by Kira Nyte
Touched by
His Vampire Charm
A Nocturne Falls Universe Story
Kira Nyte
Dear Reader,
Nocturne Falls has become a magical place for so many people, myself included. Over and over I’ve heard from you that it’s a town you’d love to visit and even live in! I can tell you that writing the books is just as much fun for me.
With your enthusiasm for the series in mind—and your many requests for more books—the Nocturne Falls Universe was born. It’s a project near and dear to my heart, and one I am very excited about.
I hope these new, guest-authored books will entertain and delight you. And best of all, I hope they allow you to discover some great new authors! (And if you like this book, be sure to check out the rest of the Nocturne Falls Universe offerings.)
For more information about the Nocturne Falls Universe, visit http://kristenpainter.com/sugar-skull-books/
In the meantime, happy reading!
Kristen Painter
Touched by His Vampire Charm
A Nocturne Falls Universe Story
Copyright © 2018 by Kira Nyte
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction and was made possible by a special agreement with Sugar Skull Books, but hasn’t been reviewed or edited by Kristen Painter. All characters, events, scenes, plots and associated elements appearing in the original Nocturne Falls series remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Kristen Painter, Sugar Skull Books and their affiliates or licensors.
Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author or Sugar Skull Books.
Published in the United States of America.
Table of Contents
TOUCHED BY HIS VAMPIRE CHARM
Welcome from Kristen Painter
Copyright
About the Book
Thank You
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
About the Author
Touched by His Vampire Charm
The product of an evil scientist’s mad quest to create a day-walking vampire, Vivian Hawkins revels in her freedom in Nocturne Falls, a haven for supernatural creatures great and small. The one thing she truly desires is to find a soul mate. Too bad such happiness isn’t meant for a monster like her.
Vampire Draven Lourdes chafes under the musty existence forced on him by the Levoire coven. If he didn’t need the stuffy old bones to keep his sister safe, he’d leave the coven behind and focus on his adventures. Instead, he has to chase a lead on one of the coven’s missing Elders to a small Georgia town—and gets the shock of his life when he meets the sweetest, most beautiful creature he’s ever seen.
Vivian is drawn to Draven the instant they meet. Though she knows better, she can’t resist the charming vampire’s pursuit. It won’t last. It can’t.
But for Draven, she’ll risk anything.
Website and Newsletter for Kira Nyte: www.kiranyte.com
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Contact Kira Nyte at [email protected]
Thank You
Thank you to all of my wonderful readers on this amazing journey! A special shout-out to Rebecca Poole for another gorgeous cover, my editor Raina for all of her wisdom and input to make these books the best they can be, and of course, to Kristen Painter for inviting me to take an exciting ride into the heart of Nocturne Falls!
Chapter One
Life was spectacular. Life was a gift.
To Vivian Hawkins, life was a miracle.
Even as she stared down at the splattered smoothie that covered the front of her shirt, dripped off her face, and clotted in her hair.
The customers at her back either snickered or gasped.
Wendy, her co-worker at Magical Mayhem Smoothies and More, rushed to her side with a rag and started wiping her arm. “Geez. We like mayhem, but not done to ourselves.”
Vivian giggled as she took the rag and rolled her eyes. “I thought I had that lid on tight enough. I’ll get the hang of this in time.” She motioned to the customers with the rag. “At least I’ve managed some extra entertainment for them.”
Wendy, a seventeen-year-old “almost senior”, as she put it, removed the blender jar from the base and carried it to the sink. “I’ve got this. Go clean yourself up in the back.”
“Thank you.”
Vivian wiped her face with the rag as she slipped into the smoothie shop’s spacious back room and sighed. Her shirt clung to her, showing off more of her frame than she’d learned most folk deemed appropriate. Glancing toward the office door, she was disappointed to find it closed and most likely locked. Not unexpected. Neither Faunalyn Ayre nor Vivi’s brother, Kalen, expected her to work today. The couple had taken off to go hiking outside of Nocturne Falls so Kalen could see what Fawn called “Fall foliage.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded beautiful.
Hopefully, one day, she’d see the sights her beloved brother was finally living.
Vivian looked around the back room—an organized storage area for equipment, cleaning supplies, and dried goods—searching for something to wear over her ruined shirt. Nothing. Not even an apron.
As she crossed to the large utility sink, she fished her cell phone from her back pocket, unlocked the screen and autodialed Jackson Emery’s number.
He picked up on the first ring. “Everything okay? Are you in trouble?”
She laughed. “No, silly. I had an accident.”
