Ice-cold fingers traced the line of her jugular down from her jaw to her collarbone, the path they took followed by a tongue both wet and cold.
“You smell delicious,” the vampire murmured, grazing her flesh with his teeth.
Another tremble shook Amy, this one a surreal mix of sexual craving and abject terror. “I’ve been told so,” she gasped, struggling to keep her voice even. She’d never offered herself to a vampire other than Ven. She just wished this one would hurry up.
There was a heavy pause, a tightening of his arrogant, overly familiar grip on her arse, and then he pulled back, his yellow stare drilling into her with almost contemptuous humor. “Really?” He grinned, his fangs glinting in the dim alley light. “By whom? I assumed I was your first?”
Amy shook her head a little, the fire in her belly and her sex threatening to devour her. Oh, God, would he never bite her? Would she never have release? “No. My…my boyfriend is a vamp.”
It was a little lie. Ven had never called her his girlfriend, but she’d been his main feed for three years now. They went to the movies together, swam in the beach at night together, made love on the sand…surely that’s exactly what she was? His girlfriend? And if Raz thought she had a vampire boyfriend, he would be less inclined to drain her. Wouldn’t he?
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry even as her pussy grew wet with dark, impatient craving.
The vampire’s grin stretched wider. “Really?” he repeated on a chuckle. “And what would his name be?”
Amy shivered, her sex contracting in denied anticipation. The aching need in her body was beginning to undo her. “Steven Watkins,” she ground out, breath quick, eyes squeezed shut. “Now, shut the fuck up and bite me, damn it. I didn’t come here for a conversation.”
Raz stiffened for a moment, his lips still on her neck. “Steven Watkins?”
She nodded and for a glorious moment, she felt his tongue touch her neck, just above the point where her pulse beat like a trapped moth. Her breath caught in her throat in a hitching whimper and she braced herself.
“The vampire that surfs by moonlight?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me more about him. Now.”
The low command vibrated through her neck and she groaned, her nipples pinching tight, her fists curling tighter. “Why?” she moaned, pressing her hips against his cold body. “Does it matter?”
“That depends.” He touched the curve of her shoulder with his icy lips. “Do you want me to bite you?”
Hot frustration rolled through Amy, bringing stinging tears to her eyes. Her body shook, the need to feel the burn so powerful she could hardly think. “He’s just a vamp.”
“So why are you here?” Sharp fangs dented her neck. A little. “With me?”
“Because he didn’t come to me tonight…or last night, and…” She bit her lip, humiliation almost dousing the craving. Almost, but not at all.
A cold tongue traced a lazy circle around the little dip at the base of her neck. “And?”
A shudder rocked through her. “And I can’t wait any longer.”
The vamp tugged her hips harder to his and another, more primitive shudder claimed her. He was aroused. Very aroused. Oh, Lord, forgive me.
“Why hasn’t he come to you? Did you do something wrong?”
Amy shook her head, trying to rub her neck against his open mouth. Fuck, how much longer? She couldn’t take it anymore. “No,” she groaned. “He has a younger brother he needs to protect. Sometimes he goes to him instead.”
Raz became very still. “A brother?” The fingers on her arse curled harder into her butt cheeks, the lips on her neck softly nibbling her flesh. “Tell me his name.”
“Patrick.”
Ven’s brother’s name burst from her lips before she could stop it. A wave of unease rolled through her, tight and cold, but she ignored it. What did it matter if a vampire knew Patrick’s name? It wasn’t like he was anyone important, and Ven spent so much time looking after him, even if the vamp at her neck did decide to go after Patrick, he’d fail.
The unease in her belly twisted into a knot at the thought and for a split moment Amy wished she could take it all back. What was she doing here? Why did the vamp want to know about Ven and Patrick?
She shifted, trying to move away when she felt sharp fangs graze her skin.
Hot pleasure rushed through her. Oh, yes!
“Steven and Patrick Watkins?” Raz murmured against her neck.
Her pussy contracted and she leaned closer to him. “Yes.”
He made a humming sound, fangs pressing harder to her flesh. “Hmmm. Good.”
