by Mary Hughes
“Stuff your fat drooling tongue inside your head and get out of my way,” shouted the Lucille Ball-deep voice of Maim.
Hey, Lucy had done a film version of Auntie Mame. This guy really was a Mame. I smiled in my cocoon.
A hand fastened onto my bottom. “You’re mine now, blood-bitch.”
I clamped my teeth against a shriek of frustration. TSTL, just toss me into the too-stupid-to-live pile. While I was distracted by my idiot pun, he’d caught me.
But this close, I could land a kick. A back-kick, square in the breadbasket, would take out even the strongest goon. Tricky, though, with no hands and in heels. I had to get it exactly right. If only I knew where his solar plexus was.
He groped my bottom, his heavy breathing rasping in my ears. Besides yuck, I couldn’t tell if he was in front or behind me, turned or straight on.
Maybe I could pull his orientation from his voice—if I could get him talking. I blocked out horny hands and stale breath. “So, Maimie. Do you really take the blues right out of the horn?” No answer. Either he wasn’t a musical buff or he’d heard it before. I tried again. “‘Life’s a banquet,’ hey, Maimie? ‘And most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death’.”
He hissed a laugh. “Very funny, blood-cunt.”
Yay! But the shell’s reverberation meant I’d need more to pinpoint. “So, Maimie—”
“Silence, snack.” His hand slid down, fingers creeping toward my slit. “Mmm. I’m gonna enjoy this.” A finger brushed my labia.
Planning, aim, any rational thought flew out of my brain. I spun a hook kick through the jerk’s head. Maim bellowed in pain.
I tried to land but missed my footing and went down. Tucking into a roll absorbed some of the impact but the dress bag made me awkward. Concrete scraped butt and thigh. Blood welled hot on my haunches. I curled up, thin streaks of pain slicing my hip. Maim swore, fell right on top of me.
He recovered first. His hands dug into my thighs, wrenched them apart. His anger beat into my skin, his fingers tight enough to bruise. He yanked me hard against his hips and I knew I was one zip away from outrage.
A terrible roar shook the shell, a beast beyond fury. Maim’s weight was suddenly gone. Knives whistled. Another roar was accompanied by a terrifying splat.
Then, ominously, absolutely nothing.
I lay on the stage, pain subsiding to nasty throbs. I finally realized nothing was broken, so I rolled up to my knees, tense and waiting. No one grabbed me. No one spoke. There was only silence. I had no idea who had beaten whom.
But I got the horrible feeling people had lost their heads, literally. I could only hope one wasn’t Logan. Tentatively, I called his name.
“Liese.” His voice was so rough I barely recognized it. “Are you okay?”
I scrambled to my feet. “I am now. What’s going on?” I pushed at my cocoon. “Let me out?”
“In a minute. I have to…recover some. Damn. Why do you have to smell so good?”
“I just want to clean up.” I turned my scraped and bloodied haunches toward where I thought he was. “See?”
Logan released a groan so deep I thought it was coming from his very soul. The next thing I knew his hands were wrapped around my hips and his breath was hot on my naked flank.
A warm, wet tongue touched me. Licked me gently. Began to lap, washing me, hot and slick.
“Logan, don’t.” The scrapes stopped hurting, but he was licking blood. “Stop that…what are you doing…oh.”
His mouth worked down my buttocks, kissing now as well as licking. His lips pressed intimately into the crease of my thighs. His breath warmed flesh chilled by the early spring night. My ex-fiancé had never kissed me like this. Never put his mouth down—there.
Logan tilted my hips back and took a long lick of my exposed sex. I quivered at the touch. He did it again and deep muscles clenched. He lapped a third time and I felt myself open to him like a rose.
“Oh, Liese,” he breathed against my bare labia. “You smell so good. You taste even better.”
There was such sincerity in his voice I had to believe him. “Logan, I’m…I’m…”
“Yes?” He lapped ardently at me, his tongue sinking into my blooming pussy. “What is it, princess?”
Goosebumps ran up and down my thighs. “I’m cold.”
“Dear heart. I should have thought.” Logan gathered me into his arms, held me close. “I don’t feel the chill like you do.” He made short work of the tie that bound me, picked me up and glided off.
