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wrenched me out of my historically inappropriate musings.
    “Hey!” I yelled. “Are you OK in there?”
    There was no answer.
    I jiggled the doorknob. It was unlocked, but I wasn’t eager to open it unless I had to. “Cal!” No answer. I sighed. “I really don’t want to do this.”
    After a few more beats of silence, I called, “If you don’t answer, I’m coming in. Try to cover up!” I muttered, “Think of the money. Think of the money. Think of the money.”
    I slowly opened the door, billows of steam rolling toward me as I stepped through. Cal was sprawled on the floor, half in and half out of the shower stall. Suds laced over his dark hair like little tufts of icing. His eyes were closed, long lashes resting on his cheeks. With his lower half undressed, I could see everything I’d missed in his kitchen. Long legs. Flat stomach. Trail of dark hair that extended all the way to his perfectly proportionate—
    “Oh, my gosh!” I cried, putting my hand over my eyes. “I’m sorry!”
    But he was unconscious again and didn’t seem to care that I was ogling him.
    Despite his griping about girlie soaps, the steam and the heat seemed to intensify his natural woodsy scent, diffusing it throughout the room. I felt it seeping into my skin, marking me, as I knelt over him.
    “Cal?” I murmured, shaking his shoulders gently.“Wake up, Cal. I’m not sure what to do for an unconscious vampire.”
    As my fingertips grazed his cheek, his eyes snapped open. He popped up into a crouch, or at least, he tried to, but his limbs were too weak to let him maintain the position. He stumbled, falling against me, knocking me to the floor. His lips drew back over his fangs as a rumbling growl echoed through his chest. The vibrations spread from his sternum to mine, sending a strange electric shiver zipping over my skin. I might have leaned closer, if not for the whole “bared razor-sharp fangs” thing. He closed the distance for me, brushing the tip of his nose down my neck to my collarbone, purring in anticipation.
    Shrinking back, I realized that until this moment, I’d been dealing with the civilized version of Cal. This was Cal stripped of all those pesky human trappings. This is how our kitchen encounter might have ended, with him poised above me, ready to strike, to drain the life out of me. Or throw up on me … which he did … twice.
    I screamed, not in fear but in disgust, as Cal tossed up two bottles’ worth of blood down the front of my shirt. He moaned piteously and collapsed on top of me, pinning me to the floor and squishing the breath from my lungs.
    “Crushed by nauseated vampire” was going to be such an embarrassing cause of death.
    I grunted, sliding my hands under his shoulders and thrusting my arms up with all my strength. I barely budged him, and when my arms gave out, he slumpeddown over my chest, making it even more difficult to breathe. And I’d just sent the one other person with the key to the house away for several days. I would die on my bathroom floor, covered in vampire vomit, crushed by a dead guy who didn’t like me very much.
    “I’ve got to find a new job,” I grumbled.

4

    Vampires are notoriously difficult to move once they are at rest for the day. So do not try to move them. Not even a little bit.
    — The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
    I t took me an hour, a slightly sprained shoulder, and the defiance of several laws of physics, but I finally unwedged myself from under my undead guest.
    I stumbled to my feet, sprawling across the floor as the blood flowed back into my tingling arms and legs. During my time on the floor, I learned a few things about Cal. One, he was as heavy as a sack of wet concrete. Two, even when he was all disheveled, he still smelled pretty good. Third, his hands had a bad habit of resting on the nearest breast, even when he was unconscious.
    Dead or undead, men were all pretty much the same.
    Finally free of my undead burden, I took greedy, gulping