That sense of unease rolled through Amy again. She stiffened…and he bit her.
Her orgasm, explosive and tainted with dark guilt, shot through her. Clamped her cunt shut on a nonexistent dick.
The burn spread through her body, wicked fingers of wonderful, terrible heat scalding their way to her craving core.
Oh, yes, yes!
Her newfound “friend” she’d all but thrown herself at in the Pleasure Pussy not but forty minutes ago, sucked at her neck, his fangs gouging deeper into her throat, his tongue rasping against her flesh.
She closed her eyes, letting the burn devour her. It was the single most painful yet exquisite sensation she’d ever experienced. There were no words to describe how it felt. None that she knew of, anyway. All she knew was the need to feel this never left her anymore. She needed it more than breath. Every second of every minute of every day she felt the craving. It consumed her. Like the raw energy of a cyclone—forceful and undeniable. Magnificent. Lord, why had she wasted so many nights waiting for Ven to come to her when she could experience the burn any time she wanted.
Why had she waited when it felt so…so… “Fucking good,” she moaned, pressing her legs together as the product of her climax dribbled down her thighs.
Raz chuckled, the soft sound vibrating through his lips, his fangs, down into her centre. “As good as your boyfriend?”
The question filled Amy with fresh guilt and she squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the sight of the grimy, trash-strewn back alley in which they stood, shutting out the faint pink smear of dawn coloring the dark sky above them. Ah, she didn’t want to think about Ven. Not now.
But the vampire wouldn’t let up. He seemed to draw pleasure from the acrid guilt in her soul, fed from it as enthusiastically as he fed from her neck and there was nothing she could do to stop him. Not while his pleasure allowed hers to be.
“Tell me, my sweet little Amy,” he continued, lifting his lips from her throat. Amy cried out, sinking her nails into his icy-cold shoulder in an attempt to hold him to her. Pale red eyes regarded her from behind stubby black lashes. “Tell me what Steven Watkins would think about you being here with me.” His lips curled into a sly grin, his tongue darting out to catch a drop of her blood lingering at the corner of his mouth. “Tell me what his human brother would think of it.” He lowered his head a little and blew a fine stream of air onto her wet, blood-seeping neck. “Where are they now, Amy? Shall we go find them before the sun rises completely? Shall we let them watch our little show?”
A soft whimper slipped from Amy’s lips at Raz’s murmured suggestion and an image of Ven watching another vampire feed from her flashed through her head. A sinful thrill shot straight to her still-contracting sex and she shook her head. “No.” Her voice was husky. “The sun is almost up. Ven will be sleeping.”
Raz pressed his lips back to her throat, touching the weeping puncture wounds there with the tip of his tongue. “And his brother?”
Amy shivered, her heart pounding, her flesh tingling. “At work.” She shifted, pressing closer to the vampire. “He is a lifeguard.”
Raz’s tongue flicked from one wound to the other before he lifted his head to stare into her eyes. “A sun lover.”
She laughed, a nervous little hiccup of sound. “Yes. You could call him that.”
Raz’s eyes flashed brilliant
vermillion. “Yes,” he murmured. “I could.”
His lips parted again, as if to return to her neck, and Amy braced herself for the agonizing rapture of his continuing feed. She needed it still. What he’d given her so far was wonderful, glorious, but it was not enough.
But instead of suckling her throat, Raz kissed her flesh with cool, wet lips and straightened, removing his arms from her body.
“No!”
She hadn’t meant to shout. Nor sound so desperate. She bit at her lip, her body already screaming with furious denied want.
“Do not fret, my sweet little Amy,” he purred, red eyes glinting. He stepped back into the protective safety of the narrow alley’s nighttime shadows. “I will give you more tonight. Much more.”
Amy’s pulse quickened. More.
A long finger extended from the deep shadows to touch her cheekbone, her lips. “Tonight I shall feed from you until your orgasm drains you of your very will to live.” He paused, and his hand withdrew from her face. “As long as you give me something in return.”
