Their lazy, intimate posture dug at Stephen, unearthing something even deeper than what he’d felt inside earlier tonight, something terribly vague. A time in Savannah, Georgia, when a woman in a peignoir would watch for him from an upstairs window and he would come to her by moonlight. But, eventually, there’d been a night when she’d discovered what he really was, and the mask of horror that had altered her beautiful face chased any warmth out of Stephen now. She had gone on to forget him, leaving him still longing for her, still coming to her window even after her funeral. He had been as young as ever, eternally thirty-one years old, unchanged except for the newfound agony.
That was when Stephen had learned never to feel again.
To the back of him, he sensed the rest of the gang deserting their prey, leaving the humans’ hearts beating while the victims languished in a blank afterglow. Later, the vampires would heal the mortals, then return them to where they had been found. At that point, the hikers’ minds would be so muddled that they would not remember what had happened in the canyon.
Unlike Kimberly…
Stephen glanced behind him at his comrades, males dressed like the humans of today in jeans and casual shirts. No elegance in these times.
What had happened to all of them?
Another of the original gang, Roger, who had been born into vampirism during the mid 1700s along with Stephen, winked at his friend, telling him to calm his temper and humor Fegan.
It was the easiest way to exist.
“Get some rest, Stephen,” their leader said, petting Gisele’s hair. “You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.”
The rogue. The hunters.
Kimberly.
“Yes,” Stephen said, adopting a casual smile, a devil-may-care shield, “I certainly do.”
And with a tight bow, he retreated to his fellow vampire brothers.
THE NEXT NIGHT fell over the city like a summer shroud, warm and veiled.
Kim was ready to go early, eager and waiting outside the Mystique nightclub long before its doors were ready to open. But she was patient, mostly because she wasn’t sure she should be doing what she was doing.
She’d told the League that she would come to headquarters later tonight, that she was feeling sick and needed a little rest after working at the bookstore all day. Darlene, who would be taking her turn on League patrol with Troy inside Mystique, had offered to bring Kim chicken soup and chocolate, bless her heart.
Yet, instead of being bed-bound, Kim had armed up, not only with tools that would fight off an uncooperative vampire, but also with…well, herself.
She only hoped that would be enough to attract Stephen again.
Dressed to lure, she’d chosen a white silk top that draped over her breasts in barely concealed invitation, as well as sleek black pants and boots. She’d worn her hair back in an equally elegant ponytail, unable to resist advertising to Stephen—if he was out there—that her neck was his for the taking.
And as for last night’s bite wound? She’d boldly drawn a primal design around it, disguising the quickly healing punctures while advertising them to a more knowing eye, hint hint.
On the practical side, she’d slung a little purse bulging with a vial of holy water and a crucifix over her shoulder, then traveled to Mystique. There, she’d ensconced herself in a twilight-bruised, foliage-laden cove where preopening cocktails were served. Misters tamed the warm air and caught the hard marble skin of statues positioned among the trees and bushes. A few other early birds lingered in the dark corners of the garden, too—couples who were avoiding detection.
As Kim waited, she told herself for the thousandth time that she was being stupid. Sure, she’d left a long note in her apartment explaining what she’d done—heading out alone to hopefully meet a vampire. The message was there in case she disappeared or showed up in the hospital with her blood drained, just like yet another victim last night. Thing was…
Kim frowned. This latest victim had been found in an alley on the Strip across from the Marrakech Casino and the Mystique nightclub. And she thought she remembered Stephen telling her that he wasn’t the one draining these women.
But her mind was fuzzy on that. She thought she recalled asking him, then getting a reassuring answer. She just couldn’t picture the details.
At any rate, after being with Stephen twice now, she hadn’t been drained. And if the “bad vampire” wasn’t Stephen, what if he could help her track this other creature down? Could she persuade him to answer a few questions while giving him another taste of her?
The blood seemed to swirl in her veins. She knew she wanted more out of Stephen than that. Last night’s conversation with Darlene hit full force.
