by Kitty Wilder
Moonlit Surrender
Kitty Wilder
Published by Blushing Books
An Imprint of
ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc.
A Virginia Corporation
977 Seminole Trail #233
Charlottesville, VA 22901
©2020
All rights reserved.
No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The trademark Blushing Books is pending in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Kitty Wilder
Moonlit Surrender
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64563-670-0
Print ISBN: 978-1-64563-671-7
Audio ISBN: 978-1-64563-672-4
v1
Cover Art by ABCD Graphics & Design
This book contains fantasy themes appropriate for mature readers only. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual sexual activity.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Kitty Wilder
Blushing Books
Blushing Books Newsletter
Chapter 1
Present time
John stopped the car outside his apartment building.
Lucy immediately froze up. “There is no way in hell I’m going up there. Show me whatever the fuck you want to show me right here.”
His lips tightened. It was something she was learning meant he was frustrated.
“I didn’t lie to you, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He let out a deep breath. “I didn’t lie to you, Lucy. Doris and I are not a couple.”
“Bullshit,” she interrupted again. “I saw you two making out in the parking lot tonight.”
“You saw something, but it wasn’t affection or love. Please come upstairs and talk to me.”
Lucy’s brow furrowed, while her mind was going a mile a minute with thoughts of what she should do right now. Oh fuck it. Why not? “Why not” is exactly what a girl says before she winds up dead in a ditch. Probably. What else is going on in life though? That asexual motherfucker sitting on his lazy ass in front of the TV? That mound of debt you’ve accumulated from school that will probably lead nowhere? The family you barely keep in contact with? Fuck it. See what he has to say.
She didn’t say anything out loud but opened the car door and stepped out. John was behind her quickly and draped his suit jacket around her shoulders before she could freeze into a popsicle on their walk to his building.
They said nothing as they climbed the stairs, nothing as he let her into his apartment and switched on a couple lights, and nothing as he pulled two glasses from his kitchen cabinet and poured a glass from the bottle of the sweet red wine he had introduced her to and something deeper red and thicker looking from a different bottle into his glass.
Still draped in his jacket, she sat down with one leg tucked under her and took a small sip, hoping she’d hate it this time. Nope. It’s still delicious. Damn.
John pulled his old, faded antique chair up closer so he could face her better and then sat down on the edge of its cushion. He watched her take another sip, his gray gaze focused on her lips for a moment before trailing back up to her blue eyes.
She felt naked sitting in front of him with her face washed of her makeup, her hair down and still damp, and attired so casually, but she stared right back at him.
“I’m a vampire, Lucy.”
She laughed so hard a little wine went up her nose. She coughed and her eyes burned and watered.
John’s expression didn’t change, the solemn muscles in his face not moving an inch.
She calmed her skeptical giggles but couldn’t wipe the amused slant from her mouth. “Seriously? This is what you’re going with? ‘I’m a vampire, Lucy’,” she mocked his stern tone and couldn’t help but laugh a little more.
“Would you like me to prove it?” he asked, still showing no signs of giving up his ridiculous charade.
“I would fucking love that. Please do,” she motioned her hand for him to continue as she relaxed into the couch cushions, ready for a show.
The first thing he did was retrieve a hand mirror from what she assumed was the doorway to his bedroom. He held it up as he stood in front of her to reveal it was missing his reflection.
“Give me that,” she snatched it from his hands, convinced it was a trick mirror, but her own reflection was clear as day. She held it back up to catch John in it, but he still didn’t appear. “Okay. It’s a neat trick, I’ll give you that. What’s next? Where are your terrible fangs, John Wright, the wicked and super real vampire?”
He pulled back his lips from his teeth and sure enough, there they were, sharp as ever.
Lucy rose from her seat at that and set her glass of wine down and shrugged his jacket off her shoulders. She looked at him, still smiling from amusement, and tugged on one of the fangs. It didn’t budge, didn’t come out the way the fake ones from Halloween stores did. She tugged a little harder.
John winced. “Pulling out the tooth doesn’t prove or disprove anything, dear.”
Lucy retracted her hand, this time a little impressed. They definitely seemed real, and he carried the façade so well. “So is this why you only teach night classes then? Why I only ever see you after dark?”
He nodded.
She laughed nervously. “So like... what does a vampire do besides eat people?”
“I don’t eat anyone. I drink blood though, yes. I don’t know what you mean. I live.”
“Do you have like supernatural powers or something? Strength?” she asked, recalling all of the cheesy vampire romances she had read as a teenager.
