When the kiss finally ended, Maddison rested her forehead on Vincent’s chest. She heard the rapid beating of his heart. It matched hers.
“Wow,” Vincent said at last, finally catching his breath.
“Yes, wow,” Maddison said with a laugh, still trying to catch her breath.
Once again, Vincent looked into Maddison’s eyes, his hands firmly on her shoulders.
“Maddison, I know it’s been a rough year. Losing Lucas in that accident, well… I hated to see you suffer like that.”
“We both loved Lucas. You were hurting, too.” Maddison reached out and caressed Vincent’s face.
“I just… Well, I didn’t expect this to happen, but I’ve fallen in love with you.” Then he added with a chuckle, “Do you think Lucas would kick my butt?”
Maddison gave him a soft smile and said, “I love you Vincent. And I imagine Lucas would be rather pleased.” I never realized my dearly departed husband was such a matchmaker.
* * *
Anna J. McIntyre's Coulson Series is a family saga, with romance, mystery and murder. Look for the fifth book in the series - Coulson’s Reckoning in 2014. The saga begins in 1900 and brings the reader to current times. Her Sensual Romance Series is light romance with happy endings. Currently there are three books in the series. Each is a standalone story. Anna J. McIntyre is a nom de plume used by non-fiction author, Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes.
http://annajmcintyreauthor.com/
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Midnight Snack
Molly Snow
Maggie spoke to her reflection in the long mirror hanging on a wall in her bedroom. “I love your hair. I love your eyes. I love your rear, and your beautiful thighs.” She posed all sexy in her little black dress that stretched over her ample figure, before smothering her full lips with shimmery hot pink gloss. “Oh, yes—you, Maggie, are the bomb.”
The doorbell rang, and on time. Seven o’clock on the dot. She stepped through her apartment in her pink heels, and grabbed a little purse off the couch on her way to the door. Through the peep-hole, she could see him clearly. Tall, but not too tall. A beautiful face with black hair sweeping over deep, dark eyes. Bedroom eyes, if she had to be exact.
Maggie rubbed her hands together in anticipation and took a deep breath before opening the door. Right away he offered her a rose, and introduced himself. “I’m Ryder. You look absolutely stunning, my dear.”
“Oh, thank you!” She took the flower and smiled brightly while batting her eyes. “What else?”
“Pardon me?”
“More compliments, please.”
“Okay….” Ryder stepped closer to her, so close she could smell his heavenly musk scent as he looked down into her eyes with pure confidence. “Your lips are like this rose,” he wrapped a hand around hers that held the flower’s stem, “whose petals are soft and full.”
Maggie pinched herself. She wasn’t dreaming. “Go on…”
“I haven’t been in the presence of such beauty, since my time in the Appalachian mountains. You’re breathtaking . . . .”
“Yes?”
“Heart-stopping . . . .”
“Do go on.”
“Sublime.”
She pinched his arm through his dress shirt. There was rock-solid muscle. He looked down, wondering what that was for. “Just making sure you’re real, this time,” she said.
He smiled glistening white teeth, and they stood there sort of hypnotized in each other’s gaze, when Maggie broke free, saying, “I would ask you to come in my apartment, but I’m a lady. I expect dinner first. Will fast food work for you?”
“The faster the better.” His dark eyes gleamed in satisfaction.
Maggie ate her Big Mac hamburger, sitting in the passenger seat of her delectable date’s black and luxurious car. He bought a burger as well, though it still sat in its to-go sack on the back seat, untouched. Her purse vibrated, and she knew it was because of her cell phone. She licked a finger after finishing off her food, so she could grab the thing to see who called.
It was a text from her best friend Alex. “Are you okay?” it said.
Maggie huffed and typed with her thick fingertips, “Yes, I am. I’ll give you all the details later.”
