Chapter 106: Vampire’s Kiss

What did you say to her?

[I texted, "Why didn’t you come welcome me home? I’m crying."]

A smile pulled at Elias’s mouth before he could stop it.

That’s good, baby. Very good.

System Theta went strangely quiet after that, as if the praise had hit it harder than expected. Elias could almost picture the poor thing spinning in place somewhere inside his head, too flustered to process cleanly.

Then he lifted his eyes and looked at Liora.

"So this is your way of welcoming me?"

She had come into his room empty-handed, late at night, after climbing in like a thief. No gift, no food, nothing in her hands but herself. And on top of that she still wanted to fool around with him?

She could dream.

Liora, who seemed to know exactly where his thoughts had gone, let the corner of her mouth tilt up. Under his stare, she raised one hand.

Elias watched it happen.

Her fingers gave the smallest flick, and a thick stack of cash appeared in her palm as neatly as if she had plucked it out of the dark.

His eyes widened a little. Then they narrowed with amusement, bright and pleased.

"So this is how you used to pick up those women?"

Liora held the cash between two fingers and said, "It is only a small trick. Just enough to make myself more likable."

Elias knew perfectly well what kind of trick it was.

A woman with Liora’s history did not need to master every art in the world, but she needed at least a little fluency in many of them. Different people were drawn in by different things. For some it was charm. For others it was mystery, conversation, taste, music, beauty, wit, a card trick, a hand at billiards, a well-timed compliment, or the kind of confidence that made every room lean toward her. People like Liora survived by knowing a little about everything.

For Elias, none of that was necessary.

Money alone was enough.

He slowly drew one arm out from under the blanket and lifted it toward her.

He was shirtless beneath the covers, and the length of that bare arm caught what little light there was in the room. Liora saw his hand turn palm-up. Then one long finger curled toward her in a lazy beckoning gesture.

She smiled and walked to the bedside.

Nothing about her expression suggested confusion. She knew exactly what she was doing.

In the middle of the night, inside her own house, she was standing alone in a bedroom with her sister’s lover.

Her mind had almost never felt clearer.

She reached the bed and stopped. The blanket brushed her fingertips. Elias lay right in front of her, glasses off, with half his face tucked under the covers. Without them, there was nothing to interrupt the full force of that face. He looked younger like this. Softer. Not harmless, but softer.

He glanced up at her from the pillow and said, "Why are you standing so straight? Bend down."

Liora obliged.

"Lower."

She bent a little more.

"Lower."

She moved again, slower this time.

"Even lower."

That was where she stopped.

For Liora, the space between them now felt like the last piece of ground before a cliff edge. One more step and she would be falling for real. She had not come here without control. She had come here to play with fire while keeping enough distance to tell herself she could still turn back.

She was still rational. Still alert. Still holding the line.

Elias saw it at once and laughed inwardly.

All talk, no movement.

He could have guessed.

The next instant, he lifted his arm and hooked it around the back of her neck, pulling her down before she had time to react.

It was not forceful enough to truly trap her. If she wanted to break free, she could have. That was obvious to both of them.

She did not.

If he was going to welcome her with that much enthusiasm, it would have been rude to refuse. Besides, in Liora’s mind, being pulled down and choosing to lean into it were not quite the same thing. One counted as yielding. The other only counted as permitting.

That distinction mattered to her.

She let his grip guide her lower. The stack of cash slipped out of her hand and scattered across the bed in a soft rush, bills fanning over the sheets and across Elias’s chest and face.

A few landed over his mouth and cheek.

Through them, he looked up at her with smiling eyes.

"Welcome home," he said.

The line was so domestic it was almost obscene. It had the easy warmth of a husband greeting his wife after a long day, and because it did not belong between them at all, it landed harder than it should have.

Their faces were close enough now that their breath touched before the rest of them did.

Liora watched his mouth move beneath the edge of one of the bills.

"I’m hungry," he said.

She started to straighten. "I’ll have the staff make you something."

"No."

The refusal came quick and certain. Elias tightened his arm around her neck just enough to stop her from rising. Then he smiled, and when he did, those small sharp canines showed.

