Days of Redemption (The Firsts Book 6) (2 page)

The most challenging thing that awaited her now was
to get home, get something to eat, and try to get some sleep.

It was going to be a
nother hotdog for dinner.  Well, it was cheap and easy, and when she was as tired as she usually was after ten to twelve hour days, which was often, it was her best choice.   Because of that, Lauren was pretty freaking sick of hotdogs. 

Damn it!
  It was times like this when she was really pissed that she held a doctorate and she had to live on bargain basement…
everything! 

A few months ago, Lauren had an unexpected run-in with one of the first blood vampires involved with the rescue in France.  Both Lauren and Koen had been shocked to find each other in Chicago and had quickly parted after he’d thrown her a generous tip for the flowers he bought for a woman who became his mate a few weeks ago.  Instead of using the money sensibly for bills, Lauren
had treated herself to the first nice meal she had eaten in nearly a year. 

Worst part was
, there was no reason to believe that anything was ever going to change.  She’d likely be pinching pennies tight enough to melt copper for the rest of her life.  She drew a long breath and released it on a sigh, something she found she was doing too much lately.

Her car dead behind her store, she
had to walk home and would pick up the hot dog from Errol, a nice older man who ran a little cafeteria about a block from her basement apartment. The air had turned markedly cooler tonight, not unexpected for April in Chicago.  It felt like snow, but she knew that if it came, it would be very light.  Even so, she pulled her coat up tighter and tied her thin knit scarf so it wouldn’t gape at her neckline to let the air slip beneath to chill her further.

She could feel her nipples harden as her fingers brushed them through her unlined coat and laughed bitterly.  That’s the most action
they’ve
had in a long time, she thought, as she let her fingertips linger for a moment longer.  Damn, it felt good to feel the twitch between her legs.

Not that she’d ever been overly sexually active.  Almost all of her life, she’d been nerdy and skinny.  When
Joubert used to call her Olive Oyl, it had been unkind.  But it wasn’t inaccurate.  She’d had no boyfriends in high school.  Afterward, she’d been focused on college and her doctorate in genetics.  Then, of course, finding a good job in her field had kept her busy, so dating had never been a priority.

Then there w
ere the awful years with the supernatural research group that had resulted in her defection and betrayal, and her self-enforced exile from her world. 

Now she felt sexy
, and she knew she
looked
sexier, judging by the glances she often received by men these days.  Honestly, though, she had no experience and didn’t really even know where to start to begin a relationship.  The only sex she had ever had was in college, some awful experiments with horny guys who would have screwed anything.  It had left her feeling dirty and pitiful.

After that, she’d considered herself pretty asexual until she watched and studied
a first blood vampire while working with Project V.  He was one of few vampires who had been
born
vampire, not
made
by genetic conversion, and much more powerful than any human who had been changed.  First blood vampires had been presented to her as vicious primitive predators.  But they were also the apex of male sexuality. 

David, the
first blood being “studied,” the man she would ultimately help save, had been naked most of the time they performed their experiments on him.  And every inch of him was gloriously erotic.  Even in his damaged state, his heavily muscled body and generous male organ had caused her breath to catch and her respiration to soar.  She admitted that more than once, she’d stared at his body and imagined what it would be like to be with a vampire. 

But she knew a woman like her would never
be attractive to a vampire like David.  And then there
was
the fact that, as far as he was concerned, she was the one who had arranged his abduction, and tortured him.  Although she hadn’t done either, she still played an ugly part in the whole mess that she would regret to the end of her life.

So, hot dog made of meat from an indeterminate origin, greasy French fries, and a watery cola. 
Yum, dinner.  Again.  The streets were quiet tonight, but most of the businesses along this street closed down by nine or ten, mostly for security purposes.  She would likely be Errol’s last customer.  A few yards from his cafeteria, she saw the lights go out.

What the hell?  He was usually open until ten.  Lauren glanced at her watch, which displayed the time 9:05.  Why was he closing so…

At that moment, Lauren noticed the second hand on the old analog watch wasn’t moving.  Ah, figured.  The piece of shit had stopped working. 

Well, why not?
  Just like everything else today.  Yeah, her luck sucked.  Lauren sighed.  It looked like it would be a can of tepid soup tonight and a piece of bread that likely had some scrolls of green around the edges.  Suddenly the uninspiring hot dog looked pretty good!  No reason crying over a lost hot dog, just another disappointment.  Add it to the list. 

How pathetic am I
, she thought
, wandering around
feeling sorry for myself?
  She had to stop.

As she reached the corner of the street, she waited before she crossed, but the street was empty, so she started to step out, and as she did, an obnoxiously loud roar from a motorcycle split the silent air.
 

The huge bike that announced itself loudly came screeching around the corner of the street so fast, she barely had a chance to realize that it wobbled a little bit before it went down, hard and fast, sliding across the pebbled pavement with a horrible scraping sound, dragging the rider, until it finally came to a stop about
a hundred feet from Lauren. 

Shocked, she was frozen for a few seconds while she gathered her wits, and then raced over to the large figure trapped beneath the weight of the massive bike.  S
he scanned all around her, but no one else was on the street.  The man trapped beneath it wasn’t moving and he was huge, so she didn’t know if she could help him get out from under the trashed motorcycle.

“Sir, are you all right?  Can you move?  I
don’t know if I can lift the bike off of you.  Sir?”

The man wasn’t helmeted, which Lauren knew right away was stupid,
since he was face-down against the pavement.  She swallowed hard as she dropped down to see if he was conscious, terrified to see the extent of his injuries.  Luckily he was wearing heavy leathers that protected his arms and legs, but she knew his face might be badly damaged.

