Long in the Tooth by Killian McRae

Author:Killian McRae [McRae, Killian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tulipe Noire Press
Published: 2020-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

There was no door on which Dorothy knocked where she wasn’t welcome. The thought, the evidence of her being so much a part of this community and appreciated by it, bent Cornelius’s heart. He’d always been led to believe that sentiment fell away as a mortal aged. That in losing one’s purpose in it, so too did the spirit diminish until, at last, the flame burnt into the wax. But here was joy and connectedness and, god bless it, a variety of experiences... It made him again wonder if the time had not come to let slip away Brutus’s gift and rejoin the fading brethren of his youth.

Only then, Brutus would claim Penny, and that would break Dorothy’s heart.

Penny was the last person out of a suite of rooms belonging to a retired schoolteacher named Betty Wetzel, who had presented each of her visitors a peanut butter cookie, extras from a batch made in preparation of her grandkid’s visit. “You’re looking at that like it’s a gold nugget or something.”

“What?”

Cornelius looked up from the baked good pinched between his fingers, an object made with such love, he was taking issue internally with the thought of not being able to eat it. Even though it did smell rather good, and that fact should bother him more than it did. Were his human appetites returning? That shouldn’t happen until the acquisition of Brutus’s new drone was imminent. He’d better speed up the seduction. When night fell, no doubt the master would hone in on wherever Penny was and deliver the second sacred drink of his own blood. After that, the only way to reverse the process would be to kill Brutus, and how was a nearly-human vampire supposed to do that?

Suddenly, Penny pushed her own cookie into his face. “You can have mine. It’s like snorting diabetes, there’s so much sugar in it.”

But wasn’t that the appeal? Nonetheless, he accepted it only to toss both the treats in a bin in the main corridor. “If I’m going to have anything sweet on my lips, I’d like it to be your mouth.”

Penny spun. “Oh, so you do know how to flirt.”

He closed the space between them, his hands curving around her hips, and brought their mouths just inches apart. “I know how to do so much more than flirt.”

“Stop it, Corny.” Her hand went up between them, her fingertips pushing playfully into his chest. “I’m sick, remember? You might catch something.”

Summoning all the sincerity in his body, his gaze sunk into hers. “That’s what I’m aiming for.”

He leaned in, his head tilting to the side, and felt the burning of a thousand knifes in his heart. He couldn’t kiss Penny. Not here, just ten feet away from where Dorothy stood. It was impossible. Unthinkable.

He pulled back at the last second, leaving the poor young woman frozen in unattained connection.

Penny’s eyes blinked wildly open. “And...?”

He reintroduced space between them, even as he became aware that the grandmother had stopped and turned to observe them.

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