Fire Nectar by Faleena Hopkins Read Free Book Online

naked and dripping from the shower to grab
the white bath sheet which hung on a nearby hook.
Normally she put no effort into how she looked but this night was different.   She cleared out a spot of steam on the
mirror with her hand and looked at herself. Her complexion was perfect, clear
and very pale. She put Benetint blush liquid on her cheeks to make them more
rosy and human flesh colored then added a brownish mauve lipstick   to her full lips. Her eyes she
kept simple. Just a little liner and mascara to accent her long lashes. She
loved her nose. It wasn’t the little bat nose so many women in Hollywood had.
It had a bit more character.
    She didn’t know why she was hurrying.   Anyone watching her would have seen she
was nervous. She smacked the black goopy mascara wand accidentally onto her
cheek in her haste and left a thick black clump. “Shit!” Impatient with the
clump and the delay, she tried to rub it off, but only managed to make it smear
even more. “Oh come on!” After some effort it finally came off and she threw
the mascara across the room as punishment. If Stewart and Anj had been there
they would have shared a knowing smile but would have been only partly right.   She was doing this for him, but more than
that, she was doing this for hope.
    She left the bathroom but not before knocking over a
bottle of perfume. Her vampyric senses awoke and in slow motion she saw the
glass shatter on the cement loft floor, shards and liquid shooting in different
directions.   Time sped up as a
large, sharp, chunk of glass pitched itself into her leg and drew blood.   She reached for it but the skin healed
over the glass before she could grab it.   “Dammit!”   She rushed back
into the bathroom, grabbed tweezers, jabbed it into her skin and peeled. She
removed the glass and folded the skin onto it quickly. The sticky sweet odor of
so much perfume on the floor was nauseating as she watched her skin heal again.   Tossing the tweezers into the bathroom
in haste, she looked at the mess on the floor.   Screw it, she thought and stepped over
it. That smell – so awful.   She wouldn’t replace that bottle and would never buy that brand again.
    From her closet she rejected outfit after outfit and finally
settled on one of all black: a pencil skirt, black bra and panties plus a silky
black sexy button-up shirt. She unbuttoned it low enough so that if you were at
the right angle, you could see a peek of her bra. Only a little peek. Sexy and
classy combined to a satisfactory effect.   She combed her long hair into a high ponytail, innocently high, to
balance the effect.   She slid her
feet into a pair of black four inch heels and surveyed herself in the mirror,
“Maybe I should wear the blue… No, this is more me .”
Forgetting to move at her practiced, slower more human pace, she hastily
snatched up a red handbag with lightning speed, grabbed her keys and rushed for
the front door.
    It was lucky she’d had to stop to open the door or she
would have skidded right into Julian who stood outside about to knock, at
precisely that moment.   “Julian!”
      “Ms.
Harcourt, hey.   Sorry – looks
like you’re… heading out,” he stammered, very taken aback by her sexy
outfit.   “Valerie called me and,”
      “-And she
wanted you to check up on me because I didn’t return her message,” she calmly
finished for him.   He shrugged and
nodded.
    Julian was her Assistant Photographer. He was a quiet man
of twenty nine or thirty.   She had lost track of his birthday. It
was hard enough not to get attached to her human relationships –
celebrating them with rituals would only deepen the bond, so she tended to
ignore birthdays and holidays.   A
talented photographer himself, Julian had graduated Brooks and had quickly
thereafter been published in GQ, plus two other smaller publications. When he
met Daniella Harcourt at a party, he was immediately struck by her presence and
looked her up as soon as he’d