Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
It wouldn’t do for a citizen to see me in my three-piece suit and thousand-dollar shoes running like I was a normal human being.
They would know with just one look that I didn’t belong.
Especially not in this shitty neighborhood.
Jesus, what was she thinking living in a place like this?
The part of the city she was in, known as the Lowtown of Austin, Texas, was one of the most crime-ridden in the entire fifty square miles that surrounded our city. And it was clear to not just me, but everyone I asked about her, that she was well-to-do.
Her brother was a vampire counsel, and he made astronomical amounts of money seeing as no other human being defended vampires.
There were, of course, actual vampires that were lawyers, but now that we were out in the open, everyone—police, judges, and the general population—regarded us with a wariness that I should have expected.
But I never, not in a million years, would’ve thought that when we came out, that people would act quite like this.
Though, I blamed the modern media for that one.
They were cruel, only painting the darkest pictures of us, and not caring one bit that they were feeding bullshit to society.
No, all they cared about was making a buck, and they didn’t care that they were ruining lives—even if those lives were the undead.
I must’ve got lost in thought, because between one second and the next, I looked up and realized that the woman I was following was no longer where I’d last seen her.
Slowing to a halt, I widened my senses and started to listen.
I could hear the televisions—all two hundred and six of them—within a four-square-mile radius. Most of them were watching a reality show—The Bachelor.
I could hear people fighting, arguments about money, kids, what one woman was going to do for the rest of her life.
As my heightened senses scanned the area, I frowned when I couldn’t even hear her running footsteps any longer.
So, she’d stopped.
But where?
I started walking on silent feet, stopping when I heard the scuffle of something that sounded like a body against asphalt.
The swish of a shoe dragging across loosened gravel. A low male curse.
Then I sensed the heightened heartbeat.
The same irregular heart rate that I’d been obsessed with—only in this instance it was beating way too fast. Much faster than her regular heart rate.
I took off running and arrived at the scene of my worst fear within seconds.
I’d spent the last few nights replaying in my mind why exactly I couldn’t have an affair with the woman.
She was soft. She was weak. She had an irregular heartbeat that I knew would kill her one day soon, and she was Austin PD’s golden child.
No, I had to stay away from her.
Or at least that’s what I told myself.
Looking at her now, a man smacking her around while he hurriedly tried to rip his jean’s fly open, I realized that I couldn’t stay away any longer.
With a vicious growl, I leaped the remaining distance that separated me from Acadia and snapped the guy’s neck.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
Acadia, in shock, stared at me with helplessness, then threw herself at me.
It was a surprisingly fast move for a woman that was living on borrowed time. One second she was lying there, weeping, and the next she was in my arms, and I was pulling her in tight.
“You’re warm,” she breathed.
I snorted. “Yes.”
I didn’t mention that I’d drank from someone as I waited for her to come back out of her house once she’d arrived home from that heinous ball that I was forced to go to. It’d been one of her neighbors. I could tell because she smelled faintly of the woman in my arms, meaning they spent at least some time together at some point this evening.
She was smart enough to figure it out. And not to say anything.
Asking sometimes got you an answer you weren’t ready to hear.
“I just nearly died,” she whispered. “He would’ve killed me.”
I didn’t know about that, but he definitely wasn’t there to give her a little tickle play, that was for sure.
“I…”
The familiar whirrurp of a squad car had me sighing.
I’d, of course, heard them coming.
However, I was a glutton for punishment.
I was also screwed.
There was only one place I was going from here, and that was in the back of that squad car.
The thing about vampires in today’s day and age—with us being out—things were definitely a lot more tense than they’d been in times past.
Such as now.
Had I explained to the cop that was barreling down on me with his weapon pulled that I’d just defended the woman in my arms from being raped, they would’ve slowed down and gotten our statements.
As it was, my face was very familiar to the men and women of Harris County.