Jackson grumbled, “Don’t tell me you’re in competition with your brother’s driving record. It’s nothing to strive toward.”
“Kalen’s a good driver.”
“He’s crashed two cars since you arrived in Nocturne Falls. Two. That’s pretty hard to manage.”
“The first time, I attacked him. It wasn’t his fault,” she defended, twisting on the warm water and saturating the rag. “The second time, he was learning how to work that stick thing in the middle of the console.”
“That’s a shifter, Vivi. For a manual engine. Regardless, are you okay?”
“I need a shirt.”
Silence.
Vivian’s brows rose as she waited, most of her attention on her efforts to scrub the strawberry smoothie from her white cotton shirt.
“It’s just a shirt,” she finally added.
“I’m not going to ask why you need a shirt or how yours went missing.”
“I’m at Fawn’s shop. I wanted to work a little today. I’m wearing a smoothie and I have nothing to change into.”
“Ah. Okay. That’s better than a car wreck or being shirtless. Your brother would kill me.”
Vivian rested the phone on the counter and placed the call on speaker mode to free her hands. She pulled her shirt over her head and shivered
as the cold soaked into her damp skin. Thanks to her vampire genes, she wasn’t as prone to the effects of the cold, but she didn’t care for the chill. Not after her ordeal only a few months ago. That deathly chill always preceded another level of deterioration. But that was before Fawn came into her life.
Vivian owed the nature elf more than her life. Her loyalty to her brother’s fiancée and soul mate was unbreakable.
“Any particular shirt? Your closet is overflowing.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just none of the shirts from Into The Woods. Those are expensive.” Vivian sponged her skin down with warm water before unwrapping the band that held her hair back. She leaned over the sink and started washing smoothie from the ends. “I think I have some of those plain T-shirts in one of my drawers.”
“Last time I went into your drawers for you, I discovered questionable undergarments.”
Vivian laughed. “Women don’t wear those boxer things.”
“Too much lace. It caught me off guard.”
“The shirts are the second drawer down.”
As she listened to more of her friend’s grousing as he searched, she smiled. She had little self-consciousness in regards to her clothing or her belongings. She’d spent her entire life before Nocturne Falls locked up in a small room at a lab, with as much privacy as your typical lab rat. Modesty wasn’t a consideration. Doctors and scientists had seen her naked more times than she could count. She never liked it, but she had no choice. It wasn’t until her body started to develop from girl to woman that Kalen put up an argument about his sister being alone with a bunch of male doctors.
He called them Lab Coats. She quietly nicknamed them “monsters.” It was fitting, considering the tests and experiments they performed on her and her brother. It was like they had no feelings, had no souls.
She always kept an outward smile for her brother’s sake. He hated to see her cry. He hated that he couldn’t protect her. She never shared the details of the worst of the experiments with him for fear it would shred Kalen to pieces.
Her beloved brother.
“Okay. I think I found something that doesn’t have lace or look like butt floss.”
Vivian snorted. “It’s comfortable underwear.”
“I’ll trust you on that. Give me fifteen minutes. I have to change.”
“You’re still in your pajamas? From yesterday?”
“Hey, don’t dis the flannel pants. It’s getting chilly outside.” He snickered. “Besides, I don’t have anyone to look good for.”
Despite the platonic nature of her living arrangement with Jackson—his uncle helped Vivi and Kalen escape the lab before he was murdered—she knew the young man looked at her with a tad of lust in his eyes. Somehow, he did his best to maintain an almost brother-sister type of relationship with her.
She had to wonder what her older brother had threatened to do to Jackson if he tried to pursue anything more with her after they shared one single little kiss.
It wasn’t his fault she had been curious. She saw the pleasure in Kalen and Fawn’s faces every time they kissed. Which was a lot. Naturally, she had asked Jackson to kiss her so she would know what it was like.
Poor guy had been so flustered. She had to catch him before he fell to the floor.
It didn’t matter. Jackson wasn’t her soul mate. She had plenty of time to wish and dream and wait for her perfect man to come. She wanted the romance and the love, but she was so new to this world outside of stark walls she had no idea how to go about finding it. She’d bide her time, exploring all the things denied her for twenty-six of her twenty-eight years.
“Thanks, Jackson. I’ll see you shortly then,” Vivian said, disconnecting the call. She finished smoothing the stickiness from her skin, washed her face, and wrung out her hair. She worked a bit more with her shirt before giving up, leaving a huge pink stain over the front, and squeezed as much liquid from the fabric as she could.
“Uh, would you like me to grab you a shirt?”
