Vampire State of Mind, page 27
Sil’s demon was still moving. I could sense its presence behind his eyes; they changed as I watched, blue-green to grey and then on to an iron-grey like a night sky. ‘Oh,’ he said and touched his chest as though it hurt. ‘Oh. God.’
‘What? Are you all right? Have you broken a rib or something? Do vampires have ribs? Oh, duh, Jessie, of course they do, otherwise their insides would be their outsides.’ I knew I was rambling but I was afraid. There was something terribly intense about Sil’s expression.
‘No. Just … a touch too much for even my demon to manage.’
‘Too much what?’
His hands laced behind me. ‘Too much emotion. For a second there … I almost felt human again’
‘And that’s a bad thing?’ The old-chocolate-box smell of him was almost neutralising the smell of blood, the cool stillness of his body steadying my own shaking one.
‘No. Yes. I don’t … It makes me feel things, Jessica. The pain, the guilt, the remorse … I don’t think I can live with those, not even to feel the … to feel anything else.’
‘You won’t love me because it means facing up to what you are?’ Anger made me bite my lip and I watched as his flickering eyes beamed in on the sudden bloom of blood. ‘I’m sorry, Sil, you were right before. You are a coward.’
‘I lost my family, Jessica.’ His voice wavered a touch. ‘I had to hide at my own children’s funeral because of what I am. I watched my wife remarry. A man she loved until the day she died – a man who made her forget me …’ I felt his ribs move as he buried a sob beneath an attempt at a cool tone. ‘I have a right not to want to feel.’
‘I’ve lost my family too, now.’ I felt a brief hotness on my cheek, which turned out to be a tear. ‘And loving you is all I’ve got left.’ I gave in for just one, quick, Germaine-Greer-bothering second and rested my face against his chest, felt his demon squirm. ‘And you do feel, you told me so yourself. You just deny it. Feed it to your demon. Like … like Rachel sometimes buys bacon and then feeds it to Jasper. Sometimes she actually makes herself a sandwich and she thinks I don’t know, and if you tell her that then I’ll stake you myself, but …’
‘So you think you could be my bacon sandwich?’ There was another tremble in his voice now, but it sounded different. ‘My one weakness?’
I took half-a-step backwards but kept my arms around him. ‘Everyone should let themselves have one thing that makes all the rest of the denial worthwhile. I loved you for four years, wouldn’t even so much as date anyone; Cameron was as much my cover as I was his, because I wanted you so much that no-one else was ever going to come close. Believe me, I know about denial.’ I lowered my voice, aware that Liam might well be hovering. ‘But it was worthwhile, for that night in the drain. If there’s never any more than that, it was worthwhile.’
‘And you can love me, knowing what I’ve done?’ There was a note of wonder in his voice. ‘Knowing how I have been? What I have been?’
‘Hey, no-one’s perfect. I broke the tracker programme. We’ve all got our nasty little secrets – my parentage is probably going to turn out to be the least of mine – but, yes. I love you whatever. Because that’s what love is, Jonathan, it’s knowing and still caring.’
His demon moved. ‘And it’s learning to live with the guilt.’ He stroked my hair, long fingers twisting through, pulling my head up so I had to meet his eyes, still shifting colour. ‘There will still be the blood. And the clubs. But I can dance and drink synth, it doesn’t have to be, well, what it was. I think I can do this, Jessica. If you feel that you can take that chance.’ With the inevitability of winter, he touched my lips with his. ‘You give me peace. And in return you’ll get my love. If you want it.’ A momentary uncertainty. ‘Do you?’
His demon felt my surge of pure joy and beat ecstatically in time to his pulse. ‘Well, I’ve got around a hundred years to come to terms with it,’ I said, reaching up to pull his mouth down to mine again.
The love for her was unleashed inside him, sending his demon into the kind of frenzied bliss that would have taken several blood-donors and a night of hyperactive sex before. Jessie. Who would have thought it? All it needed was for me to find what I’d lost, and here it was all the time. Right in front of me. I didn’t know it for what it was, even when I was willing to die for her, even when I told her mother I would keep her safe … this slender girl with the quite incredibly untidy hair was all I needed to make me feel human again. Joseph and Constance … it won’t go away, the pain of losing you, but the more I remember you, the less it hurts. And now I have Jessica I can think of you as you were; I can remember the times before. Remember throwing you in the air and hearing you laugh as I caught you, and building endless castles in the shrubbery for you to hide in. And Christie … you’d have liked Jessica, Christie. You and she are very alike. I can imagine you both now, sitting around the parlour table, sipping tea and listing my more peculiar habits, laughing together over my failings. And the guilt … the guilt for all those times before the Treaty, all those things I did not to survive, but for pleasure? That can remain, to remind me of how it was. Of what I was. Like those photographs of a past life, a warning …
For now the love is all. And it will save me.
