Jake’s hold on her tightened.
Garret grinned. “Don’t worry, bro. You need her more than I do at this point. Besides—” he glanced toward the community center “—I saw a redhead a few minutes ago that had that come-and-get-me-baby look in her eyes.” He clapped Jake on the shoulder. “I’ll catch up with you later.” In a flash, he reached the door to the community center and disappeared inside.
Jake nodded and turned his attention to the woman in his arms. Soft, shallow breaths sawed past her lips. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.
Gone was the panic. And the fear.
For now.
Christ, she’d seen him.
Dread and denial whirled together to make his gut ache and his hands tremble. Sure, she’d glimpsed the truth a time or two when his control had slipped, but it had been so quick that she’d written it off as her imagination.
But this time she’d gotten a good, long look. There were no excuses this time. No escaping the truth.
Unless…
He could make her forget. He could make anyone forget. It was a trick of the trade and one he’d used before whenever anyone got too close and saw too much. All he had to do was look into her eyes and will away the memory and everything would be cool. Nikki could go on about her business and he could go on about his.
Instinct urged him to do just that. It was the way he’d survived for so many years.
But he wanted more than survival now. He wanted his freedom.
All the more reason to kill the memory.
That’s what his head said. There was no reason for her to know the truth about him. He would be in and out of her life so fast.
At the same time, he’d vowed to set himself apart, to secure a place in her memory, to prove beyond a doubt that he was different from every other loser in her past.
Men who’d held back, kept secrets, deceived her.
This was his chance to set himself apart.
The decision certainly had nothing to do with the fact that he’d been alone and lonely far too long and he’d finally reached his limit. He was tired of running. Pretending. He wanted something real. Solid. Lasting. And that meant coming clean.
Like hell.
This was all about following through. He’d wanted to set himself apart, and suddenly he couldn’t think of a better way to do just that.
SHE’D SMELLED ONE TOO many containers of perm solution.
That’s what Nikki told herself when her eyelids finally fluttered open and reality sank in.
She lay on her back on a soft down sleeping bag. A small lantern burned nearby, pushing back the shadows just enough for her to see that she was in a huge cave. A waterfall trickled nearby, splattering into a spring that bubbled and steamed several feet away.
“I’m glad you’re awake.”
Jake’s voice brought her upright and she twisted to find him sitting a few feet away, his back against the cave wall. He wore the same black jeans and white dress shirt he’d worn to the dance. The crisp shirt now hung loose, the buttons undone, the edges parted to reveal the hard, muscular chest beneath.
He looked like any other handsome, sexy man…who just happened to be sitting in the middle of a cave. His gaze deepened, shifting from molten silver to a bright purple as he regarded her.
She blinked as the past rushed at her. In her mind’s eye she saw him poised above her their first night at the motel. His eyes gleamed as bright, as colorful as they were right now. He arched his neck, his lips pulled back, his fangs—
She shook away the image, but another rushed in to take its place.
The scene from the motorcycle, when Jake’s hands had been on her rather than the handlebars. The bike had held steady, eating up ground so swift and straight, as if something far more powerful had been in control—
“Where am I?” she blurted, eager to kill the memory. Her gaze darted around, drinking in the jagged walls, the earth floor.
“It’s a cave cut into the hills just outside of town. It’s not easy to get to—but then, I needed someplace isolated to spend my days.”
“You work during the day,” she said as if by voicing the words out loud she could make them true. “You design motorcycles.”
“I sleep during the day—I have to—and I work on my designs in the early evening.” He motioned to the laptop sitting a few feet away. “And then I see you.” He stared at her for a long moment. His gaze burned such a bright shade of purple that suddenly it hurt her eyes and she blinked.
As if he knew his effect on her, he glanced away. His attention shifted to their surroundings. “There isn’t a trace of sunlight during the day. It’s dark here. Safe. I’m at my most vulnerable during the day. I’m pretty much invincible except when it comes to wooden stakes and sunlight. The sunlight won’t kill me. It just hurts like hell. But a stake through the heart…that’ll turn me to dust faster than you can blink.”
Because he was a vampire.
The notion rushed at her, fueled by the thoughts that darted in and out of her head. The eyes. The overwhelming sexiness. The way he looked so deeply at her, into her. As if he could see all of her secrets while she could see none of his. The fangs.
No! her conscience screamed. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be.
“Where’s my SUV?” She grasped at the first sane thought that popped into her head.
“Back at the community center.”
“Then how did we get here?”
“My motorcycle.”
“But that was parked back at my place. If you left the SUV at the community center, then how did we get back to my place?”
“We flew.”
She was not hearing this.
“I don’t turn into a bat,” he went on. “But I can levitate and move around. I wanted to get you out of there fast and so I picked you up and carried you home.”
“Why didn’t you leave me there? Why…?” She shook her head. “Why am I here?”
“I wasn’t about to dump you on your doorstep, and you’ve never invited me in. So I loaded you onto my bike, climbed on behind you and brought you here.”
“But I was unconscious.”
