The Community Series, Books 1-3

by Tappan, Tracy

  His mouth fell open with a silent clang.

  She marched over to her bed and pointed a rigid finger at it. “You get in this bed right now and have sex with me, Devid, or we’re through with this date. I mean it. The only excuse I’ll accept this time is that you don’t have a penis.” She planted her hands on her hips. “Do you have a penis?”

  His face turned the shade of a Red Delicious apple.

  “Do you!?”

  “Yes, Jesus. Of course, I have a…a…” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I just don’t want to.”

  “Don’t want to, what?” Wait. “Have sex?” she qualified in shock.

  His face, if possible, stained even redder. “Yeah.”

  Humiliation rose up to burn in her throat. Tight-lipped, she asked, “Are my boobs too small, is that it?”

  “What?” Dumbfounded, he transferred his gaze to the offending mammaries.

  Her voice came out small and hurt, she couldn’t help it. “Why don’t you want me?” God, this was like standing in front of him in her back brace.

  His attention shot up to her face, then his shoulders sagged. “Ah, shit,” he moaned, pressing his eyelids with thumb and forefinger. “I do, Riss. So much, you have no idea.”

  “You just said you didn’t.”

  “No. No. I meant… Hell.” His stared at the floor. “I just can’t.”

  The realization hit her, bottoming out her stomach. Why hadn’t she figured this out before? He didn’t have a penis, metaphorically speaking, at least. “Oh, crap,” she said in an undertone. “You’re impotent.”

  Anger flared across his expression. “No, dammit,” he growled. “Don’t say that word. I hate that fucking word. I’m not…that, not in the way you think. I can get it up, I just need certain conditions to be met first.”

  She paused, blinking. Then she exhaled a chafing breath. Oh, this was so much worse. He was a pervert. “You need me to…to…? Pee on you or something?”

  His eyes seemed to bug. “Wh-what?”

  Was it worse than that? Was it…? She lowered her voice to a private whisper. “Poo?” Her cheeks flamed. She couldn’t do that. No matter how bad she wanted him, she just—

  “All right, stop it.” He held both hands up, his face grim. “You need to quit saying stuff like that, Marissa, seriously.”

  She studied his face and worried her bottom lip, her mind helplessly racing over other possibilities. What was this special condition he required in order to bring himself to full salute? “Is it…?” God, she couldn’t even say it aloud. She stepped up to him, lifted on tiptoes, and whispered it into his ear.

  He yanked back from her, a tic twitching high on his cheek. “That’s it. I’m shutting down this pervy shit.” He pointed a stern finger at her. “Tomorrow.” And with that, he bolted from her room.

  * * *

  Dev ran like someone had stuck a firecracker in his ass-crack, his legs pumping furiously, his lungs working, the memory of Marissa’s appalled expression pushing him to his fastest speed.

  Just great. For three long months, he’d been suppressing every drive he’d had to sleep with that woman, fighting against the pull of her beauty, her smile, her laughter, her scent, his growing love for her. And for what? So she could accuse him of being some kind of sick fuck? How he’d managed not to latch onto her throat—when she’d ordered him into her bed!—and proceed to erase all thoughts of impotence with a little demo of blood-equals-boner, baby, he had no idea. Except for the minor inconvenience that she didn’t know he was a Vârcolac in possession of a set of fangs. Yeah. Just real fucking great.

  Thundering up the Bruns’ porch steps, he slammed to a halt and pounded on the door with his fist. Non-stop.

  The door swung open, revealing Jacken in the jamb, one black slash of an eyebrow lifted. “What the hell, Dev?”

  “Where’s Toni?” he gasped out, gulping for air. He couldn’t catch his damned breath.

  “I’m here.” Toni stepped around her husband into the doorway, a glass of white wine in her hand. “Wow, what’s going on?”

  “I can’t do this anymore, Toni.” He gestured sharply…or maybe like a nutjob because Jacken held up a hand.

  “Hey, calm down,” he said.

