Longfellow Series: Books 1-4 (4-Book Bundle) (Erotic Romance - Vampire Romance)

by Hart, Melissa F.

  Chapter Two

  “Michelle! What are you doing here?” Sophia cried happily as her best friend stepped out of hiding and the two young women hugged each other. Michelle’s short purple hair fluttered in the night breeze, and her dark eyes sparkled with intensity.

  “I had to let you know, Peter isn’t coming tonight. He saw right through your trap,” Michelle said, with an urgent strain in her voice.

  Sophia gave a sigh of relief that her life wasn’t in danger tonight, but quickly grew disappointed as she realized that meant Peter was still a danger to everyone else in the town.

  Suddenly Logan appeared beside them. His shoulder-length blond hair looked almost white in the moonlight, and his handsome face looked taut with worry. He’d been waiting very close by to protect Sophia from Peter and had heard everything Michelle had said. “My cousin must have another scheme in mind then. Tell me what he is planning.”

  Michelle hesitated, not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, but she knew they had to be warned. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Peter decided the fifteen victims he’s already turned into vampires aren’t enough. He wants a much bigger army. He attacked a group of students from the university just a little while ago, including our friend Mark. They’d been gathering together as a lynch mob preparing to hunt vampires, but they were inexperienced and Peter made easy work of them. Now he plans to go out every night and get more victims until he has an army of hundreds of vampires at his disposal. He plans to use them to overwhelm the outer defenses of Longfellow Castle. Then he’ll kill everyone inside and take the castle for himself.”

  “There must be a way to stop him!” Sophia said with determination burning in her bright blue eyes, making them sparkle like water. She looked at Logan and said fiercely, “I’ll do whatever it takes to help you defeat him!”

  “So will we,” Michelle said firmly. “Clyde and I discussed it and we’re going to keep pretending to be aligned with Peter so he’ll tell us his plans. Then we’ll do everything in our power to help you to defeat them.”

  “Thank you,” Logan said gratefully to Michelle. He understood what a dangerous sacrifice it was and appreciated it more than words could say. “When and where is he going to attack his next victims?”

  “I don’t know,” Michelle said, worriedly. “He commanded me and Clyde to stay in his hideout and take care of the victims who are already there. Then he left. He said he was going to gather victims from all of the surrounding communities and bring them back here in one week.”

  “Clever.” Logan frowned. “Peter knows that I cannot use my grandmother’s jeweled necklace to track his movements out of town. It has a very limited circumference of vision. He also knows that by attacking me within the week, it doesn’t give me much time to prepare a defense.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re not alone. Clyde and I will use this time to train the vampires at Peter’s hideout to help defend you. I estimate there are about fifty of them all together. It will be a small army compared to what Peter is amassing, but he won’t be expecting to be attacked from within his own ranks, and it will buy you some valuable time to defeat him.”

  “Thank you,” Logan said, with tears of gratitude brimming in his eyes. He embraced Michelle. “Just promise me one thing; if Peter discovers your betrayal or things become too dangerous for you and Clyde, I want the two of you to escape together and flee to someplace far away where the two of you can live in peace.”

  “I promise,” Michelle vowed. “I’ll see you in one week’s time.” Then she hugged Sophia goodbye for what may possibly be the last time, and disappeared into the night.

  Once Michelle had gone, Logan turned to Sophia. “I want you to leave before the week is over. In fact, I want you to leave town today, right now.”

  Sophia laughed softly at the ridiculous suggestion. Touching his arm, she said lovingly, “I’m staying right here with you, until Peter is defeated. We have a love that nothing can break apart.”

  Logan’s face turned suddenly hard. He pulled his arm away from her touch and said harshly, “Ha! I know you were always just with me because you wanted my money! Here take some of my jewels and get out of here! Get out of my sight and go as far away from here as possible!”

  Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a large handful of precious stones. He thrust them into Sophia’s hands, but she just stared at them, not understanding what was suddenly wrong with him. She shook her head and tried to hand the jewels back to him, but he shoved his hands into his pockets and refused to take them back.

  “I don’t care about your money or jewels. I just care about you. I’m not going to run away and leave when you need me the most. No one knows more about the architectural design of Longfellow Castle then me. I wrote my entire thesis paper about it. I can help you form a defense that no army could penetrate.”

  “I don’t need your help and I don’t need you! I’m finished with you! I never want to see you again!”

  Sophia couldn’t believe what she was hearing and hot tears began to run down her cheeks. “You’re breaking up with me? I thought we had a love that would last forever. What’s wrong with you?”

  Logan looked at her with hard eyes, seeming to be completely unmoved by her tears. It was the hardest acting job he had ever done. “You were nothing more to me than a silly fling; a school girl virgin to amuse myself with. Now I’ve grown tired of you. The game is boring, and I have much more important matters on my mind. Just take the jewels and go away. I don’t care what town you move to, as long as I never have to see you again.”

