by Minda Webber
His shout at the end sent Sam over the top again. Another climax hit her so hard that she bit her lips to keep from crying tears of joy and something more—a certain something Sam was afraid to put a name to. She wanted this promiscuous playboy vampire, in spite of her good sense and knowing that the challenge to keep him monogamous would be endless and hard-won. She would be challenged by some of the most beautiful women in the world for his attention. Yet, in spite of the difficulties he presented, she wanted him, even knowing that someday he would walk away and take her heart with him. It was stupid, foolish and downright scary. The Prince had hit her hard, fast and below the belt. But sighing blissfully, she hoped he would do it again.
Rolling off her, Petroff closed his eyes. Making love to Sam was an experience he wouldn't soon forget, if ever. He almost felt guilty. But then he forced himself to recall who she was: the spoils of war.
She rolled with him, ending up resting her head against his chest, all silken skin and hair. He raised his hand to touch her face, then stopped himself, fighting the urge to kiss her tenderly on the forehead. There would be no postcoital fondling, not with Sam.
Running her fingers through the dark hair on his chest, she remarked softly, "No wonder women chase you to ground. If you could be bottled and sold there wouldn't be an unhappy female in America."
He accepted her accolades, although he felt faintly uncomfortable at the soft glow in her eyes. Leaning over, he kissed her tenderly, but he remained quiet as guilt began an insidious crawl into his mind, his heart just now slowing down from the workout. "I think I just might be dead," he remarked.
"There's no might about it," she replied.
He laughed in spite of trying to distance himself from her.
"And I really appreciate you not drinking my blood while we were making love. I know vampires are big on that sort of thing."
The guilt Petroff was fighting suddenly struck him hard. He grunted. "Things aren't always what they seem. Don't you Americans have a saying, never judge a book by its cover?"
Sam ignored his words and his tone, because she was too busy examining his partially flaccid penis. Curiosity getting the better of her, she wondered if it would fit in her mouth.
Yes, but barely. She sucked and he grew hard instantly.
"What are you doing?" he managed to gasp.
She grinned up at him, lying between his thighs. "Come on. You're the expert. You tell me."
Petroff arched a brow, his guilt forgotten. "Round two for old times' sake?"
She licked him once, then added, "No—for Pete's peter's sake." Then she laughed as he lifted her above him and settled her tightly upon him. His last sane thought, as she rode him hard and without mercy, was that maybe her little Americanisms weren't so bad after all.
Beyond Hypothermia
Sam came awake with the bright morning sun shining in her face. Without opening her eyes, she stretched slowly, her arms high above her head, savoring her sore muscles and the afterglow of being sexually and emotionally satisfied. She had never had a night like her last, and she had discovered an amazing fact: Sex was better than chocolate. Who'd have thought?
She felt wonderful—both after last night and because she had done a first-rate job getting rid of the ghosts. Maybe now she could consider meeting the enemy Strakhov face to face. She couldn't wait to tell him how she had stolen business right out from under his big fat Russian nose.
And not only had she gotten a big account with all the Prince's many homes around the world, she had made love with a passion she hadn't known she had possessed. She was still tingling from it.
Yes, Pete was a very special vampire. For one thing, most bloodsuckers went with the old adage If you got it, flaunt it, but she had never even seen Pete flash his fangs. A toothy smile, yes; fangs no. And last night had been terrific, leaving her aware that she and the Prince had connected on a very emotional level. In fact, their lovemaking had been even more terrific because of that—magical, special, the best ever—because there had been no serious biting or blood loss. Her and Petroff's souls had communed. For the first time in her life, Sam felt cherished.
Comparing other lovers to Pete was like comparing a broken down pickup truck to a Ferrari. He made her feel utterly female and impossibly special. Yes, indeed, he himself was better than chocolate.
Finally managing to open her eyes, she saw that her prince was gone. Patting the pillow beside her, she felt the blue silk. It was cool. Pete had been gone for more than a few minutes then. She frowned slightly, feeling slighted. Still, if he had left her bed, he obviously had business to attend before he had to go to ground and the sleep of the dead. And yet she had hoped for a morning wake up call: one more round of hot, lusty sex.
