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

But now she was sitting right across from him and looking at him with wide, playfully innocent eyes that let him know that she was ready to go a couple of rounds.  She was prepared for it, if that’s what it came to.  Being prepared was something Caroline was very good at.
     
    “OK, well then, how about this.  Here’s another question for you.  Why can’t you just let this shit go?  You want me to lay off of your smoking, why can’t you lay off of me?  Why is it that you get to make your own decisions while I’m supposed to just do as you say?”
     
    “Are you for real?  Please, tell me that’s a joke.”
     
    “Why should I be?  I don’t see anything funny about it.”
     
    Despite his best intentions, he was letting her get underneath his skin, letting her climb in and slip along the small open spaces between the skin and the tough muscles.  They were the only places where he had been vulnerable in many years, and Caroline was one of the only people who knew how to gain access to them.  When she began to speak, it was in slow, measured words, clearly meant to highlight the fact that she considered him to be removed from reality at this point.
     
    Not that she really did, but she liked to mess with him that way.  She liked to mess with him in any way she could.  It was part of how she asserted her dominance.  She was a predator just like he was and although they had their own particular ways of showing it, there was no question about it being true. 
     
    “Well, Philip, it’s funny because the two things aren’t even remotely the same.”
     
    “Aren’t they?  Aren’t they basically both about life decisions?”
     
    Caroline snorted in disgust again and rose, putting her cigarette out in his half full glass of scotch and then beginning to pace around the room.  While she did so, looking casually at the vast library he had amassed for himself, he poured himself another glass and one for Caroline while he was at it.
     
    They might as well drink if they were going to really get into the thing.  He watched her fingering his possessions, watched her consider them all and then replace them with no real interest, and then return to her original seat to light another clove.  He slid one of those glasses of scotch across the wide reclaimed wood desk (supposedly built out of a barn as old as he was, but who the hell knew if that was true) and she took it without even alluding to a thank you.
     
    She took a deep sip and glanced towards the decanter of the stuff to make sure that there was enough for another drink or two if she decided she wanted one.  She was fidgety, very fidgety, and Philip thought to himself again that she looked a lot like a cat.  Her movements were fluid and while she had her moments when all she wanted to do was curl up luxuriously and do nothing at all, most of the time she could not stay still. 
     
    She would flit from one place to another whether she had been invited to or not and when she was done with a person or a place she would just be gone.  You could not make her do a thing she did not want to do.  Hadn’t been able to even in the first few years after her turning and her increasing age hadn’t done anything to make her more pliable.
     
    So when she opened her mouth to answer him, Philip was surprised by the fact that she sounded as tired as he felt.  Almost all of the cuntish pride that she might as well have had a patent for was gone and her eyes looked almost...sad. 
     
    She looked like she really needed him to understand what she was trying to say to him.  If she hadn’t changed so drastically he would never have come close to listening to what she needed to say.  He would have just sent her on her way and gone about his business, maybe climbing back into bed with that delicious morsel dozing up there in his master suite. 
     
    But she sounded so unlike the version of Caroline he had fought with so many times before and that alone was enough to