Days of Redemption (The Firsts Book 6) (3 page)

Nah, none of those were reasons she should feel moisture in that poor
, underappreciated area of her body that was now begging for attention. 

But she did.  Her nipples pressed hard against the coarse fabric of her cheap sweater.
  Her panties were soaked.   Completely turned on, she hoped like hell he couldn’t see it.  Although she knew her respiration was too rapid, she pulled from his grip.

“Thanks again, but no again.  Have a nice life, Bryn.”

“Ya remember my name.  Why don’t I remember ya?”

TWO

Bryn’s head hurt like a mother.  The sharp-tongued goddess was right.  He was drunk off his ass, and out of his mind.  He knew better than to compel the monstrous motor bike from the tattooed biker at the last bar he’d visited, but he did it anyway.  His hubris would kill him someday.  Vampires
could
be killed, given the right circumstance. 

His eyes kept wandering to her face.  Yes, it was familiar, but not enough for him to place her at his friend David’s Icelandic home, or on the hunt they’d engaged in to take down the vampire studies
facility outside Paris.  To be fair, he was pretty drunk most of the time then.   And nowadays, too.  It was a default setting for him. 

Yet he couldn’t stop staring at her.

She
was
gorgeous.   In spite of her obvious dislike of him, he was very attracted to her.  What had he done to her to piss her off?   He knew he hadn’t fucked her.  Even drunk, he remembered any woman who he was
really
attracted to.

And he
really
wanted this black-haired beauty in his bed tonight.   She was taller than most women, and he liked that.  There was always compulsion, although he never had to use it for sex.  Women wanted him
. 
He knew he was desirable to women. 

H
e scanned her fiery eyes and hard-set jaw with perfect lips that needed kissing.  It was true that he was almost irresistible, but so was she.

“What can I do to convince
ya to let me wine and dine ya, lassie?”  Bryn gave her his most engaging smile.

Lauren shook her head, although her eyes didn’t leave his face.  She wasn’t going to fall for that macho vampire
charm.   And although she thought it would be the ride of her life to hit her crappy metal-framed bed with that body underneath her, she wasn’t about to do it.  The skinny scientist inside her
did
have her pride.

“I’m not you’re type, Bryn.  Go find some willing wench.  I know that will take you all of five minutes. 
Gotta go.”

This time she left, quickly, her pace faster than she really could do safely.  Last thing she needed to
do was to turn an ankle since she had no medical insurance, so she slowed down, and prayed he would not follow her.  After turning the corner onto her street, she glanced back to see if he was.  The street was empty.  Good.  She was relieved. 
Wasn’t she?
 

Yes.  There was no room in her life for vampires.  And although the overly slim blonde-haired geneticist was gone, the reinvented flower shop owner who drove a bucket of bolts and chicken
wire, was front and center in this new life.  And horny as hell now!  As she turned the key and entered her apartment, she looked upward towards the street. 

Ah, hell!  She couldn’t afford to be prideful.
  She wanted him.  And if she was honest with herself, what she really wanted to do was go back out there, drag his sorry giant,
sexy
ass down here and let him fuck her brains out.  

Lauren released a primal scream of frustration and threw her bag halfway across the room to
smash against the brick wall and spill all of its meager contents.

Fine.
  All that accomplished was one more thing she needed to do before she went to bed.  Well, it would have to wait.  So would food.  She was exhausted, angry, and sexually frustrated.  Her small unmade bed waited in the corner, the only comforting place in the room.  She headed for it and paused, then took off all of her clothes and dropped onto the saggy mattress.  As she pulled her scratchy blanket up over her cool skin, it brushed against her body in places with heightened sensitivity.  Her nipples peaked again and the throb returned between her legs.

Lauren slid her right hand down and let her fingers move along the slit, rolled the begging clitoris between her
index and thumb, and moaned.  At this moment, she was certain she’d made the wrong decision. 

Sleep would come
, and with the light of day, sanity would return.  She was sure he would be forgotten by tomorrow morning. 

The dark, dismal basement apartment she rented was cold
.  Even in summer, it stayed pretty cool.

But it wasn’t the coolness that kept her awake.  Lauren rolled over and tried to force herself to sleep, but it didn’t come and finally, she just threw the blanket back and got up.  

Naked, the air crisp against her overheated skin, she went to the tiny kitchen and put the kettle on to make some chamomile tea.  As it heated, she leaned against the metal cabinets and hissed as the cold metallic surface stung her bare back.  Her gaze lifted to the clock on the cracked wall.  Midnight.

It was all right.  She felt lonely and frustrated a lot of the time, but at least she felt safe now.  Of course she struggled financially, but wasn’t that just very American of her? 
Once a month, Cherise, the empathic woman she’d shared her information with that ultimately betrayed the society, would check in with her to see how things were going, offer any assistance, meaning money, but she never took it. 

Cherise
, now a vampire and married to David, had found him after losing him, only by the skin of their immortal teeth, and Lauren knew she was not innocent in her part in it.  She would not accept Cherise and David’s generosity.

No, she’d
laid down with the dogs, she would accept the repercussions of her choices.  She hoped, somehow, someday, to redeem herself and feel worthy again.  So for now, scrimping to survive felt right, honorable…deserved.  Although it would be nice to have a car that started reliably. 

Not on a florist’s income.  Not on
this
florist’s income, anyway.

A loud, shrill whistle began, and just as Lauren reached for the kettle to set it aside and turn off the burner, a knock interrupted.  She looked up, startled.

No one
ever
knocked on her door.  She hadn’t made any friends here except for her two hires, some customers, and local merchants.  But no one had ever come to her apartment.  Hell, she was sure
no one
knew where she lived. 

