Luckily, she wouldn’t be taking any.
Her first stop was the Dupres hotel. As she drew near the tiled steps, a heavy footstep crunched directly behind her.
She let loose a low, filthy curse. She should have scented her new partner before she heard him, but the stench of backed-up sewer water overpowered her keen sense of smell.
Not that she thought moving fast would really shake the bastard off her tail. After all, she hadn’t turned on the vampire warp speed.
The revolving door whooshed silently, and she stepped into the lobby, Alex close on her heels. She passed a security guard she recognized who gave her a nod and didn’t challenge her as they passed.
Good. The staff was keeping the riffraff out of the hotel. Only paying guests would be passing through the doors.
The interior of the hotel sweltered. The smell of the street strengthened in the stagnant air. Small tea candles burned on low tables and a candelabrum burnished on the counter of the reception desk. People lounged around the tables, playing cards, talking smack.
Where light didn’t quite reach, shadows grew—ominous, pregnant with menace.
Her hackles rose. Her “spider sense” alerted to something preternatural in the putrid air. She strode to the counter and slapped her hand on the polished wood to get the staff’s attention. “Someone made a report?” she asked, flashing her badge.
“Room four-o-five,” one tall, lanky black man said. “We heard screams. They wouldn’t open the door. Sounds like a really bad party goin’ down in there.”
She glanced down at the name tag on his rumpled uniform coat. “Marcus, you keep out of the way, you hear? We’ll take care of it.”
Marcus’s nod was quick, his expression relieved. If he’d been here very long, he likely had a good idea what was happening in that room. The hotel was notorious for high-rolling blood parties.
She skipped the elevator and headed toward the stairs, wondering how many times Alex would stumble in the dark as he tried to follow the sound of her footsteps.
A beam of light flashed over her shoulder, and she glanced back.
He held his flashlight shoulder high, his expression impossible to read in the dark. “Wouldn’t want you to trip on the stairs, partner.”
She heard his silent gloat and narrowed her gaze. All right, he’d embarrassed her. Made her feel small. Even if she was trying for bitch of the year. “Glad you thought of it,” she muttered.
“Police issue.”
She slammed her palm against the door to the stairwell, and they entered the darkness. Up four flights of stairs that didn’t wind him a bit.
In front of room 405, she laid a hand on his arm. “Once we’re in, you stay behind me. Follow my lead.”
“This is your turf,” he said agreeably.
Tucking her hand into a pocket inside her jacket, she started to have second thoughts about bringing him along to a bloodfest. Anything could happen. She really should have warned him.
She wrapped her fingers around wood, sanded smooth, and withdrew a stake.
His eyebrows rose. “Planning on camping out, are we? Got a tent in there, too?” he asked, leaning close to look down at her chest, only to draw up short, when the pointed end poked at his belly. Raising his hands in surrender, he backed up a step. “Not much of a sense of humor. I’ll remember that.”
“Do that,” she said, turning the stake and handing it to him. “Anything comes at you with fangs, put this through its heart.”
Maybe he did know a little something. He tucked it in the front pocket of his cuddle-soft blue jeans.
Must have been a really deep pocket.
The door swung open, and they both fell back a step.
Alex swung his flashlight toward the woman in the doorway.
She squinted at the bright light, a bottle of rum dangling from her fingers. Her clothes were awry, the buttons on her shirt mismatched. “You here for the party?” she slurred.
A red rivulet of blood slid down her neck, and she pitched forward toward the floor.
Alex caught her easily and lay her down in the hallway, next to the wall.
Chessa sighed and knelt beside her, bending close to lap at the wounds on her neck, closing them. When she’d finished, she stood and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, grimacing with disgust. “Fuck me! She’s soused.” Not bothering to see how her partner reacted to her actions, she shoved past him and entered the vampire’s den.
