Kiss of Pride by Sandra Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

showed fangs.
    She glanced toward Lord Vikar.
    He smiled at her through white, straight teeth . . . no fangs in sight now. “Welcome to Hotel Transylvania, my dear.”
    And thus her nightmare began.

Three
    Welcome to my world, sweetling . . .
    “I need to taste you,” Vikar said and almost immediately wished he’d bitten his tongue, except his fool fangs had come out in anticipation of—what else?—a taste.
    Son of a troll! How he hated these fangs! They were embarrassing, really. And inconvenient. In fact, they seemed to have a mind of their own. Like another part of his body.
    But wait. Something strange was happening here. The air fair crackled, and he could swear his skin tingled. Tingled, for the love of a cloud! Every hair on his body was standing at attention, like bloody antennae.
    The woman backed up a bit, but he was between her and the door to his office where he’d yanked her after seeing her alarm on first viewing his fellow vangels. There was a telling silence on the other side of the door now, as if all twenty-seven vangels in residence so far were attempting to listen in on how he would handle this latest disaster.
    He wasn’t sure if she sensed the same chemistry in the air, or if it was his rude behavior that frightened her. Probably both.
    “Taste . . . taste . . . ?” she sputtered, her green eyes sparking anger at him. “In your dreams, buster. I’m here for an interview, and nothing else. I don’t appreciate your manhandling me, either.”
    “I ‘manhandled’ you for your own safety. The tasting must be done, for your own safety.”
    “That’s a new line, right up there with ‘I have to have sex or my blue balls will fall off.’ ”
    She has a mouth like a drukkinn sailor. I like it. “You have a coarse tongue, m’lady.”
    “Yeah, well, m’lord , you put your tongue, coarse or otherwise, anywhere near my private parts, and you will be very sorry.”
    “What? That is not what I meant by tasting.” But now that you’ve planted the picture in my mind, I wonder if it fits in with Trond’s “near-sex”? “You missay me. ’Tis your blood I must sample in order to—”
    “Whoa! The only taste you’re going to get is of the mace I’m going to blow your way.”
    “A gun and mace? What are you, some kind of bounty hunter?” He was fairly certain she referred to the eye-blinding substance, not the medieval ball and chain weapon. So he put both hands up in mock fear.
    She made a snarling sound and was already digging into a briefcase-style purse the size of a boar’s behind. As she bent forward, he relished the sight of her reddish-blonde hair falling forward out of the knot at her nape. He also relished the sight of the cleavage exposed under her flimsy upper garment, a wisp of flesh-toned silk and lace. “Ah, here it is.” She held up a pocket-size canister that might fell a dwarf, but not a man his size, and certainly not one with his supernatural makeup.
    He tried but failed to hide his grin. “Blow away, but the only effect it will have is to make me sneeze. You do not want to see a vampire angel in a sneezing fit. Last time my fangs turned my lower lip into bloody pulp, and feathers flew everywhere.” That was not quite true, his not being winged yet, but exaggeration was a God-given Viking prerogative, in his opinion.
    “Angel?” she scoffed. “First you’re a vampire. Now an angel. I can’t wait to hear what else you claim to be.”
    “Viking.”
    “Huh?”
    “I’m a Viking vampire angel. A vangel. My six brothers and I, Norsemen to the bone, are called The Seven, or the VIK. I am the oldest, but not by much. We seven are leaders of the vangels.”
    She rolled her eyes.
    “Are journalists usually so cynical . . . and rude.”
    She blushed. “No. I apologize. Let’s start over here. I’m Alexandra Kelly, World Gazette magazine.” She extended her hand toward him.
    “And I am Vikar Sigurdsson.” He shook her hand, but only lightly,