Her body all but writhing from Raz’s declaration, Amy nodded, searching for him in the darkness. “Yes. Just name it.”
His chuckle floated from the alley—before her, behind her, above her, she couldn’t tell. “In time, sweet Amy. In time.”
His words fell over her like a silken promise. She groaned in protest and impatient anticipation, turning on the spot, looking for him. But he was gone, leaving her with nothing but the agony in her neck and the greedy insistent want in her sex.
A cold ripple of guilt slipped up her spine, singed at the edges by her desperate, consuming need and she shivered.
Oh, God, what if she couldn’t give him what he asked for? What would she do then?
You’ll give it to him, Amy. No matter what it is, you’ll give it to him. If he asks you to kill your mother, you will. And you know it. For the burn he gives you, you’ll do whatever he asks. Whatever.
The horrifying thought ate its way through her head, down into her chest to the pit of her stomach, and she whimpered.
Because it was true. As horrible and hideous as it was, anything the vampire asked of her, she would do. Anything.
After the pleasure and pain he’d given her this morning, she was close to no longer caring.
The beach is deserted.
Except for the woman standing at the far end, near the houses rising from the eastern point. Still, quiet houses bereft of life and light. The sun sits high on the horizon, a burning ball of angry orange fire that casts the beach with a cold, vomit-yellow glow.
He runs along the sand, the tiny grains slicing into his feet, his stare fixed on the body on the high-tide line near the flags.
He needs to reach him before the woman does.
Heat surges through his muscles and he increases his speed. He’s taken too long already. If he doesn’t reach the body soon he’ll never revive—
He kneels beside the body, staring hard at the lifeless man, searching for a pulse. Nothing. Peabody is—
The woman steps up to him, her striking blue eyes watching him as he punches Peabody’s motionless chest.
“He’s dead, Patrick. You’re too—”
Late. The day grows late. He runs along the empty beach, watched by empty houses. A body rolls listlessly in the slush waves on the sand before him. Tumbling over and over, snatched by the waves, dragged back into the surf and then spewed up onto the wet sand once more. He starts to sprint. Shit. How could he have missed—
The sand bites into his knees as he drops down beside Mr. Peabody. The man’s eyes bulge from his white, bloated face, as if he’s seen—
Death leans over his shoulder.
“Patrick.”
Her voice is soft. Seductive.
“Leave him be. I am here for—”
“You.”
The voice, a guttural growl, makes Patrick stumble. He looks around the empty beach, searching for the speaker, his heart thumping hard. He knows that voice. Like he knows his own name. It belongs to—
Pestilence.
The shadows reach for him, the cold sun sinking behind the flat line of the ocean, painting him in sick red blood. He swallows, turning back to the patrol tower. He had paper work to do before heading home. He has to write the report for Peabody’s—
Resurrection.
The sand slices into his knees, like a million diseased fire ants devouring his flesh. He looks down at the man lying on the ambulance stretcher, his fat, black tongue poking from bloated lips, his eyes closed, his skin still wet from the sea.
“He is gone, Patrick. Let him be gone.”
Death whispers in his ear and his cock throbs, desire burning through him in a wave more powerful than any he’s ever surfed.
“Time to acknowledge who you are so you and I can continue what we started in your—”
He looks up from Peabody and his stare falls on a man casting no shadow on the sand. A small, thin man with lank, dark hair and glowing yellow eyes. A small, thin man in a black suit, watching him. Staring at him with malevolent hate and fury.
“You are not going to stop me, lifeguard.”
The man’s whisper shatters Patrick’s eardrums. He slaps his hands over his ears, dropping his head to his chest, teeth grinding together.
And watches Peabody open his eyes.
The corpse looks up at him with bulging, empty eyes and before Patrick can move, Peabody’s hands wrap around his throat and fingers of ice sink into his neck.
“Time to die, Patrick Watkins.”
“No!” Patrick snapped bolt awake, sucking in breath after ragged breath. He looked around his bedroom, the pale, weak light of predawn filtering through the curtains, turning the furniture into a collection of indistinct, looming shapes.
