He grimaced. "Which is a problem, since we spend most of our time under house arrest."
"What are you going to do about it?" I asked, tilting my head.
"Find a way for us to date without being able to leave the house? Jane's property is pretty big. We could sneak out to the cow pasture."
"Anything that involves the word ‘pasture' is not going to end in a good-night kiss for you."
"It strikes me that there are plenty of beds on the R and D floors."
"You know, when I thought about having sex with you, creepy lab facilities didn't really play into it," I told him.
"Yes, but you did think about it!" he quipped. "There has to be somewhere that two healthy adult types can find some time alone together."
This was the same feeling I'd had when we'd spent most of the night talking outside my dorm. This was the Ben I remembered. And somehow, despite the fact that I'd seen him every day for the last several weeks, I'd missed him.
"You're taunting a desperate man here, Meagan."
I leaned closer, just enough that my lips almost brushed against his. "You're going to have to try a little harder, Ben."
And with that, I slid under the metal railing, turned in midair, and grabbed the ladder in free fall. Ben's eyes went wide, but he relaxed the moment he saw me dangling from the rungs.
"I deserve that," he said.
I pulled myself back up on the ladder until I was at eye level with him. I gave him a quick kiss. "Yes, you do."
10
Your childe may surprise you with his or her interests. Remember that a vampire with hobbies is forty percent less likely to have a "rampage" incident.
-The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire
Jane's bookshop was a colorful, comfortable, quirky paradise. My inner book nerd rejoiced at the squashy purple chairs, the pretty knickknacks, the cozy smell of coffee and blood percolating behind the maple coffee bar. Crystals and silver figurines and geodes took up space along the upper shelves, displayed to catch the eye but high enough that they didn't make the place look cluttered.
The book selection covered a little bit of everything: classic literature, graphic novels, straight-up occult studies, and a huge array of vampire self-help books. That made sense, given the number of vampires who circulated through the door.
I absolutely loved it.
It was safe for me to be there. While plenty of people would recognize Ben if he sat in the middle of Specialty Books working on his laptop, no one outside of Jane's trust circle would recognize me. It reminded me of Pages, the little independent bookshop in my hometown where I spent a sad number of Friday nights in high school. While Ben was spending tonight working in the IT office, I'd gotten permission from Jane to take the night off so I could do a history assignment that had me stumped. Dr. Baker was a stickler for punctuality and punctuation, so my usual trick of turning in a first draft would not fly.
My IM pinged, and a little speech bubble popped up on my screen: Whatcha doin'?-complete with a Phineas and Ferb meme. I smiled. Jane had loosened the Internet policies ever so slightly after Ben and I had both come home from our "night walk" without incident. While the specter of Dr. Hudson and his science still made her nervous, Jane was giving us way more online freedom. We were allowed to talk to our friends as long as we understood that we still couldn't reveal our location to anyone. Ben was even working up to an in-person visit with his family. All in all, everything was coming up pretty rosy for us.
Seriously, we just had a formatting meeting where we spent thirty minutes debating the "least historically offensive" fonts, Ben wrote. Please give me some news of the world outside. Is it beautiful there? Details, please, on the assignment you are working on. Use footnotes if you can. Citations are sexy.
And so I was having fun with Ben. Now that he'd made the monumental gesture of admitting that he (gasp) liked me, I'd put the burden completely on him to try to find some way for us to spend time together away from the house, a damn near impossible task. And until he did that, I was standing just a little closer to him as we both fished our breakfast out of the fridge in the evening. I was making a lot of direct eye contact. I was suggesting late-night study sessions. I was generally vexing him.
Hard at work, being very productive and studious, I have no time to talk nerdy to you, sir.
He sent me a little pouty emoji. You're killing me, Smalls.
I sat back in my perfectly comfortable chair and rolled my shoulders. I scanned the bookshelves with my superior vision, taking in each spine. A few titles even I recognized-Fifty Ways to Introduce Variety to Your Undead Diet, Love Bites, The Office after Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace. My eyes lit on a bright green softcover volume titled The Accidental Sire: How to Raise an Unplanned Vampire.