Stars glittered in the clearing sky, shimmering through the water where he waited, still clinging to the skeletal remains of the brother. Wide swaths of light crisscrossed the surface above him, sending greenish darts of light into the depths. Voices, distorted by water and distance, sounded thick and muffled in the distance.
After his bones were released by The Guardian, he’d been swept away on a giddy, frightening ride, afraid he’d be carried to the sea and forever confined to its depths.
Instead, he’d been washed up against the bank of a river, snagged by the fallen branch of a tree. His fate once again aided by the mystery of the Great God.
One voice neared. A male.
The wait felt interminable, laden with lush anticipation. After an eternity waiting in the darkness, soon, he’d be free. All the unsuspecting fool had to do was enter the water and reach down to examine the bones lying just beneath the surface.
Such a human need—to honor the dead. A weakness he would exploit.
When the large hand hovered above him, gleeful lustful power swirled inside.
Contact—the hand to his naked skull, even through a glove—was all he needed to complete his journey. He slipped upward and wrapped around flesh—warm, thrumming with life—and crept up a thickly muscled arm.
His new host dropped the skull back into the water and shook his hand, his expression wrinkling.
He couldn’t see him! Didn’t know what crawled up his arm, along his shoulder, and then slid around his face to enter his moist, warm mouth as it opened around a scream. The moment must have crept as slowly as a tiger crouched on his belly, inching toward its quivering prey.
The man choked, clasping his hands to his throat, sinking to his knees. Breath stopped on an inward wheeze. Inside him, the flicker of his life doused. His heartbeat slowed to a sluggish halt. His body slumped upright.
The heart still quivering inside the deep chest of his victim, the creature commanded it to beat again, forcing the muscle to remember its purpose, squeezing rhythmically—a slow steady throb that pushed blood through his veins.
Awareness of his new body encouraged him to drag in a deep breath, testing the taste and smell of the fouled air around him. After the close confines of a stifling crypt, the rich odors were ambrosia.
He opened his new eyes and slashed his gaze around him, noting men gathering at the river’s edge, peering into debris, calling softly to one another as though walking among the gravesites of the dead.
He drew another breath, drawing strength into his being and savoring again the scents of this new place. The humid air felt thick in his lungs and redolent with the putrid smell of the swirling water, the scent of stale sweat rising from his new body—and the smell of the humans nearby.
“Hey, we got an officer down!” The shout sounded from behind him. A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “Bernie, you okay?”
A smile stretched his new lips and “Bernie” looked up from where he knelt in the muddy grass. Thanks to the memories of his new host, he understood the words that filled his ears.
He curved his long, thick fingers like a shovel, smiling still as he drove them beneath the rib cage of the man leaning over him—straight inside his chest to wrap his fingers around his pulsing heart.
He liked this new world. As he gripped the quivering mass of muscle, he licked his lips. Nothing and no one would ever close him away again.
CHAPTER
4
Cigarette smoke rose like a thick cloud to burn her eyes as Chessa stepped through the suite�
�s living room area. The windows, open due to the heat in the unventilated room, admitted only a lank breeze that barely stirred the flames of the burning candles dotting empty surfaces of tables and the mantel of a fake fireplace.
Beneath the smoke wafted the odor of sex—spent cum, sweating bodies—along with the acrid aroma of spilled whiskey and the musty smell of blood. The orgy was still in full swing.
Chessa barely spared a glance for the dusky-skinned woman straddling a man on one sofa while she bounced energetically on his lap. She stepped over the calves of a man bent over the spread-eagled legs of a blonde as he tongued and fisted her, sweat gleaming on his shoulders and flexing triceps. The woman arched her back from the floor and gave a guttural groan. She was hurting so good, but not bleeding.
Next.
A hand cupped her ass and Chessa aimed a glare at Alex, who gave her an unrepentant grin. “Just trying to blend in, sweetheart.”
Her nipples pricked into full alert, and she wished like hell she’d worn a sports bra to smash them back into obedience.
His hand touched her elbow, and she followed his glance to a corner where a woman knelt between two men. The men suckled her breasts, their hands roaming her generous curves.