About the Author
fresh-photographic.co.uk (the fabulous Phil, who managed to make me look half-way human!)
Jane was born in Devon and now lives in Yorkshire. She has five children, four cats and two dogs. She works in a local school and also teaches creative writing. Jane is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and has a first-class honours degree in creative writing.
Jane writes comedies which are often described as ‘quirky’. This is Jane’s third Choc Lit novel. Her UK debut, Please don’t stop the music, won the 2012 Romantic Novel of the Year and the Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Awards from the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
For more information on Jane visit www.janelovering.co.uk
www.twitter.com/janelovering
More Choc Lit
From Jane Lovering
Please don’t stop the music
Winner of the 2012 Best Romantic Comedy Novel of the year
Winner of the 2012 Romantic Novel of the year
How much can you hide?
Jemima Hutton is determined to build a successful new life and keep her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks set to fail – until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking up, on all fronts.
But Ben has secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to be the front man of hugely successful Indie rock band Willow Down, she wants to know more. Why did he desert the band on their US tour? Why is he now a semi-recluse?
And the curiosity is mutual – which means that her own secret is no longer safe …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Star Struck
Our memories define us – don’t they?
And Skye Threppel lost most of hers in a car crash that stole the lives of her best friend and fiancé. It’s left scars, inside and out, which have destroyed her career and her confidence.
Skye hopes a trip to the wide dusty landscapes of Nevada – and a TV convention offering the chance to meet the actor she idolises – will help her heal. But she bumps into mysterious sci-fi writer Jack Whitaker first. He’s a handsome contradiction – cool and intense, with a wild past.
Jack has enough problems already. He isn’t looking for a woman with self-esteem issues and a crush on one of his leading actors. Yet he’s drawn to Skye.
An instant rapport soon becomes intense attraction, but Jack fears they can’t have a future if Skye ever finds out about his past …
Will their memories tear them apart, or can they build new ones together?
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Why not try something else from the Choc Lit selection?
Here’s a sample:
Love & Freedom
Sue Moorcroft
Winner of the Festival of Romance Best Romantic Read Award 2011
New start, new love.
That’s what Honor Sontag needs after her life falls apart, leaving her reputation in tatters and her head all over the place. So she flees her native America and heads for Brighton, England.
Honor’s hoping for a much-deserved break and the chance to find the mother who abandoned her as a baby. What she gets is an entanglement with a mysterious male whose family seems to have a finger in every pot in town.
Martyn Mayfair has sworn off women with strings attached, but is irresistibly drawn to Honor, the American who keeps popping up in his life. All he wants is an uncomplicated relationship built on honesty, but Honor’s past threatens to undermine everything. Then secrets about her mother start to spill out …
Honor has to make an agonising choice. Will she live up to her dutiful name and please others? Or will she choose freedom?
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
The UnTied Kingdom
Kate Johnson
Shortlisted for the 2012 RoNA Contemporary Romantic Novel Category Award
The portal to an alternate world was the start of all her troubles – or was it?
When Eve Carpenter lands with a splash in the Thames, it’s not the London or England she’s used to. No one has a telephone or knows what a computer is. England’s a third-world country and Princess Di is still alive. But worst of all, everyone thinks Eve’s a spy.
Including Major Harker who has his own problems. His sworn enemy is looking for a promotion. The General wants him to undertake some ridiculous mission to capture a computer, which Harker vaguely envisions running wild somewhere in Yorkshire. Turns out the best person to help him is Eve.
She claims to be a popstar. Harker doesn’t know what a popstar is, although he suspects it’s a fancy foreign word for ‘spy’. Eve knows all about computers, and electricity. Eve is dangerous. There’s every possibility she’s mad.
And Harker is falling in love with her.
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
The Importance of Being Emma
Juliet Archer
Winner of The Big Red Reads Fiction Award 2011
A modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma.
Mark Knightley – handsome, clever, rich – is used to women falling at his feet. Except Emma Woodhouse, who’s like part of the family – and the furniture. When their relationship changes dramatically, is it an ending or a new beginning?
