed and tempered the anxious beast in my gut. I needed to make a note to do laundry. Give myself fresh bedding. Too many pieces of her lingered there. It made me dizzy.

But first, the coffee.

Pulling on the sweats I'd left for Isla over myself (was she still naked?) I made my way downstairs. There, Isla lounged across my sofa, cradling a mug. The curtains had been pulled open. She was gazing out the window at the homes across the way and the small peaks of the skyscrapers in Center City poking out above them. I swallowed back a surprising knot of disappointment at noticing she wore my bathrobe and was not, in fact, still completely bare.

"Isla?"

She turned to me. Smiling. Twirling a lock of hair. "Evening, sleepy. You feeling okay?"

My throat tightened. Oh gosh, Isla was lovely. Her hair had dried in wild waves framing her chin. Even better, her lips were still swollen from our kissing (a puff of pride welled in my chest). The exposed skin of her legs was smooth and lush and felt so good wrapped around my hips. No amount of soap and water seemed capable of removing the stains of makeup from around her dark eyes, nor the purple circles beneath them. Found myself growing to like the look. It suited her in some incomprehensible way.

Stop that.

"I'll unlive. You stayed the day?" I poured myself a coffee. The rich, earthy aroma managed to clear her from my senses. Hard reset. "You didn't have to do that," though I'm relieved you did.

"Well, the werewolf that beat the shit out of you literally has the keys to my apartment, so..."

"Fangs," I pinched my nose, a new headache already blossoming. I kept offering to take her home. "I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. You can stay—or a hotel. I can pay for a hotel while we get things sorted out. Keep you safe."

She shrugged. "On the bright side, I've officially paid my rent. Maybe Denise will go easy on me if I survive long enough to snitch that her son-in-law is a cheating bag of crap. She's going to love that. Hey, if you drink that, are you going to vomit again?"

The coffee hovered an inch from my lips. Warm. Inviting. Rich. Something, anything, for me to sip on without tearing into her throat agai—sweet hell, where had that thought come from? Normally after slaking my thirst those types of urges subsided for at least a few days. Especially after how much she'd already given. Too much.

I set the mug down and groaned. "Yes."

"Then why do you do it to yourself?"

"It's coffee, Isla."

"Fair enough. Can you do me a favor?"

Swinging her hips in a slow, hypnotic rhythm with the music, Isla joined me in the kitchen. Oh hell. She wore my robe loose. The fabric kissed her soft curves. Carnation petals danced as the collar slid down one of her shoulders. The bandages on her inner thighs visible with every step. I was going to have to wash that robe before I wore it again to keep myself from going cuckoo with wanting her. It couldn't happen again. It was unprofessional. It was stupid. It felt so, so good I couldn't recall the last time I'd felt that good.

"Greg?"

Cleared my throat. "Do I even want to know what it is?"

"Can we, if you don't mind, swing by my place to check on my cat?" she beamed and fluttered her lashes at me. "I don't want to go alone."

Fear. The smallest spike of her pulse as she strained her way through that question told me she was afraid to be alone. I felt it intensely, as if her generously gifted blood jumped to match its giver's rhythm from inside my own veins.

"Of course. I like cats." Even if Isla's looked like it had a horrific case of mange.

Cats. Last night there'd been cats. Lots of cats. Mangy cats. A clowder of strays surging into the alley. My vision might've been shot. My skull had been broken to pieces at that point and I knew my memory of those final moments in the alley couldn't be trusted, but the chorus of growling felines rang vividly in my ears. They'd answered to her. Isla's glowing bones. The cats had been as attuned to her as my own borrowed pulse.

"Thank you," she said.

Isla plucked the full coffee mug from my hand and replaced it with her empty one.

"It's kind of funny, you know," she continued. "That you got hired to snoop on my collection agent."

I shrugged and resisted the urge to run my thumb across her lip print on the mug. "Society is small."

"He was at Irwin's the other night too. Did you realize that? Thought he was going to eat me if he saw me in the locker room. And not in the good way. You know, like you did."

