Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) by Samantha Snow Page A

do.  Three time’s the charm, right?  Isn’t that what they say?”
     
    “I don’t know.  Who's ‘they’?” 
     
    “I don’t know.  They.  That’s how the saying goes, isn’t it?  Anyway, who cares?  It’s out there in the world for all of us to hear now.  Who really cares who put it there?  Now, how’s about you make me that drink you were so intent on me having and then I want to see the house.  I’ve been waiting for long enough, I think.”
     
    She had only been in his home for maybe twenty minutes, tops, but he knew what she meant by that last comment nevertheless.  He could see her wanting to see this place, longing to wander through its corridors and discover its mysteries.  He found that he, too, was excited about the tour.
     
    Almost nobody was allowed inside of the walls of this home.  Even the girls he hooked up with, and there had been many, did not come into his home.  He would book them a hotel and take the girl in the penthouse suite,  not caring a bit for the cost.  What did something like the money mean to someone like Philip?  He had more money than he would possibly be able to blow through if he were to live another several hundred years (which he fully intended to do) and a five hundred dollar night in a hotel seemed like a small price to pay to keep his solitude and anonymity intact. 
     
    But not this time.  Again, Philip believed that Megan Wright was not like the other girls he had been with, and there were very few people in the world who were anything close to her. He wanted to show her his home, which surprised him, but there it was. 
     
    His home, the truest expression of who he was.  Showing his home to another living soul felt like one of the most vulnerable things he could do.  It had all of the bits and pieces of himself he had amassed over the past century and opened him up to scrutiny and any number of questions. 
     
    Usually, he would have avoided that at all costs, but not now.  Now he felt like a kid on Christmas getting to show off his new and best toy.  That’s what his house was to him; his toy, his pride and joy, the one he kept close. 
     
    He walked her through room after room after room, so many rooms that he knew without asking that she would never know just exactly how many rooms the sprawling home contained.  Not that it mattered.  She was utterly delighted with the place, believing each room to be more beautiful than the last.
     
    He knew that without having to ask as well.  So many rich and luxurious things, such an overload for the senses.  She wanted to touch everything, to pick it up and put it up against the skin of her cheek.  She wanted to experience it, all of it.  He saw that and was pleased.
     
    “What about back there?  You haven’t shown me that part yet.  Right?  I mean I don’t think you have.  Unless I’m just completely turned around, which is definitely possible.”
     
    “No,” he said smoothly, no emotion showing in his voice in one direction or another, “you aren’t completely turned around.  We haven’t seen that area.  Those are my chambers.”
     
    “Are they?”
     
    “Yes, they are.”
     
    “And are we going to see those as well?”
     
    “Would you like to see those as well?”
     
    Megan’s eyes grew brighter still and she took a demure sip of her almost empty cocktail, her eyes never leaving his.  They were caught in the middle of a standoff, neither one at all willing to back down.  But were they really on opposing sides, when it was all said and done?
     
    He would not ask her to come to bed with him, that he would not do.  He had already done far more than he was likely to do.  He had invited her here for this rather ostentatious showing of his home, had done his best to dazzle her in his own way. 
     
    And did she want to see his chambers?  He thought that she did.  She struck him as a smart girl and she must have noticed that she had seen everything but his bedroom