“Ma’am, you shouldn’t be out of bed.” He stepped up to grab her, his strong arms helped to support her limp body. She sagged into his grip, wanting so badly to leave, but thankful for the rest. Tired, aching with burning pains all up and down her body, she leaned her head against his chest.
Her mouth was so dry she could hardly make a scratchy sound of relief as she let his arms encircle her. This felt right. This warm, strong man, with his heart beating in her ear, he was exactly what she needed.
Her mouth filled with sharp, little teeth, and wetted in anticipation. Suddenly she knew what she had been thirsting for. She looked into his eyes and made a whispering, needy sound, and he did exactly what she knew he would do.
He leaned down to her, right where she needed him.
She struck hard, burying her teeth in his warm, juicy neck. As the delightful, tangy fluid flooded her mouth, the beautiful flavor brought her to life. His life gave her new strength, new purpose. His life was now her life, to be consumed.
The man swore and tried to pull away, but, she needed more. She needed it all, everything he could give. She clutched the back of his head and held him tight. He fought to dislodge her, but her strength returned the more she drank from his throat.
She knew this strength. This was how it should be. She had always been this way, powerful, aggressive, a predator entrapping her prey. He moaned and floundered in her grip, falling into spasm. His knees buckled, and she went down with him, landing on his chest, still clamped tightly onto his lovely neck.
Slurping and gulping all she could take, as fast as she could suck it down, his heart began to thump hard and heavy, lumbering under the strain of her attack. She knew the man would die if she continued. He only had about another minute or two before his heart quit. She wanted to savor that minute, to enjoy every last second of his precious life.
Wait, I’m not a killer.
The idea of killing him stopped her short. She released him with a squishy sucking sound, her lips still pursed, and her tongue licking away all that it could reach around her mouth. Lord she wanted to kill him, to take it all.
“No, I am not a killer. No.”
The wondrous fluid had cleaned away the nasty dry taste of her mouth, refreshed her to the point she could speak. She may not be a killer, not in this moment, but she knew how to kill a man this way, to drink him dry until his heart burst from laboring so hard to continue the flow of life.
“I don’t want to kill him.” But she did want to.
She tried to reconcile her conscience with the desires consuming her. Digging deeper into her memory, seeking to learn how she could do this to a man, she found only a black, yawning chasm of emptiness.
Nothingness.
Who was she? Where was she? Where did she come from? A blank void existed where answers should have been. And yet, she knew how to kill, could have done it easily. That scared her more than anything. What kind of creature kills a man without consideration?
She could. She suspected she had, perhaps more than once.
The click of the door opening alerted her to a new obstacle, a new threat. A black-clad uniformed arm followed the swinging door and a Hispanic officer stepped into the room. His eyes blossomed in shock at the sight of her. “Holy Mother Mary!”
His hand reached for his holster, so fast it was probably an ingrained response from his training as a cop.
She was faster. She flew at him in a leap and connected with a solid left cross. His head cracked back and sideways as his knees gave out. He sighed into unconsciousness as his head bounced off the tiled floor following his back-flop landing.
Threat handled.
She stood over him, waiting for him to move. All he did was breathe, in and out, in and out. She could hear his strong heartbeat. This one was fresh. She could feed again, just a little, just enough to refresh herself a little more. Then a noise came from the hallway. A woman’s squeaky nurse shoes treading towards her door.
No time for food. It was time to go.
* * * *
Chapter 4
Adrian headed for his Chevy pickup at the far corner of the parking lot, Jose’s fifty dollars tucked into his back pocket. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a pale blue fabric flitting past between two cars. In the strange pallor cast by the parking lot lights, he could’ve sworn he saw a flash of butt cheek from a woman wearing one of those open-backed hospital gowns. He changed course and headed straight for this wisp of fabric, intrigued.
He reached the shadows between two vehicles and paused, a sense of wrongness flashing in his mind. He made an about-face and headed back to his pickup truck. He had learned that it didn’t pay to stick his nose into things not his business. He had a date with a Serta Perfect Sleeper mattress in his air-conditioned apartment.
As he reached the truck, he glanced around once more and considered calling hospital security. A renegade patient was their job, not his.
Without a single sound, she was suddenly there, right next to him, her pale blood-splattered hand on his arm – the gunshot victim, the woman who damn near died in the back of his ambulance.
Her weak grip tugged at his arm. “I need your help. You have to help me.”
Her black hair hung limp, plastered to her forehead. Blood speckled her chin, neck and light blue gown. She must have coughed up blood, which would mean her lungs were not doing so good. Pneumonia, collapsed lung, punctured lung, all the possibilities slid across his mind as he stared at her, perplexed. What the hell was she doing out here? Walking around? The woman had flat-lined a couple of days ago.
“Let’s get you back to the Emergency Room. They’ll take care of everything.” At the risk of ruining his jacket with blood stains and who knew what other bodily fluids, he put his arm around her and pulled her close to hold her weight. She wasn’t wearing anything under the paper-thin gown. The contours of her naked hip fit his hand perfectly. He tried to ignore those thoughts and instead steered her back towards the hospital.