  “Calm down? Calm down?” His voice was rising into ninny-octaves. Shit! He whipped his eyes back and forth between Toni and Jacken. “Do people actually dump and whiz on each other during sex?”

  Jacken’s brows bunched together.

  Toni bowed her head, trying to hide a smile.

  It was true, then. Gross! “You have to tell the Dragons the truth, Toni. Marissa thinks I’m a sexual deviant.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tomorrow. Please.”

  She nodded. “First thing, Dev.”

  “All right, then…all right…” Sucking in a fortifying breath, he plowed an unsteady hand through his sweaty hair. “One more thing.” He hesitated, his face flushing with warmth. He felt like a boy asking about his first woody. He swallowed once, then just shoved the question out of his mouth. “What the hell is pony play?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Dev slammed the door behind him and stood just inside the locker room, his breath hissing between his teeth.

  Sedge, in front of an open locker in his birthday suit, put his hands on his hips, and Arc, bare-chested but with a towel wrapped around his waist, raised a single brow.

  Dev clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. Pain as acute as when his father had died ripped through him, making it feel like a Bătaie Blade had just exploded in his chest, leaving only a gaping, bloody hole where his heart should be. I lost her. With a savage yell, he whirled and punched the wall. Plaster crumbled beneath his knuckles, and he hit it again. Knuckles throbbing, Dev cocked back his arm for a third punch.

  “I take it the women freaked,” Arc said, his words tight and low.

  Dev swung around, nostrils flared. “I suppose that depends on your definition of freaked, Costache.”

  To their credit, the women had handled the beginning of the revelation meeting semi-okay, admirably forgoing throwing a bunch of hissy fits when they’d learned about the sack of lies they’d been handed over the last three months. Confession one: Ţărână wasn’t home to a research institute—those scientist working behind glass? All fake—but a refuge for people trying to live their lives in safety and happiness. Confession two: the main reason the women had been brought down here was to get to know the men with the hope that they’d fall in love with one and stay.

  Confession three had taken the women on their first detour into weirds-ville: the explanation of why these women were the only ones the men of Ţărână could have children with: their unique Dragon heritage.

  Lots of what the hell? skepticism had made the rounds over that.

  Confession four, the biggie, had trekked the women directly out of weirds-ville and into freak-out-city. Ahem, yes, tap-tap, the men and women of this community are actually a different breed of human called Vârcolac, who in some ways resemble mythical vampires.

  That double-decker whopper was followed by one of those black hole silences reserved for funerals, or for the you-have-six-months-to-live kind of bad news.

  Someone finally cleared her throat. “Excuse me?”

  Another woman snorted sardonically. “Delusional much?”

  A laugh rang out, uncomfortable and incredulous.

  In the back row, aerobics instructor Abby Fiske pushed to her feet. “I’m outta here.”

  Toni remained calm, which was admirable, considering the number of eyes that were looking at her like her phone was off the hook. “Vârcolac aren’t coffin-sleeping ghouls who transform people with their bites,” she said. “That’s just invented Dracula stuff. There’s no reason to be afraid of—”

  “Oh, I don’t think fear’s the issue here.” Abby crossed her arms firmly in front of her. “The issue is that there’s no such thing as vampires or Vârcolac or whatever mind-fuck you people are trying
to put over on us.”

  No such thing as vampires meant it was time for the men to perform an array of dancing monkey parlor tricks to prove that, surprise-surprise, they were very real.

  Thomal was called upon to demonstrate his Dragon speed, running across the room so fast he disappeared. Gábor presented the Pure-bred specialty of making his eyes glow preternaturally bright. Then Jacken, who was the only one besides his brothers who could control his fangs without the usual stimulations of aggression, blood, or sex, stepped up to do the shit job of flashing a set of elongated canines. This, of course, raised the newbies’ barely contained fear of him to new and dizzying heights of terror, and resulted in that trip into freak-out-land by convincing them.

