Hot for Slayer (Scared Sexy Collection, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

My motto is: If I have to suck someone dry every few weeks, why not make it a Goldman Sachs executive?

“Couldn’t bear to let someone else butcher me, huh?” “I know what’s mine,” he muttered in his usual clipped tone.

real problems are rarely the ones we spend our time worrying about.

Our bodies reject food in a spectacularly cinematic fashion that would find itself well at home in a vintage horror movie. This is true about any solid or liquid item that isn’t human blood—no matter how close they may approach it. I once took a sip of a bonobo, and hurled intermittently for the following six months. Our species has a clear case of hot-girl tummy, and I’m grateful to the twenty-first century for giving us a final diagnosis.

You’re just not used to touch, I tell myself. Yes. That’s it. It must have been a handful of years since the last time. I like to choose very bad people as meals, so I limit my physical contact with them, while Lazlo . . . He is not food. He is a person, an immortal just like me, surprisingly solid in a world where everything drifts past, disappearing too quickly. It’s disorienting, is all.

Every time we fought, every blade I sank into his flesh, every breakneck chase, the allure of his blood was there, calling. I’ve injured and killed plenty of slayers before him, and they all repulsed me, but Lazlo . . . I have no idea why his specific blood feels so overpoweringly, mouthwateringly delicious, but now that the glass splint is out, I should probably take a step back.

“It was one-sided,” he tells me after he’s done chewing. “From you.” “What?” “The dislike.” “I assure you, it was not.” “And I assure you, when I look at you, I feel anything but that.”

I’ve learned to live in the moment, and to be happy, even on my own. I’ve learned to treasure little joys, like making other people’s lives better by lending a hand or a smile, doing small talk, laughing at bad puns. Sometimes I’m lonely. Sometimes I want more—whatever that means. Not everything is ideal. But I’m capable of finding my own meaning.

Vampires don’t sleep. It’s part of the whole curse thing—no rest, no quiet, no respite from our evil deeds. We are condemned to an eternity of staring at empty walls and reflecting on what we have done, all in the hope of atoning for our very existence. The possibilities for self-flagellation are endless. But my white-hot take is that I’ve done nothing wrong, at least not since I began observing a strictly asshole-tarian diet.

“I might not remember my name, or anything about who I am. But I could never be near you and not know exactly what you are to me.”

“Some lives run invisibly. Undetected by most. And when a person comes along who sees those lives for what they are, who acknowledges their reality, who reminds people that there is value in different ways of existing . . . A minute of that is worth more than a thousand nights with a lover. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Aethelthryth, nothing would make me happier than having you with me here, or in any other place that I will call home, for as long as I live. Please, come in.”