Cuddling Sucks in Coffins

by Holly Ryan

  He stopped his devouring of my lips long enough to rid me of my Duck Tales shirt. Then, with a single flick of his wrists, he shredded my sports bra into two halves that slipped down my shoulders and to the floor. My breasts bounced free right at the level of his mouth, and he took in a nipple, his tongue bathing the tight, aching nub so. Good.

  I threw my head back with a moan, my fingers raking through his hair to hold him there. While he worked each breast with his tongue and more than a little fang, he sank one hand down the front of my yoga pants and panties to see just how wet I was for him.

  “Fuck, Slayer.” He slid two fingers up inside me, and I rode them even harder than I’d been riding his hips. “I need you wrapped around my dick right fucking now.”

  We separated long enough to rid ourselves of the rest of our pesky clothes, and then I lunged at him, my entire body quivering, as I hovered over the steel column of his cock. I watched his face as I lowered myself onto him, studying how his lips parted in ecstasy, how the tendons in his neck grew taut as I inched even lower, how his red eyes fired up my heart as he watched me right back. He was stunning.

  He was also a sexual machine.

  Even though I was on top, he was the one fucking me. His pelvis pumped up into mine as his strong arms crushed me to him. I matched his pace, grinding against him and pressing my breasts against the cool expanse of his chest. He swallowed my moans with his deep kisses, his fingers undoing the bun in my hair so my wild curls tumbled over my bare shoulders.

  The way he held me, kissed me, as if I were the very blood he craved, pounded my heart faster against my ribs, hard enough that he had to feel it pressed up as close as we were. And I wanted him to feel it. I wanted him to feel my utter amazement of him at his strength and passion and humor and beauty. It poured out of me in warm waves, and it slowed our pace to languid, sexy thrusts. He pulled away from my mouth, and his eyes snapped open to reveal two rings of molten fire around his pupils.

  “I can’t get enough of you, Slayer,” he murmured against my lips.

  “You’ll keep trying to get enough of me, though, right?”

  He laughed, which triggered one from me, too, but mine quickly morphed into a squeal when he surged to his feet. I wrapped my arms around him to hold him tight, my fingers splayed over the scars on his back that only made him more beautiful to me. He plopped me down on the table, our bodies still connected while I wrapped my legs around him to hold on for dear life as he drilled into me. He consumed my lips, my senses, and soon a violent heat pulsed between my thighs. I came hard, crying out his name and trembling around him from head to toe. He followed me into bliss with fangs bared and a loud growl. His hips still thrusting his release, he buried his teeth into my neck on the other side of Sawyer’s bite. He lapped up my blood as I clung to him, panting, still riding that high. Right as I started to see spots, he retracted his fangs and held me to him, pressing kisses to my skin.

  With a sigh of contentment, I gently traced the scars on his back while studying the increased distance from the table I sat on to the kitchen doorway. “Did the kitchen just get bigger, or did I shrink?”

  “We moved the table.” He glanced over my shoulder. “And broke it.”

  I turned to look, and sure enough, the table had been shoved into the cupboards so hard that a long crack ran along the middle. “Oops.”

  “A little destruction is good for the body.” He grinned with a lascivious twist to his mouth. “And the ego.”

  I pressed my smile to his chin. “You need a warning label.”

  “Damn right, I do.” He laughed and started to pull out when a great boom from the living room froze us in place.

  My jaw dropped. Jacek and I stared at each other for that brief, shocked lull it took before our bodies and brains reacted. Finally, we sprang apart, scrambling for our clothes, our gazes peeled in the direction of the living room. Nothing appeared to be wrong from my angle. Still, icy needles pricked down my spine and my inner alarms rang loud.

  Once we’d thrown on our clothes, Jacek stepped in front of me, but I snatched the waistband of his pants and dragged him behind me. I shot him a look that said not to argue, then stepped out into the living room, my Pebbles stake in front of me.

