Page 10 of Hungry for the Vampire

"Because of this danger," he said, with a slight gesture toward the parking lot, "it will be best if you stayed with me tonight. Todd is not here this weekend, he went back home to visit after the party. It would just be, ah." Roman cleared his throat, and I swore that I saw color in his cheeks. "Just the two of us."

"Roman, I...I..."

"Just tonight." His jaw set. "I will be able to handle the situation tomorrow, and you will not need to worry anymore. But tonight, I am worried..." He exhaled. "I would prefer to make sure that you are safe."

He was serious. He was serious, and it was hard for him to say, and it was killing me that I knew the right thing to do. That I should stick myself into my own bed, alone, to figure out exactly what I wanted, to figure out exactly what I was feeling, before I let myself get any closer to Roman. I knew that I should refuse, and maybe the next day or the day after, I could call him and—

"Okay," I said, my heart skipping a beat, possibly two. "I'll stay with you."

Roman smiled, and then I knew I really was doing the right thing.

Chapter 7

My head was swimming, but I still had stuff to do before I could go to Roman's place. For his sake, I made sure he felt I would be safe running my errands, and he was confident I would be fine during the rest of the day.

"But please," he said, "come to me before the sun sets."

Those words made my blood run hot enough to burn my ears. "I will," I promised him.

I had the day to think. It wasn't enough, but I had it.

It didn't occur to me to ask Roman if he needed a ride, considering I hadn't seen him drive up. Just more evidence of how buried in my own head I was. But he simply escorted me to my car and said he would see me later, and I was already out of the lot before I thought to wonder how he'd gotten here. Maybe he'd just been in the neighborhood.

I drove to campus to drop off the equipment I'd borrowed last week while I tried to burrow through my thoughts. There was a lot going on. I knew something wasn't exactly normal about Roman, but that was the closest I could get without going into some crazy conspiracy theories. Like, for example, that the wolves were his trained pets that he was using to fabricate situations to get close to me.

"Crazy," I said to myself as I drove. "He wouldn't need to do that. He could just talk to me. But maybe that's how they do it where he's from."

That one made me laugh. I tossed through some other theories—that Roman used to be a wolf before he was transformed by a magic spell, or he was on the run from a circus full of highly trained animal acts that wanted him back—but those weren't as captivating as thinking about the other side of this whole thing: Roman and me.

I signed my photo equipment back in at the campus library. It was a few minutes' walk from the lot where I parked, and I didn't remember a second of it. I was too preoccupied thinking about Roman. Because, yeah, at this point there was no way to ignore it. I was attracted to him.

Attracted to him, I thought. To a guy. This was a first for me. I wasn't resisting it, I was just trying to fit into it. This wasn't an idea I was used to, but as I thought back on last night at the party, it was obvious that it had been true from the jump.

As soon as he'd saved me in the woods, I had hardly been able to look away from him. He was just...so enthralling, even in his vampire costume. Maybe especially in the costume.

And then there was the party itself, where I'd originally agreed to go with the idea of hooking up with some girl. I hadn't even taken notice of a single girl there, except the one who had been flirting with Roman, and that only lasted until the wave of relief that came when he brushed her off.

God, it seemed so obvious now. But there'd been so much going on that I hadn't been able to parse through it in my head. And when it finally landed on me, I was at the grocery store with items in my cart that I didn't remember grabbing at all, my body on autopilot. I stopped dead next to the boxes of crackers and my eyes went wide.

I liked him. But not just that, I thought he was fucking hot. Sitting with him on the couch, in the car. Being up against him in the bathroom. Listening to him tell him he'd protect me—knowing it was true. It was making me soft in some places and very, very hard in others.

Which had no place in the grocery store. So I rushed through my shopping and went home, realizing I'd just agreed to spend the night with a guy who had awakened part of me I had never known. A part that I was really, really liking. A part that excited me and made anticipation flood over me in tingling waves.

But what about Roman?

I packed an overnight bag quickly, chewing on my lip. He wanted to protect me, he felt responsible for the wolf thing, okay. Great. I loved that about him. But did it mean anything more?

I didn't know. He didn't seem interested in Azalea at the party, though that didn't mean he was interested in me. The way he looked when we were talking, though...

"Fuck," I hissed, throwing a pair of socks into my bag. I just didn't know, I didn't know how to do this, I didn't know how to tell if a guy was into me—it had taken me this long just to figure out that I was into him.

Okay. Okay. So, fine. I didn't have to press the issue. God knew I wanted to, that I was craving it, craving Roman so suddenly and powerfully now that I'd finally admitted the truth. There were other things at play here though, and with pretty high stakes. Like, possibly my life. I'd like to know if Roman felt the same way as I did, sure, but I had to know what was going on with him and these wolves and everything else.

The day melted away fast. I'd forgotten to eat, and the sun was already setting. The days were short this late in the year, and Roman had been clear: Come to me before the sun sets.

"I'm coming," I said, and that anticipation swept through me again.

The sun was a fat, hazy orange in my rearview mirror as I drove to Roman's apartment. I admit that I looked for wolfish heads on the horizon, stalking me, but I didn't see anything. What I really wanted was waiting further ahead.