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In Bed with the Vampire
Shifter Dating Service: Book Three
A Paranormal Romance
by Jasmine Wylder
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Thank You!
Also by Jasmine Wylder
About the Author
Dedication
To my loved ones B & B, who encouraged me to fly toward my dream:
Let’s soar.
Chapter One
First day of work. Angelina smoothed her hair nervously, still trying to decide if this was a good idea or a bad one.
For the pros, it was a job. She needed the money; she had been pretty damn close to losing her apartment when she was hired for this job. Another thing was that it was well-paying. It would only take a few months to rebuild her savings, and if she was careful, she might even be able to finally move away from New York City.
It seemed like every time she thought she was there, something would happen and wipe her out again, meaning she’d be literally homeless if she tried to. And while it wasn’t such a bad life for herself, she had been there before, there was no way she was going to put her 2-year-old son in that situation if she could help it.
The cons of the job, though… well, for one it was just a temp job. She was still looking for other work even as she took this one. The biggest drawback, though…
“Ah, Miss Matthews.” Her new boss, Rainer Weiman, gave her a toothy grin as she stepped out of the elevator. And it was certainly toothy. Two sharp fangs flashed in his grin, and Angelina had to repress a shiver.
She remembered those fangs piercing her neck. The way he held her in his arms. And that was why she almost didn’t accept the job. If she hadn’t been so desperate… Well, working as the PA for a billionaire media mogul, as temporary as it was, could only help her career, right? One day she wanted to be a journalist. She had no training (yet) but getting an eye for the game had to be beneficial, right?
“This is your desk.” Rainer gestured to a stark white desk overflowing with paperwork already. Either his previous PA didn’t do much or Rainer had just been letting things pile up. “Now, your resume said you had experience in receptionist work, right?”
“Um…” She swallowed hard. He didn’t even remember her resume. Probably didn’t remember the interview, let alone a hazy three-night fever two years ago. “Actually, no. I just got through community training, but I haven’t had experience in this sort of work just yet.”
Rainer frowned, cocking his head. Then he grinned again. “Right! You were the girl that came off the street. I remember now. Sorry, I was a bit drunk that day.”
Angelina’s heart sank. He was going to fire her. He was going to fire her, and she had spent all that time searching through every thrift store in the city for this suit for nothing. It was difficult enough for her to find clothes, being such a curvy woman, but having to shop second-hand was even more difficult. And then, to find something good enough for a job?
“No matter.” Rainer walked to the desk briskly and, with a wide sweep of his arm, knocked half the papers off of it. “All this is just junk anyway. Now. What sort of fun do you want to have?”
Fun? She stared at him blankly. What the crap was he talking about?
He plopped down at the desk—her desk, in her chair and put his feet up. His shit-eating grin widened even further, and he gave her a wink.
Angelina’s cheeks flushed as she moved forward and started trying to straighten the piles of paperwork. “It seems like there is a lot to do around here; I’m not sure that there’s any time for fun.”
“There’s always time for fun! Life’s too short to just work work work all the time!” Rainer yawned, as though even talking about work was boring him. “Listen. I’ve been through French revolutions, World Wars, the Great Depression and, honestly, things they don’t have in the history books because nobody survived to tell about it. So, I know. I know carpe diem. So. What kind of fun do you want to have today?”
Angelina frowned a moment, then shrugged. “That might be all well and good when you’re a billionaire and want for nothing,” she said slowly, “but if all I ever thought about was having fun, then my son would starve to death.”
Rainer stared at her a moment, then let out a heavy sigh. “Well, if you’re going to be all reasonable about it.”
Despite his light tone, she couldn’t help but think he was a bit disappointed. Had he only hired for her a playmate? The thought made her cheeks darken to a new shade of red. No. No matter how bad it got, she was not going to be a prostitute. Not again. Once was enough to know that she couldn’t do that and survive. Just thinking about it made her stomach churn with self-hatred.
Was that the real reason he hired her? Did he, in fact, recognize her? Was he hoping to get some regularly in exchange for her regular salary?
“Well. Let’s get down to business, then.” Rainer stood and strode into his office, gesturing for her to follow.
She did, somehow more nervous now than she had been when she was coming up on the elevator. Her high heels clipped against the hard floor and she was glad it wasn’t a carpet. She’d been practicing, but carpet was still hard for her to walk on.
Rainer sat at his desk. “What do you know about the situation with the Starlight mountains?”
“Um—” Angelina took a deep breath, regretting starting off with something so lacking in confidence. Of course, she knew. She kept up with the news. It was just that she hadn’t expected the question! “The previous king, Gregory, was found accused of plotting a military campaign against the human governments and other vampire kingdoms. The Elders, those are the vampires who sit above even the kings—”
“I know.” Rainer smiled again.