  The front door stood wide open, rocking back and forth slightly. Behind it was a hole in the wall, the same shape and size as the doorknob. So what had slammed it open? The wind? I had no idea, but it sure as hell didn’t feel right.

  Jacek blurred past, checking behind the door, checking every corner of the room, then flashed to the rest of the house. Had someone come inside? Someone like Paul?

  Swallowing thickly, I stepped closer to the door, feeling the promise of winter invade from outside. It had always been in the back of my mind that he’d come here, or to my apartment or The Bean Dream, but I didn’t want to stop living my life because someone was trying to kill me. There was no way I could survive without my job anyway. Besides, locking myself in my apartment for the rest of my days would mean giving up.

  But it was a different story altogether if he hurt anyone. Anyone else. He’d already murdered Tim, the cemetery grounds man. I was sure of it. I could definitely see Paul doing that just to strike fear in me. And it had 100 percent worked.

  As I stepped into the doorway, I peered into the night. Lights flicked on in the houses across the street. Their doors were open too. All of them.

  I dragged in a shaky breath. That was too much of a coincidence.

  People wearing bathrobes and slippers stepped warily onto their porches, some of which still sported jack-o-lanterns and other Halloween decorations. The overhead lights emphasized the people’s wide, terrified eyes. Some carried baseball bats. Others held guns. All of us looked up and down the empty, now quiet street. Even the graveyard next to the empty lot beside this house appeared serene, as it should be.

  A cool burst of strength touched my back, my three vamps moving soundlessly behind me. I walked away from them, outside.

  “Sunshine...” Eddie’s voice roughened with his low warning.

  But I ignored it and started down the porch steps. “Stay right there.”

  I hated seeing the fear in these people’s eyes. Fear that was indirectly because of me. Not to think the world revolved around me or anything, but this was totally about me. And Paul. It reeked of him, even though all I could smell was the wind-whipped air icing my nose and cheeks.

  Gradually, everyone grew bored with the unseen threat that had blown open their doors, and they disappeared inside and sealed up their houses firmly behind them.

  I turned to do the same and then stopped short. My insides cemented together, weighting down my next step. A shudder clattered through my stiff bones.

  Paul. Paul was here. Right in front of me.

  Chapter Three

  Paul was sitting on the porch swing, leaning forward, his blue eyes shimmering in the moonlight as they watched my every blink. Blond straggly hair brushed the striped sleeves of his bowling shirt, the shoulders of which seemed wider, his form larger and more commanding. As if he were gaining in power.

  “Hey, Paul,” I said casually, more as a warning to my three vamps to stay put inside the doorway.

  They tensed out of the corner of my eye. Sawyer brought his thick arm up to block the other two where they stood and stepped onto the porch, his steps light for his massive size.

  Paul sat between them and me. He could get to them before I could. Yes, they were vampires, but he was this dark unknown. No one knew what he was capable of. Yet he didn’t seem to notice Sawyer on the porch with him. Or didn’t care to. He only had eyes for me.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said. Instead of the ancient, rustic voice he’d had just days ago, it now boomed loud and deep.

  “Uh-huh.” I wished my aim was better with my stake so I could throw it at him, though stakes hadn’t even affected the demon who’d wanted to drag me to hell as the devil’s bride. I had my seraph knife, but again, I sucked at throwing
. I literally had nothing to use against Paul, and if I did, I didn’t know it. “You must be a riot at parties with your repetitive conversational skills.”

  “Lovely night for a stroll, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “No, Paul. It isn’t.” I squeezed my stake tighter until my knuckles ached. “We played this game already, remember?”

  He stood then, tall, imposing, the top of his head almost grazing the porch ceiling. Even Sawyer had to tilt his neck to look at him.

  “Enough is enough! Get the fuck out of here!” Jacek shoved at Sawyer’s arm and elbowed past him onto the porch, his normally happy face twisted into a ferocious scowl.

  Sawyer caught him around the middle before he could get any closer to Paul.

