Read Online Nightfall by Joey W. Hill and Desiree Holt - Free Book Online

lips. “Who are you hiding from?”
    She propped herself up on an elbow. He gave her a searching
look, reached up to slide a finger along her cheek, her jaw. In return, she
settled her fingers on the bite mark on his neck. She knew he hadn’t really
registered it too much. The euphoria the released pheromones caused could do
that, but now he put his hand there as well. She moved her hand so he could
touch the bites, but put her fingers back over his and pressed down, let him
feel those two punctures, understand they were a bit more extreme than the
usual love bite.
    “No one who is part of your world, Quinn.” If she did
everything the way she should, that world would never be part of his. Yeah,
she’d given him the geographical locater mark, but that was a minor infraction,
not a big deal. It actually protected him a little bit.
    “So you’re really strong. You don’t like daylight. And…”
    She saw his fingers slide across his throat again. He
wouldn’t say it aloud, but she could hear him thinking it. She’d drunk his
blood.
    “Yes, I’m a vampire.”
    He wouldn’t believe her. That was the point. The powerful
vampires on the top of the food chain who called the shots for all of them
mostly lived in their mansions, cloaked in a veil of mystery. As such, they
could harp all they wanted about never breathing a word about being a vampire
to the human world and make that work.
    In contrast, she was an average-income working girl with
fangs and no permanent home. So in the twenty-first century, full of zealots
and freaks in the news, she’d found the opposite tactic worked. Instead of
hiding all the obvious vampire peculiarities, she put them out in the open,
claimed she was a vampire, and people just shrugged and expected she was an
escapee from the Discovery Channel Taboo series. It was the best century ever for a non-human to blend.
    That strategy worked best when she worked and stayed in
large cities, which Nightfall was decidedly not. But Quinn had seemed desperate
enough to be worth the risk. If she proved she could run his bar and give him a
good time in bed, he’d probably roll with it for a while. Guys tended to accept
a crazy chick if the sex was worth it. And if she didn’t cause him any hassles
with running After Dark.
    “A vampire, hmm?” He had that measuring look in his eye,
already weighing her potential crazy-chick factor against Artie’s many
shortcomings. After her performance this evening, she expected she still had
Artie by a mile.
    “Yeah, but if you don’t mind, I’d ask that you keep that
information to yourself. And not just so people won’t think your new bar
manager is a freak.”
    As he mulled that, Selene watched him with a frown. The way
he was processing the information seemed different from most humans. Almost as
if it wasn’t his first encounter with something otherworldly, something more
significant than the typical everyone-has-a-ghost-story-to-tell imaginings.
    There was no scent of magic on him, yet the look in his
eyes, while not total acceptance, was…wait and see. She didn’t know if that
made things more or less dangerous for her here.
    Though she was curious, she couldn’t grill him on it right
now. The timing wasn’t right and this might not work out at all. She could be
back on the road tomorrow, for all she knew.
    Turning on his side, he touched the pendant lying on her
breast bone. “Odd necklace for a vampire. Looks like a dagger through a heart.”
His gaze flicked up to her. “Or a stake.”
    “It’s a reminder that none of us are as invincible as we
think we are.”
    “Hmm. What if you can’t trust me? What if I tell the local
paper? Call Van Helsing?”
    “If he looks like Hugh Jackman, go right ahead. But
technically, I’m supposed to kill you if you tell anyone. I’d prefer not to do
that. I need the job.”
    She lay back down in his arms, nestled her head under his
chin. Once he went home, got up in the morning to do his normal ranch