“I held you with both arms. I didn’t need them for my chopper. I can control that with my mind.”
Because he was a vampire rather than a man.
Crazy.
Vampires didn’t exist. They were the stuff of movies and hit television shows. A myth. A nightmare.
And this?
Her fingers curled into the down comforter, feeling its soft warmth. Her shoes sat on the ground just to her left and she reached out. She touched the black leather, felt the smoothness against her fingertips before she let her hand fall away. She clawed at the dirt floor, felt it push beneath her fingernails. Real.
Her gaze shifted to Jake. He turned his head and stared at a second lantern sitting lifeless near the foot of her sleeping bag. His eyes brightened and just like that a flame flickered and burned.
The air lodged in her chest as shock beat at her already shocked brain. She bolted to her feet and rushed toward the underground spring. Dropping to her knees, she splashed the liquid onto her face. Water drip-dropped, falling onto the front of her dress, soaking through the material. She cupped her hands and leaned over, splashing more water, as if she could wash away the images that rolled through her head.
“I know this is a lot to take in.” At the sound of Jake’s deep, husky voice she opened her eyes. The water served as a mirror and she saw him towering behind her.
“Y-you have a reflection.” She touched the water and his image rippled.
“Some of the myths are true and some aren’t. I don’t have any particular aversion to garlic or crosses. Holy water isn’t particularly painful. And I can see myself in a mirror just like anyone else.”
But he wasn’t like anyone else. He was a creature of the dark. A night-stalking, blood-drinking vampire.
Her hand went to her throat, her fingers trailing over the smooth s
kin, searching.
“You didn’t drink from me,” she blurted.
“Yes, I did.”
“But—”
“Vampires don’t just feed off of blood. We also crave energy. Sexual energy.”
What?
Even as the question pounded through her head, her brain scrambled for answers, fitting the pieces together as if she were racing against the clock.
Feed.
Sex.
One-night stand.
That’s why he’d been at the carnival. He’d needed a woman. And so he’d picked her. “Why?” The question fell from her lips. “You could have had any woman at that carnival, but you picked me. Why?”
“You have a lusty appetite. You’d denied yourself for so long that you were like a volcano ready to explode. I couldn’t resist.”
“In other words, you picked me because I was desperate.”
“And you picked me because I was desperate,” he reminded her. “You came to my hotel room of your own free will.”
Because she’d thought that he was a regular guy. A temporary guy.
“I am temporary,” he said as if reading her thoughts.
As if?
He was reading them.
“Just as you can read mine,” he told her. “We’re connected. Bound by the sex.”
She shook her head. “I can’t read your thoughts.”
“You have to focus. Project.”
Her mind raced too fast. Denial and relief and a multitude of other emotions swirled together, overloading her mental circuits.
“The telepathy is part of what I am,” he went on. “When I look into someone’s eyes, I can see what they’re thinking. Right now you’re not half as afraid of me as you are of yourself. You’re afraid of the way I make you feel. Because even though you know the truth now, you’re still attracted to me.”
Because he was a vampire.
Forget chemistry. What flowed between them was pure lust. It oozed from Jake, courtesy of his vampness, and Nikki couldn’t help but be caught up in it.
Any woman would have been.
“But I don’t want any woman.” His gaze caught and held hers in the mirrorlike pool. “I want you. And you still want me.”
She wanted to deny it, but what was the point?
The truth stood staring back at her, a shimmering reflection of a man who was more than a man. His eyes gleamed hot and potent and powerful. He touched her, his fingertips burning into her arm, and lust stirred, fierce and quick and far more powerful than the throb of fear keeping time with her frantic heartbeat.
His scent—raw and male and a touch savage—filled her nostrils and created the most damning thoughts of two bodies tangled together, touching and twisting and kissing. Sex at its most primitive level. Passionate. Breath-stealing. Desperate.
She inhaled and immediately regretted it. The scent grew stronger, the impressions more vivid. Her body trembled, urging her to turn and reach out. To touch him.
Are you crazy? her last bit of sanity demanded. Sure, he’s hot and the sex is great, but he drinks blood. One minute you’re having an orgasm and the next you’re on life support.
“I never mix the blood with the sex. Drinking from someone either way forges an intense mental connection. To do both simultaneously would make that connection twice as strong. Unbreakable.”
Permanent rather than temporary. And vampire or not, Jake was clearly number two.
Disappointment rushed through her, followed by a wave of indignation and a mental ass-kicking. Are you kidding me? It’s not like you ever, for even five seconds, wanted a real relationship with him.
Okay, maybe for five seconds.
But everything had done a complete one-eighty. Jake wasn’t the man she’d thought him to be. Cripes, he wasn’t a man at all. He was a vampire.
Who wanted only sex from her.
She could see the truth in the hot brightness of his gaze, feel it in the heat coming from his fingertips and hear it in the raw huskiness of his voice.
“Come.” It was one word, yet she was powerless to resist.
That’s what she told herself.
It had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she was tired of thinking. Of trying to process the truth. To believe the unbelievable. And suddenly she wanted only to feel.
