Forbidden Touch by K. S. Haigwood

couch just informed him that she was a vampire. A VAMPIRE! Vampires didn't exist. Of course, he'd thought witches didn't exist a little while ago, and he was all for saying she was one. He shook his head and looked at her again. She was waiting patiently for him to take all of this in. Okay…okay, he could deal with this. He told her that he wanted to know, and she had only done what he'd asked of her. He shook his head again. A vampire.
    "All right." That was all he could think to say.
    All right? She shook her head, thinking that maybe he was in denial. Well, if not, he'd certainly taken it better than she thought he would. "I don't know who the killer is, but I have certain skills that are important to the tasks I do. I can usually find the Rogue vampires a lot sooner, but this one is different. His brain is fried with insanity, and all I can get from him are the images of the people after he chooses them as victims. He has been waiting forty-eight hours from the time he chooses them, until he goes through with it. I've been entering your dreams to put those images in your head for the last four weeks, hoping you would catch on and locate them before he killed them," she sighed. "But you didn't."
    "I thought I was only having nightmares, or that I was going crazy. It wasn't up until yesterday that I thought I might be psychic. Why didn't you tell me in my dreams?"
    She shook her head. "I couldn't talk to you. You aren't supposed to know about us." She pleaded for him to understand how much of a risk she was taking. "I never meant for you to be caught up in all of this, Mitch."
    Had her intentions been to never talk to him, or touch him, if she had found her killer before he found out about her? He laughed lightly to himself. Was he still trying to convince himself that she liked him? Women as beautiful as her didn't seduce guys like him. How many times had he told himself that? He was still hanging on to a small thread of hope. She had told him that she was a vampire, and yet here he stood, wanting her more than anything in the world. His life was falling apart, and he couldn't think of anything more wonderful than feeling her naked skin on his.
    He rubbed at the aching pain behind his temples with his fingers and simply felt drained. "And now that I am?"
    She looked at him with confusion written all over her face. "What do you mean? We are going to track the Rogue and his victims together, I'll catch him and then you can have your life back. And we are going to try and do it without my family knowing that you know about me." She was pointing at her chest, and she was dead serious.
    She was very cute when she was serious, he thought.
    He shook his head again. "What I mean is," he took a deep breath and looked at her. "Now that I know about you, and when we find the killer and everything is over and done with, are you going to vanish from my life?"
    Her mouth had been open with her sober look, but when he finished talking she closed it with a snap. He couldn't be thinking that they could be friends. He was a mortal, and she never would be again. The visions in his dreams let her know that he thought she was repulsive. But looking at him now, he didn't have that look on his face, even after being told what she was. He was looking at her with longing in his eyes. Did he want her still? No he couldn't possibly. "I have no other choice."
    He stood and paced some more. He was going to wear a hole in the hardwood floor of his apartment and land on the person under him if he didn't stop. "How old are you?"
    "Why do you need to know? It doesn't pertain to the case, so I think the less you know about me, the easier they will be on you when they find out." He just looked at her without answering. Again she asked him. "Why do you need to know how old I am?"
    "What's your name?" he said instead.
    She looked away from him. "I don't think you need to know that either."
    "Yes, I do!" he shouted. It got her attention enough to look back at