Luckily, it was the person I’d been expecting.

Thierry removed his hand, leaned over, and crushed his mouth against mine in a kiss that took my breath away. I gasped against his lips, but then kissed him back deeply, wrapping my arms around his neck before sliding my hands up into his dark hair. His body warmed me in the cold night.

It wasn’t the first time we’d secretly met after everyone thought we’d broken up, but I hadn’t expected it tonight. Everyone else thought he’d only just returned from a trip to

France, but he’d never left the city. Since it was vital that nobody saw us together, it had been difficult finding a time and place to meet. I’d missed him a lot.

When the kiss broke off and my heartbeat came back to a normal pace, I looked up at him, raising an eyebrow. “A message on a coaster? Is that seriously the best you could do?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to get away. Calling or messaging you on your phone could be traced.”

“And being spotted in a nightclub buying me drinks is much less risky?”

“I’m very discreet.”

I managed to smile. “By the way, your handwriting is nearly illegible.”

His mouth quirked. “Yet you figured out what it said.”

“Barely.” I grabbed hold of his black shirt and kissed him again quickly. We were shielded by the very romantic trash holders on either side of us but I still felt nervous that somebody might see us together. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to see you.” His silver-eyed gaze moved down the length of me and back up to my face.

Just as the bartender had described my drink sender, Thierry de Bennicoeur was tall and knee-weakeningly delicious—my words, not his. Dark hair, broad shoulders, full lips, straight nose, stern black eyebrows over gray eyes that sometimes appeared to be silver.

You’d never expect that he was pushing seven hundred years old, a vampire sired during the Black Death plague in Europe in the 1400s.