Emma’s grown into a stunningly attractive young woman, full of ideas for modernising her family business. Then Mark gets involved and the sparks begin to fly. It’s just like the old days, except that now he’s seeing her through totally new eyes.
While Mark struggles to keep his feelings in check, Emma remains immune to the Knightley charm. She’s never forgotten that embarrassing moment when he discovered her teenage crush on him. He’s still pouring scorn on all her projects, especially her beautifully orchestrated campaign to find Mr Right for her ditzy PA. And finally, when the mysterious Flynn Churchill – the man of her dreams – turns up, how could she have eyes for anyone else? …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Highland Storms
Christina Courtenay
Winner of the 2012 Best Historical Romantic Novel of the year
Who can you trust?
Betrayed by his brother and his childhood love, Brice Kinross needs a fresh start. So he welcomes the opportunity to leave Sweden for the Scottish Highlands to take over the family estate.
But there’s trouble afoot at Rosyth in 1754 and Brice finds himself unwelcome. The estate’s in ruin and money is disappearing. He discovers an ally in Marsaili Buchanan, the beautiful redheaded housekeeper, but can he trust her?
Marsaili is determined to build a good life. She works hard at being a housekeeper and harder still at avoiding men who want to take advantage of her. But she’s irresistibly drawn to the new clan chief, even though he’s made it plain he doesn’t want to be shackled to anyone.
And the young laird has more than romance on his mind. His investigations are stirring up an enemy. Someone who will stop at nothing to get what he wants – including Marsaili – even if that means destroying Brice’s life forever …
Sequel to Trade Winds
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Introducing Choc Lit
We’re an independent publisher creating a delicious selection of fiction. Where heroes are like chocolate – irresistible! Quality stories with a romance at the heart.
Choc Lit novels are selected by genuine readers like yourself. We only publish stories our Choc Lit Tasting Panel want to see in print. Our reviews and awards speak for themselves.
Come and support our authors and join them in our Author’s Corner, read their interviews and see their latest events, reviews and gossip.
Visit: www.choc-lit.com for more details.
Available in paperback and as ebooks from most stores.
We’d also love to hear how you enjoyed Vampire State of Mind. Just visit www.choc-lit.com and give your feedback. Describe Sil in terms of chocolate and you could win a Choc Lit novel in our Flavour of the Month competition.
Follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/ChocLituk
Jane Lovering, Vampire State of Mind
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‘What? Are you all right? Have you broken a rib or something? Do vampires have ribs? Oh, duh, Jessie, of course they do, otherwise their insides would be their outsides.’ I knew I was rambling but I was afraid. There was something terribly intense about Sil’s expression.
‘No. Just … a touch too much for even my demon to manage.’
‘Too much what?’
His hands laced behind me. ‘Too much emotion. For a second there … I almost felt human again’
‘And that’s a bad thing?’ The old-chocolate-box smell of him was almost neutralising the smell of blood, the cool stillness of his body steadying my own shaking one.
‘No. Yes. I don’t … It makes me feel things, Jessica. The pain, the guilt, the remorse … I don’t think I can live with those, not even to feel the … to feel anything else.’
‘You won’t love me because it means facing up to what you are?’ Anger made me bite my lip and I watched as his flickering eyes beamed in on the sudden bloom of blood. ‘I’m sorry, Sil, you were right before. You are a coward.’
‘I lost my family, Jessica.’ His voice wavered a touch. ‘I had to hide at my own children’s funeral because of what I am. I watched my wife remarry. A man she loved until the day she died – a man who made her forget me …’ I felt his ribs move as he buried a sob beneath an attempt at a cool tone. ‘I have a right not to want to feel.’
‘I’ve lost my family too, now.’ I felt a brief hotness on my cheek, which turned out to be a tear. ‘And loving you is all I’ve got left.’ I gave in for just one, quick, Germaine-Greer-bothering second and rested my face against his chest, felt his demon squirm. ‘And you do feel, you told me so yourself. You just deny it. Feed it to your demon. Like … like Rachel sometimes buys bacon and then feeds it to Jasper. Sometimes she actually makes herself a sandwich and she thinks I don’t know, and if you tell her that then I’ll stake you myself, but …’
‘So you think you could be my bacon sandwich?’ There was another tremble in his voice now, but it sounded different. ‘My one weakness?’
