“You lure your prey?” I tilted my head slightly.
His lips twitched.
“Yeah,” he said. “For over nine hundred years now. How do you think I stay alive?”
I pursed my lips.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I hadn’t given it much thought. “I just thought maybe there were volunteers.”
“There are,” he conceded. “But we weren’t always out in the open like we are right now. It took us hundreds of years to get to this point.”
“You mean it used to be worse?” I read his tone, realizing that he wasn’t reliving good memories. His eyes were haunted, and he looked like he wanted to think about anything but what he was thinking.
So, I gave an experimental suck on his wrist, and that same spicy flavor coated my tongue again.
I would’ve thought that drinking blood would’ve been disgusting, but surprisingly it tasted not half bad. It still wasn’t a cookie or ice cream or anything, but it wasn’t brussels sprouts.
Then things that had already been satisfied once in the last thirty minutes started to tingle once more, causing me to moan and writhe.
The man that’d been doing the dream thinking started to come back to me, and I, for one thought that was a good thing. If only he realized that I was horny as hell, and stuck that cock back inside of me… I mean, really, I was naked. He was naked. I saw good things.
The wrist that I was sucking on was torn away from me, and the flow of deliciousness was cut off, causing me to whimper and cry out in need.
That big body on the bed next to me moved back to between my legs, and that’s when I felt it. Against my thigh.
It was big. Hard. And I wanted it.
Now.
This’ll have to be fast, princess.
I responded in my head and got his reply right back.
Yes. I’m going to fuck you now.
• • •
“We can communicate with each other in our heads?” I broached the subject ten minutes later as I watched, exhausted and sated, from the bed as Con pulled his pants up over his hips… his naked hips.
“It seems so.” He grinned. “Definitely good news.”
I didn’t know if it was good news or not. Was it due to me sharing his blood that allowed me to garner all these new abilities? Like seeing in the dark and being able to hear his freakin’ heartbeat?
Speaking of which…
“Why is your heart beating?”
His head came up slowly, and I had to bite my lip as the move made shivers of anticipation run down my spine. He looked gorgeous standing there, naked but for a pair of dress slacks.
His beard was long and blonde, and I was curious as to how that was there, too. The things I’d heard about vampires was that all facial hair was slow to grow… and this man’s beard was epic.
His shoulders were broad, his skin a milky white that seemed to glow in the moonlight.
And there were tattoos… dozens of them peppered over that milky white skin. They were so numerous, in fact, that I couldn’t even begin to explore them all today. It’d take me weeks to explore each one.
“That happens during times of deeply felt emotion,” he said. “Like when I’m fucking a woman that I’ve been thinking about fucking for weeks now.”
My lips twitched, and I stood up, surprised to find that I could.
We’d gotten carried away earlier, and Con had fed on me again, though a lot less than he had the previous time.
Though, I’d also fed from him again, which I supposed was what canceled out the blood loss on my end.
“I…”
Something flashed across Con’s face, and I sat up, clutching the sheet to my chest.
“What is it?” I whispered.
His face turned to stone.
“Fox’s sister, and my office manager, was shot in the head tonight by an overzealous zealot who thinks vampires shouldn’t be in the world.”
My mouth dropped open. “H-how do you know?” I whispered.
He stood up and reached for his shirt.
“Because Fox just ‘pathed me saying that she was about a millimeter from falling over the brink of death, and if I didn’t come now, she’d die.”
“Why does she need you?” I went to my knees.
“Because I’ve been feeding her for thirty years now.”
With that, he was gone, and I was left wondering what kind of relationship Con and some woman I’d never met before had that he’d been feeding her for thirty years. A relationship that warranted an immediate exit of the man who’d just warmed my bed not five minutes before.
A man that didn’t come back.
• • •
CONSTANTINE
“It’ll be better for us both if we stay away from them,” Fox informed me. “I don’t want to stay away from my sister, but I don’t know what else to do.”
I gritted my teeth and turned to face Abraham. “You’re in agreement with this, too?”
He nodded once.
I turned my eyes to Pavlov. “And you?”
His mouth worked, but he gave a quick, firm nod, letting me know that he agreed as well.
It was unanimous.
“What about the humans that work in the office?” Fox asked.
I went to the desk where Chen, who I might add I was unbelievably happy to have back in his old position, had left some papers there.
“According to my information, we only have four other humans working at this location,” I said. “The rest work for the blood bank itself, and since we’ve been so careful to keep the connection between the two companies separate, I don’t see any reason why we should be concerned that they would be connected to us in any way.”
Too bad I was wrong on both accounts.
CHAPTER 14
Men suck. Even worse when they suck when they’re sucking.
-Keisha to Acadia
ACADIA
“Is there any possibility you could be pregnant?” the woman asked.
A shot of adrenaline poured into my veins.
“Um, not that I know of.”
I was on birth control, after all.
That didn’t mean that it was a hundred percent effective, though, my inner voice countered.
I told my inner voice to suck it.
“No,” I said more firmly. “There’s not.”
Not if you don’t count that time that that vampire came inside of you…
I tightened my fists, allowing my nails to dig into the sensitive skin of my palm, and watched as the woman took out a glass thingamajig and placed it onto the white paper towel she’d laid out on the counter.
The next thing she did was pull out an alcohol swab and start to clean my finger for the thirty seconds they were required by law to do.
Once finished, she pricked my finger, wiped the blood with the towel underneath my hand, and then set the glass vial to my finger and collected the sample that she used to check my iron.
Once finished, she placed the Band-Aid overly tight on my finger and shoved the glass vial into the little red machine.
The machine beeped, and she made happy noises. “Good, let’s go.”
She was gone before I could ask what the number was, racing toward the chair that I hated.
“I want to do it left-handed,” I told her, pointing at the other chair.