Now that was an interesting fact. Perhaps one you should have seen coming too, old boy. In all my snooping and suspicions of the pack, I hadn't once considered the werewolf woman who'd hired me had been affiliated with the mob. Our Society may be small, but realistically what were the chances of that, in a city as densely crowded with creatures as Philadelphia? Not like all werewolves were related or in the mafia. Honestly, it would've been prejudiced for me to assume so when Mrs. Cabroni hired me. But Denise D'Onofrio was the Pack Alpha. Surely, she kept more than one errand boy? Why then did this one dog stitch Isla and I together like threads—

"E-eat you?" I sputtered, my brain somehow only just catching up to her words. "What part, darling, was the good way? With my teeth or tongue?"

What the hell made me say that? I couldn't stop myself. Just like last night, when our bodies were joined, and I growled into her hair that I wouldn't stop until either she begged me to, or the sun came up. Oh boy, that was a mistake. Being drunk on her blood and pleasure had made me a ravenous pervert. But her taste... she was like no other I'd had before. A mulled wine: warm, rich, spiced, sweet, and intoxicating. I wanted more of her. Already, I craved more.

And what was as intoxicating as it was terrible for our professionalism and my cravings was how much she enjoyed it. Her little moans and gasps. The way Isla raked her nails down my back and thrust up to meet me. How she sang out my name and pleas for more each time she came. She'd been so warm last night. So welcoming. So wet and soft and tight. I grazed fangs against her ear, hooked her earrings under them, and she had laughed and panted that she chose option two: no letting me rest till sunrise (even though she betrayed herself and promptly fell asleep the moment we paused to catch her breath).

Isla hoisted herself up to sit on my counter tops, shaking me out of my spiraling thoughts. She snuck a hand into the hem of my sweatpants and dragged me to settle between her legs. "It's also kind of funny," she cooed, coffee breath hot against my neck. "How you failed to mention you already knew about my vague conjuring and negligence charges for a minor record last night before I mentioned it."

Rats. Isla's chatter I heard from upstairs could've only been with one pesky spirit.

"Phoebe."

"It's a wonder how you manage to stay in business with the all the tea she spills," Isla sipped coffee. My coffee. Licked droplets off her lips slow and sensually. She must've misread my hungry expression, as she continued: "She's downstairs now. Oh, don't be mad at her about it, she was actually really nice to talk to last night."

"Last night?"

Isla shrugged. "Couldn't sleep."

"I wanted you to confess yourself," I said, truthfully. "You already know I don't know what's in it."

She tensed. My, no, her pulsed jumped a beat. "Were you satisfied with my confession?"

Was I? She seemed vulnerable when she confessed to unlicensed conjuring. Sincere.

But Octavius worked dark magic and ritual sacrifice beats. Illegal bloodletting rings. Prohibited curses cast on humans. Why would he be concerned about an entertainment licensing violation stemming from a decade old offense?

I set her empty cup down and slid both hands up her legs, beneath the robe, coming to rest with my palms tucked under her bottom. With a gentle tug I set her on the edge of the countertop – oh fangs, I was going to have to clean these – and pressed my groin against her already wet heat.

"Unless there's anything else you feel the desire to add?"

Silence, thick and cloying, spilled between us. Isla sucked on her lip.

"Nope."

"Of course not."

Isla was a liar. I already knew this. She'd been hiding parts of herself from me since the moment we met. Her relation to the wolves, her talents, the batshit reason she gave me for wanting to hunt down Lily. One moment she acted like all she cared for was the money Lily stole, the next Isla was concerned for the girl's wellbeing more than any other creature around the table at that séance. It was always bad for business to become romantically involved with clients, especially deceitful ones. Last thing I needed was to wake up one evening with a stake in my back.

Instead of a stake, Isla hooked her heels around my knees, locking me in place, and undulated against the throbbing bulge forming in my sweats, my body already aching to feel her clamped around me again.

Son of a gun, what was wrong with me? She didn't even have to speak and yet she was still dragging me off course. Something changed between us. Irrevocably. Giving into my lust for Isla was a levy breaking. Touches and teases spilled freely over my shoddily constructed barriers, washing away my very founded, very logical, mistrust of this woman. And it was so hard to fight against the current carrying us along.

Her throat was ringed in a dark purple bruise. Formed from my bite and from when that filthy mutt had pinned her. I dipped my mouth against her neck. Kissed her there, just above the bandage. She purred.