His smooth stride was deceptively fast. I dug out of my cocoon barely in time to see the rapidly disappearing scene behind us. No broken heads. No bleeding and battered bodies.
But I knew I’d heard something horrible. “Logan, put me down. We need to call the police.”
“Later. Now, I’m taking you home.” Logan’s voice was rough with emotion. The hand he used to shield my face was trembling.
“But those men—”
“I’m taking you home,” he repeated. “We’ll sort all that out later.”
“But—”
“I’ve got your taste in my mouth, sweetheart. I’m afraid I can’t wait.”
“Logan.” I wriggled until he was forced to pay attention to me. “Being attacked by four men is not something we can sort out later. Especially if they were the gang trying to break into the Blood Center. Logan, stop.”
“I’ll handle it, princess.”
“You’re not the police. At the very least I need to tell Elena.”
He finally set me down. We were already ten blocks away. How…? Forty miles an hour, I remembered. On foot. “Fine.” His tone, rough, said it was anything but fine. “Give Elena a call. Maybe once you’ve unburdened yourself, you’ll feel free to go home with me.” He crossed his arms, pumping muscles in both arms and chest. Even after all that had happened my tongue wanted a long, hot lick of that.
And then… Go home with him? I swallowed hard. “To play World of Warcraft?”
His eyes darkened. “To make love.”
“Oh. Um…yeah.” Burning in Logan’s heated gaze, I nearly forgot roars and splats. Only sheer determination got the phone out. Good thing Elena was on redial.
The line flipped open. “H…hello?” She sounded breathless, like she’d been exercising heavily. Running, or skipping rope, or—
Oh, snap. “It’s Liese. Am I calling at a bad time?”
“No, of course not.” She said it too quickly. A deep murmur and her answering yip made me clap my phone shut.
“She’s busy.” I was fire-engine red. “I’ll just call the police station instead.” I opened my phone, punched 9-1—
“No.” Logan snatched the phone from me so fast I punched the last 1 in the air before I knew it was gone.
“What are you doing? Give that back.” I reached for it.
Logan grabbed my wrist and yanked me in. As my breasts smashed against the Cliffs of Dover, I screeched. “Not again—mphf.” He ambushed my lips with a masterful kiss and proceeded to eat me alive.
Fire swirled in my brain. “Stop it, Logan.” It came out Mush mush momush, so I guess I don’t blame him for not understanding.
Oh, that man could kiss. The drugging bliss of his mouth on mine, his hard body rubbing hotly against me nearly made me succumb. But this was important. With the last of my willpower I clapped a hand on my phone and pulled. Logan hung on. I faked a tug down. When his resistance kicked in I yanked up with all my strength.
I ripped the phone away, but the backlash sent my arm spinning up hard enough to clock him.
He fell back, one hand to his cheek, his eyes wide. “That wasn’t just a slap. Why?”
I felt bad, but it had stopped him. He was so charming, could so easily walk all over me. “It was an accident. But you were kissing me to shut me up, don’t try to deny it.” As he’d kissed me to shut me up all the other times. Because he couldn’t help himself, my geeky patootie.
I didn’t say the last out loud, but his eyes narrowed on me
in that Amazing Kreskin way I was coming to know. “I have easier ways to shut you up, Liese. Tonight—and all the other times—I kissed you because I wanted to. Because I want you. I told you that.” He reached for me.
I edged back. “Liar.” Wanting it (even desperately wanting it) didn’t make it true. “You kissed me because there’s something weird going on. You kissed me to distract me from figuring it out.”
“There’s nothing weird—”
“The more you deny it, the more I know I’m right. Mannequins, disappearing bodies—”
“I’m not lying about this, Liese. I want you. And I’m going to prove it.” He picked me up again and strode down the street.
Exasperated, I said, “Just tell me the truth. You could have tons of gorgeous women. I know you have no real interest in me. Admit it.”
He set me down with exquisite care, then grabbed me by both arms. “You are driving me nuts. Well-groomed, symmetrical little automatons aren’t beautiful, not to me. You’re gorgeous. I love your curvy breasts, your sweetly rounded buttocks. Your glistening little slit—” His eyes squeezed shut and his voice trailed off into something almost like an animal’s growl.