I took half-a-step backwards but kept my arms around him. ‘Everyone should let themselves have one thing that makes all the rest of the denial worthwhile. I loved you for four years, wouldn’t even so much as date anyone; Cameron was as much my cover as I was his, because I wanted you so much that no-one else was ever going to come close. Believe me, I know about denial.’ I lowered my voice, aware that Liam might well be hovering. ‘But it was worthwhile, for that night in the drain. If there’s never any more than that, it was worthwhile.’
‘And you can love me, knowing what I’ve done?’ There was a note of wonder in his voice. ‘Knowing how I have been? What I have been?’
‘Hey, no-one’s perfect. I broke the tracker programme. We’ve all got our nasty little secrets – my parentage is probably going to turn out to be the least of mine – but, yes. I love you whatever. Because that’s what love is, Jonathan, it’s knowing and still caring.’
His demon moved. ‘And it’s learning to live with the guilt.’ He stroked my hair, long fingers twisting through, pulling my head up so I had to meet his eyes, still shifting colour. ‘There will still be the blood. And the clubs. But I can dance and drink synth, it doesn’t have to be, well, what it was. I think I can do this, Jessica. If you feel that you can take that chance.’ With the inevitability of winter, he touched my lips with his. ‘You give me peace. And in return you’ll get my love. If you want it.’ A momentary uncertainty. ‘Do you?’
His demon felt my surge of pure joy and beat ecstatically in time to his pulse. ‘Well, I’ve got around a hundred years to come to terms with it,’ I said, reaching up to pull his mouth down to mine again.
The love for her was unleashed inside him, sending his demon into the kind of frenzied bliss that would have taken several blood-donors and a night of hyperactive sex before. Jessie. Who would have thought it? All it needed was for me to find what I’d lost, and here it was all the time. Right in front of me. I didn’t know it for what it was, even when I was willing to die for her, even when I told her mother I would keep her safe … this slender girl with the quite incredibly untidy hair was all I needed to make me feel human again. Joseph and Constance … it won’t go away, the pain of losing you, but the more I remember you, the less it hurts. And now I have Jessica I can think of you as you were; I can remember the times before. Remember throwing you in the air and hearing you laugh as I caught you, and building endless castles in the shrubbery for you to hide in. And Christie … you’d have liked Jessica, Christie. You and she are very alike. I can imagine you both now, sitting around the parlour table, sipping tea and listing my more peculiar habits, laughing together over my failings. And the guilt … the guilt for all those times before the Treaty, all those things I did not to survive, but for pleasure? That can remain, to remind me of how it was. Of what I was. Like those photographs of a past life, a warning …
For now the love is all. And it will save me.
About the Author
fresh-photographic.co.uk (the fabulous Phil, who managed to make me look half-way human!)
Jane was born in Devon and now lives in Yorkshire. She has five children, four cats and two dogs. She works in a local school and also teaches creative writing. Jane is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and has a first-class honours degree in creative writing.
Jane writes comedies which are often described as ‘quirky’. This is Jane’s third Choc Lit novel. Her UK debut, Please don’t stop the music, won the 2012 Romantic Novel of the Year and the Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Awards from the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
For more information on Jane visit www.janelovering.co.uk
www.twitter.com/janelovering
More Choc Lit
From Jane Lovering
Please don’t stop the music
Winner of the 2012 Best Romantic Comedy Novel of the year
Winner of the 2012 Romantic Novel of the year
How much can you hide?
Jemima Hutton is determined to build a successful new life and keep her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks set to fail – until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking up, on all fronts.
But Ben has secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to be the front man of hugely successful Indie rock band Willow Down, she wants to know more. Why did he desert the band on their US tour? Why is he now a semi-recluse?
And the curiosity is mutual – which means that her own secret is no longer safe …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Star Struck
Our memories define us – don’t they?
And Skye Threppel lost most of hers in a car crash that stole the lives of her best friend and fiancé. It’s left scars, inside and out, which have destroyed her career and her confidence.
Skye hopes a trip to the wide dusty landscapes of Nevada – and a TV convention offering the chance to meet the actor she idolises – will help her heal. But she bumps into mysterious sci-fi writer Jack Whitaker first. He’s a handsome contradiction – cool and intense, with a wild past.
Jack has enough problems already. He isn’t looking for a woman with self-esteem issues and a crush on one of his leading actors. Yet he’s drawn to Skye.
An instant rapport soon becomes intense attraction, but Jack fears they can’t have a future if Skye ever finds out about his past …
Will their memories tear them apart, or can they build new ones together?
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Why not try something else from the Choc Lit selection?
Here’s a sample:
Love & Freedom
Sue Moorcroft
Winner of the Festival of Romance Best Romantic Read Award 2011
New start, new love.