Vivian twisted at the waist and stared toward the doorway to the front of the shop. Wendy blinked, a very confused look on her face.
“Jackson’s bringing one down for me. Thank you, though.”
The young woman’s attention darted from Vivian’s almost naked torso. It took Vivian a moment to realize her lack of modesty wasn’t normal in the real world, though she would have thought the were-panther would have been more blasé about seeing some skin. Maybe what felt comfortable among weres was not acceptable if the other party was not a were-animal of some kind.
She cleared her throat and held her damp shirt against her chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, no. Not a problem. I heard you talking to someone. Wanted to make sure you were okay. Why don’t you hang back here until Jackson arrives? There’s only a couple of customers in the front. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Are you sure?”
Wendy flashed her a genuine smile. “Of course, Viv. No worries at all. You know you can ask me if you ever need something. Jackson isn’t the only one who is your friend.”
A familiar sting hit Vivian’s eyes, one that came so often now, especially with these wonderful people of Nocturne Falls opening their arms and their hearts to her and Kalen. The siblings had suffered so much for so long. Just a speck of kindness drew on Vivian’s emotional well.
“I know. Forgive me. I’m still adjusting to much here.”
To her surprise, Wendy rushed across the room and wrapped her in a tight embrace. It was short-lived, but the unspoken sincerity in her friendship was as warm as her arms.
“Fawn wouldn’t keep me here if she didn’t think I was trustworthy. That woman bases her relationships on trust and honesty. I’m your friend. Don’t forget that.”
As Wendy returned to the front of the store, Vivian sank back to lean against the sink. She hated the emotions that crashed over her at times. It was like she had kept so much bottled up inside her for so long that now, as she experienced true freedom, so did those emotions.
She clenched her teeth and willed away the tears, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Get hold of yourself.”
She had just enough time to compose herself before Jackson arrived at the front of the store. Wendy took charge of the shirt and brought it back to Vivian, after disclosing their mutual friend’s current state of undress. Vivian tugged on the fitted T and secured her hair on top of her head before leaving the storage area. She rounded the counter to give Jackson a hug.
“My savior. Thank you.” She pecked him on the cheek and stepped back. “Can I make you a smoothie?”
Jackson blushed. He was a cute guy with permanently mussed dark hair, glasses that constantly slid down his nose, and a wardrobe she determined looked more like sleepwear than outerwear. He shook his head.
“Nah. I’m gonna grab a coffee from The Hallowed Bean and head back home. Trying to reprogram software for a friend in between studying some strands of bacteria.”
“Well, good. I’m glad I haven’t completely disrupted your day. I’ll see you later then.”
Jackson waved to Wendy and took his leave.
Yep, normal, everyday conversation between them.
Unfortunately, Vivian knew all too well from snooping around Jackson’s lab that those strands of bacteria were actually the remnants of the virus that had nearly destroyed her. Every night, she listened to him mutter to himself about the complexity of the virus and what the worst-case scenario would be if Hugh Ellingham’s cure didn’t hold.
Vivian took her place behind the counter as a young couple came into the store, arm-in-arm.
“Welcome to Magical Mayhem, where we’re more than just smoothies! What can I get started for you today?” Vivian greeted, her smile widening. Why not?
Life was spectacular. Life was a gift. Life was a miracle.
A miracle she felt slipping away into a familiar darkness.
Chapter Two
“You made it. Finally!�
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Draven Lourdes kicked the stand on his Harley and without effort balanced the machine between his legs. He swung his arm, clapping Clark Hamburg’s hand and receiving a hard hug and equally hard pat on the back.
“Good to see you, man.” Clark straightened up and brushed a hand over his sandy hair. “I was starting to worry you’d learned to abide by the speed limit and wouldn’t make it before the fam.”
“I’m always point on these ridiculous quests. Like there’s any chance the leads the Elders have are anything but nonsense.” Draven stretched his arms over his head to ease the tension of the ride from his shoulders and let his hands fall to his thighs dramatically. He cracked his neck with a quick sideways tilt of his head and climbed off his bike. “Sal’s been missing for, what? Thirty-five years or something like that? Whatever. It’s an excuse to get out of that musty old mansion for a bit. They still think Dracula is a trendsetter.”
Clark laughed. “You’re kidding, right? Don’t tell me they’re still all about those flouncy lined coffins and stuff.”
Draven pinned him with a deadpan look. He made a circular motion with a finger to his face. “The look of ‘I’m not joking.’ They think I’m crazy because I sleep in a bed, have a wardrobe that includes some color, ride a Harley, prefer a Corvette, and enjoy going out.”