Climbing out of bed, she winced at the muscles of her thighs and in between. Those muscles hadn't been used in over four years.
Stepping into the shower, she hurried through the motions of washing, dressing just as quickly so she could find Pete and see his morning-after expression. Was he feeling sated and content? Was he edgy, the bite of sexual tensions urging him to spend the morning in his coffin in spite of the work he'd had scheduled for today? Did he feel guilty sleeping with a human who wouldn't let him drink her blood, and an ex-employee? Did a man like Prince V. ever feel guilt? Most vampires didn't.
Sam stuck her head into the Prince's bedroom, which was undisturbed. Next she tried the library, but no sign of Pete was to be found. Hurrying toward the kitchen, her heart beating fast, she fought the urge to skip with undiluted joy. She wondered what her uncle and brother would say about her dating a corpse? Hopefully she could convince them that she was happy, and that Pete was really quite lively for someone who had seen both the Franco-Prussian War and the French and Russian Revolutions.
Sticking her head into the kitchen, she found that Pete wasn't there either. Spying Mr. Belvedere in conversation with the cook, Sam explained eagerly, "I'm looking for Pete… Petroff. Do you know where he is?"
Mr. Belvedere smiled. "Prince Varinski left early this morning," he said.
Stunned, Sam felt her mouth drop open. It was like she had taken a sucker punch to the gut.
"Did he leave me a note or anything?" This couldn't be happening to her. She had finally found love—at least, she'd thought that was the feeling she was experiencing with Pete. She couldn't believe he would hurt her like this, not when she had been busy spinning daydreams in the shower. Now her freshly spun dreams were cobwebs, ashes and nightmares. Why had he left without saying anything?
Mr. Belvedere shook his head. "Prince Varinski said that his business here was finished, and that he had an emergency." The butler beamed and congratulated Sam, "And may I say how happy we all are for your help in getting rid of those atrocious ghosts? We think you're amazing. And the Prince agreed. Yes; you were quite efficient in the way you managed to rid Mandelay of two of its unwanted guests."
Sam gulped. Pete—no, Petroff—had abandoned her without a word of farewell; no rose on her pillow or even a lousy good-bye kiss. No asking to see her again. The affair had ended without a bang or a whimper. Well, she was thinking about having a whimper.
Her stomach was churning and her heart hurt. Yeah, she thought sourly, she should have been smart about the whole business, knowing better than to go to bed with such a promiscuous playbat. She should have expected this long sensual trip to paradise would end up nowhere, and she should have kept her jeans zipped tight.
Willing her face to remain expressionless, she nodded to the butler. She couldn't let anyone know how Petroff's defection had wounded her. Logically she knew their time together had been short, but the heart was a strange master, and it felt what it felt and loved who it loved, whether that occurred in three days or thirty years.
"I'm sure the Prince will call you as soon as he's able—he's such a busy vampire. But since you're his girlfriend, I imagine he'll be giving you a call sometime soon. He mentioned that you had a tiring night last evening, and that you needed
your beauty rest."
She winced at Mr. Belvedere's words, guilt eating at her like a parasite. She had never been his girlfriend, and apparently never would be.
"I see," she said, and she did. She had given herself to him in joy and affection, with possibly the first stirrings of true love, and she had been cruelly rejected. No wonder he hadn't drunk her blood. She'd thought it was in consideration of her feelings, but rather it appeared the playboy prince hadn't wanted that close a connection. So much for their supposed communion of souls. He had made her into a one-night stand, three words Sam hated with a passion.
Using up her remaining self-control, she kept her face stoic though she was becoming aware of a pulse slamming somewhere in her temple. It was as if someone was repeatedly knocking a hammer there.
Trying to seem nonchalant, she smiled the smile of a wax dummy, thanked both the cook and the butler for their help, and explained she would be leaving. Scenes of Humphrey Bogart forcing Ingrid Bergman to go away with her husband in Casablanca flashed through her mind. She added; "I'm leaving and not looking back."
