“I’m not lying,” he said with an earnestness that didn’t sound quite rehearsed enough to not seem genuine. “You’re not caked in weird makeup or wearing all black like the rest of our customers. I’d let you bite me for free.”

It was certainly a tantalizing prospect, at least to my monster side. A brief, vivid image of being crushed beneath his hard body as I sank my teeth into his neck flashed through my mind, and I closed my eyes, shaking my head to get rid of the picture.

“So, how much do you charge?” I asked, turning my mind from impure thoughts.

“For what? The sex or the blood?”

“There will be no sex,” I insisted, a little to myself, a little to him.

“Come on,” he pressed, sliding his hand up my arm. “You can’t tell me you’re not bored, day after day in the back of a van.”

There was a note of neediness in his voice. This man wanted something from me. And there was only one thing humans wanted from vampires. To be turned.

“No,” I said quietly. “I haven’t been bored.”

I’d been kept awake all day by nightmares. As soon as the sun came up, my head filled with Nathan’s screams. Cyrus was out in the desert somewhere and I had to find him before his father got his hands on him. No way was I bored.

With an exasperated sigh, I stabbed the needle into Evan’s vein while he was still planning his next tactic. “And no amount of pretty talk will get you turned tonight.”

My head throbbed. Physical and mental fatigue overwhelmed me. “Is there a bathroom? I really need to get the road dirt off of me.”

Evan pointed the way.

I stepped into the spacious, marble bathroom and turned the taps to fill the tub. I’d collect what I needed from Evan, then pay him and kick him the hell out and take a nice, hot bath.

I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror above the sink and took a deep breath, preparing to let my guard down and open the blood tie. As soon as I did, Nathan was there, angry and screaming as he had been for the last few days. But there was another presence, too, one I hadn’t felt since the night Nathan had poured his blood down my throat while I was unconscious.

This has to be a mistake.

The steam from the running water became horrendously oppressive, and I struggled to drag in breath out of habit. I wiped my damp hair from my forehead with a trembling hand. If it wasn’t a mistake, it had been a punishment meted out by the cruelest of fates.