Hot for Slayer (Scared Sexy Collection, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

Not that I enjoy relentless harassment, but what’s a girl to do when the only constant presence during the last millennium of her life has been a guy who’s contractually mandated to murder her?

Fuck him and his dry-cleaning bill.

I wondered how I could feel such hunger while my internal organs were being minced into meat loaf.

“As long as you don’t let anyone get to you before I do, Aethelthryth.” “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll always save myself for you.”

And that’s how I got away from Lazlo Enyedi on the night of November 9, 1989.

When he noticed my eyes on him, he lifted the blade up to his face. And with a smile that did not feel like a smile, he began to lick it clean of my blood. It was . . . Well. It just was.

Today, nearly thirty-six years after that night in Germany, his arms wrap tight around me, his body is a heavy blanket above mine, and his only purpose seems to be shielding me from the sunlight. Today, Lazlo Enyedi saved my life.

My mother didn’t raise a quitter.

Well, my mother didn’t raise me at all.

Dear Mommy was very generous with her pledges, especially when they involved sacrificing other people.

I want things that do not belong to me all the time. Chief of which: companionship.

Vampires suck—no pun intended—and

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

Stubbornly, I decided to bring shame upon my species by doing neither. I liked my cramped little apartment.

So I carved out a third option for myself: I would ignore the new guy and hope he’d do the same. Naturally, he didn’t.

Fuck this. I’m not dealing with the mood swings of an adolescent. I’m moving.

Teenage Dirtbag Vampire was there, waiting for me, and this time he managed to take me by surprise, knock me out, and drag me to an abandoned building, where he tied me to a chair bolted in front of an east-facing window.

Clearly, this slayer really wants me to die on his terms.

Did the raccoons eat your prefrontal cortex, idiot? You have to kill him. Immediately.

Do you also remember when he cut off your chin with his dumb Crusade sword? It took, like, five weeks for it to grow back to the right shape.

Kill him now. Kill. Him. Now. But I don’t. Because I’m too busy listening to the five words that change my life forever. “Who the hell are you?”

Lazlo doesn’t remember who I am, and I’m ready to panic about it.

Lazlo doesn’t remember who he is.

Dickhead.

“Because you hit your noggin, and your impressions are out of whack?”

When shitheads don’t insist on using my full antediluvian name.

“Ethel. Pretty.”

Come on, Enyedi. Stop ruining my fun. Next song up is about how lonely I am, and how sad that I haven’t gotten laid in at least three hundred years.

Patiently, he stared with that icy, unsettling gaze as I sang something cringeworthy about how no one understands, I just want to feel his hands.

“I hope you loved the song.” At last, he smiled. I could have sworn I spotted an amused dimple dipping within his cheek, but he mouthed a few words at me. I am going to kill you.

I am taking. A vampire slayer. To my home. No: I am leading the oldest and most feared vampire slayer in existence to my place. Despite being a vampire myself. What a time to be undead.

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.

Oversalting will not bring you closer to godliness, Sister Aethelthryth. If you are trying to hide your sins behind a curtain of rosemary, you have nearly succeeded.

No, because at the time I wasn’t aware of the existence of this continent is not the best answer.

“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.”

Still, 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.

The possibilities for self-flagellation are endless.

“Ethel, stop it.” “Stop what? I’m only—” “The bugs, the job, the nemeses stuff. You don’t have to tell me the truth, but you can stop pretending.” “Pretending what?”

“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.”

Although, something within me asks, wouldn’t a sip of Lazlo be good? Delectable. Thick and rich and unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. It would sit heavy in your belly, power your nerve endings, and you’d finally feel so warm that—

Sorry, Lazlo. But they never pledged to maul me and eradicate my people, so they deserved the tarts that pop more than you do.

The strength. The warmth. The sensation of being part of something.

I spend the next two hours teaching a vampire slayer who was created to wipe out my bloodline how to correctly fill in a sudoku grid. He’s not at all bad at it, and I hate to acknowledge it.

Vampires don’t blush. We simply don’t have enough blood for it.

Not once does he ask me if I’m hungry, too, or if I want a single bite. I think he’s done with my bullshit.

And I think that he’d rather I stay quiet than lie. So I do.

“I know your smell. I know your skin. Your hair. It’s all familiar. I have it all memorized. And I dream of you—of this. So many dreams, all so different, we must have done it a million times, in a million different ways. Tell me what you’re hiding from me, let’s get this over with, and then let’s do it a million more

times.”

Normally, I wouldn’t have interfered with the affairs of the human aristocracy. But it was dusk, and I was hungry.