  Sophia stood in a state of shock, the jewels falling from her hands and scattering on the ground at her feet, while Logan entered the house and slammed the door firmly behind him. She called out to him and pounded on the front door, but he wouldn’t open it for her or even peer out the window where she could look at him one last time. As she walked slowly away in defeat, she saw the jewels glittering on the ground and realized they could be her last memento of him. She picked one up and put it her pocket, then walked away, sobbing. She had no idea that inside his mansion, Logan was crying too.

  Crushed and heartbroken, she wondered aimlessly through the town, not even realizing that she’d wandered back to the university until she plopped on the front steps of the central building. She had once loved this university as much as she loved the small town that surrounded it. She had spent a lifetime studying the architecture and history of every building in town, and most especially Longfellow Castle. Now, the university and even the entire town, had lost all of its joy for her. Without Logan’s love, she felt empty and realized that maybe she should just leave town as he had suggested.

  How could he be so heartless and cruel? How could he say I was nothing more than a fling to him? A fresh onslaught of tears streamed down Sophia’s cheeks.

  A cold breeze made her shiver, and she shoved her hands into her pockets and felt the jewel that she had forgotten was there. Why did he say I only wanted money from him as if I were nothing but a prostitute? Was that all I was to him?

  Sophia pulled the jewel from her pocket and stared at it. It glittered brilliantly in the sunlight, and she noticed the unique shape and color of it. This wasn’t just any jewel! This had been one of his grandmother’s most treasured and valued possessions. Logan had confided in her how his grandmother had been able to use jewels like this one to protect the people she loved.

  Logan had said, “When my grandmother, Virginia, gave these jewels to the ones she held most dear to her heart they surrounded that person with a magical force field that repelled all their enemies and kept them safe for as long as they held them.”

  “How do the jewels work?” Sophia had asked, feeling fascinated.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Logan confessed. “But as long as you hold them in your hand, no evil can hurt you.”

  Sophia realized with a gasp that Logan did still love her! He was only trying to protect her in the best way he knew how! He was trying to drive her
to leave town as just another way to keep her safe. Well, it wasn’t going to work! She wasn’t leaving town. She was going to secretly stay and help him in every way she could, only she would have to make sure that he never knew it.

  Chapter Three

  Sophia worked tirelessly, pouring over the research she had collected when she’d been writing her thesis paper on Longfellow Castle. She had architectural plans and schematics from every contractor who had ever worked on the house, as well as those from city planners, electricians, plumbers, gardeners, roofers, painters, historians, and artists. Every scrap of paper that had ever been written about the house was in her hands, and she planned to use them to help Logan defend it, even if he didn’t want her to.

  Every night, she crept over to the house Peter used as his secret hideout and met with Clyde and Michelle. They’d been working just as hard teaching their band of fifty new vampires how to live, use their powers, and ultimately fight for the side of good against the man who had made them, Peter Longfellow. Under their careful teachings, they’d learned how to live as vampires without harming a single human being, and how to use their powers to conceal and protect themselves, and not to attack. It made it all the more difficult to teach them how to use their skills in war, and to learn how to fight against evil vampires who would not share their values and would have a natural instinct for violence. Training fifty people to be both pacifists and soldiers trained for war was no easy task.

  “How’s it going?” Sophia asked, as she let herself into the front door and saw her two dearest friends hard at work, teaching their recruits how to throw wooden stakes at a dummy of Peter.

  “It’s progressing a lot slower than I would like,” Michelle said with a sigh, as one of the young vampires refused to even pick up the wooden stake out of instinctual fear and another missed the target so badly, he nearly impaled another vampire. Very few of them could even come close to hitting the target, shaped like a heart in the center of the dummy’s chest.

  Sophia covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a laugh and Michelle grinned back at her and said ruefully, “It’s given me a new appreciation for how good a teacher Logan was to me. I just hope we don’t let him down.”

  “You won’t. Just the fact that you’re doing all this to help to him means more than you can imagine.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Michelle rolled her eyes, and then grew serious again. She took Sophia aside where the others couldn’t hear. “I just heard from Peter today. He’s assembled two hundred vampires already. The last of them will complete their transformation tonight, and they will return back here. When the full moon rises tomorrow night, we are to attack Longfellow Castle. The time for battle is almost here.”

  “Okay. We’ll be ready. Look at what I found in my research today.” Sophia masked her fear with enthusiasm and pulled a pile of papers from her pocket and showed them to Michelle, but her best friend wasn’t fooled by the fake bravado.

  Michelle put a gentle hand on Sophia’s shoulder and said softly, “Don’t you want to go to Logan tonight and tell him that you love him? This could be your last chance to be with him.”

  Sophia’s eyes brimmed with tears of emotion, but she would not let them fall. She shook her head. “No, he must believe that I have left town like he told me to, or worrying about my safety will be a distraction to him. It was my decision to stay so I could help him defeat Peter’s army, but I don’t want my presence to be a hindrance to him in any way.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” Michelle said in her blunt style that was both her best and worst quality. “You and Logan love each other. Go to him now, tell him that Peter is attacking tomorrow at the rise of the full moon, and then spend this night together as if it were your last, because it just might be.”