When one drew away from her breast, she saw blood, a thin dark stream pulsing from her nipple. Both men followed its trail, lapping up the rich liquid from her belly.
Alex touched her elbow.
Chessa shook her head. “They’re just fucking. As long as they play nice, drink blood only for mutual pleasure—”
A scream ripped the air, coming from a bedroom deeper in the apartment.
Chessa tensed and pulled out another stake from an inner pocket.
Alex dug his hand into his jeans and drew out his stake, cupping its length along his arm to hide it.
She gave him a nod and strode toward the open door of the bedroom.
Inside, three people lay naked across a bare mattress. A woman lay draped over one man, her pussy engulfing his cock. Another man knelt behind her, riding her ass, his mouth opened and clamping hard on the back of her neck. The wound was deep. Blood streaked down her back. Her body trembled, her mouth gasped as she reached behind her to claw at the man, her arms flailing wildly.
His deep groan held a note of triumph as he shared a conspiratorial glance with the man beneath the woman who lifted his head and bit the front of her throat.
While blood burbled from the fatal wound painting all three in deep crimson, Chessa leapt onto the bed and drove her stake into the back of the man at the top of the doomed threesome.
His back arched, his mouth gaped wide in horror before his whole body burst into a flash of flame, muting to dust in an instant.
The woman collapsed like a rag doll against the second vampire.
He thrust her body upward, slamming it into Chessa who toppled from the bed beneath the leaden weight.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Alex dive for the bed, pinning the vamp with an elbow to his throat while he shoved the stake through his sternum and straight into the bastard’s heart.
A billowing cloud of ash choked the air a moment later, and Alex rolled off the bed, stripping away his T-shirt.
Chessa dumped the girl’s body to the side and leapt to her feet in one lithe movement. “How’d you hold him down?” she asked.
“I had surprise on my side,” he said easily, shaking vamp dust from his T-shirt. “He was busy watching you.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. His chest was lightly furred and heavily muscled. A polished red stone hung from a thin black cord just below the base of his neck. She had the odd urge to curl her tongue around it. His arms flexed in interesting ways that sparked a curl of heat deep in her womb. All that power in his human frame…
Her nipples spiked tighter, and she plucked her T-shirt from her chest, realizing immediately it was soaked in blood. “Shit!” She stripped off her jacket and headed to the bathroom, grabbing bath towels from the rack above the toilet to wipe it clean.
“Here, put this on,” Alex said, standing behind her in the mirror. He dangled a clean shirt, a man’s white button-down dress shirt, at the end of his index finger.
Despite the deep shadows, his gaze met hers in the glass. A challenge was laid down in the arch of one dark brow.
Chessa never backed down from a dare. She recognized it as a weakness in her makeup. Still, it didn’t stop her from setting her jacket on the counter, and unbuckling her shoulder holster.
With a stubborn tilt of her chin, she tugged the hem of her soiled T-shirt from her leather pants and stripped it off in one fluid movement. Her gaze locked with his again, daring him to look lower at her bared breasts.
His nostrils flared, his jaw hardened with a ripple of tensing muscle. Then his eyelids dipped as he took in the sight of her small, rounded breasts and bare midriff.
“You should see whether anyone noticed we dusted off a couple of their friends.” She shrugged on the white shirt.
His glance followed her movements as she rolled up the sleeves to her wrists. She didn’t know why she didn’t start on the buttons at the front first. Maybe she didn’t want him to know she trembled a little inside.
Okay, she did know why she did it, but just wasn’t ready to admit she liked the sexy way his gaze clung to her pebbled nipples.
“No one cares,” he rasped. “They’re too busy fucking.”
That word on his lips…
The crisp cotton fabric scratched the tips of her sensitive breasts as she tugged closed her purloined shirt. She suppressed a shiver.
God, she was hungry. The scent of blood still filled her nostrils, the aroma of sex roused another deepening hunger.