Packing her bags in haste, she left Mandelay behind in a cloud of dust, driving fast and furious, tears stinging her eyes. She would never forgive its bloodsucking lecherous leech of an owner—even though, in this case, she'd been the sucker.
No, she certainly wouldn't ever forget him; not since he had used her cruelly with nothing more on his mind than a quick pump in the night. How stupid of her to think that she was different, that he might actually care for her. Sam Hammett, master of her emotions, who generally kept a tight rein on her sexual urges, had ended as what she had never wanted to be: another notch on Prince Petroff Varinski's coffin lid. She'd give him the cold shoulder next time she saw him if she ever did!
As her car rounded a curve in the graveled road, Sam felt a chill bone-deep within her. She started to shiver. Oh yes, she was beyond hypothermia.
Oh, the Places Sam Would Go!
It was a Saturday; no better than the day before, no worse, Sam thought as she looked out of the large-framed kitchen window, waiting for the ham to fry in her skillet. Across from her family home on Mulberry Street, kids were playing in the park. Two houses down, Mrs. Horton, the block's official busybody, was probably working on her list of who was naughty and who was nice. She was always trying to hear who was. She and her best friend Mrs. Fishe would be discussing it, giving everybody a good grilling while they used binoculars to survey the parking lot of Sam's uncle's bar. Mrs. Horton and Mrs. Fishe knew what everybody drove, and they loved to see if one car, or two cars, red cars or blue cars would still be in the parking lot on Saturday or Sunday mornings.
Sighing, Sam realized it was just another Saturday morning like a thousand other in her life. One hour following another, each without a phone call from a one-night-standing dirty rat of a vampire.
Almost one whole week it had been! "Six days, over one hundred and forty-nine hours and no telling how many minutes, all with Prince Petroff Varinski being a no-show," she complained to the empty kitchen.
Sam had not only fallen off cloud nine after their glorious bout of lovemaking; she had crashed to earth in a large splat. After being splattered, she had quickly congealed into a slumping grump, and then slouched into what she regrettably called "the waiting place." Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for Petroff to realize what a fool he had been. Waiting for her heart to start mending a little, and waiting to hear that remarkable raspy voice with the Russian accent.
"What a sap I am! An easy sap!" For boy oh boy, had he given her the royal brush-off. She grumbled, wondering how she could have thought that a vampire who had more shoes under his coffin over the years than Wal-Mart kept in stock could ever fall in love with her. How could she have hoped that the places she would go with Petroff included a happy flight off into the sunrise and a coffin for two. No, that was something only a knucklehead would believe in, a vampire fairy tale.
And there'd been no check, either. Well, she told herself, she hadn't really expected a check. After all, she was the one who'd told him that her services of ridding him of his hurtful phantoms were free, meant to showcase her talents. Still, she couldn't help picturing the proverbial check in the mail. It seemed to represent his acknowledgment of her business service, since he was obviously ignoring her bedroom service.
"I did a great job of removing his ghosts, and quick too. What a cheapskate. For somebody who's really rich… A real gentleman, vampire or not, would have sent a check, flowers, made a phone call—something," she griped, scowling ferociously at the coffeemaker, which only gurgled back.
Not one word had Sam heard from the womanizing vampire. For years she had ignored the various talk shows that spoke and complained about men, as did her friends, but it appeared that every female who had ever been dumped was right on target: The male species were all alike, and they all had two faces. Men wanted to acquire, but once they had acquired, they often wished they had not. The innocent victim—usually a female—always got a shock treatment. And now Sam saw that vampire males clearly had the same unattractive characteristics as human males. When it came to lovemaking, love-taking and getting the hell out of Dodge—or out of Mandelay castle as the case may be—they were all. the same: no good.
Rubbing her forehead, she grimaced. She'd had another one-night stand once. The galling incident had happened around six months after her parents' death, when she'd been a naive nineteen—a stupid nineteen. She had met the man in Scotland while clearing out a nest of nasty gargoyles in a small hamlet. The gargoyles were worse than ever, and in full rutting season. There wasn't anything more dangerous than a cranky gargoyle in rut.
