Taste of Virgin Blood
Description
A nocturnal corporate thriller morphs into a dark romance: Theresa Knight, a hyper-competent but invisible night-shift assistant, is driven by her brother Alan's debt into listing her virginity on a clandestine site. The winning buyer reveals that the Exchange is a vampire front. Consent is reframed: he offers to pay regardless, but she chooses transformation, pivoting from self-erasure to ruthless agency. Blood and love intertwine. Pain and pleasure mix.
Chapter 1
Oct 23, 2025
As the city sinks into the night and emerges with dawn, so do I trail the borderland between reality and dream. Here, everything feels muted, underwater, and so I clutch to coffee as my lifebuoy, resting on the waves of hums, scent, and hot drink the machine produces. My eyes close. For just a second.
"Working late again, Miss Knight?"
His voice slides across my skin before I even turn around. James Bloxham stands in the doorway of the break room, his suit jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his elbows. The dim light catches the angles of his face, all sharp lines and shadows.
"Someone has to keep this place running," I say, and my voice sounds different. Lower. Confident in a way I never am.
He moves closer. Too close. Close enough that I can smell something clean and expensive, like cedar and cold air. His hand reaches past me, but not for the coffee. His fingers brush the counter beside my hip, caging me in.
"You work too hard," he says.
"Maybe I like working hard."
"Do you?" His other hand comes up, fingertips grazing my jaw, tilting my face toward his. "Or do you just like the way it feels when someone finally notices?"
My breath catches. His thumb traces my lower lip, slow and deliberate, and heat pools low in my stomach. Wrong. This is wrong. He's my boss. He's twenty years older than me. He's untouchable.
But his mouth is so close to mine I can feel the warmth of his breath.
"Tell me to stop," he whispers.
I can't. The word won't form. Instead, I lean into his touch, desperate and shameless, and his gray-blue eyes darken with something that looks like hunger.
The coffee machine beeps.
I jerk awake, my heart slamming against my ribs. The break room is empty. No James. No hands on my skin. Just me, alone, with my face burning and my body humming with want I have no right to feel.
"Get it together," I mutter, grabbing the coffee mug with shaking hands.
"Talking to yourself now?"
I spin around so fast I nearly drop the mug. James stands in the doorway, exactly where he'd been in my dream, except this time his expression is unreadable, polite in that distant way he has with everyone.
"Just tired," I manage.
"You should go home." He steps into the break room, moving with that eerie precision he always has, like every gesture is choreographed. "It's past three."
"I have reports to finish."
"They can wait."
"No, they really can't." I force myself to meet his eyes, even though looking at him feels like staring into something too bright. "Whitney needs them by morning."
"Whitney needs to manage her own deadlines." His gaze holds mine for a beat too long, and I wonder if he can see it on me, the dream still clinging to my skin like sweat. "You're more valuable than you think you are, Miss Knight."
Valuable. The word lodges under my ribs like a blade. I open my mouth, then close it. What would I even say? That I trade forex and commodities on the side, that I've built a portfolio that makes almost half as much as this job pays? That I stay here anyway because the night shift means I get to see him?
"I should get back," I say.
He steps aside. As I pass, our shoulders nearly brush, and heat flares through me, sharp enough to hurt. I walk faster.
It doesn't help.
Back at my desk, the spreadsheets blur on my screen. I pull up my trading platform in another window, checking overnight positions. The numbers move like living things, and I understand their language better than I understand people. My side portfolio is up another two percent. I could quit this job tomorrow. I could walk away from filing reports and staying invisible.
But then I'd never see him again. Never feel that jolt when he walks past my desk. Never get to torture myself with wanting something I can't have.
So I stay. And I bury the rest.
My phone vibrates. Alan's name lights up the screen.
I glance around the office. Only two other people are here tonight, both absorbed in their own work. I answer quietly.
"Alan? It's three in the morning. What's wrong?"
"Tess." His voice comes out thin and ragged, like something's squeezing his throat. "I'm at the hospital."
My stomach drops. "What happened?"
"I got into some trouble. These guys. They want money, and I don't have it, and they…" He breaks off, breathing hard. "They beat me pretty bad."
"How much money?" My hand tightens around the phone.
"Eighty-three thousand."
The number doesn't make sense. It's too big, too impossible.
"Alan, what the hell did you do?"
"I borrowed it. For Mom and Dad.
"Knight!" Whitney's voice cuts across the office, sharp as a whip. "I need those reports NOW!"
I close my eyes. "Alan, I have to call you back."
"Tess, please. They said I have five days."
"I'll figure something out. Just stay at the hospital. Don't go anywhere. I'll come see you after my shift."
I hang up before he can argue, before the panic clawing at my throat can turn into something visible. Eighty-three thousand dollars. Five days. Dangerous men who beat my brother badly enough to put him in the hospital.
I stand, smoothing my skirt with numb hands, and walk over to Whitney's desk. She doesn't look up.
"Here," I say, setting the files down.
"Took you long enough."
I don't respond. I turn back toward my desk, my mind spinning through impossible calculations. My portfolio. Liquidating positions. Margin loans. But even with everything I've built in secret, pulling that much cash in five days would crater my positions, trigger tax events, and leave me with nothing.
The numbers don't add up. They never add up.
Back at my desk, I stare at my screen without seeing it. Eighty-three thousand dollars. The words repeat like a drumbeat, matching my pulse.
I need a solution. Any solution.
And underneath the panic, still humming through my blood, is the ghost of James's hands on my skin, the heat of his breath, the way he looked at me like I was something worth noticing.
Wrong. It's all wrong.
But God, I want it anyway.
Taste of Virgin Blood
30 Chapters
30
Contents
Save
Passion Exclusive
My Passion
Copyright © 2026 Passion
XOLY LIMITED, 400 S. 4th Street, Suite 500, Las Vegas, NV 89101