He nodded. “It is one talent, yes.”
“Show me.”
He dipped down and lifted her up into his arms again, the same way he had carried her out of his apartment when she had been too tipsy to tackle the stairs.
Her heart began to race, but not from being so close to him this time. She was starting to believe him. She leaned in and heard the odd silence of breathlessness in his lungs and the strange absence of a heartbeat. “You definitely breathe though. I’ve heard you sigh and stuff.”
He shrugged with her still easily cradled in his arms. “A reflex. An old habit that refused to die along with many of the things I lost with my mortality.”
She reached her slender hand in between the buttons of his shirt until they touched his temperate skin beneath, not cold as she had imagined a vampire’s would be, but it was not the warmth of living flesh either. She felt under his chest hair that alarming silence within and recoiled in fear. “I don’t like this. This isn’t funny anymore. Put me down.”
Gingerly he set her back on her feet.
Lucy took two steps back. “So like... what? Doris is a vampire too then or something?”
“She is the thorn in my side, the wretched woman.” He fell into his chair as if suddenly collapsing beneath a great burden. “She figured it out. She realized what I am and she’s been using it as leverage for some time now.”
“I don’t understand. How did she happen to figure it out?” She crossed her arms as she listened, skepticism still scrunching her face.
“Through all of the things I just showed you. She did her own investigation on me, then confronted me with the results.”
She paused, soaking up the information he offered. “Why would you care though? So what? There are whole groups of people on the internet swearing vampires are real, but nobody gives it any stock. She already looks a little crazy to me.”
He chuckled and nodded, then took a deep drink from his glass and returned to his serious scowl. “It’s not the general public I fear. It’s the few hidden in the shadows that would believe her, those that don’t suffer my kind.”
She sat down on the edge of the couch, eyes wide. “Do you mean there are vampire hunters too?”
“I suppose that would be the simplest description of them, yes. They are a group, a collective of skilled hunters that have been around for centuries, dedicated to wiping out evil on earth, vampires among that crowd.”
“What do they call themselves? Where do they come from? Are there any here?”
He held up his hand to halt her barrage of questions. “I really don’t know much about them, dear, save to avoid them. I encountered one once, long ago, who I only managed, by the skin of my teeth, to convince to let me go. She did not offer a history lesson on her order.”
She paused reflectively for a moment, soaking up all the information he had given her. “So, Doris knows and she threatened to tell people in exchange for...?”
He looked away from her and was silent for so long, she had begun to wonder if he had even heard her. “She has an unhealthy fascination with the supernatural. She asked that I drink from her.”
Lucy’s brow raised in shock. “Seriously? She didn’t ask for money or anything, just to be your personal juice box?”
He shuddered slightly. “Please never use that particular phrase again.”
She laughed nervously. “You’re serious though?”
He nodded. “That’s what you saw in the parking lot. It’s true, she doesn’t care for you. I imagine she finds you a threat.”
“A threat?” Her eyes widened. “Were you planning to do the same to me? To make me your little snack pet?”
“No! No, not at all, I swear it to you.” He held up his half empty glass. “I haven’t needed to touch a person to sustain myself for many years. I have a connection through the diner we visit. The owner supplies me with my meals.”
“That’s blood?”
He nodded and set it back down on the worn wooden end table beside him.
Realization dawned on her. “That punch you get when we go there?”
He nodded again.
She searched her history with him, noting she had never truly seen him eat anything, but for a taste here and there, only that red punch – blood. She had never seen him during the day, even their text correspondences were after dark. The tepid temperature of his skin, the absence of heartbeat, the lack of breath, it all pointed to the picture he was painting her.
“So how long have you...” she trailed off unsure.
“It’s been a few hundred years or so. I’ve honestly lost track by now.”
Her jaw fell slack in absolute shock and she moved to take a drink of wine and wound up finishing the whole glass. “This... is a lot,” she whispered.
He leaned forward, watching her as if she might suddenly die from the information he was dumping on her, and refilled her glass. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. My intention was never to burden you with my mess. I thought… I just wanted…” he hesitated, for once unsure of what to say.
“Why me?” she asked softly, finally finding her way back to his luminescent gray gaze.
“I don’t understand.”
“Why are you telling me all this? Why did you ever talk to me? Why did we spend so much time together?”
“Because I enjoy your company,” he answered simply. “I didn’t intend for things to get so out of hand, but...”
“But what?”
“I can’t seem to help myself around you. You’re a very special young woman.”