Ryder smoothly but quickly drove through town, back to Maggie’s apartment complex. He opened Maggie’s door for her, like any proper gentleman would, and offered his elbow for her to hold. The night air was surprisingly warm on her cold skin, and even the stars were brighter than usual. Fairytales do exist, she thought. Let’s hope this one stars a werewolf. She needed a werewolf kiss to cure her of her condition.
Upon entering the apartment, they wasted no time. It was like one of those cliché scenes in movies, where they couldn’t contain themselves. They made out like rabid teenagers. Maggie was enjoying it all oh-so much, but the logical part of her brain was screaming a warning at her hormones: They’re cold! His lips are cold! She tried silencing her thoughts, but couldn’t. Ryder had her pressed against a hallway wall, kissing her neck, when suddenly she pushed him off.
“What’s the matter, dear?” His black hair was disheveled, and there was slight irritation in his dark eyes.
“You are cold,” she said.
He nodded knowingly, and turned to the heater’s thermostat, turning it up. “No worries.” He leaned into her, kissing her neck with his icy lips some more.
She pushed him back again. “Who are you? What are you?”
“I’m a desperate man, desperate for your touch, your lips, your love. Desperate, I tell you.” He moved in closer, his eyes pleading. “Charmed by your beauty, your grace—”
Maggie so wanted to believe all that, but her baloney detector went off at the mention of her ‘grace.’ “I am not graceful.”
“Of course you are, dear.” He put out his hands, in hopes of acceptance.
“If I’m graceful, then I’ll be the queen of England!” she said sarcastically. “Did you miss how I gobbled down my hamburger? Licked my fingers afterward?”
He shrugged. “Eh?”
“You also missed the fact that while waiting at the drive-thru, I couldn’t help but cut the cheese, right on your shiny, leather seats?”
“You did?” His eyebrows went up.
“Who are you really?” Maggie crossed her arms, feeling disgust. “A spy? From another district?”
“Spy?” Ryder waved his hands around like it was both absurd and like he had no clue what the heck she was talking about. He then placed his arms on either side of her, leaning his hands against the wall. “You want to know who I really am?”
“That’s what I’ve said twice now. Spill the beans. Your charm no longer holds power over me.”
He leaned down and kissed her neck a couple times, as if testing the truth of the matter. When he looked up, Maggie shot him a hard stare. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do this the hard way. I enjoy the sexual thrill of women desiring me while I do what I do, so this is a bit disappointing. It will be the first time someone has refused me. I’ll just have to get on with it, then. I won’t waste any more of your time.” He opened his mouth, showing a set of fangs descending.
“A vampire?” Maggie cocked an eyebrow. “You goons actually exist?”
He pulled his neck back, narrowing his eyes in surprise. “Goons? Honey, we are the sexiest creatures in existence.”
“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes.
“What? You don’t believe me? You wanted me like a frantic school girl moments ago.”
“That was then. This is now.”
“Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas. Do you really think they were just acting in Interview With The Vampire? That’s who they really are. They go to our underground Hollywood mixers all the time.”
“I’m more of a Taylor Lautner girl. You’re boring me.”
“Boring you? Ha!” Now he stepped back and crossed his arms.
“How many of you are really left in the entire world, anyway? I never hear news reports about vampire
holes in the necks of young, unsuspecting women.”
Ryder rubbed his hands together and smiled wide, looking at the floor before saying, “We have our ways of covering that stuff up. Different vampires have different methods.”
The news story at the deli flashed through Maggie’s thoughts. Cut-Throat, the serial killer, slashing women’s necks. Women met through personal ads. So Alex had indeed been right. “So your method is slashing the neck afterward?”
“Very discerning,” he said, again moving in close.
Maggie surprised him by tilting her chin up for him. “Go ahead. Have a bite,” she said.
Ryder’s eyes went wide with arousal. He leaned in ever-so-slowly, his fangs pressing gently against her skin, before she felt them penetrate. It didn’t hurt much, actually. It felt like little pin pricks.
“Do you like it?” Maggie asked.
The next second, he recoiled in disgust, wiping his mouth with a sleeve. “Foul!”
