Page 96 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“You just drank my blood.”

“And I would like to remain alive long enough to do it again.”

“You’re already dead.”

“I am not having this argument with you while the tide is turning.”

I stare at him.

“Your position is that the tide is more important than what we could be doing right now.”

“My position is that we are anchored in the lee of the Sisters in December with the wind going northeast, and I have pulled two families off those rocks in my lifetime. I am not going to spend the next hundred years being the reason there was a third.” He straightens one cuff. It does absolutely nothing for his dignity. “Also, I would like a bed.”

“You’d like a bed.”

“I have spent four hundred years acquiring an extremely good one, and I intend to use it.”

I consider this, then sigh. “Fine.”

“Thank you.”

“But I want it noted that you chose tidal safety over me.”

“I chose tidal safety for you.”

I shake my head at him. “That’s not better.”

“It is considerably better.”

He gets the anchor up and the boat around, and we come home with the moonlight stretching away behind us. Black Harbor grows larger ahead, two hundred yellow lights on a dark hill. I sit beside Julian with my head against his shoulder and his arm around me as he steers with the other hand. I’m cold and slightly woozy and my throat is going to be a genuine problem to explain to Lucy, and I’m so happy I can barely sit still.

Halfway home, I say, “You said no immediately.”

“I did.”

“And then you told me the truth in under four minutes.”

“I did.”

“Do you know how long that would have taken you in October?”

Julian looks ahead at Black Harbor slowly taking shape out of the dark.

“I wouldn’t have told you at all,” he says finally. “I would have said no, and I would have been perfectly pleasant about it, and you would have gone home believing you had asked for something unreasonable.”

“And now?”

His hand tightens on my hip.

“And now I would like to be asked things.”

I turn my face into his shoulder so he can’t see what that does to me, which is pointless.

He can hear my heart from the road.

CHAPTER 19

The drive up the hill takes five minutes. I’m awake for all of them, which I would like on the record, because I’ve been told twice tonight that I might be woozy.