Lauren had already palmed her cell to call for EMS, but
the display was dark and wouldn’t be making any calls at all.  Another piece of shit she owned that rarely worked.

The still man suddenly
lifted his head.

Lauren leaned into him. 
“Sir, I’m going to try to find someone with a cell phone so I can call for an ambulance.  I’ll be right back.”

A pained groan came from the man a
s one of his hands shot out to grab her arm.

“Nah,” he said, keeping her trapped
while she tried to pull free.

He rolled toward
s her, and sat up, pushing the large, heavy motorcycle off of him with one foot as he pulled it free with ease.

Lauren hesitated to look at him, afraid he would be horribly injured, but when she let her eyes move to his face, he seemed to have only some scrapes on his nose and cheeks.

“Don’t call no one, lassie,” he said, slurred, with a distinct Scottish brogue. Then he raised his head and looked at Lauren.

Huge pale blue eyes, as clear as a pristine lake, stared into hers.  And, oh God…

She recognized them.  Those soulful eyes belonged to one of David’s friends, centuries old, and not human.  This oversized man was a vampire.

Yep.  Her luck today officially sucked as big as any day could suck.  She was a woman hiding from the vampire world and everything attached to it…and a vampire had crash-landed at her feet.

Lauren knew now there was no reason to call for help.  The enormous vampire would heal quickly, within minutes, from any injury sustained in something as simple as an impact with pavement.

But he struggled to get upright, and that surprised her.  The man was too heavy to rely on her
smaller body for support, but he tried to as he finally gained his footing and stood up, part of his weight resting against Lauren’s slight frame.

Why was he leaning so hard against her?  This accident wasn’t severe enough to cause much damage to a vampire of his size.  Then the smell assaulted her. 
Whiskey, and a lot of it.  He reeked of it.

“You’re drunk off your ass,” Lauren said flatly.

He swung those ridiculously gorgeous blue eyes in her direction as he tried to focus on her face.  “Aye, that is not untrue.”

Shaking her head, Lauren tried to pull away from him, but his hand was tight on her shoulder and she was pretty sure if she did move away from him, he’d be reacquainted with the hard asphalt again quickly.  She pushed against him anyway
, but he didn’t budge.

She needed him to get off of her. 
“You can let me go now.  I know you’re not hurt.”

His eyes opened wide and he smiled.  “I just had an accident, lassie.  Have
ya no sympathy?”

“Hardly.”
  She hesitated.  He likely didn’t recognize her.  Not only because of the alcohol, but her appearance was much different than it was when she’d met the Scottish vampire in Iceland over a year ago.  Even if she hadn’t changed so much, she doubted he’d noticed the emaciated, dull-faced woman he would have met before they took down the research facility.  Lauren recalled he’d been drunk a lot back then, too.

“I know what you
are,” she decided to tell him, and saw his eyes register what she meant.  “You’re falling down drunk, but you’re not hurt.”

That surprised him.  He looked more closely at her now. 
He studied her face but she could see no recognition in his eyes.

“I don’t know
ya,” he admitted, the question in the air that he wanted to know
how
she knew what he was.

Lauren looked away for a moment.  Yeah, his type wouldn’t have remembered
her
type.  He could have any woman in the world and she was sure it wouldn’t have been the sexless scientist she was then.

“I’m Lauren. 
From Iceland.  I helped bring down the research facility in France with you and David last year.”

Now he frowned and looked harder at her face.

“Nah, ya can’t be.  I’d never of forgotten a face like yours. ”

“Well, you’d be wrong.  Look, you’re okay, I’m beat,
I’m hungry, and I need to get home.  Nice seeing you.  Have a good life.”

This time when she pulled hard on her arm, he released her and she jerked backwards.  Good.  Put some distance between the big over-sexed vampire and her
embarrassing past.  As she turned to go, he’d moved in front of her the way vampires did…faster than any human could move.

“Wait, now. 
Ya can’t just walk away.  Ye’re hungry, ya said.  Let me take ya to dinner for rescuin’ me.”

Lauren shook her head.  “Thanks, but I didn’t do anything.  You weren’t in any danger, so you didn’t need any help.”

After she turned again, hoping he would just let her go, she felt strong fingers on her chin, turning her face up to him again.

“Nay, I think I need a lot more
rescuin’ if ya understand what I’m sayin’.  Ya need to let me thank ya.  Properly.”

He was pouring on the charm.  Well, vampires did that.

Lauren looked him directly in the eye, pissed that he was interested in her now, but didn’t remember fighting alongside her just a year ago. 

“Let’s see,” she said tersely.  “What are some of the things I didn’t need today
?  Um…an unexpected pregnancy, a urinary tract infection, alien abduction…and oh, yeah, a big-ass drunk vampire crashing at my feet.  No, you do
not
need to thank me.  Properly or improperly.”

With his fingers caressing her cheeks now, he moved closer, his lips close enough she could feel his breath on hers.  “Improperly, I think.  And
ya know I can do it verra, verra, well.”

Lauren didn’t move.  His warm fingers
sliding across her skin, his breath brushing her lips, his overt sexuality so close to her, she felt the twinge between her legs ramp up into throbs
.  Oh, fuck.
 

Just because vampires were highly sexual didn’t mean she wanted
him, or the fact that, even under the leathers, she could see he was heavily muscled and knew he would be extraordinarily skilled after centuries of practice.  Just the fact that she hadn’t ever really had a thoroughly satisfying sexual experience, the fact that she
did
remember this uber-sexed god sitting just a table away from her wearing a bathrobe and nothing else at the vampire’s first meal.