A Girl's Guide to Vampires

"Flirting? Heat? Kitchen? Are you mad? Crashing against the wall like that must have scrambled your brains, mister, because there is no way on God's green earth anyone could claim I was flirting with old fang-tooth!"

Raphael took another step forward until we were toe to toe, nose to chin. "You allowed him to hold your hand, and I noticed you weren't fighting too hard to get away. Not to mention you repeatedly batted your eyelashes at me in an obvious attempt to make him jealous. In other words, you showed every sign of a woman who was desirous of a man's attention by putting on a show of indifference to pique his interest. That, Joy Martine Randall, is flirting. I'd appreciate it if you could leave me out of your plans the next time you want to play your little sex games."

"Oh!" I huffed, unable to believe how wrong I'd been about him. I liked him better as the blood-sucking undead than I did as the self-centered, stuffy, righteous, PRIGGISH male he was. "For your information, Mr. So-Stuck-on-Yourself-You-Probably-Attract-Flies, I was not flirting! I do not play games! And I most certainly was not batting my eyelashes at you, so you can get that idea right out of the pudding that passes for your brain!"

"Pudding?" he bellowed at me, outrage bristling from every pore.

"Vanilla. With lumps in it!" I bellowed back.

He took a deep breath, his fingers flexing as he struggled to keep control of himself. Oddly enough, the fact that he was bigger and stronger than me wasn't threatening. Somehow I knew that, try him though I might, he was not the type of man who would hurt me.

"You are the most exasperating woman I've ever met," he growled through clenched teeth. His eyes were things of beauty to behold, but I wasn't about to tell him that, nosiree, not me. A compliment would be the last thing out of my mouth to a man who was so pigheaded he could be served at a luau. "I wouldn't doubt for a moment that you planned this whole fiasco just so I'd lose my job. I had you marked as trouble the moment I saw you fawning all over him." He pointed at Christian.

I stared at Christian in open-mouthed surprise, so flabbergasted I couldn't think of anything to say. Christian gave Raphael an odd look that mingled surprise with anger. I wondered briefly what he had to be angry about; it wasn't him being slandered in such an atrocious manner. My flabbergastedness lasted about three seconds.

"You great big tottyhead! First I'm flirting with Dominic and then I'm fawning on Christian? Is that what you think? Because if you do, you're deranged, you're just one hundred percent deranged! You've got some sort of sex obsession, that's your problem!"

"Unlike a woman who has thrown herself at three men she's met in the space of a single day, I do not have an obsession with sex."

"Three? Three?" I steamed at him.

"I'm the third. Have you forgotten last night?"

"That was different. I have long since changed my mind," I argued, poking him in the chest and tipping my head back so I could glare at him better. "I know your type, all strong and silent and sexy as hell, and believing every woman within a five-mile radius has the hots for you. I bet you even think I'm attracted to you."

"You are the one who said you'd pay me to have sex with you."

"Joy!" Roxy gasped.

"It was a joke," I told her, lying through my teeth. I turned back to Raphael. "I'd just hit my head. I obviously wasn't myself."

His eyes glittered wickedly at me as he dropped his head so he could glower into my eyes. "Very well, we'll forget last night, but that doesn't explain the fact that you're attracted to me now."

"I am not!" I said, outraged at such an idea, refusing to admit that my body was thrumming like a plucked string in reaction to his nearness.

"You are. You're practically begging me to kiss you. If that's not being attracted to me, I don't know what is."

His breath feathered across my face, distracting me for a moment. I bathed in the light of his heated eyes, feeling warm and feminine and very, very aroused.

Damn him.

"If I wanted you to kiss me, Bob, I'd be checking your tonsils right now."

"Is that so?"

He was so close to me, I could feel the heat of his chest as it brushed against me. His eyes burned into mine, our mouths just a fraction of an inch apart as I acknowledged that he was right, I did want him to kiss me, more than anything else I could think of.

"Yes, it's so. I think you're the one who wants to kiss me. Why don't you just give in and say it?"

"You say it first."

"Never."

"I don't give in," he warned just before his mouth brushed against mine.