She grimaced in disbelief with a massive eye roll. “Really? You expect me to believe that? I think that’s the least believable thing you’ve said all night,” she laughed sardonically. “Out of the hundreds of years you’ve been alive and all the people you’ve met, I’m special? You just can’t help yourself?”
“And why shouldn’t it be so? We live in a wondrous world.”
“There are so many people in the world though, and that’s not even counting past generations. How many versions of a person can there be? You must’ve already encountered about twenty of me by now.”
He laughed. “Would it surprise you then to know you are the first you I have met?”
She nodded in disbelief.
“You don’t give enough credit to the diversity of mankind, all the numerous variables that go into making a person: genetics, lifestyle, environment and so much more. Inevitably, I’m sure combinations get close to repeating, but I’d say they never truly do. I cannot speak definitively on it though. Suffice it to say, though, I find you unique and captivating.”
“Captivating?” she echoed, still unable to grasp everything he had said so far in the night. She looked up at him, into his beautiful, otherworldly eyes. They held the most sincerity, the most depth she had ever witnessed in a person. Lifetimes rippled within his gray ocean.
“Do you know,” he began softly, inching his chair a little closer to her, “deep down every person holds this innate desire to know and be known by someone? It drives so much of what we do, to enjoy and be enjoyed. We all seek acceptance and company, all of us in varying degrees, but we all seek it. Even I do. I was once a man.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Just to be with you,” he said so softly, so easily. “I’m not asking for anything but your company, just as we’ve been. I’m sorry for offending you with Doris. I’m just not entirely sure how to defuse the situation without my secret coming out – and it is a secret, Lucy. You can’t tell anyone what I’ve told you here tonight, not Ben, not anyone. Do you understand?” He waited for her to show a sign that she had heard what he said, but she just stared up at him still dumbfounded. “Lucy, do you understand? You cannot tell anyone I’m a vampire. Okay, dear? My life depends on your discretion.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
He nodded too, if a bit nervously. “Good girl,” he muttered. “Our secret.”
She reached a shaky hand to grab her glass of wine again and finished it off with three consecutive gulps.
John watched her worriedly. He grabbed the bottle of wine again and refilled her glass once more.
She took another sip, set it down, and then relaxed into the couch and closed her eyes to collect her thoughts.
Lucy opened her eyes and looked at him, the alcohol in her system emboldening her once more. “I don’t want things to be the same.”
He looked startled as he realized what she meant. “Sweetheart...” he started but trailed off unsurely.
She rose from her seat and stood between his knees, resting her shins against the edge of his chair.
His eyes trailed up her body, lingering over every curve and valley, slowing their path as they grazed over her breasts.
Lucy felt goosebumps tickle her skin as she realized in her haste she had not slipped on any undergarments. All that stood between the two of them was a thin barrier of cotton. “Do you still want me?”
He nodded, not missing a beat. His hands rose from his lap, pausing only for the slightest of moments as if to give her a chance to decline his touch before they slid up the backs of her t
highs and under her shorts to cup her ass.
Lucy felt heat coursing through her body, felt her pulse thunder in her ears, and wondered what arousal felt like to a vampire with no heartbeat. She reached her hand down to his neck and jumped when she felt a faint, slow pulse.
“We can discuss vampire anatomy another time,” he stated low and smoky, noticing her discovery. “Suffice it to say you make what little blood is in me rush.” He rose from his chair and towered over her, crushed her to his chest, and then bent down to kiss her hard and passionately, not the slow game he had played in his car the last time they had kissed.
Lucy moaned into his mouth and felt him moan back, felt the rumble in his chest before the sound even made it out of his mouth and into hers. She let her hands explore him, trailing over his body and unfastening his tie so she could open his shirt and feel his skin against hers.
“Lucy,” he groaned, pulling away from her. To her surprise he was breathing heavily. “This... you’ve had a shock tonight. You’re not yourself.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Damn it, John. Stop making excuses. I want you. I want you so fucking bad and have for so long. I don’t care what you are. You’re you and that’s all that matters. Please.”
His hands faltered uncharacteristically. “It won’t be how you think,” he warned softly.
“I don’t care,” she smiled and tugged his arm to guide him to his bedroom.
He followed quietly, allowing her to lead him.
She didn’t bother to switch on a lamp, instead savoring the way the moonlight spilled over his features from the large window overlooking the sleeping town below. She backed away from him just a bit and pulled her shirt up over her head, her breasts heaving out into the cool air of the room, and then pushed down her shorts, standing before him totally naked.