While Sam had been scouting out the gargoyles' numbers, this man had been documenting the rutting for the BaCall Scientific Journal of Preternatural Mating Rituals. The two of them had developed a friendship, talking and walking together for over a week. Romance had been in the air, despite or perhaps because of the coupling gargoyles. Sam had gotten all misty eyed. And to the accompaniment of some gargoyles' rustling wings and mating cries, Sam had been seduced.
Unfortunately for the budding romance, the next morning Sam discovered that the lying jerk had a wife he'd forgotten to mention. The betrayal hurt, although her heart wasn't really broken. Still, she had been pained and felt guilty for years. To this day, she cringed when she heard the cry of a gargoyle in rut, though that might be because that wasn't a particularly nice noise, anyway.
Regrettably, Sam was experiencing one-night stand syndrome all over again. She felt used, abused, angry, humiliated, guilty and worthless—as a female and as a human. She was alone and lonelier than ever, and all because of a too-big-for-his-coffin prince who obviously felt she was beneath him, the lousy leech.
Yanking her frying ham out of the pan, Sam sat down at the table and poured herself a glass of juice. Deep down, she felt like grabbing the nearest stake and marching back to the Prince's palatial home in Dodge and shoving it somewhere the sun didn't shine. She'd stick him in the heart, but she was no longer sure he had one.
She had done a bang-up job at ridding him of his lousy ghosts. She had done an even banging-uppier job of making love with him. Their souls had met on some distant plane, but that plane had apparently gone down in flames.
"We should be hot and heavy right now," she muttered to herself. It wasn't often a man and a woman—or even a vampire and a woman—could touch each other's souls. "Instead all I got was a Wham, Bam and No Thank-you, Ma'am!"
Ham in hand, Sam heard the scuffling of tiny feet. She wrinkled her nose. Sure enough, the ham smell had awakened her pet goblin. Damn! Now she would have to make the breakfast her pet, Zeuss, loved.
Reaching into the refrigerator, she pulled out some eggs and plopped them in a skillet, making a moue of distaste at their forest green color. Although it wasn't as unappetizing as the lime green of ghost slime, it still wasn't pretty.
"A breakfast food should be brown, tan or even red, but never green," Sam cr
iticized her pet.
Zeuss hopped onto the counter with his little yellow feet, his white tongue flicking in and out as he made little purring noises. Goblins were much like cats, except they walked on two legs and their fur was varying shades of green and gold. Today Zeuss had on his top hat, making him look like a character out of some weird children's book.
Turning the eggs, she spoke to him like a person, although his understanding was much more along feline lines. Still, she wanted to keep his attention. Zuess loved and adored her when she was feeding him; when she was not, she was pretty much on her own.
"I feel like the greatest dope alive, and I've never taken an illegal drug in my life! I laid my emotions on the line for that vampire. I want to wash him right out of my hair, but I can't seem to. How could I get involved with an overblown, oversexed, callous client?"
Zeuss yawned; his little rainbow-colored tongue flickered in and out.
Petting her pet, Sam continued her list of grievances. "It's just my lousy luck that I had to pick a loser for love in the game of life. I bet that stupid unprincipled Prince will give the rest of his paranormal pest problems to the Strakhov brothers, too. I battled with that smashed grapes of wraith chef and the appalling artist apparition, and all my hard work and risk will be for nada—zip. A big, fat zero. And what do I get for all this? A cracked heart."
Shaking her head at her maudlin thoughts, Sam picked up the newspaper, eyeing again the notice she had seen earlier that had sent her blood pressure skyrocketing. Prince Varinski was giving a party tonight, for various friends in high places—jet-setters, vampire bats and other nocturnal creatures—and she obviously and quite pointedly hadn't been invited. This, coupled with the ignominy of being unpaid and a one-night stand, was the proverbial straw that broke a woman's back.
A slow grin spread across her face, and a crafty little plan began to form. Nodding her head at Zeuss, she vowed, "I'm going to crash Mr. High-and-Mighty's party. And there, I'll tell the Prince of Bat-asses just what I think of him."
