Andre let loose a string of profanity that would make a sailor blush.
Once he pulled himself together he said, “As soon as the sun sets on the evening of October thirty-first, I’m going to be by your side for the entire evening. You’re going to sleep here, you’re—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I put up my hands. Bossy much?
Before I could say anything more, Andre took in my expression and backtracked. “Let me rephrase that. What I meant to say was that it is my deepest wish that you’ll stay here at Bishopcourt, where I can beat the shit out of the devil should he so much as try to pull the stunt he did last time he came. That better?”
“Uh, yeah, actually that is,” I said, starting to smile in spite of myself.
“Good.” Andre came around the desk and extended his hand to me. “Now that we’re done for the evening, I want to show you something.”
I glanced at his hand. “What do you want to show me?” I asked, not bothering to take it.
“It’s a secret.”
I stayed in my seat. “I don’t like secrets.”
His eyes thinned and he scrutinized me. “For a girl who says she doesn’t like secrets, you keep an awful lot of them,” he said.
I hate it when I walk myself into statements like that. “Fine, you have a point. Can you just give me a hint?”
Andre’s expression turned mischievous. “It’s a secret room.”
“A secret room?” My eyes lit up. And then they narrowed. “Wait a second, this isn’t anything creepy right? It’s not like a sex room where you keep the women who you feed off of, right?”
“No, that’s a different room.” He took my hand—since I wasn’t giving it to him—and acted as though he hadn’t just admitted to keeping sex slaves.
I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let go. “You really have a sex room where you keep your blood donors?” I asked.
He frowned. “Of course not. I don’t know where you get these ideas of yours.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “Then why did you just admit that you did?”
He managed to look offended. “It was a joke.” First the quill, now this. Andre really needed to upgrade his jokes.
I let him pull me to my feet, and together we left his study, walked down the hall, . . . and stopped at his bedroom.
“Uh Andre, why did you take me to your room? FYI—been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.”
His eyes glinted. “You have not ‘done that and gotten the T-shirt.’ Trust me, you’ll know once that’s the case.” Randy vampire.
My pulse spiked at his words, and a slow grin spread across his face at the sound.
“You know,” I said, “sometimes it sucks having a boyfriend who can tell exactly what I’m feeling when.”
He raised an eyebrow, his smile spreading further. “You consider me your boyfriend?”
I wanted to die, and if mortification could kill a person, I just might’ve right at that moment.
I put a hand to my face. “I didn’t mean it.”
“I think you did.” I could hear the smile in his voice.
I shook my head. “Oh God, forget I said anything.”
Only, he wouldn’t. “Boyfriend . . .” he said to himself. “I like that. It’s not as good as soulmate, but definitely a step up. I’m your boyfriend.”
He removed my hand from my face. “You can stop being embarrassed. I happen to like the term. But this doesn’t change anything about all those dates we have ahead of us—and the skanky cocktail dresses.”
I groaned. “You seriously know how to take advantage of a situation.” He looked quite proud of that particular fact. “What if I told you that I wasn’t serious about the whole boyfriend thing?” I said.
“That’s nonsense.” Andre opened the door to his room and held it open. “After you.”
I walked through, scraping up my pride with the knowledge that I’d at least made someone’s day.
From behind me Andre said, “My girlfriend has a really nice backside.”
I threw him a look over my shoulder that could curdle milk. “Just because I let a little something like the term boyfriend slip does not give you permission say everything that crosses your mind.”
He came up next to me trying to look innocent. He shouldn’t have bothered. He’d probably looked sinful since the day he was born, and no amount of doe eyes was going to change that. “I thought girls liked positive affirmations?”
I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or beg for the ground to swallow me whole. “Yeah, they do. But letting on that you were shamelessly checking out my ass is not one of them.”
“It is one of the better ones I’ve seen in a long while.”
I folded my arms at that. “You suck at being a boyfriend.”