Make yourself unforgettable, her friend had said.
That’s right—be somebody to him, Kim thought. Be more than just a faceless nothing who’s here today and gone tomorrow.
She lifted her face to catch the light spray from a mister. Moisture settled over her skin, sucking the silk of her top to her chest. Her nipples puckered against the material, and she leaned back, feeling sensual, ready for anything.
“I’m here,” she whispered, setting up to entrap her quarry. Come and get me.
When she felt a whoosh of air, she sat up, digging her hand into her purse. She recognized the scent that enveloped her—a mysterious essence of the unknown.
“You should have stayed home, Kimberly.”
At his words, a thread of danger went taut within her, singing with a thrill. She clasped the crucifix, on alert.
Lowering her chin, she made a point of still arching her back, knowing the water had done its best to reveal everything underneath her top. Her gaze focused on Stephen, and the oxygen twisted in her lungs.
When he skimmed a gaze over her chest, every part of her tensed to pained stimulation. The sharpness ebbed to a throb, a slow melt that ended between her legs.
He was dark in this tree-covered cove she’d chosen, but the breadth of his shoulders under that outlaw coat brought back every memorized detail of him, every heart-stopping nuance.
“How could I stay away?” she asked, voice throaty. “They found another woman across the street last night, and I was hoping for a little enlightenment.” She smiled and couldn’t help adding, “And maybe more.”
“A third bite?” He shook his head. “Didn’t last night teach you anything?”
Yeah, she thought. It taught me that I need to try harder with you.
Just the scent of him brought it back—the woozy completion, the sense that Stephen could give her something that she’d needed so badly after her older sister had died. Something she couldn’t even begin to explain, even though she was drawn to him, all the same.
Then it struck her. Like Lori, Stephen was dead. Actually, he was undead, which wasn’t the same thing, but close enough.
She started to quiver, but it wasn’t just out of the fear that she really should have stayed home, as he’d advised.
It was because something was wrong with her for wanting him like this, for enticing him and hoping he’d take her up on the offer.
Tremors along her belly traveled to her limbs. She sat up. “Aren’t you here for another bite tonight, whether it’s me or another woman?”
“You fed me well enough to last for a while.” He took a step forward, all shadow now. “Why can’t you forget about it like the other good prey?”
“Your other meals don’t remember what happened to them?”
His silence was eloquent, and a tiny bang! jarred her. Last night, she’d been profoundly disappointed after he’d admitted to not remembering her. But she wasn’t his usual bite. He’d just said so. She was different.
Yet…Was she unforgettable?
She teasingly parted her legs, opening herself to a gaze she could feel but not see.
Not until his green eyes began to glow.
Was she getting to him? Were his fangs emerging with the arousal?
Her blood began to pump, beating in her sex.
She was everything that first bite had made her—confident, dominant, somebody. “You’re here for a reason you don’t want to admit, Stephen. Just say it.” She smiled slowly. “You’re addicted to me.”
“I’m addicted to sustenance, nothing more. And it just so happens that I don’t need any at the moment.”
“You’re gonna stand there telling me that those green eyes aren’t blazing like lights on a slot machine that just hit the jackpot?”
His gaze intensified, and she primed herself. She was right. He craved her, he’d come back for more, and now was the right time to be asking him questions about vampires, to be investigating—
His gaze blinked off, as if he’d closed his eyes. From the measured cadence of his breathing, she could tell he was trying to get himself under control.
Dammit.
“I wish to know what you know,” he said, so calm, so collected. “Last night didn’t provide adequate answers.”
She felt herself going hazy at the stroke of his voice. “I told you—we don’t know much.” Seriously? He just wanted to question her?
He sighed, and her mind went clear again.
“Hey,” she said. “Did you just try to hypnotize me or something?”
“I tried to read you, yes.”
His simple response took her aback. “Okay. Well, then, you know I’m not lying.”
