I arched a brow at her. “How could this get any worse?”

“He could be old and ugly.”

“I take it he’s not,” I replied dryly.

Annabelle jumped up and leaned over to tap furiously on the keyboard of my laptop. “I read an article about him recently and it had a picture of him. Here, see for yourself,” she replied as she tilted the screen towards me.

I wanted to pretend disinterest. Who cared what he looked like? But dammit, with more lives than a cat, I couldn’t fight curiosity. My deep seated need to know everything made me look.

Oh, he is a handsome devil. Tousled blond hair, clear blue eyes hidden behind a bookish pair of lenses and a sensual mouth made for biting. Just the type of snack I liked to enjoy when my hormones craved something carnal-what a shame my partners never survived. “Good looking in a nerdy way or not, I’m still not crazy about the idea of letting him poke and prod at me.”

Annabelle shrugged. “Suit yourself. Me, I wouldn’t mind stripping for him and letting him search all of my cavities with any of his body parts.”

I laughed at her shameless comment before I dove on her for a satisfying nibble on her neck. As her rich blood rolled down my throat, warming me and speeding up my heart, I wondered if I’d get a chance to snack on the good doctor, in the interest of science, of course.

Yum.

Several days later

The doorbell rang and I scowled. My dreaded guest had arrived.

I smoothed down my silk blouse and already wrinkle free skirt. I recognized my nervous gestures as a way of controlling my environment-or so the psychiatrist I’d eaten and absorbed claimed. I didn’t like my queen’s plan of offering me up as a white rat for human experimentation. But I couldn’t disobey a direct order.

I’d managed to get my way in at least one respect and that was the doctor would reside here with me while he probed me. It took some finagling and an investment in medical equipment that my kind didn’t require, but I refused to put myself in a strange location under the control of humans. To my surprise, I didn’t have to argue long, and so the time had quickly arrived along with the man who would dissect me without killing me.