The Place. Not once had he cast his gaze in her direction and yet she knew, with an

unshakeable, absolute certainty that he was aware she was watching his every

move…of which there were precious few. Fabulously immobile, his relaxed posture

insinuated a quiet confidence as he lazed nonchalantly against the peeling and faded

countertop of the oak bar, watching the goings-on of the vampire haven’s late-night

patrons in the mirror behind the bartender.

Containing a colorful assortment of humans, immortals and those lingering

somewhere in between, the lounge was a small, intimate space that could barely hold

sixty souls. Dark alcoves and high-backed booths hid more than half of the spot’s

some sought the obvious such as nourishment, excitement, danger, even death, others

hungered for darker, deeper and ultimately more daring reasons. All kinds of scenarios

played out in the cold dark damp of night, from those craving the refuge that only

immortality could bring, to the good old-fashioned tradition of humans being hunted,

drained dry and sometimes even turned against their will.

While there were other, more commercialized vampire havens that were glitzy,

gleaming and quite frankly overdone in a modern décor of black and red,

stereotypically giving themselves over to a Draculian castle chic look complete with

cobwebs, candelabras and mortar walls, this backdoor hideaway had a plain grittiness

that could have been right at home in any li’l Midwestern town in the States. Wooden

planks for flooring, mismatched, often torn upholstery on the worn oak barstools and

scratched metal tables spoke of the lack of pretense present—all of which suited

Samantha just fine. Throughout the course of her life she’d had her fair share of

shellacked, pristine and pretentious places and people, including those from the dark

side—the latter prancing their immortal and oh-so-beautiful bodies around to

hypnotize, mystify and basically render the human populace inferior by comparison.

What she wanted was a true-blue immortal who hearkened back to another time,

had lived the equivalent of umpteen dozen lives and had so much more to offer than

just a drop-dead gorgeous form and the tantalizing experience of being sucked silly.

Granted, any one of the undead could technically speaking do the deed, but if she was

going to become one of these bloodsucking bastards herself she wanted it at the

hands—or should she say at the fangs—of the real thing. Not that she had ever been

very good at differentiating between human and immortal. Through the years, the

undead had become exceptionally skilled at feigning the mannerisms and appearance

of their human counterparts, but she would have bet her life that the being across the

room was all vampire. Of course that was cheating because she knew him. Well, kinda.

Rising, she heaved a deep sigh and, squaring her slender shoulders, approached the

vampire’s back. The cotton fabric of his dark shirt stretched across his broad shoulders

as he looked down into the golden liquid in his glass. Just before she reached his side,

his eyes lifted to lock with hers in the mirror. She froze just a few feet away from him.

"Hi," she tried to sound casual.

He looked up at her reflection but didn’t answer.

"Can I…buy you a drink?" Samantha inwardly kicked herself. She knew he never

drank drink-drinks. His kind couldn’t metabolize the stuff. He just ordered the port for

show.

The vampire looked at her mirror image a long moment before turning around in

his seat to regard her face-to-face. A hint of recognition flashed in his eyes but apart

from that, there was no visible sign of life on the striking face. To be precise, a statue

would have been more animated.

"No."

"Oh."

Okay, this was awkward. When she’d fantasized about this moment as she had

done several hundred times, Samantha had envisioned something quite different from

this.

"Okay then."

For a split second the thought of giving up flashed in her mind but was just as

quickly extinguished by a burning necessity. As she pondered her next move the

smooth voice that had so monosyllabically rejected her just seconds earlier stopped her

in her tracks.

"But I could buy you one."