Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (22 page)

As she leaned back against the bath, he captured her foot

and gently kneaded her arch.

“So,” she said eventually. “You came all the way from

Sydney just to shag me in person?”

“The dreams were not enough tonight.”

“You know all the right words to say, even if they are lies.”

She shifted, pulling her foot from his grasp and  running her hands up his stomach, making warmth and life flood across his body. There were many vampires who couldn’t stand the touch of another, who took the blood they needed with as little contact as possible. He had never been one of those, which is why he always tried to take what he needed while making love. Blood might sustain his life, but it was physical contact, the warmth of another, that nourished his soul. That made the effort of going on through the darkness and the loneliness that much less of a fight. Even emotionless contact was better than nothing.

180

But he and Riley had never been emotionless.

Her body followed the journey of her hands up his body, until she was lying on top of him, her full breasts squashed against his chest and her heart  beating like a trapped thing. Her desire swirled around him, as tasty and warm as the cadence of her blood.

She raised a wet hand and lightly ran a finger around his lips. It was so soft, that touch, and yet so arousing. The blood need rose in him, as thick and as strong as desire.

“And just what were your original intentions?” she said  softly. Teasingly. “Before we were so rudely interrupted by the  chameleons, that is.”

He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, holding her still as his lips met hers. But this kiss was no gentle thing, but rather fierce, filled with all the hunger and desire that was in him.

“Good intentions,” she gasped, when he finally let her go.

“That is only just the beginning.” He kissed her chin,  nuzzled the pulse point at the base of her neck, drawing the  scent of her, the wild muskiness of woman and wolf combined  with the sweet freshness of rain on a summer’s day. A scent that  was uniquely her own, a scent he would never forget, no matter  what happened between them.

He slid his fingers down her flesh, then wrapped his arms around her, sending a wave of water crashing over the rim and onto the tiles as he spun them around, until she was on the bottom and he was on top.

181

“Ah, the control freak strikes again,” she murmured, eyes  bright with amusement. “Can’t stand having a woman in charge  and all that.”

“As if there is any way to control you,” he murmured,

releasing her arms and sliding down her body again.

When he took one nipple into his mouth and sucked on it lightly, she  gasped softly, her body arching into his, urging him on silently.

He teased her, touched her, aroused her, until her blood was humming and her body shuddering, and all he wanted to do was bury himself deep inside her, release himself as he filled his soulwith her blood and her life.

But not yet. Not quite just yet.

He rose and claimed her lips yet again, his kiss as urgent as before, filled with the unleashed desire that burned between them.

“You know,” she gasped, “for a so-called control freak,

you’re doing a very tardy job of taking what you want.”

He smiled at her, his gaze roaming over her features, features that could be as sharp and as pretty as she was. “I didn’tthink you’d appreciate such assertiveness if it meant cutting short your own pleasure.”

“Trust me, you wouldn’t be cutting short anything.”

He shifted position, so that he was between her legs, his cock pressing against her, teasing, but not entering. “So you’re saying that you would like me to take you?”

She grinned. “Unless you’ve  got something better to do.”

182

He paused a heartbeat, pretending to consider. “Nope,” he

said, “I don’t believe I do.”

And with that, he rammed himself deep inside her. And it was glorious, so
 
glorious
. The way her body enveloped him, the heat of her surrounding him, claiming him. There was a completion in this moment, a wholeness that went beyond mere pleasure. It might create life in others, but for him, it was all about sustaining it.

He began to move, and she moved with him, her supple body shuddering with the force of the pleasure building within her. He could taste her desire, taste her need, as surely as he would soon taste her blood, and it only fuelled his own lust to greater heights. He began to move fiercely, urgently, and she was right there with  him, wanting everything he could give her.

She gasped, grabbing the bath top for support, as his movements grew faster, more urgent. Everything broke, and she was unravelling, groaning with the intensity of her orgasm.  Then his own hit, and thought and time stopped as he came, thrusting deep and hard, losing himself inside her as his teeth entered her neck and he took the lifeblood he needed.

She came again, her shuddering rolling across his body, her

mind filled his, completing him. Making them one.

She was his  –  in dreams and in life  –  and one day soon she

would know it.

He’d make sure of it.

183

Love B ites

Kim b erly Raye

I
 
t was  the perfect place to meet a vampire.

A fast retro dance pounded over the state-of-

the-art sound system and vibrated the walls of the trendy club  located in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Cigarette smoke  thickened the air. Liquor flowed from the wall-to-wall bar.  There were mirrors everywhere  –  the massive walls, the floor,  the ceiling. Red velvet couches and small glass and chrome  tables edged the room. Strobe lights twirled and sliced through  the darkness, casting flickering shafts of lights on the sea of  bodies that gyrated on the dance floor.

The place oozed decadence and sexual tension.

It also oozed bullshit.

I stood off to the side near the far edge of the bar and watched a man, mid forties, dressed in slacks and a plain white button-down shirt, approach two young women sipping Cosmos.  They ignored him at first, sucking down their drinks and rolling their  eyes, but the more he smiled and talked, the more they seemed to relax.

