Victor suddenly jumped away from her like a rat abandoning ship.
Without his support, her trembling legs gave out and Elvi fell to her knees on the
kitchen floor, a mass of confusion and frustration.
"There you are, Victor."
Elvi heard Edward Kenric's voice through her own panting and immediately
understood that the thundering had been his jogging lightly down the stairs. She also
understood why Victor was now standing wide‐eyed at the end of the counter, a guilty
look on his face. They'd nearly been caught misbehaving in the kitchen. Actually, they
still might be caught, Elvi realized, when she spotted her torn panties lying on the floor
next to the spilled bag of blood a few feet away.
If Edward came around the counter…
"I have a question for you," Kenric continued and much to her horror his voice was
moving along the counter toward the end.
Panicking, she scrambled forward on all fours to snatch up her panties.
"Have you—Oh, Elvi."
She'd just stuffed her panties in the pocket of her robe, tied it closed, and snatched up
the paper towel she'd dropped earlier when Edward came around the counter to join
Victor.
"Hello, Edward." Forcing an innocent smile, Elvi began to swipe at the drying blood on
the floor, then paused to snatch up the empty blood bag and toss it up and—she
hoped—into the sink, before continuing to clean up the mess on the floor as if that's
what she'd been doing all along.
"I didn't realize you were here as well. Can I help you with that?" he asked, moving
closer.
"No, no. It's almost done. You go on and talk to Victor. Take him out on the deck if you
want privacy," she encouraged. "I'll be done here in just a moment."
"If you're sure," he said politely, then turned to Victor and said, "If you wouldn't
mind?"
Victor hesitated, then gave in to the inevitable and led the way out onto the deck.
Elvi sagged where she knelt, feeling as wrung out as a dishcloth. She only allowed
herself a moment's respite, however, then quickly finished wiping up the blood on the
floor. Once done, she stood and threw out the paper towel, then grabbed the empty
blood bag from the sink and tossed it as well before moving to the refrigerator to
collect a fresh bag of blood for herself. It was the reason she'd been headed
downstairs in the first place, but she'd allowed herself to be distracted.
Her gaze slid to the counter where she'd almost had her first orgasm as a… well… not
dead person.
Elvi took her bag with her and fled the kitchen. Now that the passion had passed she
was embarrassed and unsure how to act with Victor. Dear Lord, she barely knew the
man and had nearly had sex with him right there on the kitchen counter for anyone to
walk in and catch them at it. What was the matter with her?
What's wrong with us? Elvi corrected silently as she moved past Mabel's room and
heard the sounds coming from inside. She felt a moment's envy and had a brief flash in
her mind of her and Victor making love in her… coffin, she ended the thought with a
grimace as she recalled she didn't yet have a bed, then pushed the image away with a
shake of the head.
For God's sake she—and Mabel—were both sixty‐two‐year‐old women, practically
senior citizens, both of whom had lived sedate, conservative lives. They were small‐
town girls who'd married their childhood sweethearts. She'd had no other lover other
than her husband and knew the same was true of Mabel, and yet here they were
acting like a couple of tramps.
Elvi managed not to roll her eyes at her own thoughts. She knew it was an old‐
fashioned term and that her thinking, too, was old‐fashioned. But that was what she
was, an old‐fashioned, small‐town girl who suddenly found herself behaving
completely out of character.
Worse yet, while Elvi was aware she should be grateful that Edward had interrupted
before things had gone any further, she really wished the annoying man had just stuck
to his damned room and not interrupted at all. She'd had a taste of the delights Victor
could show her and wanted more.
"Damn," Elvi muttered. She never should have come down for a bag of blood before
retiring. And what had happened to the " I'm not ready to date?" feelings that had first
attacked her on hearing these men were here. Now she didn't care about dating, she
wanted to sleep with one of them. She supposed that was a good thing at least. There
was only one she was interested in sleeping with.
A passionate scream drew her gaze back over her shoulder to Mabel's door as she slid
into her own room. Elvi wished she could talk to the woman, but, of course, that was
impossible right now. It looked like she would just have to wait until DJ left. In the