Almost as if in a trance, she wandered to the door, realizing for the first time it didn’t have a peephole.  Pausing, she looked for her robe and saw it across the room on a broken
-down wicker chair.

“Um, who’s there?” she finally called out.

“Lassie, it’s me.  Listen, I feel bad because I think I must have upset ya and I don’t know why.  Will ya let a contrite man in to discuss this?  Or apologize if it’s necessary?”

What the hell?
 
What was he
doing
here?

Immobilized, Lauren did not know what to do.  She couldn’t let him in, not in her current hyper-sexed state, she couldn’t trust herself. 

“No, no, no, no…” she whispered to herself almost silently.

“Lass?”

Go away, go away.

He began to bang on the door. 
Oh, what the fuck!
  She couldn’t allow him to draw attention from the neighbors when she was trying to remain unnoticed in the world.   Almost running over to the wicker chair, Lauren grabbed the thin satin robe and cinched it tightly as she hurried back to fling open the door and pull the oversized idiot inside.   She held onto the door as she glanced out and looked into the corridor to see if anyone else was around.

There was, a man, near the end of the hallway, but he was in the gray shadows and she couldn’t see who it was. 

Closing the door quickly, she turned on Bryn.

“What the fuck, vampire?
  You roused my neighbors and it’s after midnight.  People around here have jobs.”

“Sorry.  Sorry,
ya know it’s my day, don’t ya?   I didn’t think about it.”

He was still having trouble standing.   She let her eyes roam over him.  The leathers were gone and he now wore tight fitting jeans and a
dark tan tee shirt that fit so tightly, he might as well not be wearing anything at all.  The color matched his skin tone and defined the ridiculously large muscles of his chest and arms.  Was he still drunk? 

Lauren leaned in and wrinkled her nose.
 
Yeah…

“Have you been drinking again?”

Bryn smiled and pulled a bottle of bourbon out from behind him.  “Aye.  After ya spurned me, I went to a bar called the Cat’s Ass and tried to pick up a she-cat like ya told me to.  But I couldn’t get yer perfect face out of my mind.  Seriously, lass, what did I do to piss ya off?”

Lauren shook her head as she rolled her eyes.

“Sit down, you idiot, before you fall down.”

Taking a long swig from the bottle, Bryn dropped onto her bed, the springs taking the hit with a loud squeak.

“Thank ya.  I wasn’t sure if gravity wasn’t gonna win that one.”

He patted the bed and lifted his eyebrows.

“Why don’t ya join me?”

Putting some distance between them, Lauren went into her kitchen
ette and pulled down two coffee mugs.  As she prepared two strong cups of coffee, she glanced at the man that literally filled her tiny apartment.  The twitch hit her genitals hard now, as the flood of moisture returned.  She couldn’t deny it.  She wanted him.

But she still wasn’t going to say yes.
  Once the coffee was ready, she walked back to him as he took the final swig from the bottle, held it up to look down its empty throat, and pitched it onto a pillow lying on the floor beside the bed.

Carefully, she placed one of the cups in his hand
and took a seat in the wicker chair, which tilted sideways.

“Drink.”

He smiled as he took a sip, that godawful smile that almost made her jump him right then.

“Ye’re
gonna undo all the hard work I put into this fine buzz.”

“Sure.  I seem to remember you being drunk most of the time in Iceland, too.  Is that just normal for you?”

Bryn laughed and nearly spilled the coffee.

“Observant little wench, aren’t
ya?  Aye, it is.  Many before ya have mentioned it, but I seem to always fall into my cups, no matter how much I think to change.  I like it, as a matter of fact.  It’s a freedom, most times.  But not tonight, when I am tryin’ to convince a certain lady to let me into her bed.”

He looked around and then back to Lauren with a serious expression. 
“
Och.
  Mission accomplished.”

Lauren shook her head for the tenth time since he’d shown up in her life tonight. 
“Where are you staying, Bryn?”

“I don’t have a place.  I just
arrived in town tonight.  Been partyin’ with my new friends in this pretty city.  They can’t hold their spirits like I can.”

“You’re not holding them very well, either, vampire.”

“I’ve had a lot, I admit that.  Perhaps some rest will do.”

Lauren stood up abruptly, spilling some of her un
touched coffee before she set it aside.  “No.  Not here.  You can’t stay here.” 

“Come on, now.
It’ll be sunlight in a few hours and I see this little box has no daylight access.  Can ya just let me rest for a wee spell?   That collision with yer streets really did hurt, lass, and I ache.  Ya wouldn’t want me to go back down to the Cat’s Ass after all yer fine work to sober me up, would ya?”

“What the hell am I going to do with you here?”

He grinned.  “I’ve got some ideas, girlie.”

“Forget it.  I don’t do vampire.”

“Now, lass, ya
do
know what ye’re missin.’”

With a sigh, Lauren threw an extra blanket at the bed.

“Yeah, I do.  And the place is called the Cat’s Hat.”

Bryn stood.  Lauren watched, mesmerized, as he pulled the tee shirt over his head and his incredible body was revealed to her. 
She drunk him in.  Even though she’d seen vampire’s bodies before, they had always been under clinical conditions. 

This was
so
much more intimate.   And Bryn had perhaps the finest body she’d ever seen.  She locked her hands at her sides because all they wanted to do was roam around that hard, muscled chest and then lower, beneath those outrageously tight jeans that, now that she was looking, seemed to beg for removal.

The next moment, as his hands went to the snap, and then the zipper, she turned suddenly and hurried into the kitchen
ette, keeping her back to him.

“Um, just leave those on, please,” she finally managed to say.

“They’re awfully tight.  Would it disturb ya too much if I left them off?”

Left them off?
  Was he already naked?  She couldn’t look.  She shouldn’t look.

Lauren turned. 
And looked.