“I do not know what to make of you.” He shook his head, started to say something, then stopped. “Why track monsters, Kimberly? Why must you do it?”
Instead of answering, she latched on to the word that had seemed the most agonizing for him to utter: Monsters. She’d never considered a creature this enchanting, this beautiful to be anything of the sort. Stephen was more like something fallen, someone who held knowledge and the promise of contentment with just one encounter.
“Monsters?” she asked.
“Anyone who lives my way is nothing but.” His tone was uneven.
“But you—”
He stepped close. “Tell me everything you know.”
Again, Kim felt bleary. Instead of fighting it, she went along with the dreamy flow, leaning her elbows on her spread thighs and glancing up at him from under her lashes.
“Stop trying to read me.” Just do what you did to me again. Let me feel how I felt before, and give me even more this time. Let me know that you’re not going to forget me and that I’ll leave some sort of impression before it’s too late.
In the silence, his eyes started to glow again.
Encouraged, Kim reached toward his belly, touching him there softly. She felt hard muscle under his fine shirt; those muscles jumped, responding.
“Seduce me again,” she said, boldly slipping her fingers down, down, until she reached his cock. It was hard, too.
Gasping, she traced his arousal, skimming underneath to feel his balls. She made circles there, looking up again to find his eyes a glaring green now, to hear the breath sawing out of him.
“You seem very human,” she whispered, giving him a slight squeeze that made him moan in clear surprise. “You’re not like a monster at all.”
When he leaned back his head in clear ecstasy, Kim canted forward, still sitting on the bench, then bent to him, intent on truly persuading him to make her the bite he’d never forget.
5
STEPHEN KNEW he shouldn’t be giving in to her, but when Kimberly nudged against his penis, he couldn’t stop himself.
She rubbed her mouth there, gently yet insistently. Needing something to grasp, he found her ponytail, wrapping its length around his hand while he held the back of her head and unthinkingly urged her on. All the while, he kept telling himself to put a halt to this. It wasn’t the reason he had come to her tonight. It was not for a human to take the lead with him and reduce him to a dolt who could do nothing but surrender.
As she slid her hands under his long coat and to the backs of his thighs, Stephen eased his other palm to her neck, resting his thumb on her jugular.
Bang, bang…
Her heartbeat pounded into his flesh, joining with the rhythm of his own hunger for her blood. For her…
She had parted her lips and, even through his trousers, he could feel her drawing at his growing erection, pulling him into her mouth in ever-increasing excitement.
Stephen bent his head to watch, the darkness unable to hide her carnal play. His sight cut through what a human could never see in the night—her head bobbing as she worked at him. His ultrasharp hearing caught the sounds of her mewling in pleasure deep in her throat, caught the hum of modern wires vibrating the air and echoing the sensations of his awakening body.
He held back another moan, his elongated fangs scratching his bottom lip with the effort. Tenderly—much too tenderly—he stroked her red hair. It had been so long ago…so cursed long since he had allowed himself to be swayed by another. The last time had been under the hush of a Savannah moon, well over a century past with a woman who had screamed at his true face.
A rush of survival, of fear, made him wary. He lightly pulled back on the ponytail he had wrapped around his hand and, because of his strength, Kimberly gasped away from his cock, her chin tilted upward, her lips parted. He had not meant to be so forceful, but he couldn’t have this. Couldn’t carry through with certain trouble.
“You may not believe I am any sort of terrible creature,” he said, his tone serrated, “but you are well on your way to bringing the monster out.”
She smiled. Yes, smiled, and something in his chest was yanked out of its malaise. His blood throbbed through limbs that should have been dust by now, yet he felt so alive while gazing at her. Weak.
Kimberly rested a hand on his wrist, and he loosened his hold on her hair.
“You’re trying really hard to make me think you’re off-limits, aren’t you?” she whispered.
“I suppose I shouldn’t bother.”