In the dark, with the money scattered around him and that look on his face, the effect was close to wicked.

"I want to eat you."

Liora’s eyes changed at once.

Not much. Just enough.

Then softness touched her mouth.

The contact should have been warm. It was not. It was cool, faintly scented with fresh paper and clean ink. A crisp bill had been pressed between their lips, turning the kiss into something stranger.

Even so, the calm in Liora broke.

The money had blocked the kiss, but not the intent behind it. That reached her perfectly well. She could feel the shape of his mouth through the paper and the quiet cruelty of the joke with it.

Elias, on the other hand, still looked maddeningly composed. There was laughter in his eyes, but it sat light and clear, not heated. He looked almost thoughtful, as though he were tasting something he had expected to enjoy.

Then he brought up his other arm and looped it around her neck too, drawing her down closer.

Their bodies did not meet, but the distance between them thinned until it felt almost imaginary.

A faint tearing sound broke the room’s silence.

Liora felt a small sting in her lower lip.

The bill had split.

Through that torn paper barrier, Elias began to suck very lightly, and for one confused second Liora had the absurd feeling that she was not leaning over a man at all but over something nocturnal and patient, something that had chosen her as its meal and was taking its time with the first taste.

Then he let her go.

His arms loosened. She straightened slowly, and the ruined bill stayed stuck to her mouth for a second before peeling loose enough to hang there awkwardly. A faint metallic note had joined the scent of paper.

Blood.

She looked down.

Elias lay where she had left him, sunk into the bed, his expression loose with satisfaction and his smile completely unrepentant. There was the thinnest trace of red at his mouth.

He looked up at her like a creature perfectly pleased with itself.

"Thanks," he said softly. "That hit the spot."

Then he slid both arms back under the blanket. All that pale bare skin disappeared from view at once, hidden again beneath the covers as if she had imagined the whole thing. He blinked at her with absurd innocence.

"Good night."

There was no trace left of the thing that had just dragged her down by the neck and eaten at her mouth through a hundred-dollar bill.

Liora did not answer right away.

She looked at the cash scattered across the bed instead. Then, without a word, she bent down and began gathering it. One bill after another. She stacked them neatly and slid the whole pile beneath his pillow.

Only then did she say, "Good night."

The answer sounded calm enough.

It was the sort of thing a marked servant might say to the thing that had claimed her.

After she left, Elias waited only long enough to hear the door close.

Then he shoved the pillow up, grabbed the money, and started counting.

"One, two, three..."

By the time he reached ten, his face had gone blank.

"Damn it."

He looked down at the stack with open disgust.

"A thousand dollars? If I’d known that was all she brought, I never would’ve wasted that kind of flirting on her."

He was not a real vampire.

Blood tasted awful.

System Theta had nothing useful to say to that. The honesty of it was almost moving.

Still, money was money, and more importantly, Liora was already gone. It was not as though Elias could chase her down the hall and demand the kiss back.

He shoved the cash under the pillow again, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

He had no idea how long he slept.

This time System Theta managed to get the warning out before Elias spoke.

[Host, someone is...]

"I know," Elias said under his breath.

System Theta wilted immediately.

Why was it always him who noticed first? What exactly was its job here anymore?

Elias listened to the door open again, and annoyance moved across his face in the dark.

Was this really going to be a thing now?

The first time someone woke him up, he still had enough patience to treat it like foreplay. A second interruption in the same night was a different matter. At that point, whoever it was could eat a punch.

Then he realized the person coming in was not Liora.

A familiar voice, low and edged, came through the dark.

"You settled in fast."

Serena.

Elias kept his face still under the blanket.

Fine. If Serena only wanted to stand there and mutter things, he could let it go. But if she actually woke him up on purpose... 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Then Serena said, "I’m still awake, so why the hell is he sleeping like this?"

And yanked the blanket over his face.

Air vanished.

Elias lay there in immediate darkness and muffled fabric, every scrap of patience he still possessed disappearing on the spot.

"I’m going to kill someone," he said flatly into his own pillow.

System Theta hurriedly pursued.

[Host, Please calm down.]