“No, wait, I can’t.” She stopped him from going any farther by turning in his grip to face him.
Shit. “Do you need me to carry you?” Please no. My back can’t take any more tonight.
“I can’t be here.”
Her face, which had held a look of pleading, turned dead serious. Dark eyes bored into his soul with a depth of intensity. “I need you. Take me with you. I must leave now.” There was something fascinating about her eyes. She never blinked even once, and he found he couldn’t look away from her. “You have to help me.”
Yes, of course. He had to help her.
He suddenly understood, and really, it was a simple request. She needed a ride. No big deal. Helping her was the right thing to do. The soldier part of his mind rapidly assessed the risks. The CCTV cameras only covered the entrance area of the hospital. Nobody would know where she went from the parking lot. He glanced around, looking for any sign of a witness to this strange moment. Then he recalled her little issue, she was a mafia target or something like that. He had no desire to become collateral damage on a botched hit job. A saner voice nagged him, get rid of her. No upside in helping her, no upside at all. She stank like old blood and medicine, that sick-hospital smell. She stood in his arms staring at him, unblinking, her dark eyes a well filled with raw, intense need.
Something stirred inside him. Even in her present condition, she was eerily compelling.
He had deliberately trained as a paramedic to help people. The bastard shrink had called him a sociopath, unable to care about people. So, here he was, trying to care, trying to help, trying to be like everyone else, normal. It was his job to help people like her, more so than the police who were probably looking for her right now.
Do your job, Adrian. Prove the bastard shrink wrong.
“Okay, I’ll give you a ride. Come on.” She snuggled into his embrace with a grateful smile on her bloody lips as he pulled her back towards his truck. He reacted to her appreciation low in his groin. Obviously
it had been way too long since he got laid. Messing around with patients was a major fail, quick way to get fired and prosecuted.
He helped her up into the truck – impossible not to end up with a handful of her ass in the process. She held his gaze with that creepy look, and a small grin split her lips. Adrian smiled back at her reassuringly, then shut the door and jetted around to the driver side for the packet of Clorox wet wipes on the seat. Without surgical gloves, no knowing what nasty germs he might get from touching her.
She just sat there, blood splattered, in nothing but her paper-thin gown, watching him. She looked so vulnerable, and she had put so much trust in him. He started the truck and navigated out of the parking lot with her furtively watching him all the while. She kept glancing back at the hospital entrance, as if looking for someone in pursuit.
“Shit!” She dropped flat on the truck bench seat as a police car sped past. The car screeched to a stop at the emergency entrance and two cops piled out, jogging into the hospital.
Her huge brown eyes looked up at him. She had laid her head in his lap. The girl might be afraid of the police and everyone else, but she trusted him.
He tried not to think about her face on his thigh, or the complete absurdity of the moment. He just kept on driving up to the intersection at the highway. Then it occurred to him he had no idea which direction to take.
“So, where are we headed? We’re on I-35 and I-37, on the south side.”
Still she just stared at him, head resting on his lap like he had become her personal pillow. Damn, he’d have to wash his jeans with Lysol disinfectant.
She shook her head, rubbing her lank black hair all over his jeans. “I … I don’t know.”
Fucking great.
“Look, I understand you’re afraid. I was one of the paramedics who brought you in. Somebody tried to kill you. It’s amazing you can even walk, and you don’t need me to tell you that you need medical attention. You should be in a hospital.”
She shook her head. “I can’t go back.”
He knew she was gonna say that. “If you won’t go to a hospital, then I’ll take you home. I can check your wounds, change your bandages, but I’m not a doctor. I’m not qualified for anything else. Tell me where you live. I’ll get you there, do what I can to help, and then we’re done. We never met. You don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who you are. I could lose my job for this.”
He felt a twinge of something as her emotions flickered across her face. She was afraid. He’d seen plenty of that in Iraq. He stared at her for a minute, until a honking car behind him drew his attention to the stale green light. He took off for the north onramp to I-35. Cruising the highway, he kept glancing down at her. She had her hands over her face, like an ostrich hoping the problem would go away if they simply didn’t see it anymore.
One more exit and they would be at his apartment complex. He tried not to think of the implications. This girl needed to go somewhere, definitely not to his home. “I need a direction, an address, something.”
She uncovered her face and there were dark wet tears in her eyes. Was that blood? Fuck. Why the hell would she be bleeding from her eyes? She choked as though crying. Damn women were always crying.
Adrian hadn’t cried in years. He hadn’t felt that kind of intensity about anything, apart from a few insane moments in Iraq. How could people function when they feel so much? The only thing that got him going, beyond sex, was full-on combat, kill or be killed. The EMT calls got a bit wild once in a while, but not very often.
He reached over to the glove box to find the Kleenex tissues and handed her one. “You’re bleeding.”
She dabbed at her eyes, looked at the tissue and then back up at him. Lost, bewildered, scared, her huge dark eyes raked at him with the urgency of her plight. She choked out the words, “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know anything.”