That’s what Honor Sontag needs after her life falls apart, leaving her reputation in tatters and her head all over the place. So she flees her native America and heads for Brighton, England.
Honor’s hoping for a much-deserved break and the chance to find the mother who abandoned her as a baby. What she gets is an entanglement with a mysterious male whose family seems to have a finger in every pot in town.
Martyn Mayfair has sworn off women with strings attached, but is irresistibly drawn to Honor, the American who keeps popping up in his life. All he wants is an uncomplicated relationship built on honesty, but Honor’s past threatens to undermine everything. Then secrets about her mother start to spill out …
Honor has to make an agonising choice. Will she live up to her dutiful name and please others? Or will she choose freedom?
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
The UnTied Kingdom
Kate Johnson
Shortlisted for the 2012 RoNA Contemporary Romantic Novel Category Award
The portal to an alternate world was the start of all her troubles – or was it?
When Eve Carpenter lands with a splash in the Thames, it’s not the London or England she’s used to. No one has a telephone or knows what a computer is. England’s a third-world country and Princess Di is still alive. But worst of all, everyone thinks Eve’s a spy.
Including Major Harker who has his own problems. His sworn enemy is looking for a promotion. The General wants him to undertake some ridiculous mission to capture a computer, which Harker vaguely envisions running wild somewhere in Yorkshire. Turns out the best person to help him is Eve.
She claims to be a popstar. Harker doesn’t know what a popstar is, although he suspects it’s a fancy foreign word for ‘spy’. Eve knows all about computers, and electricity. Eve is dangerous. There’s every possibility she’s mad.
And Harker is falling in love with her.
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
The Importance of Being Emma
Juliet Archer
Winner of The Big Red Reads Fiction Award 2011
A modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma.
Mark Knightley – handsome, clever, rich – is used to women falling at his feet. Except Emma Woodhouse, who’s like part of the family – and the furniture. When their relationship changes dramatically, is it an ending or a new beginning?
Emma’s grown into a stunningly attractive young woman, full of ideas for modernising her family business. Then Mark gets involved and the sparks begin to fly. It’s just like the old days, except that now he’s seeing her through totally new eyes.
While Mark struggles to keep his feelings in check, Emma remains immune to the Knightley charm. She’s never forgotten that embarrassing moment when he discovered her teenage crush on him. He’s still pouring scorn on all her projects, especially her beautifully orchestrated campaign to find Mr Right for her ditzy PA. And finally, when the mysterious Flynn Churchill – the man of her dreams – turns up, how could she have eyes for anyone else? …
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Highland Storms
Christina Courtenay
Winner of the 2012 Best Historical Romantic Novel of the year
Who can you trust?
Betrayed by his brother and his childhood love, Brice Kinross needs a fresh start. So he welcomes the opportunity to leave Sweden for the Scottish Highlands to take over the family estate.
But there’s trouble afoot at Rosyth in 1754 and Brice finds himself unwelcome. The estate’s in ruin and money is disappearing. He discovers an ally in Marsaili Buchanan, the beautiful redheaded housekeeper, but can he trust her?
Marsaili is determined to build a good life. She works hard at being a housekeeper and harder still at avoiding men who want to take advantage of her. But she’s irresistibly drawn to the new clan chief, even though he’s made it plain he doesn’t want to be shackled to anyone.
And the young laird has more than romance on his mind. His investigations are stirring up an enemy. Someone who will stop at nothing to get what he wants – including Marsaili – even if that means destroying Brice’s life forever …
Sequel to Trade Winds
Visit www.choc-lit.com for more details including the first two chapters and reviews.
Introducing Choc Lit
We’re an independent publisher creating a delicious selection of fiction. Where heroes are like chocolate – irresistible! Quality stories with a romance at the heart.
Choc Lit novels are selected by genuine readers like yourself. We only publish stories our Choc Lit Tasting Panel want to see in print. Our reviews and awards speak for themselves.
Come and support our authors and join them in our Author’s Corner, read their interviews and see their latest events, reviews and gossip.
Visit: www.choc-lit.com for more details.
Available in paperback and as ebooks from most stores.
We’d also love to hear how you enjoyed Vampire State of Mind. Just visit www.choc-lit.com and give your feedback. Describe Sil in terms of chocolate and you could win a Choc Lit novel in our Flavour of the Month competition.
Follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/ChocLituk
Jane Lovering, Vampire State of Mind
