There was a flutter of hope that flew through her at Liliya’s response. The sad truth was that Lizbeth had never had an appointment with a client in which she wasn’t bitten. She didn’t consider herself a prostitute because her blood was the real item that was being bought and sold. Most of the time, depending on the vampires, sex became a part of the arrangement. She never wanted it – truth be told, she hated it – but Lizbeth had learned a long time ago that fighting only made things worse for her. The idea of sleeping with Liliya had not yet hit her mind; her brain may have likely stalled out from exhilaration if it had. The only thing that she could think about right now was the fact that if her blood was being bought by one person and one person alone, she would no longer have to suffer through those other, more horrible vampires. “No other appointments…” She muttered the word under her breath wistfully. A smile began on her face and grew until it nearly spanned ear to ear. She had the job. She had the job. Lizbeth had never been so ecstatic to take on a new client. “No, no objections!” There was a pause, long enough for her to think about her availability. “I do work two other jobs, but I don’t think that they will be a problem.” Since she had moved to Scarlet Oak six months ago, Lizbeth had been working at both The Golden Dragon, a Chinese restaurant in town, and Heme, the vampire bar. Somehow she had managed to keep the two worlds separate, all while keeping herself from running into the ground. The truly horrible days were those when she had to work a morning shift at the restaurant, then turn around and work a shift at the bar, and, before she could call it a night, meet with a client before sunrise. The day after, she usually woke up feeling like death warmed over, but they were – thankfully – few and far between.
She was trying to keep the butterflies in her stomach from going haywire at the feeling of the vampire’s fingers on her neck when Liliya asked if she could have a sample of her blood. Her face dropped slightly. Milo hadn’t told her that there would be anything more than an interview tonight, but if Liliya was truly going to keep her, then what could it hurt? Then again, he would be furious if she came home with a fresh bite and he hadn’t received payment for what was taken. Lizbeth wasn’t above healing the wound as much as she could; she only had to hope that Milo wouldn’t inspect her once she arrived home. “I suppose that would be okay.” Her head nodded slowly as she responded. Lizbeth scooted closer to Liliya on the couch, inclining her head to the side to give the other woman better access. And then, as if purposely to make her nerves even worse, the thought occurred to her that this was the first time a vampire had ever bitten her and she had wanted it because of how close the two of them would have to be for Liliya to take her blood. Would it feel any different that the hundreds of bites that she had experienced before? Lizbeth desperately wanted to know the answer.