The problem hit, and he didn’t like the way it made his stomach turn. She wasn’t local. She didn’t live in San Antonio. Where the hell could he take her?
“You don’t have anywhere to go? No friends, no house, no hotel?”
She wouldn’t speak, held her lips tight, as if to stop herself from screaming, and shook her head again.
Damn. He knew he shouldn’t have put her in his truck. No upside to this deal at all. Now he just wanted to be rid of her. But the woman was still in his lap, looking at him like he owed her something, like he was going to be the one who saved her from … whatever.
Isn’t that why you took this job, to save people? Do your job, Adrian.
“Look, I’ll get you cleaned up, some clothes, a bus ticket, and that’s it. I can’t do anything more. Seriously.”
Huge, wet, doe eyes held his gaze while she slowly nodded acceptance. She covered her face and curled up on his seat, shivering. He turned up the heat, even though it wasn’t cold in the truck. San Antonio spring nights were never really cold. Pulling into the covered parking in front of his apartment complex, he realized he had a new problem.
“Stay here a minute, I’m going to get you a blanket. Just stay low, make sure no one sees you.”
He scooted his thigh out from under her and closed the truck door to peek in through his driver side window, ensuring she stayed down. She stared at him all the while. This was one strange chick. He found it hard to reconcile the Latin goddess who had almost died in his ambulance with this half-naked, crazy chick hiding in his truck. She had looked so beautiful, and fragile, whereas now she was this needy, pushy, intense girl who wanted to dump her whole damn life in the palms of his hands.
He could only imagine how bad her wounds must be, and how drugged up she was. Call the police, right now. That was the sensible thing to do.
Adrian unlocked the front door of his second story apartment and paused, cell phone in hand. His fingers itched to dial those three numbers, but his instincts stopped him. For some stupid reason, he felt like he was meant to help her.
What the hell else did he have going? Crenshaw, talking shit, and a six pack of beer? Not exactly high adventure.
Fuck it.
He grabbed a blanket and dashed down the stairs to the crazy woman in his truck. She lay there, looking up at him. Psycho or not, the girl had a strange appeal, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
* * * *
She sat up for him and watched as he wrapped the blanket around her, snug and warm. Then he scooped her up in his arms without so much as a grunt. She liked the sense of security of being held in his strong arms. She could have walked. She felt strong enough to run. But she let him do what he wanted. At the door to his apartment, the neighboring apartment door swung open and a man rumbled in a distinct Texas drawl, “Bout time you brought something home. I was beginning to wonder.”
The neighbor stepped out into the porch light, staring right at her. She pulled the blanket over her face and burrowed into her man’s warm chest. She had begun to think of this man as hers.
“Cren, she’s … tired. Had too much to drink.” He hugged her close and turned away from the other man, shielding her with his body. “I’ll catch ya tomorrow.”
Her savior stepped into his apartment and kicked the door shut behind him, right in his neighbor’s face. Though she hurt all over, she didn’t want him to let go. She wanted to keep this man, keep his arms around her. He smelled a bit ripe, sweaty, but still good. Her stomach growled at the thought of food within reach.
He carried her over to the kitchen and set her on the stool at the breakfast bar. “You sound hungry. I can make you a sandwich.”
Her stomach rumbling, she nuzzled against him as he tried to step away. His heart thudded loud and strong, right there, an inch away. All that juicy flesh just under the surface. Her teeth came out long and full, ready.
“Yes, I am hungry. Starving.” She struck into his neck, sinking her teeth in deep, grasping his shoulders to keep him from escaping her.
“Ow, what the hell?” He tried to pull back. “Shit! Let me go.�
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She held on and slid off the seat, following him as he backed away. This one tasted rich, thick. Strong, healthy, much younger than the fifty-something police officer. She wrapped around him, arms and legs entwined tightly as he squirmed to dislodge her.
“Goddamn.” He fell against the wall and pulled her on top of him as he scooted down to the floor to land on his rump. He twitched, spasmed, then stopped fighting.
She realized she would have to stop soon, or he would be hurt. With willpower she found from somewhere deep inside, she let go and tongued his neck furiously for every last drop. She wiped her face and licked the last of his blood off the back of her hand.
He sat on the kitchen tile, back to the wall, his arms loose around her. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he labored to breathe. His hips squirmed beneath her. The spike of his hard cock ground against her pubic bone. She liked the feel of him between her legs. So strong and warm. She had a sudden urge to unzip his pants and find the juicy veins at the center of his sizeable erection.
She shook her head, breaking the disturbing desire for carnage.
Somehow, she knew that it would only take one or two more bites to claim him as her personal property, a slave. She didn’t know where the idea came from, but she knew this was true. She must have done it before.
Try as she might, she couldn’t recall anything, no names, no faces, nothing.
His hazel-brown eyes had watered up, dilated darker. She traced a tear down his stubbled cheek. He had an athlete’s face, with angular jawlines and strong, hard shoulders. She wanted to cut through his shirt and study the rest of him that she couldn’t see. This man would soon be hers, and she needed to inspect her future property.
The Nightlife: San Antonio Page 3