Wicked Soul (Ancient Blood #1)(21)

I mentally facepalmed myself and waved him in as I turned to get the blood out. “I’ve been looking forward to this—it’s rare I get to do live model drawings. “

Warin didn’t answer, and when I turned back toward him halfway to the fridge, he was still standing in the door opening.

“I cannot enter without a spoken invitation,” he said softly.

“Oh. Oh!” I blinked, entirely taken aback by the unexpectedness of his request. “Uh, come on in, Warin.”

“Thank you.” His voice was still soft as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I watched him shrug out of his coat and hang it on the coat hanger I’d put up next to the door. Something not remotely connected to his magnetic blue eyes made a shiver travel up the length of my spine at the realization that I’d invited an undead creature into my home. Not that I hadn’t known what he was when I asked him to come by, but… there was just something deeply unsettling about that very real reminder that he was something other than human.

“You are fearful,” he said as he turned toward me. His face was blank, but his eyes seemed… saddened.

“What? No.” I waved him off and resumed my previous smile. “It’s just kind of odd, ya know?”

“I can detect fear quite easily,” he said, touching his nose with a finger. “There is no need to lie, Liv. I can leave if you are uncomfortable.”

He could smell me? Well, that was just all sorts of disconcerting. I sighed. “All right, it’s kind of… a tiny bit terrifying that you have to be invited into my home, like in one of those awful scary stories. But I’m not scared of you—you could have eaten me like, a million times by now, if that was your grand plan. And!” I skipped to the fridge and swung it open. “You seriously can’t leave now—do you have any idea how awkward it is to buy blood at a butcher’s? I don’t think anyone but the butcher himself bought that I was gonna make blood sausage. Pretty sure everyone else thought I had some sort of Satanic ritual planned.”

I pulled out one of the pint bottles of pigs’ blood and held it out toward him as a peace offering.

He stared at it for a long moment before he lifted his gaze to mine. “It was very kind of you to go out of your way for me. You needn’t have gone through embarrassment for my sake.”

My shoulders slumped. “Don’t tell me you ate already. I have four pints of this stuff.” His cheeks did look slightly flushed.

“I would never turn down your kind gesture,” he said, offering me a faint smile. “Thank you. I will have a glass.”

I beamed, relieved I hadn’t committed some form of vampire faux pas. “Make yourself comfortable, I’ll be right over,” I told him, gesturing to the sofa.

I turned to my small kitchen and busied myself pouring the blood into a glass. It smelled pretty horrid, and it took everything I had not to gag. I was going to pour myself a glass of wine, but after getting the stench of pigs’ blood in my nostrils, I couldn’t face drinking any sort of red liquid. Instead, I got myself a drink of Mountain Dew, grabbed both glasses, and turned toward the sofa.

But Warin wasn’t sitting down. Instead, he was standing in front one of my paintings of a sunrise, seemingly absorbed.

“I did that one this summer, shortly after coming to Chicago,” I said as I put the glasses down. It was odd, having someone look so intensely at my art. It made me feel a bit shy—I rarely had people over, so it wasn’t a common occurrence. My paintings had always been just for me, since I was a kid needing somewhere beautiful to escape to.

“You have a lot of talent,” he said, not taking his eyes off the sunset. “Do you exhibit?”

“Ha, I wish,” I snorted, flopping down of the couch. With a finger, I pushed Warin’s glass of blood farther toward the other end of the coffee table. “I doubt anyone would offer up their gallery for an amateur. But thank you for the praise.”

“I would,” he said, finally turning away from the painting. “Do you have other pieces?”

“Yeah, tons.” I smiled, flattered by his obvious enjoyment of my art. As much as my inner critic claimed he was just being polite, I could see the sincerity in his eyes. “Most are in boxes in my bedroom, though.”

“I would like to see them sometime. If you don’t mind?” He walked across to the sofa and finally sat down, eying the glass of blood.

“Of course.” I reached for my drawing pad and pencil I’d strategically laid out on the coffee table in preparation for his arrival. Or hadn’t tidied up in my frantic rush to make my apartment look somewhat inhabitable, more like, but whatever.

“But it’ll have to wait. I’ve been so looking forward to this. You have really beautiful features.”

“Thank you,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, giving me a glance out the corner of his eye, and it wasn’t until then that I realized I’d called him beautiful. The young man on my couch whom I’d had more than one perverted dream about. Of course he would think I was flirting.

“Uh, I mean—you’ve got the face of any artist’s dream. Your cheekbones and jawline are very… structured,” I finished lamely, realizing I wasn’t making things any better. Judging from Warin’s arrow-straight posture and lack of eye contact, I’d managed to make him feel about as awkward as I did.