by Holly Ryan
“Paul!” I shouted and shot toward him. Oh no he didn’t. Not my vamps’ house, and let’s be honest, not my house.
“Belle!” Sawyer shouted after me.
But I was already halfway up the porch steps, my vampire slash slayer speed carrying me faster than I’d ever moved before.
“Paul, I’m right here!” I dashed inside, searching everywhere for him. Why was he in here? Surely he must’ve seen me or sensed me outside. Was there something he wanted here, other than me dead? Not Night’s Fall. Not the god bone. I had both of those on me.
“Sunshine, what—” Eddie called, but the front door slammed shut on him and cut off his words.
I flashed upstairs. “Paul!”
Why wasn’t he coming at me? When I stabbed him with the god bone, had I hit the critical slayer-must-die portion of his head? I didn’t even know where I’d stabbed him, really. Where was he?
Just as what sounded like the front door exploded, I burst into the guest bedroom. My vamps shouted for me from downstairs, but I had to find Paul. The closet door stood open, shifting slightly back and forth as if something had just scurried past. I raced toward it. If he was inside, he had nowhere to go. Trapped, the prey to my predator, a super nice change in pace for once.
But the closet stood empty. I whirled, a long hiss slipping through my fangs, and caught my reflection in the mirror on the back of the closet door.
Wait. Since when did vampires have reflections?
I stopped and stared. A cold chill dragged down my back. Paul looked back at me from inside the mirror, standing exactly how I was standing, as if he were me. Or I were him. Both true, in a sense, because I had his power.
“Slayer!” Jacek shouted from somewhere nearby.
Paul lunged. His arms burst out of the mirror, grabbed hold of the stake through my bun, and yanked me forward before I had any time to react. My head smashed into the mirror, tiny shards of glass digging deep into my skin. Then Paul pushed me back and stepped from the mirror, the stake in my bun now gripped tight in his fist. I stumbled, blood pouring from the glass in my forehead.
“Game on, Paul.” I waved him toward me with one hand to distract him as my other gripped the god bone inside my pocket. “Show me what you got.”
The stake on top of my head, that’s what. Lethal for a vampire like me. Shit.
I lashed out with the god bone, and he leaped away before it slashed him.
He approached again slowly, a glower twisting his face, and I realized I was about to be backed into a corner of the bedroom, right between the side of the bed and the window.
But that just wouldn’t do. I stopped and held my ground as the small distance between us shrank, loosening my grip on the god bone just enough to fling it through the air.
“Belle!” Sawyer appeared in the bedroom doorway, but I didn’t dare unfix my gaze from Paul.
I coiled my arm back, ready to let the god bone fly.
Apprehension rolled off of Sawyer in waves thick as blood. His body tensed. His penetrating gaze was aimed only at me...not Paul.
My grip on the god bone faltered.
Something was wrong. Something...lovely.
A burst of static clawed at the inside of my head. It used to be I could turn it off with my mind. Not anymore.
Time seemed to both speed up and slow down, but I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure of anything including why my legs, which I’d been so happy to see underneath me, no longer were. My back slammed against something hard, and a second later, glass shattered. I was falling. Out the window? But how?
Sawyer was already blurring across the room toward me, his arm outstretched. His eyes were wide, panicked, as his fingertips swept over mine.
And missed.
I plummeted down, down, my stomach somersaulting, my speed whipping tendrils of my bun into my face. The ground below rushed up to meet me, and I crashed into it and bounced. I lay there, stunned, looking up at the broken second-story window I’d just fallen out of. Was pushed out of. Fallen out of? I tried to unscramble what just happened when the front door burst open and four men and a dog spilled out in a rush of frenzied worry.
“Sunshine, are you all right?”
“What the fuck just happened, Slayer?”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Belle.” Sawyer knelt by my side and cradled my face between his large hands. His frantic gaze scoured my body for injuries even though I was a vampire.
