The Vampire Design (Part One): Billionaires After Dark: The Vampire Design, #1

By Vivi Anna

A New York Times Bestseller...

Expanded, with a cameo from Jonathan and Mak from The Vampire Affair...

Art student, Emily Brooks, is tired of being told there is no passion in her work. Especially since she knows it's true. There's none in her work and none in her life. So when her best friend Paige says she's going to Germany for the summer with her boyfriend, Emily jumps at the chance to do something out of the ordinary.

But what she finds there is beyond anything she could ever imagine. Amazing art, delectable food, dizzying happiness, and a passion so intense it couldn't possibly be real.

 

BILLIONAIRES AFTER DARK

The Vampire Affair Series:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

The Vampire Design Series:

Part One

The Werewolf Liaison series:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vivi Anna
• Release date: Mar 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497783720

Book preview

THE VAMPIRE DESIGN

By

Vivi Anna

Art student, Emily Brooks, is tired of being told there is no passion in her work. Especially since she knows it’s true. There’s none in her work and none in her life. So when her best friend Paige says she’s going to Germany for the summer with her boyfriend, Emily jumps at the chance to do something out of the ordinary.

What she finds there is beyond anything she could ever imagine. Amazing art, delectable food, dizzying happiness, and a passion so intense it couldn’t possibly be real.

To learn more about Vivi Anna and keep uptodate on her latest releases, please be sure to sign up for her monthly newsletter.

Chapter One

Blue paint splattered my runners as I touched up the last bit of my painting. I took a step back to look at my finished piece. I smiled. I thought it was pretty good. Definitely the best work I’d done this year. I hoped my instructor, David, thought that as well.  He was currently walking the studio and commenting on the other students’ paintings. Soon he would be next to me and giving me his opinion.

Nerves zipped through me as I waited for him. I’d been struggling this semester and David was not shy about letting me know. Which I suppose was his job, but sometimes he was a bit cruel about it.  I got the sense that he liked telling me how untalented I was. Maybe it was to make him feel better because I’d heard through the rumor mill that he was a failed painter.

I was wiping my hands clean on a cloth when David finally stepped up beside me. How are you today, Emily?

Good.

I gnawed on my lip as he scrutinized my work. He frowned, and wrinkled his nose, then took a step back, looked at it this way and that, until finally he took off his glasses and rubbed at his nose. This was never a good sign.

As usual your work is good. You have good lines, and composition. It’s textbook really.

My lips twitched up tentatively into a smile.

But it lacks that thing. That thing that makes great art.

And then they fell back to normal.

It has no life to it Emily. It’s almost like a paint by number.

Crushed.

That’s how I felt right at that moment. I could feel all my hopes and dreams shattering around me. Raining down on my head like bits of glass.

Where’s the passion?  He turned and really looked at me.  To be a great artist, you must create from here. He put his hand on my stomach.

I flinched away. I really didn’t need him being familiar with me. At least not in front of the entire class. Actually even if we’d been alone, I would’ve flinched away. I didn’t like being touched by someone who wasn’t my friend or my man.

He pulled his hand away, his face betraying him. He knew he’d overstepped.  You create with your mind. You have to channel emotion into your brush.

I do, I said. Or at least I thought I did.

Really? He looked at the painting again. What emotion is in this work?

I studied the canvas. My gaze followed the sweeping lines of the ocean and the woman I’d painted standing knee deep in it, the waves cascading up her bare thighs. A bird swooped down to the water in the distance. I thought it was a peaceful piece.

Longing.

For what? he asked.

For what is beyond the water. For what is beyond her reach.

Now that’s I’d said it out loud, it was there right in front of me. Something I really hadn’t truly realized about myself until right this second. I was the girl in the painting.

He nodded. Then my suggestion is for you to travel beyond that water and find your passion.

He put his glasses back on, and moved on to the next student and the next painting.

I could feel the tears coming, so I packed up my supplies, and got the hell out of there before they fell. I rushed across campus to the parking lot and got into my car. I started it, and then the tsunami came.  I rested my head against the steering wheel and cried.

By the time I was done, I had snot encrusted on my nose and my eyes were red. I put the car in gear and drove to my shitty little apartment, and back into my, obviously, passionless and pointless life.

When my roommate Paige came home, she found me on the floor in the living room wrist deep into a tub of cookie dough ice-cream.

What’s wrong? she plunked into the sofa behind me, and started to instantly massage my shoulders.  She knew me well.

I’m a talentless, emotionless hack.

David is a talentless, emotionless hack. Not you.

I don’t know Paige, maybe I’m just not an artist. Maybe I’m wasting my time.

You are so talented, Em. You can’t take the word of loser David.

He said there was no passion to my work. That it was emotionless.

Paige paused for a moment, then continued to rub my stiff neck and shoulders. Maybe you need to get laid.

I turned around to look at her. Are you saying there is no passion in my work?