  But Paul was so focused on me, he didn’t even seem to notice. “I think I’ll take that stroll now.”

  I blinked hard at the words, grasping to understand their meaning and why they settled dread into my bones deep enough to shake them.

  Then, in the space between seconds, Paul vanished. A great hurricane-like wind howled through the night. It slammed into me, knocking my feet from the ground, sweeping my loose hair into a blinding tangle around my head.

  Something boomed through the night. The door, I realized once I could see again. It had slammed shut.

  But most importantly, the porch was now empty.

  My three vamps were gone.

  A strangled cry tore from my mouth as my fists clenched the grass, my eyes glued to the front door.

  What had Paul done?

  I signaled my brain to go, to move me, to stand me up, but it took precious seconds to flash me images of what might be happening behind that closed door instead. Was Paul in there with my vampires? Slicing them open like he’d done to Tim?

  Panic flared, raw and hot though my veins. I finally surged to my feet and flung myself forward.

  A loud crack came from the other side of the door. And then the whole thing was tilting, tilting, until it crashed onto the porch. Three vampires stood just inside, very much intact as far as I could see, and very much pissed. Their eyes glowed red, fangs bared, fists balled at their sides. Sawyer stood in front of the other two, always the protector, now settling his massive booted foot on the floor. He’d kicked the door down.

  I charged them at the same time they did me, relief stinging my eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Sawyer demanded, splitting his attention between me and the night.

  Eddie cradled my face between his palms, several emotions blazing across his expression too quickly to name. “What did he do to you? Are you hurt?”

  Jacek propped me up with his muscular arm around my waist, and I sagged into him.

  “I’m okay,” I assured them. “What happened to you?”

  “He threw us back into the house,” Jacek growled.

  “He separated you from me and...” I shook my head, still cradled in Eddie’s hands as he scanned me up and down for injuries, I supposed. “He said he was going to take that stroll.”

  Were those two things related? The separating and the strolling? Or were those just the words and the actions of a deranged psycho?

  Sawyer came to my other side and put his hand on my hip, still scanning the entire street. “His magic is strong. Did you feel it?”

  “He’s getting stronger,” I said. “The last time I saw him, which was what, four days ago? He wasn’t anywhere near that strength.”

  Unless he’d been holding out on me, but that didn’t really feel like his bowling-shirted style. He’d only been testing me before now. Now, it appeared he’d declared war, one I had zero clue how to win since no mortal slayer ever had.

  I locked eyes with all of my vamps in turn. “Which means I need to figure out a way to crush him fast. Before he keeps gaining strength.”

  “BIOLOGY IS SUPER. BIOLOGY is my pal. Biology is super. Biology is my pal.” I repeated it like a mantra as I sat down to take my biology test online in the hopes that it would please the biology gods. I’d studied, or at least tried to, but the charts and molecular structures I’d had to memorize kept bleeding with images of Paul and what he might’ve meant by I think I’ll take that stroll now. He’d gotten inside my head, and I’d let him.

  Bad slayer.

  But biologically speaking, some things had stuck. Some single-celled organisms were beasts at survival, even as small and seemingly inconsequential as they were often thought to be. I wanted to be a single-celled organism when I grew up.

  I hemmed and hawed over some questions and BS’d my way through the essay portion, then sent another few mantras up to the biology gods and hit submit. Hopefully it was enough.

  As I dashed out the door of my apartment for another shift at The Bean Dream, I glanced once again at the hallway walls in my building. Any other day, they were highly uninteresting, just regular, boring walls. Today, though, next to each and every door including my apartment’s, a hole the size of a doorknob hollowed out the paint, plaster, and wood. From what I’d seen and the sound of Podunk City’s buzzing residents, everyone’s doors had slammed open last night.

  Everyone’s.

  I wished I knew what it meant, but I seriously doubted it had to do with puppies and rainbows. More like dark unknowns intent on slaying the slayer.

