Read Online Kiss of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm Book 2) by Gayla Twist - Free Book Online Page B

Ohio with no good clothes and scarcely a place to rest your head.”
    “Oh, no.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re not going to start up with that whole, ‘I am your maker’ thing again. Are you?”
    “I am your maker,” he insisted. “I am responsible for your welfare. At least for the next fifty years or so. And you need looking after. That was made abundantly clear last night. I am ashamed of myself for neglecting you. I shudder to think of what could have happened to you.”
    “I was fine,” I assured him, also getting to my feet. “I know how to take care of myself. I’ve been doing it my whole life.” Dorian was super-hot and I couldn’t help being attracted to him, but I was in no mood for him to start trying to boss me around again. He was making a lot of assumptions that made me very uncomfortable.
    “Yes, you were obviously doing a wonderful job taking care of yourself,” he snapped. “Feeding off of sleazy men in dark alleys. That’s no way for the progeny of a Vanderlind to behave. From now on there will be no more of that. You’ll feed in a civilized manner and you’ll stay here with me. Or at one of my homes in Europe, if we go back there.”
    Dorian was very good at making pronouncements, but he wasn’t very good at asking me what I wanted. And that really annoyed me. Plus I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust anyone who was offering to take care of me. I’d had my heart broken plenty of times between foster parents and my own crazy mother.
    “What are you saying?” I asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
    “I’m saying that it’s time to cut out the nonsense. You’ve had your little adventure at being independent, but that’s over with now. It’s time for me to take care of you.”
    I narrowed my eyes. “What if I don’t trust you?”
    Dorian looked surprised. I had obviously caught him off guard. “Why wouldn’t you trust me? I am your maker. I am the person whom you can trust most in the world.”
    “And what if I annoy you again?” I asked, folding my arms and glaring at him. “What if I don’t obey your every whim and proclamation? Don’t think I’ve forgot about you showing up to my Winter Formal with a sharp stake in your pocket. Why are things suddenly different now?” I demanded. “Why should I trust you?’
    “Because…” Dorian thundered, but then he stopped short. “Because…” he said in a much quieter voice, looking down and shaking his head. “Things are different now,” he told me, sounding almost wounded.
    “How are they different?” I wanted to know. One flying lesson and a little cuddling wasn’t exactly a guarantee against violence.
    Dorian looked up at me, his gray eyes wide and vulnerable. “I thought,” he began, but then he shook his head. “No, never mind.”
    “No, you should tell me,” I insisted. “What?”
    “I thought that we’d shared something that we obviously haven’t shared,” he said in a quiet voice. “That was my mistake.”
    He cares about me , I thought with astonishment. It wasn’t just my wishful thinking. Dorian Vanderlind actually cared about me. I opened my mouth to tell him that he wasn’t mistaken. We had shared something; there was something between us. But before I could compose the right words to say, Dorian kept talking.
    “If you prefer living rough and derive pleasure from feeding off of sleazy men, then I won’t try to stop you. But I would like to continue your training while I remain in Tiburon. You should at least know how to anticipate the dawn.”
    I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to insult me. Oh yeah, I absolutely loved scraping by for food and trying not to murder my friend and her entire family. That was obviously a lifestyle that I was happy with. “Don’t worry about me,” I snarled. “I’ll be perfectly fine. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you with my low class behavior. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”
    “That’s not what I was saying,” Dorian