184

The man definitely had game.

In everyday life he was James Blumfield, Manhattan’s representative for the Snipers of Otherworldly Beings  –  SOBs for short. By night, he was Jimmy Blue,  a music-video producer.  At least that was the cover he used in places like this.

James spent his days pushing pencils and mapping every vampire  –  made or born  –  and every Were (from wolf to  Chihuahua) between Chinatown and Harlem. Jimmy took over at night, tossing around the bullshit so that he could locate his designated target and make the actual kill.

He was one of the best SOBs in the business.

He was also my boss, mentor and uncle.

My name is Danielle Blue and I come from a long line of  SOBs. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great (I think that’s enough greats) grandfather made the first ever vampire kill back during the twelfth century. We Blues have been killing  Others ever since.

Life for a Blue went something like this  –  birth, dysfunctional childhood (
you
 
try being raised  by a pair of supernatural assassins) emotionally traumatic teen years (on account of this is usually when a Blue realizes that Mom isn’t the PTA president and Dad’s not using that wooden stake to put up a tent), high-school graduation and then the family business.  My entrance had been a little delayed because I’d been determined to buck tradition and do something different. I’d spent a year fantasizing about being a famous artist (I’d painted dozens of pictures and had sold a whopping zero). I’d wound up broke and living at home, which had ended with me finally giving up my brushes and enrolling in SOB Special Weapons  101.

185

I know what you’re thinking. Having ‘Dani Blue, SOB’ imprinted on my business cards is sure to kill  my dating chances.

Well, you’re right. But some things, like an 800-year-old

legacy, are just more important than getting laid.

Especially if you’re like me and getting laid hasn’t been all

fairy dust and rose petals like in the movies.

Where’s the back hair and the farting and the ‘Hop on

honey, and take a little ride on the love pony’?

I kid you not. That was my last boyfriend’s favourite pick-up line. It worked the very first time, after I stopped laughing and realized that he was, you know, sort of  cute. But cute can only last so long (two years in my case, on account of I’m somewhat of a slow learner when it comes to guys). I’ve had a total of three boyfriends.

My first crush back in the seventh grade (which I’d repeated twice because I just hadn’ t been able to nail the maths) had lasted all the way until sophomore year because no matter how many loogies he spit at me, I just couldn’t stop thinking that maybe, just maybe, he had some sort of excessive spit disorder.  I had a severe algebra block, so  who was I to point fingers?

And then there was my high-school boyfriend, Todd, who had a bad habit of boinking cheerleaders behind my back, yet I kept giving him a second chance because –  hey  –  we’re talking an obvious addiction. I’d had it bad for Twinkies and Oreos back then, so I knew the feeling.

And then there was Ryan (see pony reference above).

186

Anyhow, I’m 22 now and ready to take a nice long hiatus from men and relationships and bodily noises. It’s time to put the last four years of SOB training  to the test.

My thoughts slammed to a halt as someone bumped into me from behind and I pitched forwards into a young woman holding an Appletini.

“Bitch,” she muttered before I could give her so much as an

apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” came a slurred voice  behind me, followed by a

slosh of beer on the back of my faded-blue-jean jacket.

Just for the record, I’m not much of a clothes hound. I never could master the art of shopping and so I’ve been buying the same brand of button-fly Levis for the past ten years. The only thing remotely stylish about me was the pair of regulation RayBans I wore to protect myself. See, vampires can read minds and influence humans, but only if they stare directly into the eyes.

Other than the ultra-cool glasses, I was dressed  not-so-ultra cool in my usual: jeans, a worn, paint-splattered T-shirt leftover from my starving artist days, tennis shoes and my favourite hand-me-down jacket.

One that now smelled like Heineken.

No sooner had I recovered than someone else bumped into me. I shook some bourbon off my shoe and shifted my gaze back to my Uncle Jimmy. But there were too many people and I could no longer see him.

Yep, it was the perfect place to meet a vampire, all right.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the perfect place to kill one.

187

While I’d been extremely lucky on the written part of my finals, I hadn’t done so well in the actual field test. Not that I didn’t know my way around with a stake, or a .350 Magnum loaded with silver bullets. It’s just that my aim sort of, well, sucked.

During the field test I’d been placed in a back alley with a pseudo-vampire and three stuffed mannequins a.k.a. humans. I’d bumped into human number one, decapitated number two and staked number three in a place I’d rather not mention (let’s just say he  won’t be fathering any stuffed babies any time soon).  Since the primary mission of an SOB was to rid the population of Others to preserve the safety and well-being for all human-kind, I’d gotten a great big F.

Luckily my graduation wasn’t just based on the field test, but a combination of the written portion, the field demonstration, and a lot of begging and pleading on my Uncle  Jimmy’s part. He’d put his reputation on the line and convinced upper SOB management to give me a chance.

Hence the SOB ID card  in my pocket. It was official and I

was about to make my first kill.

The
 
kill.