  The women started screaming like they were surrounded by a bunch of salivating beasts, which was always insulting, no matter how much their reaction was supposed to be understandable.

  “Pipe the hell down!” Jacken roared, his sharp glare and the tone of his voice effectively quieting the mass tantrum down to sniffles. “We’re not monsters,” he ground out. “After three months of living with us, you know that, for chrissake.”

  From there, more explanations had followed, the whole nine yards laid out for the newbies, the goods and the bads. Emphasis was placed on the benefits of hooking up with a Vârcolac: increased health, a doubled lifespan, and significantly decreased aging, which all resulted from long-term exposure to Fiinţă, not to mention the indescribable pleasure experienced from being juiced up with the elixir. Then the blood-bond was described, how after feeding and sex took place, a biological transformation occurred that rendered the mated Vârcolac dependent on the blood of his or her mate for the span of that person’s life. Yoo-hoo, that’s why nobody’d been doing the nasty for three months; Vârcolac weren’t physically capable of having sex until they were blood-bonded.

  Dev gave Sedge and Arc a stormy look. “Well, let’s see, Susan nearly puked at the sight of a pair of fangs, by the expression on Hadley’s face when she saw Thomal’s scaly dragon tattoo, I strongly suspect that she now thinks of him as Lizard Man, and Abby’s going to bail on us because, and I quote: ‘I don’t want to have children with birth defects.’ That’s us, man.” He leaned back and flung his arms wide. “Walking talking birth defects.”

  Arc’s nostrils went white.

  Hell, Dev almost longed for the days when they used to kidnap women. This is who we are, there’s no getting out of here, so deal with it.

  Sedge powered his legs into a pair of blue jeans. “Jesus, didn’t any of them take it well?”

  Dev drew a labored breath. “Chelsea did.” Gábor, that lucky fuck. “She practically creamed herself when she realized that she could finally get herself a bad boy who wouldn’t cheat on her. The rest are guarded about it right now.” Which he supposed was fair. “After the dust settles, we’ll see what—”

  The door to the locker room swung open and Thomal stepped inside, his expression calm—unnatural calm. Powder-keg calm. With hard, remote eyes, he glanced at the damaged wall, then at Arc and Sedge, and finally at Dev.

  The two of them shared a moment of violent pain.

  Dev forced the word up his larynx. “Hadley?”

  With a strange economy of movement, Thomal looked up at the ceiling, then at the row of metal lockers. “Packing.” His blue gaze flattened. “Marissa?”

  The words choked to death inside Dev’s throat as memories of facing down Marissa after the Big Reveal raged through his head…

  * * *

  Dev closed the door to the mansion’s Asian Parlor with a sharp click and leaned back against it, trying to look like his ears and his pride weren’t still taking a pounding from all of the freak-out screaming he’d just endured. Steam formed behind his eyeballs as he watched Marissa move to stand near a gigantic Buddha sculpture, her hands wrung together at her waist. Like she might be afraid of him now.

  Please, don’t do this.

  He moved his jaw back and forth. “So, is this your version of losing it over the Big Reveal?” he asked. “Absolute silence?” She hadn’t said a single word all through Toni’s speech.

  A swallow worked its way down the length of Marissa’s throat. “I’m just absorbing everything.”

  He skimmed his eyes over her. “Are you trying to talk yourself out of it being true? We gave you women a pretty convincing demo, but maybe you’d like to rationalize that away.” Others were; he’d seen it on their faces.

  “No. I…believe it. I mean, it caught me totally off guard, trust me, but…” A thready breath came out of her. “The night you and your men saved me from Murk and Teer, a lot of surreal stuff happened, and…so this makes sense, in a very unexpected way, but, yes. I also trust that Toni isn’t insane.”

  He narrowed his eyes on her through another inspection. “Something’s got you unhooked.”

  “I…” Color flared in her cheeks. “Thinking of you as a…as sexually inexperienced is, uh, taxing my imagination.” She smiled weakly. “You look like you could keep Playboy Forum supplied with articles for months.”