“Oh, come on. All women are the same in the dark.”
Logan’s eyes snapped open, that eerie red-gold. “No. They’re not.” He grabbed my hand and took off.
I tripped after him. “Just admit it, Logan. Please. I know I’m not beautiful. I promise not to yell, or throw a fit. And if you really want sex I won’t object.”
He spun me toward him. His eyes were wide, appalled. “For heaven’s sake, Liese. This isn’t about me getting laid. I’m not the kind of male who lies just to get laid.”
My face must have said I wasn’t convinced.
“No? Fine. If you want to be cynical.” He released me to tear open his jacket and shirt. Grabbing the neck of his T-shirt, he ripped it in two.
My eyes popped out of my skull at the mountains of sleek muscle revealed. His skin glowed like golden silk in the lamplight.
With a wave of his hand, Logan indicated his ripped torso. “Maybe you’ll believe I’m not the kind of male who has to lie just to get laid.”
Okay. True. Yeah. Tongue-lolling bladah-bladah true.
“Now, princess.” He grabbed my hand, extracted my key from my purse, dragged me to my door and unlocked it. “You don’t believe me when I say you’re beautiful. That I want you for you.” He scooped me up and swept into my apartment. “So I’m going to show you, very physically. That can’t be faked.”
I watched my couch and stereo go by as if they were a stranger’s. Things looked very different six feet off the ground. “Logan, I know physical things can be faked. Little blue pills—”
He screeched to a halt just outside my bedroom. His easy charm dropped away and he was actually angry. “Liese. I am not taking any medications.”
“But you could be.”
“He did, didn’t he?” Logan stalked through the doorway and tossed me onto my bed. “I swear, killing’s not good enough. I’ll feed his own dick to him—and make a bib with his testicles.”
“Logan! That’s crude.” But, thinking of my ex, kind of funny. I pictured Botcher’s sac stretched like a lobster bib under his chin and laughed.
“That’s my Liese.” Logan knelt at my feet. “I’ll make you forget all about that miserable excuse for a man. I’ll make you happy, sweetheart. Lean back.”
It took Logan one second to make me forget Botcher. He spread my thighs and French-kissed my sex.
I gasped. Logan’s tongue speared into me. Hot breath beat against me. I bucked. His hands opened on my thighs, holding me steady for the muscular thrusts. His tongue rasped over my slit, spreading it. He sucked one lip into his mouth and I bit back a shriek. He scoured my hole with his tongue and the shriek emerged.
He took one long lick, and another. And then he fell to.
He devoured me, nipping and lapping and sucking like I was a whole dessert tray. Heavens above, that man could love with his mouth. If he’d been practicing for centuries he couldn’t have been better. Insistent and hot, his licks were delivered over and over with increasing force until I had a small shuddering climax.
Then he added fingers.
Two long, clever digits thrust into my heat. I arched back, gasped at the delicious pressure crowding my bottom. He pulled out slightly, the small sucking sound caressing my ears, and thrust again. His fingers slid deeper.
His mouth opened on my mons, his breath warming the smooth skin. His tongue slid hot into the slit, holding my clitoral sheath steady while his thrusting fingers jounced me. I was tossed between tongue and fingers, pushed higher and higher, until I trembled violently with desire.
Suddenly he stopped. Wracked with need, I nearly shrieked my frustration but the bed shifted and then he was drawing my dress over my head. My vision cleared to the sight of naked, pumped golden male. Whoa. When’d that happen?
And how? ’Cause clothes-melting might just revolutionize the porn industry.
Logan’s eyes burned. “I want you, Liese. Like I’ve never wanted anyone else.” His taut, packed belly undulated rapidly with his panting breaths. “Let me love you, sweetheart. Completely. Say yes.”
I licked my lips. Logan might have faked the sincere tone. He might have viagra’d the enormous erection jutting from his hips.
But he couldn’t fake the sex rash mottling his chest or the fierce desire in his eyes.
Or the huge, straining fangs glistening between his lips.
“What the hell?” I knifed up. Fangs? I had to be seeing things. Okay, I’d thought the v-word, but that wasn’t reality smacking me in the face. I reached trembling fingers toward his mouth.