Angelina flushed. She twisted her hands together and fought down the embarrassment. “I’m just used to having to explain these things to other people. But anyway, the Elders removed him as king and have locked him away. Currently, there is an election of sorts for the new king to be chosen. The people of the Starlight mountains will be sixty percent of the votes. The Elders will then make up the last forty percent.”
“And I am one of the candidates.” Rainer leaned forward. He stared at her hard for a moment, then that grin of his returned. “And I want you to write up a report about Isaac Fisher’s recent presidential pardon. Most news outlets are jumping on it as an example of a failed justice system. I want you to go deeper. Take a new spin on it… ‘Kid finally gets a second chance’ kind of deal.”
“But I’m not a reporter—”
“I know that. You’re also not a PA and yet I still hired you.” Rainer’s grin widened even further until it almost looked like a grimace. “The thing is, you want to be a reporter. That is correct?”
Angelina hesitated before she nodded.
“Well, you know what the difference is between the reporters whose work y
ou read in the newspaper and you?”
“Training, experience—”
“Employment!” Rainer slapped his hand on his desk. “Some bigshot came around and slapped the title of reporter on them and so they became reporters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is all the credentials and whatnot, but that’s just padding. I’ve been in this business long enough to know. It’s the heart of things. The heart! And that’s what journalism today has lost. It’s all pretending to be objective, as though humans aren’t human and as though you can write without emotion. You. You’re raw. Untrained. I want to get at the heart of this thing, and I want you to get me there. Got it?”
Angelina was feeling quite out of breath just listening to him, but she nodded eagerly. If he was going to give her such a responsibility knowing she wasn’t qualified for it, who was she to argue? She knew how to do research; she’d been doing it for years and studied the craft of her favorite reporters religiously. She could do this!
Rainer nodded. “Good. Good, good. Great, even!” He slammed both hands on the desk and gave a sharp bark of laughter. “We’re going to really ‘His Girl Friday’ this shit. Trust me, by the time your terms of employment are up, you’re going to have offers from every newspaper in America.”
“You are awfully confident about that,” Angelina laughed. “I will do my best, boss. But His Girl Friday isn’t really a good example, is it? I mean, Cary Grant doesn’t help Rosalind Russell become a reporter; she’s already one. If anything, he’s holding her back.”
“Holding her back?” Rainer looked shocked. “Why? Because he loves her and sabotages her fiancé to get her back?”
“No. Because he doesn’t respect her choices and thinks he knows what’s better for her.”
“He did better for her.”
Angelina snorted. “Arguing about old, sexist movies is not what I expected to do on my first day here.”
“Sexist?” Rainer’s expression fell. “You’re calling that movie sexist? Oh, come on. It’s just a little bit of comedy and excitement. It’s not like it’s saying that all women desperately crave for their ex-husbands to interfere with their lives to a creepy stalker level and will spend the whole movie playing at the hate relationship only to secretly be in love with him the whole time.”
“Maybe not,” Angelina shot back, “but there are plenty of movies that do have that message and that teaches men that no doesn’t mean no.”
Rainer rolled his eyes. “Listen, Angie, you’re putting way too much stock in that sort of thing. If you relaxed a little, you’d enjoy life a lot more.”
It was just the sort of thing she was always being told. As though relaxing would help erase all the times she had been groped, swatted, or had comments made about her. Her cheeks flushed again but it was out of anger as much as embarrassment this time. She wanted to let him have it, to tell him what she wanted to say to every man who had made an unwanted sexual comment to her.
Instead, she merely turned on her heel and went out to her desk. She couldn’t afford to lose her job! And Rainer Weiman, being as big as he was in the industry, if she pissed him off then she was never going to be a reporter. So, she sat at her desk, looked at the piles of paperwork in discouragement, then booted up her computer.
He wanted a piece on Isaac Fisher. The vampire who was convicted of some pretty bad behavior but received a presidential pardon for helping to bring down Gregory before he could attack the world. Well, he was going to get one, all right. But she wasn’t going to half-ass this. If he thought he could give her an impossible task and then use it as an excuse to fire her when she failed, he had another thing coming.
Angelina was used to the impossible. When she was a teen and a car accident broke her spine as well as killed her parents, she was told she’d never walk again. And oh look, she could walk. When she was having terrible menstrual cramping and bleeding and she was diagnosed with a rare disorder which meant she was never going to get pregnant? Wham, pow. She was a mother.
Now, the only thing that was impossible was that Rainer was still even remotely attractive to her. Sure, he had the chiseled jaw and rugged looks, not to mention a seriously muscled body, but man... She should have guessed already from his frequenting of parties where there were prostitutes.
As she started her research, she thought about Tommy. His dark eyes, his easy smile. He shared his dimples with his father. But one thing was for certain… Rainer was never going to know he had a son. Not hers, at least.