"What will you confess?"

I pulled my mouth away. "Come again?"

"Plan on it—but I asked, what will you confess to me? You complained about not knowing me last night, but it seems like you've actually got a full dossier. Probably know what I ate for breakfast on the first day of junior high—"

"Pop tarts—no, just coffee, black, like the teenaged girl with something to prove you undoubtedly were."

"I—okay, lucky guess," she pouted. "But the tables have turned, and I don't know a flying fang about you."

"Liar," the word burned in my throat. "You know I'm hopelessly in love with Rihanna."

She smirked. "I want to know more."

Isla accentuated her more by gliding her warm hand up my bare chest, dragging her thumb across my nipple. My hips jerked into her, and she hummed softly, grinding with me, dampening the oppressive fabric between us, unraveling whatever threads of sense were left in me. What had we been talking about?

"Ah, well, that's cause I'm not all that interesting. Just another chump vampire," I tongued the fangs poking out over my lip without permission, unable to concentrate on retracting them. "You? You're fascinating. How many spirits did you conjure as a minor?"

She winced. Struck a nerve there, didn't I?

"Chump vampire private detective," Isla brought the coffee to her lips just as I dove into to kiss her, cutting off my path. I hissed at the offending object. The small noise in her throat suggested she was quite amused by this. Once she finished her gulp and I was already salivating from watching the bob in her throat as she swallowed, she very matter-of-factly asked: "How'd you get there. You told me how you quit working for Dmitri, but why a become a private eye after that?"

A cord of tension knotted in my lower back. Closed my eyes. Another mistake. Faces, frightened and sad and angry, flashed across the backs of my lids.

"Always been good at finding things. People." Hunting, you mean to say, old boy. You were always good at hunting. A dark, shameful pain twisted in my gut for judging Isla's past. Shit. I was a hypocrite. Summoning ghosts without a license, vague conjuring charges, those were nothing compared to the blood I'd spilled. "Seemed like a finally decent way to put that talent to use."

"Sherlock Holmes-stan too, got it."

Teasing. I could do teasing. I liked teasing her. "Always preferred Agatha Christie, actually. Or Hammett."

"Oh," she feigned a disgusted face. "You're one of those people who ramble on about how much better the book was than the movie, aren't you? Ugh. That's it, that's all I need to know, and I am disappointed."

I chuckled earnestly. She deserved it, winning this little game. Instead of answering, I focused my attention on the bandages on her thighs. One was peeling up the edge. Like she'd been picking at it. I smoothed it down. Pressed the course fabric of it into her flesh. She squirmed and replaced her hand on my chest.

Inspected the one of her neck, after that. She didn't fuss or complain. When I dragged my thumb over the bandage hiding my deepest bite Isla mewled and arched her back. The robe fell off her shoulders, flower petals swirling, as she presented her bare chest to me. My hand trailed south, tracing a path from the veins in her neck, over her collarbone, down between her delicate breasts.

I cupped one firmly, unable to resist. She was soft and plush and her nipple hard under my palm. My fangs jabbed sharply into my bottom lip. Isla sighed. Closed her eyes. Pressed her thighs together. Her growing arousal perfumed the air. She had me painfully hard. Just like that. Just at the sight of her tender lips parting and the scent of her desire and the way her blood warmed so gently under my touch. I needed to be inside her. Stronger than any urge for blood I'd ever felt was the sudden, pulsing, intense need to fill her as she screamed my name into the darkness of the night.

"And now," she whispered, voice breathy, "is when you tell me a hundred reasons why we can't do this again, isn't it?"

Oh, for fangs sake.

"I can't think of one right now," I rasped. Couldn't think of anything beyond the need to taste her again.

"Oh? Should I give you some time to collect your th—"

I took her mouth. Grabbed her by the back of the neck and drew her in. Kissed her rough and hungrily and deep, just as I learned she liked it last night, making notes with every little gasp and moan. Isla returned the kiss with enthusiasm, moaning and eagerly gliding her tongue over my sensitive fangs in a way that made my spine so weak—

"Ho! Gregorio! What news have you of my beloved?"