He took another swallow of Scotch to fortify himself and hopefully burn the devil out of his sinful soul. There she was, practically dead and not even his own species, and all he could think about was the way her tan skin stretched over her smoothly rounded hip.

Clenching his teeth, he pulled her uninjured leg free and tossed the ruined garment aside. Bracing her foot against his chest, he peered at the book. No matter how many times he studied the illustrations, he would never be ready. So he ripped the sterile packaging off the needle and threaded it with nylon floss, took a deep breath and went to work.

His stitches started out clumsy and uneven, but he soon fell into a rhythm of pinching the flesh closed, piercing the edges and pulling the thread taut. Once wet with blood and the sweat from his hands, the needle slipped from his fingers often—the reason for the pincers in the illustrations became painfully clear—but as far as he was concerned, he wasn’t doing a bad job of things. He became so absorbed in his task, a plane could have crashed into the living room and he wouldn’t have noticed.

“Not bad.”

He jumped at the sound of her voice, and she hissed as the needle scraped torn flesh.

“Don’t startle me!” He wiped perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand and glared up at her, but he couldn’t maintain his anger when he saw the state she was in.

Her usually golden skin was ashen, and sweat beaded on her forehead. Her mouth clamped in a grim line and she held her body rigidly still.

“I thought you might like some positive feedback.” Her voice rasped as if she’d swallowed a mouthful of gravel, but she gave him a tight smile with pale lips.

“You don’t look so good.” He concentrated again on the task at hand, trying and failing to ignore her stifled cries of pain as the steel passed through her skin.

Through uneven breaths, she gasped, “You can thank your sainted friend for that.”

“Because you’re injured, I’ll let that slide. Along with the fact you tried to kill me earlier this evening.” He jerked the thread a bit less gently than necessary to punctuate his statement, and watched from the corner of his eye as she gripped the couch until her knuckles went white. “You lost a lot of blood. When I’m done here, I’ll get you set up on a transfusion.”

“You know how to do that?” she asked, surprise apparent in her strange, lilting voice.

He rolled his eyes. “I’m a vampire. We’re experts in getting blood into people.”

“I know you knew about getting it out of people.” She rubbed her neck, looking vaguely shocked to find it bandaged. “But he only bit me once.”