***
“All I’m saying is that you’re down three points.”
Rainer rolled his eyes. His PR agent (the vampire one, in charge of his image among the vampire kingdoms) probably would have scolded him for that. Rolling eyes was seen as a human thing for some bizarre reason and most vampires frowned at the people who did it.
Apparently, though, the ‘living with the humans’ angle was working for Rainer. Sure, some people thought it was weird and others claimed he was out of touch with vampire culture, but knowing about humans was a big plus for the Elders. Most kings remained sequestered in their kingdoms. Some didn’t even know what Netflix was. Having a king who could keep them all up to date on what these funny little humans were up to was seen as a pretty big deal.
No, the problem now was that he wasn’t ‘proactive’ enough. But proactive about what? That was anybody’s guess.
“I built myself a media empire in the fifties. I’m always running stories on vampire rights issues. I hold fundraisers every month and do guest appearances on social issues all the time. My slogan is simple. I will fight for the freedom to walk in the sun. What is not proactive about that?”
His PR agent hemmed and hawed for a moment before admitting, “Your biggest rival has over thirty victories on the battlefield. You’ve never even led an army. He’s saying that you can’t fight for their rights when you’ve never really fought.”
Rainer ground his teeth together. He had fought, alright. He hadn’t just lived through wars, he had been an active participant in them. He’d seen men blown to bits, women hacked to pieces as they tried to protect their children. He’d seen people who claimed they were the good guys, that God was on their side, rape and plunder and murder. He’d seen enough that there had been times in his life when he wanted to rip his eyes from his head, just so he wouldn’t have to see it anymore.
And to think that just because he wasn’t at the head of the charge, some idiot was saying he hadn’t fought? It made his blood boil.
“The battles he fought in here hundreds of years ago.” Rainer fought to keep his voice constrained. “The bastard didn’t even participate in either World Wars. He just hid out in his mountain. I fought. I saw the carnage. I—”
“Then we need to use that. I need you to do what you do so best and come out with that passion, that fire. It’s what makes you a great newsman and it’s what we need, now, to make you a great king.”
“Right.” Rainer muted the phone. “Right, I’ll just get right on that. I’ll talk about how bloody horrible it was, how I hope we never have to see something like that again, how prowess on the battlefield should not be something that’s celebrated because it just means death and violence! That’ll get them to love me for sure. Oh, yes, for fucking sure.”
“Hello? Hello, are you still there?”
Rainer, feeling a little calmer, unmuted the phone. “Yeah, I’m still here. Sorry, I was just thinking about the old days. It was so much easier when you could just challenge a man to a duel and then skewer him to get your way.”
He laughed, as though it was a joke that he really believed. It was the sort of thing that vampires said all the time. Ah, the good old days. None of them seemed to recognize how good the days were now. They all longed to go back to dysentery and chamber pots. Hell, there were some kingdoms where electronics were a booming black-market trade because the kings had forbidden them entirely. What it was about vampires that made them so stale, Rainer didn’t know. You’d think that in such a dynamic world, they�
�d realize how far behind they were. Maybe they didn’t care.
His PR agent laughed meekly. This one was pretty young, only seventy years old. The youngsters were the only ones who got anything done these days. They were the ones bringing in change, improving life in the kingdoms. Stopping the old guys from crumbling to dust. They were the only ones who saw a point to it. And what thanks did they get for it?
Ironically, I’m well over a thousand myself.
That was still young, especially compared to the Elders. Some of them were older than the pyramids at Giza. Rainer was sure one of them was actually half-Neanderthal.
Rainer sighed as he straightened in his chair. He could only imagine what they had seen, witnessed… Maybe there was a reason they hid from the world at that. In any case, that wasn’t the point right now. Right now, he needed to work on the strategy to combat the whole ‘not proactive enough’ bullshit.
“Ah, anyway. Let’s be smart about this, shall we?” he suggested. “I’ve seen the proofs for the advertisements. I’m not a fan of mud-slinging. I don’t want to be chosen because I’m not as bad as my opponent. What I want you to do is to take every opposition to me and either find a way to turn it into a positive or correct the assumptions made there.”
“But—”
“I know you can do it.”
A beat. “Mr. Weiman, we need you to be visible. I am telling you, especially with this battlefield thing, you need to stand up and speak for yourself and not just during debates.”
“You can handle it. Oh, my assistant is trying to get my attention. Dear, Lord! I have lunch with the Queen of England. Great chatting with you, cheerio!” He hung up and stretched the kinks from his back.
Sure, he knew he had to put a bit more effort into this whole king thing if he wanted to be king, but the truth of the matter was he only decided to run because he thought it would help stave off the boredom. But now, he had something else to help keep him from getting bored.
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