Read Online Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors by Molly Harper - Free Book Online Page B

thigh. I shot to my feet and backed away to a distance that wouldn’t get me put on some sort of watch list.
    “No, no, no. That’s not how this works at all.”
    “But you said Gabriel was your sire, and you’re . . . with him.”
    “I’m with him because he’s my boyfriend, well, my fiancé now.”
    “Seriously?”
    I mulled over whether he was more surprised that I was getting married or that I was marrying Gabriel. I nodded. “He just happened to become my boyfriend after I was turned. It has nothing to do with the sire thing.”
    “But what if I want to date?”
    I shrugged. “After you’re settled, you can date whoever you want, as long as they’re a consenting adult and you don’t do anything anatomically compromising in my house.”
    Given the gleam in his eyes, I was suddenly very thankful that Jamie couldn’t get anyone pregnant. There wasn’t enough latex at Goodyear to contain that gleam.
    “You have to be careful around humans, Jamie,” I said, my tone gentle. “Daddies who wouldn’t be happy to find you rolling around the backseat with their daughters aren’t going to be happier about it now that you have fangs. And while getting hit with a shotgun blast won’t kill you, it will sting like the dickens. And you don’t want to hurt the girls, either. You’re a good-looking guy. You could break a lot of hearts.”
    He grinned at me and put his hand on my knee.
    I groaned.
    “I misread that again, huh?”
    “Yes. And your hand’s still on my knee.” I sighed. “That settles it. We’re going to have to keep you away from Dick Cheney.”
    “The vice president?”
    “Oh, we need to talk.”

4

     
    There will be outside events that can distract you from your duties as a sire. Only leave your childe with other vampires whom you trust. Do not under any circumstances leave your childe alone with a human, unless you enjoy settling wrongful-death suits with large amounts of your money.
    —Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires
     
    J amie proved to be as energetic and fretful as any newborn baby on his first day home from the hospital. None of us got any rest until the very last dregs of night sky had been burned away by sun and he collapsed in the guest room.
    After precious few hours of fitful sleep, I was having a very strange dream. First, a burly man with wild, curly dark hair was standing in front of River Oaks, screaming and shaking his fists. I reached out to his mind, but all I got were rolling waves of hate, grief, anger, and regret, in alternating shades of red and orange. I pulled away, recoiling from the angry mass of thoughts. My weird dream brain shifted to inside the house, and mygrandmother was standing in the corner of the room, and she was angry, hissing horrible things to me. I was a disappointment to my family. I was a thief. I was a usurper. Her voice was a cold fog that slithered across the floor, over my bed, wrapping itself around my head as the insults struck closer to home. I was unnatural and wrong. It should have been me who died. I was a whore, sullying my family’s home with my vile dead lover.
    Sadly, it was pretty much the same speech I got last Christmas.
    The very moment the sun slid behind the horizon, the phone rang. Gabriel groaned and rolled away from it. Still groggy, I reached for the receiver and clicked the remote for the sunproof curtains to rise. Lovely purplish twilight poured in through the windows as my eyes adjusted. Blinking blearily, I picked up the receiver and heard a ragged sniffle from the other end of the line.
    “Jane, sweetie, I have bad news.”
    Slightly more awake, I pushed the receiver closer to my ear. “Mom? What’s going on?”
    “Jane, your grandma Ruthie passed.”
    I sat up, taking the quilt with me and knocking Gabriel out of bed. “What?”
    “Ow,” Gabriel muttered into the floor.
    “Your grandma died this afternoon. I’m so sorry, honey.”
    “No, no, I’m sorry, Mom. Are you