“I know, right? I warned you. I’m not like other girls.”
He wiped some more before gaining a bit of composure. “It was like I put a straw into the dirt and slurped up moldy worms. I wish I could vomit! I wish I could get the (cough) taste (cough) out of my mouth (cough).” He then took off to the kitchen, whipped open the refrigerator, and downed half a liter of Pepsi.
Maggie was ticked. That bottle was supposed to be her after-dinner nightcap. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re not supposed to go into a stranger’s fridge and start taking stuff for yourself.”
Ryder slumped to the ground, and guzzled some more. He paused to say, “I’m in your apartment, I just revealed I’m a vampire who wanted to suck your blood, and you have an issue with me opening your refrigerator?”
Maggie took off her shoes that were pinching her toes a little too much, and threw them in the corner of the dining room. “You are pathetic, you know. I thought you people aren’t supposed to eat or drink anything other than blood anyway.”
Ryder set the liter down, finally, and looked absolutely spent. “That’s true. I’m drinking it through my incisors. I’ll be in a world of pain, but it won’t harm me this way. Anyway, Foul Girl, what are you supposed to be, if you are neither human nor a vamp?”
Now it was time for her to have fun. She crouched down as best she could in her tight dress, and said, “A zombie.”
His eyes went wide. “Well, if I cannot have the delight of your blood, I will take pleasure in tearing you into shredded card board.” He rose, his feet no longer touching the floor. There was mania in his eyes as he floated toward her, his countenance revealing the inner dimensions of a demon . . .
*
Maggie’s cell phone rang. Before answering, she finished topping her treat off with plenty of whip cream from a can. “Hello?”
“Hi, Maggie,” Alex’s concerned voice came through. “I couldn’t wait. I was too worried. Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
She heard him breathe out in relief. “Good. It’s after midnight—is your date over?”
“He is done with.” She smiled and added a cherry on top of the whip cream.
“How was it?”
“It sucked.”
“What are you doing now?”
She looked down at the odd-shaped brain of a serial killer sitting in her bowl, loaded with toppings. Oops, she almost forgot the hot fudge. She sniffed the sweet and pungent aroma of her delicacy, before grabbing the hot jar of chocolate, and poured the stuff all over. It had been so long since she last had a brain. “I’m eating… some ice cream.”
“A little midnight snack.”
She chuckled to herself. “More like a monster midnight snack, if you ask me.”
“Okay, then have a good night.”
“I will. Nighty night.”
* * *
MIDNIGHT SNACK is a modified chapter from Molly Snow’s TO KISS A WEREWOLF spin-off novel, TO DATE A WEREWOLF.
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Molly Snow is a Top 10 Idaho Fiction Author, awarded by The Idaho Book Extravaganza. Her works include quirky teen romances Beswitched, Head Over Halo and To Kiss a Werewolf. Also a speaker on writing, her school assemblies have been featured in The Contra Costa Times and The Brentwood Press. Snow is married to her high school crush, has a set of silly twin boys and a bobtail cat named Meow-Meow. She also co-writes with her mother Z & C Mysteries, the first in the series being The Riddles of Hillgate.
http://mollysnowfiction.blogspot.com/
*
Friends With Benefits
Kate Aaron
He’s using me. I’m not so dumb I don’t know it. He’s always used me, ever since we were teenagers and he’d tell his parents he was staying at my house to cover his nights out at clubs and bars, dates with older men, drinking and dancing ‘til dawn. Used me when he copied my homework on the bus the next day, a pirate smile on his face as he whispered scandalous details of what he’d been up to. Or maybe it started earlier, when he was the one who kicked the football through the side of his neighbour’s greenhouse and I took the blame; or earlier still, when he glued Hannah Jones’ pigtails together with PVA. Yes, Liam McGinty has been using me since we were five years old, at least. And all that time, over all those years, I’ve let him.
Tobias Black, doormat, at your service.