She turned toward him.
15
DIFFERENT.
The word vibrated in Jake’s head and kept him from pressing her up against the nearest hard surface and plunging fast and sure inside of her hot, tight body.
Instead he moved away. So fast that he knew to her it appeared as if he’d just vanished. One minute he was helping her to her feet and the next she stood at the water’s edge all by herself.
“Nikki.”
She whirled at the sound of her name. Her gaze zigzagged through the semidarkness until it found him on the opposite side of the underground spring.
His eyes locked with hers as he lifted his hand and trailed his fingers in midair.
When she felt the delicate touch along her cheekbones, shock jolted through her, widening her eyes and parting her full lips. Desire followed, easing her taut expression and chasing away the furrows in her forehead. Her lids grew heavy and her chest hitched.
Jake moved his attention lower, around the slope of her jaw, down the sensitive column of her neck.
Goose bumps chased down the lengths of her arms, and her nipples pebbled, pushing tight against the bright yellow material of her dress. He licked his lips and she gasped. He knew she felt the contact even though he stood several feet away.
There was no mistaking the freight train of different emotions that barreled through her—denial, pleasure, disbelief, wonder, excitement. She felt them all.
She felt him.
In a way she’d never felt another man before.
Satisfaction rushed through him, followed by a surge of desire so intense that he shook from the force of it.
“I need to see you,” he said, his voice gruff, his throat suddenly tight.
Nikki stared across the smooth, shimmering water to where Jake stood near the small waterfall. She watched the purposeful movement of his hand and felt the edge of her hem catch. The material slid up her thighs, over her hips, to her waist. Air whispered over her bare skin, between her legs, to tease her clitoris. Her body throbbed in response and her knees turned to jelly.
His hands moved higher and so did the dress. It caught on her breasts, snagging for a long, breathless moment before slithering up and over.
“Lift your arms.” His voice was ragged this time, betraying his calm, controlled demeanor.
She had the distinct impression that while he was the vampire who called the shots, she was the one in control.
She wasn’t, she reminded herself. Despite the fierce longing that flashed in his gaze. The desperation.
I want you.
His voice murmured through her head so loud and clear, and she knew then that he spoke the truth. They were telepathically linked now. He’d invaded her body and her mind.
And her heart.
Nikki fought the truth and clung to the lust burning her up from the inside out. Her heart had nothing to do with any of this. It was all about her body. She slid her palms into the air.
The dress slithered up and over her head and fell into a yellow puddle beside her. A thread of heat snaked around her ankles and worked its way up as she stood there, naked and breathless. The sound of trickling water filled her ears, mingling with the frantic beat of her heart.
He studied her for an endless moment and his eyes fired an even brighter, more intense shade of purple.
Desire. His deep, husky voice whispered through her head even though his lips never moved. My eyes are this color when I’m turned on.
The breath caught in her chest and her head started to spin again. Her nipples grew tighter, harder, eager to be stroked, nibbled, sucked. Now. Anticipation coiled in the pit of her stomach and her legs trem
bled.
He stepped toward her, his boots skimming the top of the water as he crossed the pool.
“What about you, Nikki? Are you turned on?” He came to a stop right in front of her, so close she could almost touch him.
If she reached out.
“I…” She licked her suddenly dry lips. “What do you think?”
“I think,” he murmured, his thumb grazing the very tip of her breast, “that you’re about as worked up, as wet as a woman can get.” The words slid into her ears to stroke across her nerve endings. “You’ve never been this hot for any other man, have you?” She shook her head and satisfaction brightened his eyes. “Show me. Show me how much you want me.”
Me and only me.
She could no more deny him than she could fly to the moon and back. The lust burned too fierce, blazing inside of her, fueling her with an urgency to touch him. Taste him. Regardless of what he was.
Because of it.
She knew that was the cause for her sudden desperation and she grasped at the explanation rather than consider the alternative—that she reached out not because he was more than any other man she’d ever been with but because he was the man.
She focused on the desire raging inside her and grasped the edges of his shirt. Flesh grazed flesh as she pushed the material over his shoulders, down his arms, until it fell away and joined her discarded dress. She reached for the waistband of his jeans.
A groan rumbled from his throat as her fingertips trailed over the denim-covered bulge. She worked the zipper down, tugging and pulling until the teeth finally parted. The jeans sagged on his hips, and his erection sprang hot and greedy into her hands.
She traced the ripe purple head before sliding her hand down his length, stroking, exploring. His dark flesh throbbed against her palm and her own body shuddered in response. She licked her lips, suddenly eager to taste him. A crazy reaction for a woman who’d never been all that fond of giving a blow job.
But this was Jake. Every reaction she’d ever had with him had been off the charts because of the lust she felt for him.
The lust he inspired.
She dropped to her knees, smoothed her fingers down the dark perfection of his shaft and took him into her mouth. She laved and suckled for a long moment before he grasped her shoulders and stilled her movements.
Love at First Bite Bundle Page 14