He raked his hands through his hair and flopped backward onto the mattress. Jesus. What a nightmare.
Staring blankly at the dark ceiling for a moment, he fought with his hammering heart, forcing it to steady.
Okay, two nightmares in one night was just not on. This is what he got for going back to bed while Ven went off hunting Fred.
An image of the woman insisting she was Death popped immediately into his mind, destroying the residue ghosts of his nightmare. He ground out a groan of frustrated disbelief. He saw her all too easily, naked limbs smooth and firm, belly toned, breasts high and round.
His body stirred, the terror of his dream forgotten.
Another groan rumbled in Patrick’s dry throat and he threw himself off his bed, his feet hitting the floor with a thud.
Normality seemed to be unraveling around him. He was turned on by a woman who may or may not have murdered a man with just a single touch of her fingertips, who called herself Fred and somehow turned up in his bedroom in the middle of the night. A woman Ven insisted was the Grim Reaper, who was almost half his brother’s size yet strong enough to fling him across the room like he was a rag doll.
A woman capable of making her clothes and herself disappear before Patrick’s very eyes.
Normality unraveling.
Like it had before.
Frowning, he crossed to the cupboard and snatched his work clothes from the top drawer. He wasn’t going to think about that. He’d pushed that particular “unraveling” to the back of his mind and that’s where it was staying. No one knew about it, not even Ven, and it served no purpose thinking about it now. What he needed to do now was get dressed and get to work. It may be only—he shot the clock beside his bed a quick look—five a.m., but it was the middle of summer. The sun was beginning to break the horizon and that meant there’d be swimmers and surfers already hitting the waves in the faint predawn light. Swimmers and surfers who needed to be watched over. Protected from danger. From…
Pestilence.
Patrick’s chest squeezed tight at the unexpected thought and an image from his dream smashed through his head. A man in a black suit who didn’t cast a shadow on the sand. A familiar man.
“St
op it,” he snapped, his frustration turning into self-contempt.
He yanked on his shorts and left the room, tugging his shirt over his head as he went. He wouldn’t let normality unravel again. Not again. He’d barely recovered the last time it had happened.
Maybe Ven is right? Maybe you are something—
“Jesus bloody Christ, Watkins, stop it! You’re a lifeguard. That’s it. You’re not some goddamn savior of the human race.”
The jog to work passed in a blur of denied memories and denied images. Memories he didn’t want to dwell on, memories of strange occurrences he’d never told Ven about, strange “accidents” he couldn’t explain but almost cost him his life. Memories of a shadowless man on a deserted beach. Staring at him. Wanting him dead.
Images he wanted to dwell on a lot, too much. Images of the mysterious woman, images of her naked, stretched out on his bed, waiting for him to join her, waiting for him to make love to her until they both climaxed, screaming each other’s name.
The crunch of sand on concrete under his feet snapped Patrick from his torment. He blinked, his attention turning to the empty car park around him and the dawn-quiet stretch of beach before him. He was at work already?
He looked at his watch. 5:07 a.m.
Patrick frowned. Shaking his wrist, he brought it up to his ear. The battery must be flat. He’d left home at 5:05.
The soft, almost inaudible tick tick tick tick of tiny mechanics slipped into his ear and he frowned again, dropping his arm. His watch, it seemed, was working fine.
Normality unraveling, Patrick?
Refusing to acknowledge the squirming tension in his gut, he took the stairs up to the patrol tower’s door two at a time and let himself into the building. He’d punch in and then hit the water. Perhaps all the swimming required to check out the surf’s conditions would clear his head. After that he’d work through the morning’s paper work, pitch the safe-swimming flags and then call Ven. His brother was probably settling in for the day by now, and he wanted to touch base with him.
To ask if he’d found Fred?
Squirming tension twisted through his gut again, lower this time. Almost in his groin. He bit back a groan. His brother had most likely spent the night chasing a paranormal Peeping Tom and all Patrick could think about was the deranged woman herself? ’Struth, he needed a swim. He only hoped the surf was still cold.
Dark Destiny (Principatus) Page 7