I didn’t have any injuries. Even my glass-filled bloody forehead felt perfectly healed. My breath hadn’t been knocked out of me because I didn’t have any breaths. It hadn’t even really hurt when I’d landed, which was a shock in and of itself. But the second shock, the most powerful one, was that Paul hadn’t reappeared yet. Hadn’t come out of the house to see if I was dead and then to finish the job. Which he would. No question. There was something very wrong here.
“Say something,” Sawyer said, desperation in his voice.
I forced a blink and focused all of my attention on him, on the concern etched deep into his gorgeous face. He made it easy as... “Pie?”
He sat back on his heels, his whole existence seeming to sag with relief, same as the other three.
Cleo started to cross the yard toward me, but I held up a hand. “There’s glass.”
Luc tore his gaze from me and made a short, hissing sound at Cleo. She immediately sat and puffed up her chest.
I blinked at Sawyer. “That’ll teach you to put a window there.”
Jacek barked out a laugh and set his hands on his knees, his eyes closed, his face pained. I’d put that awful expression on him, but I still wasn’t quite sure how. I needed his bright smiles, and there had been too few of those.
“I suppose it’s my new life goal to see how many holes I can put in your house. Sometimes my life goals turn out to be really shitty, like the time I announced I was going to be a prostitute in second grade.”
Sawyer’s eyes widened.
“I liked how they dressed,” I said sheepishly.
Eddie shook his head, his wild blond hair skimming his glasses. “It’s important to have goals. Even shitty ones.”
“I’ll pay for the damage.”
“That’s the least of our worries, Belle,” Sawyer said.
I gazed over his shoulder at the open doorway of the house, open because the door hung sideways off its hinges.
“Did I break the door too?” I asked, because I couldn’t remember. Memories rearranged themselves and made no sense under the thick layer of mashed potatoes that had invaded my head.
Sawyer frowned down at something I couldn’t see and seemed to have an internal debate with himself while grimace after grimace rolled across his face. Finally, he held something up for me to see. One of my stakes.
“This was wedged in the door from the inside,” he said.
I patted down my jacket just to be sure, three vamps, a dog, and a devil tracking every single movement, and I came up empty. The stake in my inner jacket pocket was gone, and I would bet at least a hundred pennies that I’d been the one to wedge it underneath the door so my vamps couldn’t get in. Why the hell would I do that?
“Paul’s not in there, is he?” I asked, my voice a wobbly mess.
“We never saw him.” Eddie pushed his lips together in a tight line. “But that doesn’t mean you didn’t see something.”
I had seen something. Or thought I had. But if I hadn’t, then... Tremors rippled down my body, fueled by the greatest terror I’d ever known. My muscles locked up tight and my teeth smashed together so I wouldn’t scream. All this time, how many of my experiences with Paul had actually been real? What a horrifying question, the answer to which I might never know.
At the sight of my shivering body, Sawyer scooped me up into his arms and headed inside the house. I rested my head against his chest, feeling his strength wrap around me, and like his presence and warmth always did, it should’ve calmed me. It didn’t, though, because he couldn’t carry me awa
y from myself.
“Let’s get you inside so you can rest.” His chest rumbled underneath my cheek.
“Paul is real, though, right?” I asked.
“He’s real, Belle,” came Luc’s voice behind us, a dark and velvet whisper. “All too real.”
Sawyer carried me through the doorway, and Jacek flashed around us to fluff the pillows on the couch.
“Luc,” Eddie said, low enough that I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear it. “Can you find Detective Appelt and get him here? We need to get her slayer power out before...”
Sawyer laid me down just in time for me to see Eddie spear his fingers through his wild hair and close his eyes as if he couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence.
Before my brain gave out and I made things very easy for Paul to end me.
Chapter Three
How do you build a vampire pyramid? Easy. Fall in love with three insanely hot vampires, have them sit their perfect asses on the couch, and then stretch over their laps and sleep there. Bonus points for spooning a dog at the same time.
I slept soundly with my face pressed to the back of Cleo’s head, her soft fur sticking to my lips. She didn’t seem at all concerned for her safety this close to me, and I chose to trust her instincts. I just couldn’t imagine trying to eat her. I couldn’t imagine throwing myself out a window, either, though. I’d tried to explain what had happened to my vamps, which was hard, because my memory of it was already fading like it was just a murky dream.