I’m not bitching. Honestly, I’m not. I’m grateful. I started school six months late, thanks to a poorly-timed transfer at Dad’s work which saw the whole family—me, my parents, my two older sisters—relocated from the rolling green hills of the Cotswolds to the grimy grey of Manchester when I was just four years old. I was the new boy, an oddity with a strange accent. And to make matters worse, I was a fat kid, of course, a tubby barrel of lard topped with a shock of hair as dark as my name, and NHS glasses. My peers, quite rightly, shunned me. All except Liam.
Before my arrival he was a loner; a strange, reclusive child—not shy, Liam McGinty was never shy—but he looked down on the other kids like they were already beneath him, infinitely inferior in every way. It was like he knew, even then, exactly what he’d grow up to be.
I can’t remember the first time I noticed him, really noticed the breadth of his shoulders, the narrow taper of his waist, the way his jaw had squared out beneath the jut of his cheekbones and the dimples which showed either side of his full lips when he smiled. He smiled often, and I began to long and live for those smiles dripped in sin. Even at fourteen, he looked like a wanton. By eighteen, thoroughly debauched and long schooled in the art of seduction, the illusion was complete.
Not that we were eighteen anymore, but even ten years on Liam still looked like a man in his prime. It simply wasn’t fair. I’d morphed from the chubby kid into a skinny twink, from one cliché to another. These days I couldn’t seem to put on weight if I tried, and God knows I’d tried. At fourteen I hit a growth spurt which rearranged my body from round to tall, and while I wouldn’t complain about that, I wished I had some muscle, some small hint of definition. Naked, I feared I still looked like an adolescent, all ribs and bony points. The kind of men who found me attractive were usually older, seedier and, dare I say, predatory in their attentions. They made my skin crawl—would have done, even were I not hopelessly in love with my best friend.
In my defence, he leads me on. And yes I know I get a say in the matter and I know I can always say no but, well, who could possibly say no to him? Certainly not me.
We’d always been close, even as kids. Not only in the sense that we lived in one another’s pockets, but we were affectionate; ‘touchy-feely’, as my dad put it, with increasing concern in his voice. Changing for PE or at the swimming pool I was always conscious of my body, but never before Liam. Maybe that was odd, when most people are on edge around someone they’re attracted to, but Liam has such an easy, open nature. He never shied away from me, never expressed disgust or revulsion when I unveiled first my flab and then my scrawny frame. I was, I guess, a nonentity to him; my body simply didn’t matter be
cause it was hardly like he’d be interested in me, was it?
So when he made that first move, back when we were fifteen or so, it shocked me to my very core.
He knew I was gay already—I’d made a tearful confession some six months previous, and he hadn’t seemed surprised. Indeed, it was he who ended up surprising me, admitting he was bisexual himself.
“What?” I’d started out of his arms, tears shocked into submission.
Liam shrugged, ran a hand up through the back of his medium-brown hair then carefully rearranged the artfully-mussed strands. “I’m bisexual,” he said, like he couldn’t understand why I thought it a big deal.
“You’re attracted to men?” I heard the scornful edge twisting my tone, but I couldn’t help myself. I mean, nobody’s bisexual, right? Not really. For a horrible moment, I thought he was making it up just to make me feel better.
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Like who?” I demanded, seeking proof.
His pouty lips pursed in a wicked bow. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
It was such a desperate bluff I didn’t even bother calling it. A wild and unauthorised hope sinking in my breast, I turned away, trying to find it in my heart to be grateful he’d been supportive enough to make up a story so I didn’t feel like I was the only one.
“I thought you’d be happy,” Liam protested, a hand on my arm halting my movement. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for ages—”
“Whatever.” I shook him off and spat the word at him, a wounded animal lashing out. For the briefest of moments, I’d allowed myself to hope…
“Toby? I, I thought you’d understand—”
“What is there to understand?” I asked. “How do you even know—you haven’t even kissed a guy!”
“Actually, I have.”
With those three words, the bottom dropped out of my world.
The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters Page 15