“No, Stephen.” Her breath was coming hard now. She reached out, skimming her fingers against his cock. “You shouldn’t bother, not when you seem to be all man to me.”
Blood flooded to the afterburn of her touch, engorging him further. He strained against his trousers, the pressure agonizing.
Equally painful was the thought of becoming attached to one of them again. A woman. A human who would ultimately reject him because mortality required it. And he would never, ever, turn a human into what he was. The controlling Fegan forbade his children the act of making their own families; that was fine with Stephen. He had only once felt the compulsion, though he had never acted on it with Cassandra, his beautiful belle. Perhaps, if she had accepted him as he was, he would have gone against Fegan’s rules and suffered the consequences of being hunted down and punished for procreating. But his Savannah lady had turned from him in horror at the truth, and Stephen had never thought of taking another human after that.
Angered by the betrayal of his body, Stephen let go of Kimberly. “I’m hardly a man. This form you see in front of you? It can imitate a man’s desire. But it’s only that. An imitation.”
She was still looking up at him. He would have almost called her position subservient, but he knew better. This hunter woman would never be dominated unless it suited her needs.
“Imitation,” she repeated. “Are you calling that hard-on a fake?”
He tried not to think about what was paining and swelling his nethers. “I am capable of this, but I cannot…”
Words failed him. So modest all of a sudden? Odd.
“You’re saying we can’t make babies,” Kimberly said. “Is that it, Stephen?”
“Yes.”
He hoped this news would be enough of a blow that it would discourage her from getting attached, too. He had read that many human women coveted closeness and a future with their paramours. Having avoided this in his own mortal life, he was no expert, yet attempting to crush any growing hopes she might possess seemed wise.
Kimberly shook her head. “Not all of us are out for picket fences and a family in the suburb
s.”
When she tried to laugh, he knew that she wasn’t persuaded by her own words. Actually, it was as though saying them out loud had made her think twice about them.
Then, as if to chase away the heavy mood, she stood from her bench, grabbing his coat lapels and resolutely leading him into a leafy, pitch-black cove of trees. Here, the sounds of the city faded; the beeping horns from the Strip were like subliminal notes of a forgotten song.
His body wound through itself, newly aroused.
“I’m not after what most women want, anyway,” Kimberly said. “That shouldn’t be a surprise to you.”
“Don’t tell me. You want another bite.”
“I want…” She seemed on the verge of saying more.
In the dark, her expression glowed like candlelight to his vampire vision. There was something in her eyes he couldn’t read—a hunger of her own, a craving so deep he couldn’t even begin to interpret it.
Tentatively, she raised a hand from his lapel, her fingers hovering a whisper away from his face. Stephen held his breath, his blood chugging, the sound taking over his hearing.
When she touched his cheek, he flinched, knowing she was feeling the texture of him and realizing that he truly was an error of nature.
She brushed down to his jaw. “Cold. Like a statue with a layer of skin. But I feel heat underneath.”
As she trailed down to his neck, he swallowed. For a beautiful moment, she stroked him, just as he had stroked her jugular earlier. In the pit of his belly, lust and need boiled.
“You look normal enough to me,” she said.
It was hard to speak with his throat so scratchy. “Appearances are deceiving.”
She leaned forward, nestling against his jugular. When she sniffed, he instinctively pressed his hand to the small of her back. He knew he would smell like the air itself; all a part of blending to endure.
“So good,” she murmured. “You remind me of sitting in a meadow back home at sunset.”
Waiting to see what she would do next, Stephen found himself splaying his fingers at the base of her spine, seeking her warmth. He loved the curve of a woman’s back, loved the sensuous grace and art of it. Back when he had been a new vampire, he would have given up a night’s haul to appreciate such a thing. In fact, years ago, he had done this many a time with many a willing victim when Fegan’s gang had stopped a coach in the dead of night, asking the occupants to deliver their goods—which always included their blood.
The Ultimate Bite Page 6