My vamps slept, too, all six of their hands touching some part of my body, always protective. Seemingly automatic, even in sleep, they traced the lines of my arms and legs, the curve of my hips, memorizing, feeling, owning me with their touches. I knew this because when I awoke to the sound of Cleo lapping at her water in the kitchen, they were still doing it, still passed out. While we slept, every circle they drew with their fingertips or brush of their palms on my body lit a fuse, small at first. Then it ignited, burning through all of my fears and my thirst for blood until my whole body hummed. My pussy ached so much it hurt. I rocked my hips forward into Jacek’s thigh to ease some of the tension, then again with a moan when my panties and jeans rubbed at my clit.
He stirred underneath me, his fingers grazing the skin under my shirt and skimming around to my belly. Then his fingers tracked lower down inside the waistband of my jeans. He took a handful of my panties and tugged them hard so they rubbed up deliciously against me. I moaned loudly, my hips rolling to grind against the fabric.
Sawyer and Eddie shifted on either side of Jacek. Someone’s hand went to my ass—Eddie, I thought—and squeezed, pushing me harder into my thrusts.
A deep rumble came from Sawyer who brushed the hair from my face with one hand and gathered the fabric of my shirt up my back with the other. He peeled it off of me, and then smoothed his hands over my skin toward the clasp on the back of my bra.
Jacek took his hand out from the front of my pants and went straight for the button and zipper with a loud groan. Eddie pulled me into a sitting position on Jacek’s lap and then guided me to my feet while Jacek slowly worked my jeans and drenched panties down my legs. Eddie roughly palmed one of my breasts as he took my hand and placed it on his rigid cock through his dress pants. A shiver rippled through me. Sawyer had already stood on my other side and glided his lips over my bare shoulder, the fingers of both his hands threading into my disheveled hair. Jacek, still sitting on the couch, pressed kisses into the back of my hips, waist, and ass as he finished shoving my jeans to my knees. Then he trailed his fingers up the insides of my legs until he found my dripping pussy. When he pushed two of them inside me, Sawyer caught my moan with a deep, hungry kiss.
I trembled with need so hard my legs almost gave out. It throbbed through me until my whole body writhed and pulsed, a heartbeat that raced for sweet relief. I squirmed against Jacek’s fingers, fucked Sawyer’s mouth harder with my tongue, and squeezed Eddie’s cock, about to burst with how badly I needed the three of them.
I broke from Sawyer’s kiss and stared up into his shuttered, hungry red eyes. “Fuck me. I need all of you to fuck me.”
I’d never seen three vampires rid themselves of their clothes so fast.
Jacek sat on the couch with his ass on the very edge of the middle cushion, then he lay back, his feet on the floor, so that his head was propped up by the back cushions. He guided me toward him so that my knees bracketed his upper torso on the couch, then guided my hips forward so I sat on his face. He glided his nose over my folds and grinned as I trembled over him.
“You smell like you’re about to get fucked, Slayer.” His red eyes on mine, he ran his tongue over my clit.
I whimpered and held on tight to the back of the couch while Sawyer knelt on the couch next to me, his hand already pumping up and down his giant cock.
“Tastes that way, too,” Jacek growled, and then pulled me down on top of his mouth.
I cried out, again and again, but Sawyer was there to muffle it with his lips and tongue and a little bit of fang. I lost all control, my hips a frenzied ride on Jacek’s face while he fucked me with his tongue.
Sawyer pulled away from my kiss and stood on the couch, his hard length now at my mouth’s level. He tilted my chin up so I’d look at him. “Watch the fangs, okay?”
I nodded, wrapped my hand around his shaft, and took him into my mouth as far as I could handle it. With his cock in my mouth and Jacek’s tongue in my pussy, a rush of sensations swept up my back, dragging me closer to a powerful orgasm and sweet relief. But a hand wrapped around my belly from behind and pressed against me to slow my pace.