Logan pushed me flat. Straddled me with muscular thighs. “You’re gorgeous, princess. Looks, smell, feel. Taste.” He leaned over me and pressed wet kisses to my neck, my collarbone. His hot lips were segmented by something smooth and long.
Two somethings. With very sharp points. I tried to squirm away but he held me trapped. He palmed a breast and I could only gasp.
“Believe me when I say you’re beautiful, Liese. All of you, but especially these.” Logan shifted to suckle me. The fangs rode on either side of my nipple like electric prods.
I arched, unable to stop myself, pressing into his warm mouth. The sleek length of his canines felt like living marble on my skin. The fangs freaked me, but my body liked their throbbing press so much that my nipples were tight snaps and my breasts strained for more.
Logan groaned to the pit of his belly. He closed his eyes. Took a deep shuddering breath through fiercely flared nostrils. “Lord, Liese, you smell wonderful. I’m dying to penetrate you. Please, sweetheart. Say yes.” His tongue swirled around my nipple.
I couldn’t speak, caught by the unreality of it all. Logan was making love to me—mind-banging enough—with fangs.
Like something that started with a v and ended with an -ampire. Yet it would explain so many things. The Rasputin voice, the red eyes. The superhuman speed, the nocturnal hours, licking my blood off my skin, Zinnia’s caterwauling on species rights, the 40 mph (on foot) alarm parameters…yeah. All so plain in hindsight but even Superman tricked Lois Lane with only a pair of glasses and a bad haircut.
If Logan were a vampire, my own sexual response to him could be safely labeled Erotic Power of the Undead. And it was power—electric bolts sheered through me from his deep suckling. Violent need shook me. I grabbed his head, wanting to push him away but only clutching harder and mewling in passion’s terror.
Logan’s mouth immediately gentled. His hands caressed me, warm and sweet. Comforting, like he knew I was freaked and wanted to reassure me I was safe with him.
Like he cared about me.
That actually scared me worse than the fangs. If Logan were a vampire, I should be his snack. Yet he was touching me like a lover.
Say yes. Here was the real reason I couldn’t say it. Not his fangs or even the power of my reaction t
o him but the sense that this was about more than sex. That, even if it started out as response to the dark appetites of the vampire, something had changed for me. Something significant. I was no longer responding with my wet, needy sex.
Logan might be making love to my body, but I was responding with my heart.
Shocking enough. But when Logan said, “Only you, princess. Only you make me feel like this. I want you so badly,” as if he were echoing my thoughts, as if his heart were involved too, an avalanche of fear hit me. He couldn’t really mean it.
He moved to suckle the other nipple. The sharp points of his fangs scraped my cleavage along the way. “Say yes.”
My throat was too thick. He pressed the canines into my aching flesh and I whimpered.
“Say it.” He suckled my nipple until I wanted to scream. Until I no longer cared about hearts or fangs or fears, only about slick writhing bodies. Something had to give.
I couldn’t say it. So I grabbed his ears and rammed my breast into his face.
Prongs of fire drove into my flesh, his needle-sharp canines. Lightning struck, twin bolts of pleasure. A shivering, out-of-the-blue orgasm rolled over me like thunder.
His tongue immediately pressed against the throbbing pricks. “Damn, Liese. I’m sorry I slipped but—aw, hell. No, I’m not sorry. You taste incredible. Beyond moonlight and soft summer breezes. More, sweetheart. Let me give you more. Let me love you fully. Completely. Say yes.”
His lips roved over my breast, sucking gently. My blood leaped to attention. Ached. His hand slid between my thighs, hot. “More, sweet Liese.” He began to stroke.
It would have been insanity to say yes. But Logan boldly stroked my clit until I shrieked. Until I cursed. His hand rode me as if he were inside my head, fulfilling my desires before I even had them. As if he’d been born knowing how to drive me insane.
And the wetter I got, the more he pleaded.
“Please, Liese. Let me take you to heaven.”
Rich, powerful Logan Steel. Begging to give me pleasure. His mouth blazed fire down my cleavage, his hand worked slickly between my legs. His monster erection seared a throbbing beat against my thigh. It would be heaven inside me. Heaven, all for the price of a single word.
