Sapphire (Jewels Cafe #2)

Chapter 1

I stared down the wolf across Jewels Cafe. He curled his lips to show his sharp glinting teeth.

He could be so melodramatic.

"We're staying here, Wim," I said.

He growled.

"Yes, for the third time this week!"

Wim stood up on his hind legs, resting his big hairy front paws on my shoulders and bared his teeth in my face.

So, I did the one thing I could when a wolf threatened me.

I bopped his nose.

Wim blinked, surprised.

"Sapphire," a woman called from the cafe's counter.

I turned my head. Amber, who owned the cafe, raised an eyebrow and pushed a seventy-four-ounce cup across the counter. "Sixty-seven shots of espresso, twenty-eight pumps of caramel syrup, a white mocha, a regular mocha, foam, and extra-extra-extra whipped cream. Wim, here's your small glass of water."

My drink had everything. Well, almost everything. "Does your blood type change when you shift into someone else?" I asked the chameleon shifter.

"You'll never find out."

"So coy," I said as I stepped away from Wim.

I grabbed the cup in both hands and headed for my usual table in the back corner. Wim shifted back to his human form and plopped down across from me with his tiny cup.

"You promised we'd go dancing," he said.

"Yes, but this place has coffee," I said.

He sighed. "I know you're undead, but that drink might kill you."

"I have seen empires rise like the slow, bright dawn and crumble to dust like a cookie in a clenched fist. I am as ancient as the foundations of the earth itself. This won't hurt me."

"You're fifty-three, Sapphire. You were turned two decades ago."

I glared at him across the wobbly cafe table as I sipped my drink through a reusable straw. At twenty-eight, Wim had reached full hotness. Men in their early twenties were awkward still, but Wim was just right. His black hair fell to his shoulders in perfect waves. His dark eyes glinted with a mischievous, predatory light that sent a pleasant shiver down my spine.

"Do you even need coffee?" he said.

"I was never a night person."

"I mean, does caffeine have any effect on vampires?"

"You know damn well it doesn't, Wolfie!" Coffee, alcohol, and everything fun had no effect on vampires—at least not on vampires of my lineage. That didn't stop me from trying.

"What if someone takes cocaine and you suck their blood?" he said.

He was rubbing it in now, probably because I called him Wolfie and he hated the nickname. So, I pulled out my phone and unlocked it, swiping through profile after profile of normal men, right where he could see.

He leaned toward me, resting his forearms on the table. I glanced at his tattoos of nighttime forests and wolves. Something about them made me want to stroke his arm.

"Is that your dating app?" he said.

I grunted.

"Who are you going to feed on and abandon tonight?"

"None of your business."

"Why don't you spend the night with me, Fire?"

"You know why...you won't let me suck on your neck. Besides, I'm ancient, an unending fixed point in time."