Embrace the Heat by Cassandra Lawson

aching with her own
arousal.
    Speak of the devil! Layla watched Simon walk
toward the gate with two scantily clad wood nymphs. One she
recognized. Narissa was a real bitch on her best days, but the
nymph’s nasty disposition obviously didn’t bother Simon.
Apparently, Simon had changed his mind about ending things with
Narissa.
    Layla ducked her head, hoping they wouldn’t
notice her and walked toward the training center.
    “Wait up, Layla!”
    Layla smiled at the sound of Mitchell’s
voice. Seriously, he followed her and her team around like a puppy
some days. He was a very rare breed of turned vampire. While most
were undead, Mitchell was more like the born vampires, in that his
heart still beat. Of course, that could change if he ever went
without blood long enough. Mitchell was an outsider in many ways,
just like her and her friends.
    When Layla had first met Mitchell, he’d been
skinny and his brown eyes had been weary of everyone except Ian.
Now, he’d filled out quite a bit. He was more than half a foot
taller than her and growing into a handsome man. Mitchell didn’t
remember a lot from before the change. He remembered his family and
being taken by humans for experiments. His age was a mystery, but
they all guessed he was around sixteen. Next week he’d be starting
school, and hopefully that would make him feel more involved.
Mitchell needed friends his own age.
    He inhaled deeply when he got close to her.
“You smell different,” he said with a frown.
    The vampires and their heightened sense of
smell had taken getting used to. When one of them said something
like that, it still weirded her out. It was rare, but Mitchell
didn’t really have an internal filter most days. At first, she’d
thought it was something specific to Mitchell. Then she’d met other
adolescent vampires and discovered that they all suffered from foot
in mouth syndrome.
    “I have a new soap,” she admitted. It had
been one that she picked up when she was grabbing supplies over a
week ago and just tried today. The smell was a little too girly for
her tastes, but there hadn’t been many options that day. Actually,
she thought she’d done a pretty good job of rinsing the smell off
of her body.
    He shook his head. “It’s you, not the soap.”
Then he blushed. “Sorry, that was really rude. Ian says I need to
think about everything more before I start talking. He says I
offend people when I comment on the way they smell.”
    Layla reached out and gave his hand a
squeeze. “Don’t worry, Mitchell. We’re friends so you can tell me
when I stink.”
    “Oh, you don’t stink,” he said quickly. “You
just smell . . . . disturbing. I feel really
strange around you right now.”
    Layla let out an uncomfortable bark of
laughter. “I think I’d prefer to stink.”
    Mitchell blushed. “Sorry.”
    “Stop saying that! Where are you off to?” At
least the only vampires she’d be around today were old enough to
avoid complaining about the way she smelled.
    He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll watch the training,”
he said. “Not much else to do. Ian is on patrol all day.”
    “I’m sure that would be fine,” she said. “I
don’t know who’s in charge.” It still pissed her off that a vampire
was always put in charge of their training. Even when Raven was
around, Connor insisted that a vampire be involved. Connor or Rand
were usually in charge of training, so it wasn’t too annoying. It
might bother her more if Connor wasn’t a pain in the ass with his
vampires too. Everyone had a rigid training schedule. If you wanted
to fight or go out alone, you trained on Connor’s schedule. Layla
had no idea how Raven put up with him.
    They entered the training center, which was a
very large gym. There were three levels of work out areas and
meeting rooms in the building. Today they were on the third floor
in one of the sparring rooms.
    Layla was relieved to see Rand in charge of
training. She liked Rand. He was probably three times her