“Take the other side, Regan,” I told him as I held Mr. Dick’s head still.
“My love.”
Regan moved closer with a grin on his face and, as we held hands behind the man’s back, we sunk our teeth into his flesh. Not sucking yet, we let him squirm as the pain sank in. He fought as hard as he could for as long as he could, but he was no match for two of us. As the last bit of life left him, I looked down to see Regan get hard again. I helped him out with that and then we fell asleep in each other’s arms. Our two corpses lay crumpled together in a heap on the floor looking at each other.
I wanted this year to top it, so our picks had to be perfect.
We would start that night in the new state we had chosen. We landed in southern Georgia in a town called Valdosta. There was a university there and with a larger population, not many would notice a few people disappearing while we were in town. Those were the things we looked for. Smaller towns were great when we wanted down time, but they weren’t good for hunting and grooming our yearly gifts to each other. For that, the bigger the city, the better. It was another of the things Regan had taught me.
We had just woken up for the night and I was getting his breakfast ready. It wasn’t much, but he had robbed a blood bank a week ago and that was what we were using. It wasn’t that we couldn’t go out and get a fresh supply, but this was our tradition. Not drinking fresh from the source blood during our courting period made the kill that much sweeter when we would do it for each other. Depriving ourselves of the fresh kill for over four months also heightened our senses when it came to picking out the right person to take.
“Are you ready, my love?” he asked as he took my face in the palm of his hand and turned me to face him.
“I’m always ready. I have a feeling this year will be the best one yet.”
“Why’s that?” he asked and smiled. That was as close to a laugh as I ever got from him. He was always on the serious side, and I had gotten used to it. I took the small smiles as they came and knew when he did, I was pleasing him.
“Look at how long we’ve been together. We know more about the other person than we do about ourselves sometimes. Our days together get sweeter and sweeter. I know with each year that passes us by, that will only grow. I know the few months leading up to our big day can be a challenge, but the end is always worth it.”
“You still question me sometimes, don’t you? I don’t know what I have to do to prove to you I am loyal. I only want you, my love.”
He told me that almost daily during the courting period. I didn’t mean to think like that, but before him, it was all I had known. I also saw all the people that switched partners like it was nothing to them. Being vampires, it wasn’t in us, but times had changed so much in the past hundred years, I waited for the vampire community to follow.
“I don’t mean to,” I told him.
“It’s you that questions us, not me. I know where I stand with us and I know who I want. If you ever decided to leave, you better kill me.”
“Why?” I was shocked he brought that up then because the thought had never crossed my mind.
“It would be less painful. I would die without you anyway. The least you could do would be to put me out of my misery quickly instead of dragging it out.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“We’ll see. Let’s go, shall we?”
He held out his arm for me to take the same way he had since we met, and I took it. Pulling him a little closer to me, I gave his arm a squeeze. He looked down at me and smiled, but there was a void in his eyes I couldn’t figure out.
CHAPTER FIVE
We headed out and went in separate directions. He had been talking to someone online for a few days and was going to meet her for the first time. It wouldn’t take him long to have her eating out of the palm of his hand. It was a trick of his I never quite figured out.
I didn’t have anyone picked yet, but I knew of a few hot spots to check out. It wouldn’t be bad if it took me a few weeks to find someone. We didn’t rush it because it meant that much to us. They also didn’t have to be the opposite sex. There was more than once we had chosen the same sex and brought them back to the house. Regan loved to watch me with another woman and even encouraged it. To say seeing him with another man didn’t turn me on either would be a lie. There was something so sexy about watching him take control of another man.
I had to get my mind off of him and back on what I was doing, or I would fold and go back home to wait for him. It wasn’t that I needed him to be with me all the time because I didn’t, but thinking about him like that turned me on so bad, all I wanted to do was go home and make love to him. It was the only time I didn’t think about anything but us and I loved it. The way he would touch me, even after all those years, still drove me as wild as the first night we had been together.
Vampires don’t do the traditional wedding like humans do, but the night we first made love—that was our ceremony. Him biting me to turn me was the same as giving a woman a wedding ring. The marks, although they healed, were still visible by two small, light brown dots on my neck. It told other vamps that I was taken and that they needed to leave me alone.
I didn’t have to do that to Regan. He had a new scent on him that others would recognize that told them he was already mated. Humans were too wrapped up in their own lives to catch his scent or see the marks on my neck even when they got close to me. I didn’t do anything to hide them away because I was proud to be Regan’s.
I had aimlessly wandered to a more wooded area than where I had started. It was still populated some and I could see others there. There was a car parked in a small lot with the windows fogged over. It wasn’t long before I could smell them, and I could see the car rocking side to side. They would have been an easy meal if I weren’t on restriction. The only thing that made the blood sweeter than fear was when they were finished having sex. Chemicals flowed through their system and the blood had a sweet flowery taste to it. That was my favorite.
Regan said he hated that taste, but I caught him once finishing off a girl that had just been with her first man. When he caught me staring at him, he tossed the man closer to me and I joined him in a meal. We made love next to them that night and it felt like they were watching us with their eyes frozen open in a wildly frightened stare.
I heard the sounds of a river and made my way over there. If I couldn’t find anyone that night, I could at least go for a swim to cool down. Thinking about Regan always got me hot and I couldn’t do what I was out there to do if I was wrapped up in him.
It wasn’t long before I heard someone whistling. I moved closer to the sound and that was when I saw him. He was tall, but not as tall as Regan. He looked a little chunkier, but it could have been he was more muscular. It was hard to see from where I was at and with his work clothes on.
I could tell his hair was black when he walked out from under a tree and the moonlight caught him. He walked with authority, and I couldn’t help but stare at him. I thought maybe he was the one I would gift Regan with that year, so I wanted to see where he was headed. I would need a way to bump into him or meet him if I was going to make it work. Following him would at least give me an idea of where that could happen.