Wanted: A Blood Courtesans Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

her plump lips. Her taste lingered on my tongue. It wasn’t just her darkness that drew me to her. She burned with an almost reckless sense of perseverance, but she was too shy to acknowledge her sensual side. Such an interesting paradox. I’d enjoy drawing it all out of her.
    “I can’t control my thoughts. Especially the negative ones.” She shifted away from my touch, even more uncomfortable about revealing her power than sex. To me, they were one in the same. “If I think something bad about someone, it happens. I don’t do anything. I don’t have to. It manifests itself and comes to life. Things break, get ruined, and once people realized that the accidents were somehow connected to me, they egged me on. And then they got hurt.”
    This girl could be my secret weapon. If I could learn to harness her powers and teach her how to use them. It was a big if. I’d never met a human with this kind of power. I couldn’t let her know what power it gave her over me. “How do you know it’s you, and not a coincidence?”
    “I black out, and whatever happens is exactly how I pictured it.” She swallowed hard. “Amber used to be my best friend. She turned on me. Told everyone at school what she thought I could do. That’s when things got really bad. I graduated from high school a few weeks ago, finally free, right? I’d go to college, start over. The hope was once I was away from the people who upset me, the bad thought thing would go away. But it didn’t. It couldn’t. Last week, Amber came into work, a little coffee shop, and mouthed off. I’d had enough. It was probably the disappointment of it happening again that made it so much worse this time. I don’t know. If I did, I could stop it. I thought about how nice it would be to shut her up, to get her to leave me alone for good. Anyway, the surveillance camera shows the empty bottle of kitchen cleaner in my barista station. It shouldn’t have been there. I don’t remember putting it in her drink, but she died from the poison. The police came for me, and I ran.”
    “You came here.” It excited me, that she was ruthless enough to do something like that to someone she’d once cared about. That she made her friend pay the ultimate consequence. Not only could Corynne be a valuable ally, but possibly the first woman I’d met worthy of being more than a courtesan since I came to New York City. “No one knows where the power came from?”
    She shook her head and chuckled. “Nope. I’ve seen every shrink in the tristate area, as well as a few priests, but none of them were strong enough to drive the devil out of me.”
    “The problem with humans is that don’t quite understand the meanings of good and evil.” I moved away from her, the power, the scent, and went back to the fire. I caught her stunned expression. “If I turn you, you’ll see things from a different perspective. You think of what you did as murder. I see it as doing what needs to be done.”
    “Do you kill people?” She shrunk back on the couch, but kept her gaze fixed on me.
    “When it’s necessary.” To Hell with being away from her. I wanted to give myself over to this feeling. I’d waited forever for it. In my excitement, I moved too fast, hovering over her. She gasped. “Blood is currency. Like you would buy food, we buy blood. That’s why you’re here. That’s not the only purpose it serves. Blood intensifies sex. You’re lucky, that’s the only way you’ll ever experience it.”
    Her hand covered the smudged black mark over her chest. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Corynne. It’s a choice, that’s all.”
    She shook her head. “Nobody wanted me.”
    I tipped her chin up, our gazes locked. “There are many things humans don’t understand. They see what they want to see. Come up with explanations that put their fears to rest. In seven centuries, I’ve learned that most humans fear power and change. The two things go hand in hand. They’ll do anything they can