Page 20 of Damian’s Conquest

“She’s not chubby!” Damian protested. “She’s curvaceous.”

“You want my help or not?”

“I do,” Damian ground out, swallowing his annoyance. Why did everybody call a woman with curves chubby? She was perfect.

“Okay then, there aren’t a lot of women named Naomi, so that helps. Let’s see,” Eddie replied.

Impatiently, Damian drummed his fingers on the desk.

“There, I think that’s her. Naomi Sutton. I’ll text you the photo. Let me know if that’s her.”

A moment later, Damian’s cell pinged, and he looked at his messages. Eddie had sent the photo. “That’s her!”

“Great. I’ll send you a picture of her license with her address. Let me see if we have anything else on her.” There was more tapping on a keyboard, then Eddie added, “She works for the Chronicle.”

“The newspaper?”

“Yep, San Francisco Chronicle. She must be a reporter or something, ‘cause it says here that she has a BA in Journalism.”

“Thanks, Eddie, appreciate it.”

“You bet.”

Damian disconnected the call. For a moment, he just sat there, stunned. Was it just a coincidence that Naomi worked as a journalist, or did her job have anything to do with why she’d been in his office? Had she really been there on a dare by her girlfriends, or was something else going on? After he’d kissed Naomi, and Lydia had interrupted them, he’d dismissed his initial suspicions about finding her in his office, but now, knowing that she was working for the San Francisco Chronicle, the same suspicions reawakened. Had she been snooping around? And if yes, then why?

Fuck! In general, he had no trouble reading a person, and was able to tell whether somebody lied to him or not, but when it came to Naomi, his judgment was clouded. Yeah, clouded with lust. Because that’s all he could think of when he thought of her: of her beneath him, his cock in her hot pussy, her nipples in his mouth, his face crushed against her breasts, his fingers on her clit, his hands kneading her heavy tits.

Damian shoved a hand through his thick hair. What now? He couldn’t just show up at her place. No, he had to figure out first, why she’d been at the club, why she’d targeted him. But how? He’d have to think on it. And he couldn’t very well tell any of his friends, not even his twin, or everybody would know that he’d stepped into a trap. A trap set by a sensual and utterly alluring temptress who knew just how to use her body to get what she wanted. He’d even bought her innocent act, her demure behavior when she’d asked if he could dim the lights because she believed her body wasn’t perfect. And it must have been an act, because minutes later, she’d allowed him to bite her. And when she’d ridden him, she’d proved to him how experienced she was, and that a little rough sex wasn’t new to her. She’d enjoyed the things they’d done together. There was no doubt about it.

Was that what she did? Seduce a man for a story she was writing? But what story? He looked around the office. Had she searched the place? Nothing seemed to be out of order. Besides, there wasn’t much of interest to anybody, certainly not to a newspaper. A few financial records, orders for booze and other supplies, wage records for the staff, cash receipts, nothing out of the ordinary.

He got up to open the fridge. There were several bottles of water in it, and behind them were several bottles of blood. It didn’t look like Naomi had opened the fridge and moved any of the water bottles to give her a view of the bottles of blood in the row behind. But it was probably better from now on to lock the fridge in case another human was somehow able to enter the office. He took out one of the bottles of blood, and unscrewed the top. He was about to set the bottle to his lips, when he heard the door open behind him. He looked over his shoulder.

“Morning, Damian,” Patrick said, still dressed in his vampire costume.

Damian turned to him and greeted him before gulping down half the bottle.

Patrick pointed to the bottle. “You have another one?”

“Help yourself.”

Patrick marched to the fridge and took a bottle out of it. “The last crate of the blood in the basement is gone. Did you bring it up? We’ll have to reorder pronto.”

“It was there last night before the party. I checked it myself.”

“Yeah, it’s not there anymore.”

“That can’t be. Are you sure?”

“Yep. The entire crate is gone, not just the bottles.”

Damian exchanged a look with Patrick, and realized that they were having the same suspicion. “You think somebody stole it?”

Patrick nodded. “It’s one thing for a few bottles to be gone, because the staff last night would have had some during their breaks, but why would the entire crate be gone?”

“Let’s check the security tapes,” Damian suggested. “I checked on the storeroom just before nine o’clock.” He let himself fall into the office chair and woke up the computer, logged in, and navigated to the security system. It took only moments to find the right camera and get to the point of the recording where Damian could see himself leaving the storeroom and locking the door behind him.

“That was me checking just before nine p.m.,” he said to Patrick.