“Not so fast, Sunshine,” Eddie whispered into my ear. “Not without me.”
He stepped in close behind me, his hard shaft rubbing against my ass. It slid over my skin easily, slicked with lube that made his dick smell like a magical dick-shaped library.
I moaned around Sawyer’s length, then widened my legs over Jacek and leaned forward a little more, then moaned again at the different angle of Jacek’s tongue. Sawyer threw back his head and tangled his hand into the hair at the back of my head, his hips thrusting toward my face. I stroked and sucked him off faster, trying to take him in deeper. Behind me, Eddie spread my ass cheeks and nudged my asshole with his cock.
Fuck. This was so hot, I almost couldn’t believe it was happening. Three vampires—my loves, my protectors, my confidantes—at once. They were about to fill me up in every way possible.
Slowly, Eddie sank inside me. I stilled my thrusts into Jacek’s face to get used to Eddie, then I moaned around Sawyer’s dick. With a growl, Sawyer sank both hands into my hair and pulled, speeding my mouth and hand along his cock and going deeper. Jacek’s tongue circled around my clit, and I bucked against him, pulling Eddie even deeper inside me. I cried out at all of the sensations coursing through me and sped my pace on Jacek’s tongue. Eddie matched my speed while he fucked my ass, his arms wrapping around to squeeze and rub my nipples. The slap of his hips, Sawyer’s slick cock hitting the back of my throat, and Jacek’s circling tongue barreled out a powerful orgasm from deep inside me.
“Mmmmmmmm,” I hummed around Sawyer.
They fucked me through it, their pace relentless.
Then Jacek pulled back with a come-covered grin. “Stay right there, Slayer. I’m not done with you yet.” He pushed himself up the back of the couch so I straddled his hips instead of his mouth.
Even though my head pointed toward Sawyer, I didn’t need to see that Jacek was hard and ready. I angled my hips just slightly, pulling Eddie with me, and sank down onto Jacek. The complete and utter fullness would’ve taken my breath away if I’d had any, but the double penetration didn’t hurt. I was wet and turned on enough that nothing would ever hurt, not with these three.
Jacek took one of my nipples into his mouth and bit and sucked and licked it while I rode him. Eddie matched my pace from behind, and I sucked off Sawyer, all of us in perfect unison. A delicious tingling curled up from my to
es, and I pumped faster, taking them all inside me deeper. More. More. More.
Another orgasm erupted out of me, this one even more powerful than the last. Eddie groaned his release into my shoulder and dug his fingers hard into my hips. He bit his fangs into me while Jacek came with a growl. Sawyer slammed into my throat once, twice more, and then bellowed as his salty come poured onto my tongue. Jacek clamped his fangs around my nipple. I groaned at the delicious pain, my pussy still pulsing around him, and swallowed. Sawyer sank to his knees onto the couch next to me and scraped his fangs down the column of my neck before he bit down.
I sagged into their arms, completely sated after my thorough fucking, but major thirst burned through my body. “So...thirsty,” I rasped.
Within a second, there were three wrists in front of my face dripping fresh blood. Grinning, I sucked from each of them, noting the different flavors.
“Jacek, you taste like spring rain,” I said. “And Sawyer, you taste like lavender growing in the woods. Eddie, you’re ink on paper. Oh god, you all smell that way too.” I closed my eyes to bathe myself in their essences. My favorite essences apparently, because I couldn’t get enough.
Sawyer pulled back from my neck and licked my blood from his fangs. “Now you know what it’s like for us with your sunshine and desire smell.”
Jacek licked my nipple clean and pulled back, a blissful smile on his face. “And taste.”
Eddie kissed his way up my back to my ear. “It’s like a drug. Or it is for some, at least.”
“Mmmmm.” That was me agreeing. I was too zoned out to do much else.
We disengaged from each other, and then I floated to the top of the stairs on a cloud of after-sex bliss for a shower and a change of clothes. I was pretty sure I still had glass in my hair from my sudden encounter with the window. It had been boarded up, as had the front door, and would be replaced soon. I just hoped I didn’t hallucinate again.