  “What if he hates me for refusing to listen to him and leave town?”

  “He won’t hate you. Now go!” Michelle insisted. She took the research papers from Sophia, gave her a hug, and shoved her best friend out the door. Sophia knew that Michelle was right. All week long, all she’d wanted to do was be with Logan. It had been hell forcing herself to stay away from him, and she could only hope that he’d been as miserable as she was. She knew that if the battle did not go well, and either one of them died, they would both regret not having made love one last time and having ended their relationship with a fight.

  Feeling almost giddy with excitement, she ran to Logan’s house, stood on the front steps as she had on the night they first met, and rang the doorbell. She could hear the sound of its chime echoing through the house, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps and the silhouette of his handsome shadow filling the curtain window on the door. Finally, the door opened and Logan gasped with surprise at the sight of her, then swept her into his arms and kissed her passionately.

  “What are you doing here?” he cried out joyfully between kisses. Then he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the couch.

  “I couldn’t stay away. I’ve been helping Michelle and Clyde prepare their army to defend the castle, but I had to warn you that Peter is coming tomorrow night. Our time to prepare a defense is over,” Sophia said in a burst of nervous words.

  “You silly girl, I told you to leave town. Don’t you know you could be killed when Peter attacks?” Logan said. His words sounded angry, but his face reflected nothing but joy as his eyes drank her in and he kept covering her with kisses.

  “I know, but I couldn’t bear to leave you. I would rather we died together than for me to survive without you.”

  “I’m so glad you came back!” Logan said, no longer able to control the tears of happiness that slipped down his cheeks. “I love you so much! I didn’t mean any of the things I said when I told you I wanted to leave. I just wanted to keep you safe, but this week without you has been the darkest of my life. Without you, it was as if I were already dead. Never leave me again!”

  “I promise that I never will,” Sophia said, as she kissed the tears from his cheeks and let her lips move down his throat to his muscular chest. Logan sighed with pleasure as Sophia gently peeled open his shirt and kissed his powerful torso, working her way down his abdomen to the waist of his trousers.

  When Sophia unzipped his pants and released his most sensitive organ, Logan thought he had gone heaven and moaned loudly under the expert workings of her mouth, lips, and tongue.

  “Let me have a turn to pleasure you,” Logan said after a while, and delighted in stripping Sophia’s clothes off and tasting her delicate flesh with his mouth.

  He started with the nape of her neck, kissed his way to the hollow of her throat, then worked his way to her firm, round, young breasts. Gentle sighs of pleasure came from her lips as he lovingly massaged and squeezed them with both his hands while rubbing her hardened nipples with his thumbs and gently pinching them his fingers. When at last he took them into his mouth and began to suckle her there, loud moans of pleasure came from her lips and she spread her thighs, welcoming him in.

  “Not yet. I want to show you much I missed you,” Logan said. He peeled off her panties and made love to her with his mouth, tongue and fingers while she moaned and writhed with ecstasy beneath his expert touch.

  “I’m going to climax,” she cried out, and Logan increased the pace of his efforts until she orgasmed loudly beneath him. Sophia clutched at the cushions of the sofa while her muscles spasmed and her whole body undulated with the intensity of her pleasure.

  When at last she regained her composure, she pushed him down onto the couch and straddled him. His organ was still rigid with desire and she mounted him, delighting the feel of him sliding deep within her most intimate folds. She began to stroke atop of him, moving slowly as first, and then gaining in speed as her pleasure grew. She scratched at Logan’s chest as she thrust, pinching his nipples, as he had done to her and riding him more and more furiously as their passions escalated.

  “I’m going to orgasm!” Logan moaned loudly and Sophia knew that she was going to als
o. She cried out his name as they climaxed in perfect unison, and he cried out hers too. Then they each collapsed in each other’s arms, professing their love for each other. They had made love as if it were there last night together, and indeed it very well might be.

  Chapter Four

  The sun had set and a palatable tension filled the air. The full moon was rising over the horizon, filling the black night sky with a pale light that was almost as bright as the day. In the distance, a horde of evil vampires appeared over the hill and began advancing on the castle with incredible speed. The mass of them darkened the sky like a black cloud.

  “They’re here!” Sophia called out to Logan fearfully. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest so hard she thought it might explode, but one look at Logan helped calm her and fortified her courage. He looked so calm and prepared, even in the face of such overwhelming danger. His confidence and bravery renewed her sense of hope in their future together and only increased the love she felt for him that was already so great.

  Within moments, the horde of vampires reached the electrified fence that surrounded the castle grounds and was now fully activated and charged with deadly electricity. The defensive fence had been very useful in the past, protecting the castle from mobs of angry humans, but tonight it proved to be completely useless. The army of vampires gripped the bars of the fence and climbed over it as easily as ants climbing over a wall. They spilled into the castle grounds and continued to advance upon the castle, completely undaunted.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Sophia cried out in fear and disappointment. “Isn’t the electrical current flowing properly?”

  Logan nodded. “The fence is working just fine. The vampires aren’t hurt by the electricity, so it’s as if it wasn’t even there.”