Original Sin (The Order of Vampires 1)

Jimbo’s wasn’t a bar for dancing, but when he led her in a slow glide, she felt more anchored than ever before. Her gaze was sewn to his as his fingers laced with hers, palm warm and a perfect fit.

There is no one who compares with you... The simple lyric seemed written just for them. As he pulled her close, he seemed to latch onto her soul.

“The Red Album,” he said, turning her with the beat. “You like it.”

It wasn’t a question. Her head tilted back to fully see him, as he was at least a foot taller. “It’s my favorite.”

His lips curved as if he were pleased with himself. He looked over her shoulder, pulling her hand closer as they turned. His other hand drifted over her hip and glided to the base of her spine as if he’d held her there a thousand times.

A hint of possession seeped from his touch. A man had never held her so intimately before, with such... authority. He held her as if he had every right to.

Her existence and focus belonged to him in that moment. A spell she couldn’t break and didn’t want to. Every worry and weight on her shoulders slipped away. There was no darkness, no fear, no emptiness, and no gravity, only Adam.

His heart beat in synch with hers. A million questions raced through her head, but she seemed only capable of asking the most inconsequential ones. “Why did you pick this song?”

His voice rumbled from his chest. “You told me about it.”

Her brow furrowed despite her scattered memories of recent dreams. “When?”

“When we met.”

She drew back and looked him in the eye. This wasn’t real. This was a joke. So what if she dreamt of him? Dreams were personal, private, between a person and their conscience—sometimes not even that.

The idea that they somehow knew each other from some dream sharing mumbo jumbo was just too bizarre. She pulled her hand out of his and finally found the nerve to take a step back. “I just met you yesterday.”

His head shook. “You’ve known me longer than a day, Annalise. We met when the sky touched the earth, and stars were born. You were the air I breathed. And I was the first sound you heard. We were pulled apart to come to this moment in time, but it has always been our destiny to find each other again.”

Wonderful. The first guy to give her butterflies and he was a hippy-talking-lunatic. “Right. Well, I gotta get back to work—”

“I know you remember meeting me.”

She paused, only because she sort of did. But that wasn’t real. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Remember meeting me somewhere else?”

“Yes.” He nodded with absolute certainty.

She propped a fist on her hip. “Where?”

“When night was day and day was night.”

Her skeptical poise faltered to shock. It was her dream. Her lips parted. “In a field...”

He gave another nod. “We were there, and you sang this song—”

He reached for her and she took another step back. The song ended and she sensed others staring. “What is this? Who are you? How do you know about that?”

“I told you. I’m Adam. And I know, because I was there with you.”

They stood in the center of Jimbo’s and people gawked at her. The sense of rightness disappeared as confusion and burning humiliation cleaved into her. She was making an ass of herself.

The bar seemed abnormally quiet. The click-clack of balls traveling over the felt of the pool table and sinking into places, the sound of the restroom door swishing open, and the sizzle of the grill in the back. But no one talked.

The disorienting sense of tears spiked behind her eyes left her blinking at Kyle. He frowned from behind the bar, his eyes asking what the hell she was doing and hers answering back with a dumb I don’t know.

Gus and Bruce stared as well. They were all looking at her. Her and Adam. Oh God. Was this the psychological break she’d been dreading? She could almost hear reality breaking away from fantasy like the plates of the earth shifting. The fallout was coming—

“Excuse me.” She turned and kept her head down as she rushed through the bar to the back and closed herself in the restroom.

Her breathing kept tempo with her racing heart as she replayed the last two minutes. Two minutes that felt like a thousand years.

She went to the mirror. Her face looked pale. She’d been off all day. Wetting her hands, she blotted her face and shut off the faucet. She focused on the steady, calming drip, drip, drip of tap leaking.

Nothing made sense yet something did make sense. His comment only freaked her out because it sounded ... true. She knew the field, remembered dreaming that moment.

“Annalise?” A knock sounded at the door.

Kyle. How would she explain her crazy behavior to him? “Be right out.”