  “No,” he responded in a level tone. “Vârcolac mate for life; one partner, that’s it.” He pushed himself off the door. “I’d think that’d be a huge selling point.” The image of Chelsea throwing her arms around Gábor flashed into his mind, followed by an unpleasant grab of jealousy.

  Marissa turned around and paced away from him a few steps, sweeping a hand over her hair. “Truthfully? The all-or-nothing of it scares me.” He saw her shoulders move up and down with a deep breath.

  A three-hundred-pound circus lady sat on his chest.

  She turned around. “Getting together with you means forever, Dev. Not just the idea of taking marriage as a serious commitment forever, but really forever. If I understand this biological bond correctly, it means that I could never leave you. If I did, you’d die.” She threw her hands out. “Die, Dev! Not just devastate you with a divorce, but fricking kill you!”

  “Ah.” His jaw throbbed as he felt her steadily slipping through his fingers. “I hadn’t realized you planned on leaving me. That does complicate matters.”

  “Nobody plans on these things,” she snapped back. “I’m being practical and realistic here. I would never go into a marriage with divorce in mind, but there are no guarantees in life. What if after we bonded, you…you figured, ‘hey, I’ve got her trapped now,’ and turned into an abusive asshole.”

  He took a swift step back. “What did you just say?” He clutched both sides of his head. “You seriously think I’m capable of—”

  “No.” She dropped her eyes and ran a hand over her mouth. “But I’ve only known you three months.” Her voice was low and strained. “And even at the end of my stint in Ţărână, I didn’t see us getting married. I’m not ready for that kind of commitment—especially not a bonding level of commitment. I wanted us to continue dating, but…it doesn’t sound like the community is going to loosen up and allow movement in and out of the town. So…I don’t know where that leaves us.”

  He fought for air, that fat circus bitch still on top of him. “You know exactly where it leaves us, Marissa.” He jerked the door open. “With a nowhere future ahead of us, why the hell should we keep seeing each other?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Marissa’s cook station was behind a tall counter situated a few yards inside the front door of her restaurant, Marissa’s. Not a very inventive name, and not her first choice, but any time she’d tried to call her place anything else, people just said, “Let’s go to Marissa’s,” anyway, so, she’d given up and gone with it.

  At first it’d been weird for her to cook out in the open like this, where all and sundry could watch her work. But her architect, Luken, had strongly suggested that she stick with the design. He’d said that the people of the community would want to chat with her when they came to dine, and better that they just lean an elbow causally on the tall counter rather than consistently overrun a kitchen in the back. He’d been right,
and now she loved the arrangement.

  She was doing some prep work for tonight’s dinner menu, chopping green peppers and parsley. It was usually a time she loved in her workday, when things were quiet, the main dining room lights dimmed, and a CD of her own choice—right now, Daughtry—spinning out on the sound system to keep her chopping away. But these days, quiet time just led her to crawl around inside her own head too much, thinking about how lonely she was. None of her friends had abandoned her when she decided to finish out her year in Ţărână—the community was honoring their half-million-dollar offer—but Dev most certainly had. In the week since the Big Reveal, she hadn’t seen him once. After they’d ended it, she didn’t know what she’d expected, but…she supposed she hadn’t thought he’d remove himself so completely from her life. Maybe that made her naïve, but what did she know? She’d never had a breakup like this before, so damned painful.

  She grabbed another green pepper and—

  The door to her restaurant crashed open, hinges rattling and glass quivering as Dev loomed inside, his smoldering eyes locking on her like some great beast of prey.

  Marissa froze for one shuddering beat of her heart, then drew a breath that expanded her chest.

  The men and women living in this community are vampires.

  Oh, ya think? Every day that made more and more sense.

  Letting the door smack shut behind him, Dev started toward her, his face chiseled with dark emotions.

  She stole a glance at the well-oiled movement of his hips, and her mind headed straight into the gutter. She’d almost forgotten what a hot son of a bitch he was.