  Between a rush of bored customers at The Bean Dream, Sylvia, my boss, wandered from the supply room, struggling with a large bag of coffee beans. She didn’t look happy.

  “Murder, murder, murder,” she muttered.

  I bit back a laugh, taking the bag from her and easily tossing it underneath the counter with the rest. She was usually the epitome of poised. “Bad day?”

  “First the thing with the doors last night”—she waved absently to the shop’s shattered glass door now taped with cardboard—“then the rude delivery man. Little murders are legal, right? Just a tiny bit of murder?”

  “Technically, no.” Said the woman who staked vampires to death. Except three of them who staked her with their— Ahem. “But my lips are sealed should any unfortunate delivery men disappear.”

  She frowned and rubbed at her ears. “Maybe I’ll just go do some paperwork instead.”

  “Want me to bring you a gingerbread latte with extra whipped cream and a voodoo doll?”

  “It’s like you’re a saint or something. Yes, please.” She smiled, though it looked pained, and started toward her office.

  The overhead bell rang as the card-boarded door pushed open, and two customers came in discussing whether last night’s door hijinks was caused by a pressurized windstorm.

  If they only knew.

  WITH MY HAND ON THE new cemetery lock, I closed my eyes briefly and willed myself to be calm. This would be like any other night. Not like last night. Not at all.

  Still, the deepest part of my soul shivered, even though I hated to admit it. What if I didn’t have the lady balls to go through this night after night, battling a dark unknown I wasn’t even sure I could beat? Maybe I should become an immortal vampire slayer to give me a boost in strength and more will to fight. Then if I beat Paul, I could live with my vamps forever. I could certainly think of worse things than that, but once again, the only thing holding me back was the thought of Mom in the hereafter, whatever that might look like. Without me. And me without her.

  “Am I nuts?” I whispered. Of course I was. I was talking to a gate. But was I that nuts to think I actually stood a chance against Paul as I was right now? Well, I was still alive. So I guess score a touchdown or something for me, at least for the time being.

  I smashed the lock from the gate, thinking there had to be an easier way than always breaking them. The gate swung open slowly in a long, painful wail as if mourning Tim. Hopefully another grounds man could be found to fill his shoes soon.

  I closed the gate after me and started down my usual paths, taking comfort in the familiar dips and curves of the rocky path. “Here, vampy vampy vampy.”

  It still felt strange hunting vampires when hours la
ter, one would likely be screwing my brains out, but this was fine. At least that was what I told myself. The vampires who wandered the graveyard were brand new, lured there because that was where they thought they should be—among the dead. It must’ve been a very confusing time for them as they dealt with their feral bloodlust. But my vamps were older and more experienced. Still, the difference in how I treated the new and old wasn’t lost on me.

  Several yards to my left, a tall gravestone growled. Odd for an inanimate object. Plucking my Pebbles stake from my bun, I marched toward it then peered behind the marble column. Nobody was there. Maybe it was the gravestone. After I gave it the stink-eye, I searched the cemetery, keeping my slayer sense on alert, and tightened my leather jacket against the frigid night.

  The slightest shiver in the air behind me whirled me around. Red eyes met mine from six feet away. Fangs glinting in the moonlight, the vampire lunged toward me. But before I could raise my stake, a black blur flashed from the darkness. A metallic blade sang through the air and sliced the back of my hand. Pain flared. I dropped my stake on instinct and stumbled back.

  What the hell?

  The vampire was almost upon me, his jaws snapping and strings of drool running from his fangs down his chin.

  Unarmed. I was unarmed and bleeding. No, wait. I snapped another stake free from the back belt loops of my pants. Now I was armed, but in my non-bleeding, non-dominant hand. This was sure to go well.

  At the last possible second, I thrust the stake forward into the vampire’s chest. And missed his heart. Fuck.

  His blood coated my hand and rained down on my boots. Still connected to my stake, the vampire lurched forward at my neck, a mad, gleeful smile splitting his mouth as if he were mocking me.