She gave Alex a sideways glance. He’d be a meal and half—and she hadn’t seen his cock yet.
But she didn’t do partners. At least, not until she was sure she trusted them. Nothing worse than looking a guy in the face every day if he’s had you and heard you beg.
“Then let’s make sure they know we mean business. Maybe they’ll keep playing nice for a while.” She clutched her stake in her hand and turned away from his hot stare in the mirror. The sooner they moved on, the sooner she could quench at least one of her hungers.
After making their point with the other occupants of the suite, they started down the list of hotels with infestations. Twice more, they interrupted bloodfests gone too far—with three rogue vampires eating dust on their way to hell.
Alex had surprised her with his cunning and strength. And especially with his coolheaded reactions. He had experience. Lots of it. She could see why he’d been assigned as her partner.
Not that she was ready to concede she needed a new one. He was still too distracting—too much sexy male stuffed into blue jeans that hugged his ass and his glorious package.
God, she had to get off that one-rail track. Nodding to the bouncer at one of the last bars still open in the Quarter, she jostled roughly past patrons looking for a place to ride out the chaos outside.
The bar was one of her favorite haunts, one she’d used to introduce Natalie to the glories of a casual feeding.
She headed down a narrow corridor at the back to the secret room—the blood bar. She’d worked up a raging thirst. To hell with what her partner thought. He’d see the real her in a minute, and maybe, he’d ask for that transfer before she had to pitch a fit with the brass.
Inside, only acoustic guitars played. The air was stifling hot and stunk of too many bodies standing too close together. It suited her fine. The heat intensified the aroma of the blood. Muted voices and laughter didn’t mask the sound of dozens of beating hearts.
A slightly built man with long dreadlocks brushing the tops of his bony shoulders sat on a stool with his elbows resting on the bar behind him.
Her choice made in an instant, she walked up to him. “Fed anyone tonight?”
His chocolate gaze slid over her, and his eyes widened. “Been waiting for you, babe.”
S
he gave him a feral, heated look—all the warning she’d give him, this wouldn’t be a gentle feeding.
His sex stirred in the front of his loose pants as he stared. “Gonna need a dark corner?” he said, his voice purring.
“Suits me fine,” she bit out.
He canted his head to the corner of his choice and slid off the stool, wending his way through the bodies blending erotically together on the dance floor.
Chessa followed, all her attention on the man leading her into the darkness. She hadn’t had enough of Nicolas’s blood earlier to blunt her appetite. Now, her thirst ruled her, knotting her belly. Dread-man might be just an appetizer. She needed to feast, to fill one hunger to the exclusion of the other that had been steadily growing with every hour spent with Alex.
Dread-man stopped in a corner behind a large silk potted plant. “How do you want me?” he asked, his tongue sliding over his full lips.
“Our clothes stay on,” she growled.
Looking only mildly disappointed—after all the man knew he was going to get a mind-blowing release—he shrugged. “Whatever the lady says.” His gaze cut away, and he nodded to someone behind her. “He going to feed, too? Not that I have any objections.”
She whipped around to find Alex standing behind her, his legs braced apart, his arms crossed over his chest.
His expression was watchful, tense. “Just keeping your back.”
“Get lost,” she snarled.
“Don’t think so. You look ready to explode. Don’t want to have to pull you off your meal.”
“I’ve been doing this before you first sucked a tit.”
Eyes narrowed, he stepped close and leaned down, his lips hovering above hers. “He’ll feed your thirst. Let me feed your lust,” he whispered. “We’re partners, remember?”
Jesus H. Christ! Trembling now with need, Chessa could barely get her mind around what he offered. A thin, mewling moan clawed its way out of her tight throat.
“Shhhh,” he crooned, slipping an arm around her back, pulling her hips flush with his. “You can have this,” he said, caressing her with his thick cock through their clothes. “But you can’t ever bite me, hear?”
Seduced By Darkness Page 4
