her memory of the man at the front entrance, this remembrance was like a scalpel through soft flesh.
“Gavin Thibodeau.” She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until the man himself whipped around and squinted through the night in her direction.
“Hart?” His voice sounded like metal shards, scrubbing away at the quiet din of background noise of a hospital at night. “What the hell are you doing lurking around in the shadows? And where have you been? Do you know—”
He cut himself off as Aubrey stepped closer, and was more easily seen. The last time she’d seen him, her locks had been lank and habitually in a long tail, and she’d never bothered with makeup or jewelry. There had been no point when she wore scrubs all the time.
Now she was vivid, a colour image in a black-and-white picture, something that she had made an effort to accentuate, though she wasn’t entirely certain why.
She felt like a different person. She was a different person, one who could attract someone like Gavin.
Yes, she could attract him. She could have Gavin if she wanted him.
She found that she did. That, at least, hadn’t changed when she’d died.
“Hello.” Even her voice sounded different than it had. It was warm and smooth, like thick, creamy honey.
Gavin—she’d never thought of him as Dr. Thibodeau, though she’d always called him that to his face—had been her preceptor, her supervisor, at the hospital. He was tall, had spiky hair the color of espresso and eyes of glacial ice. A silver bar pierced his eyebrow, one that he took out when on duty, and she knew from the clothes that he wore to and from work that when not in scrubs he preferred skinny, low-riding denim, studded belts and fitted T-shirts.
She’d had a yen for him even before she could smell the intoxicating aroma of his blood.
“Where the devil have you been, Hart? It’s bloody unprofessional to just take off without a word. You’ve screwed up your residency but good.” Aubrey watched as he raked a hand with long, skilled surgeon’s fingers through the gelled spikes of his hair. He was wearing a pair of those skinny jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt.
Her mouth watered, and she felt the sting of her fangs as they began to descend. They pricked her tongue, and she tasted the salt of her own blood, but it held no appeal.
It lacked the essence of life that Gavin’s did.
She wanted his blood, wanted it spread out on her tongue, in her mouth and down her throat.
She wanted more than that, too. She could feel arousal spreading over her like the warmth of the sun that she could no longer worship. It was a sensation that she was familiar with, only intensified with her new senses.
“I’ve been sick.” She took a slow, deliberate step toward him, and then another, and saw his pupils dilate and his nostrils flare just the tiniest bit.
Interesting. She hadn’t used any of her new vampire allure—at least she didn’t think she had. Malcolm had told her that it was a force that had to be released consciously, but who knew if he’d been telling the truth.
“You work in a hospital.” The tempo of Gavin’s heartbeat quickened, and it sounded musical to Aubrey’s ears. “If you were seriously sick, you should have come here.”
“I couldn’t go to a hospital.” Aubrey stepped closer still. She understood now what Malcolm had meant when he’d spoken of hunting. She was the predator, and she’d locked in on her prey. “It wasn’t like that.”
Gavin’s stare fell to her lips, which she licked. His voice was shaky as it uttered his next words.
“What was it like, then? Do tell.” She liked that he hadn’t lost his sarcasm, even in the face of his confusion. And he was confused, she knew that, even before she’d done anything more than talk.
She was different now. She was confident, she was sexy. She was beautiful.
She was going to have what she’d been dreaming about for months. And she was going to have blood, too.
“Do you really want to talk?” Closing the rest of the distance between them, Aubrey leaned in a calculated inch. If she’d had any breath left, she would have been able to exhale on his lips and have him feel the warmth.
“You’re… different.” Gavin closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “What’s different?”
Aubrey placed her rear at the edge of the van floor that was now at her back. Gavin had been moving a box, it looked like. A large, heavy box. She pushed at it with a hand, and it slid back into the vehicle as if it was empty.
She saw Gavin blink at the ease with which she moved the item, when he’d grumpily asked for help… and he was no weakling. She’d seen the muscles of his arms under the short sleeves of his scrub shirt. He was lean, but he was also ripped.
Leaning backward so that her weight rested on her elbows, Aubrey stared at Gavin, unabashed. “I’ve had to reevaluate my life. Being sick… changed me. And now all I can do is work with what’s left.”
She wanted him to come closer. Wanted him to touch her. She could’ve just grabbed him and torn her teeth into his neck, but she wanted him to come to her willingly.
She wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t do any of this, unless he was at least partially willing. Which was probably why Malcolm had told her to hunt only those who were strangers to her.
It was too late. She’d caught the scent of her prey, and like a decadent fudge brownie to a dieter, she could think of nothing else.
She would have him inside her, just as she’d wanted him for months. And while he was inside her, she would taste his blood. She’d drink, she’d grow strong.
And then she’d make him forget that any of it had ever happened.
Gavin was horribly confused. Dr. Aubrey Hart, the resident who’d abruptly dropped out of her residency weeks earlier, was lying against the back of his van with a confidence he’d never seen even a hint of before, and her body language was screaming at him to take what he’d tried not to think about taking from her before.
He wasn’t sure that he believed that she’d been sick. It was more like she’d had a complete personality transplant. But if he’d found her skittishness cute before—in a forbidden, can’t-ever-act-on-it kind of way—he found her new seduce-me attitude sexy as hell.
He liked strong women. They were difficult, they were demanding and they were a hell of a lot work, true, but they also challenged him.
What kind of man would he be if he wanted some sweet young thing who would just acquiesce to his every desire?
That was why he’d never understood his attraction to Aubrey. But now, with the memory of the sweet girl and the reality of the new woman in front of him, the two swirled into a delicious mix that made his mouth water and his cock thicken. Like whiskey and beer, the combination seemed as if it shouldn’t work.
But oh, how it did.
But something still seemed off to him, and that something had him holding back from simply climbing
