by A. K. Koonce
Sleepless Beauties
Copyright 2021 A.K. Koonce
All Rights Reserved
Editing by Red Line Editing
Cover design by Dark Imaginarium Art & Design
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without express written permission from the author. Any unauthorized use of this material is prohibited.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
For anyone who’s ever accidentally found love.
And rejected that shit immediately.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Also by A.K. Koonce
One
Kira
The man across the street drags his chair closer to his date as they eat their brunch like they invented love and lust and…
Well, cheating.
“Oh Robert, Robert, Robert...” I whisper as I snap another quick picture from behind the lamppost I’m leaning into.
His hand drags up her thigh, shoving at the yellow sun dress she wore for him. My phone rings and I nearly drop the thing in a rush to get my picture before...
Noooo! Gah just let it fall next time, Kira!
Shit.
Right now? We’re doing this right now?
“Yeah? Hey! Hi, Mom,” I say into the phone while I try to get a shot of the woman fondling Robert’s dick from over his gray slacks. “No, now’s not a bad time. It’s fine.” I snap another ten or so of a far too up-close picture of the elderly man’s cock.
My gag reflex sounds just as my mom asks if I’m still dating Chad.
“Oh, stop. He’s a nice young man, Kira. Your sister would have loved him.”
This time my grimace has nothing to do with life alert hand jobs and everything to do with the current conversation.
“Kyra would have agreed,” I whisper quietly.
“Come home for Thanksgiving?” she asks in that way that only mothers do. It’s that I’m asking, but there’s really no question mark tagged at the end of that demand.
“Of course, Mom.” I glance at the time and if I don’t ditch Robert’s daylight dick play and my mother’s phone call right now, I’m going to be late. “I got to go, Mom.”
A pause drifts across us like it always does.
“Love you,” I add, and I know she’ll say it back. And I’ll hang up first. And she’ll call again. Same time, same day next week.
The call ends, and I swipe quickly though my phone to email over all the pictures to Robert’s sweet darling wife who will use them to get all the alimony he can afford.
With that job done, I’m officially off work for the weekend.
But I have one more thing to do before I go home. I jog across town. If I don’t hurry, I’ll miss her. Again.
And then I won’t be able to see her for another month.
The cold fall air bites at my cheeks as I turn the corner and stop dead on the crimson line painted into the old sidewalk. One side is newly paved. Long and unending, leading through a neighborhood my kind hasn’t ventured into in over nine decades. It’ll be an even ten at the end of this year.
As for the other side—my side—the pavement is cracked and worn. And that’s because my side is hicago tax dollar kept instead of Crimson City kept. It’s just one more thing that shows how supernaturals care more about perfect appearances than humans do.
It’s not something the average human thinks about.
What I wouldn’t give to be average. Unknowing. Naïve.
Instead, I’m very well educated.
Unfortunately.
Because we’re not alone on this earth. There truly are things that go bump in the night.
And one of those things is walking toward me right now.
“Hey, Pretty Human,” the charming but arrogant vampire bows to me.
My lips curl at the way he always over familiarizes his nickname for me. He does it on purpose. He knows how much it makes my illogical heart stutter, and he rejoices every time.
That’s why humans will always be weaker than vampires. It isn’t their supernatural speed or their immortality. It’s just humanity’s foolish nature to think that just because something is pretty it should be valued. The man’s flawless white smile and shimmering eyes are a case in point.
“Prey.” His bizarre name is spoken flatly against my tongue. Carelessly. I want him to know that although he might make a shiver of uneasiness race across my body, he himself is nothing to me.
His tight fitted tee-shirt goes unnoticed, let me assure you. As does the way it rides up at the bottom, exposing lickable veering lines and just enough hair leading down the center of his hard stomach to make me choke on my own saliva like an old cat.
Completely. Un. Noticed.
Unkempt hair as dark as the night sky flits over his ice-cold eyes. A venomous sneer lingers in his gaze. The unnoticed shirt that hugs his lean frame is the same inky color of his locks, as are his jeans. And his boots, and probably even the arrogant underwear hugging his arrogant ass.
He’s my sister’s assistant… boyfriend? I don’t actually know.
But every month, when I come here to the Crimson City line to see my sister, this asshole has always accompanied her.
Except for today.
Because this time he’s alone.
“Where’s Kyra? It’s the sixth. Today’s our day.” The speculation in my tone can’t be helped. It’s something that has been ingrained into my very being. Doubt everything and everyone.
It comes from being paid to find out secrets. And everybody has at least one or two hidden away.
Mothers lie. Ministers cheat. And the boyfriend? He’s always guilty. If you were to call me and the word boyfriend comes up, we both already know what I’m going to find.
Vampires, they can’t be trusted at all. Not even a little bit.
This one’s no different.
He blinks his violent blue eyes at me. They’re pretty today, really. At least this time his eyes are not shadowed with the blood of his dinner lingering in his gaze.
They looked… gentle. And a little remorseful, if I didn’t know any better.
His dirty black boots scrape against the pavement as he looks away from me. The red line between us is a glaring notation. He doesn’t touch it.
Nor do I.
“Miss Vega cannot make it today. I’ve been advised to dismiss you this month.” There’s definitely something hidden behind those pretty prep-schoolboy eyes when he finally brings his attention back to me.
He can pretend to be proper and fake being polite,but we both know he isn’t.
A beat passes in silence as I pick apart his words, his stance, his stare, his every minute detail.
Dark c
ircles rim his inky lashes. His already lean frame has a more careless slouch today, if that’s even possible. A tired sort of stance. And as for what he just said… No one knows that I meet my twin sister here on the sixth of every month. He didn’t say Kyra asked him to send me an update, he said he had been advised…
By whom?
Who else could possibly know about me?
No one. Kyra wouldn’t take that chance. She wouldn’t dare tell anyone about her human sister.
Just like I wouldn’t even tell our mother that Kyra’s didn’t actually die two years ago. That she’s alive and... Well… as close to alive as an undead monster can be anyway.
So the bigger question isn’t who knows and who sent him, but…
“Why isn’t she here?” I take a single step closer to the dangerous line that to the average eye would be overlooked. And because of the magical spell interwoven with that line, it would naturally be avoided by the more oblivious of my kind.
Lucky them.
Prey tilts his head to the side, a smug smirk cutting over his lips as he looks down on me. His hands slide into his pockets as if he’s cold in the autumn weather but I know he feels nothing.
Not a damn thing.
“Careful, Pretty Human. You wouldn’t want to cross that line.”
My jaw grinds hard as I keep my mouth shut about the one thing I can never tell anyone. Especially his kind.
They’d kill me for it.
Because the humans who know about supernaturals, don’t step over into their world. And they’ve agreed not to come into ours.
My sister and I break this rule once a month. We don’t dare to break the rule often.
I break it more than they’ll ever know but that’s my own little secret for just me to keep.
“I want to see her myself.”
A car slows with squealing brakes as it travels down Crimson Road. Just as it nears the city line, the car comes to a full stop. The driver shakes his head. It takes him a minute to reevaluate whatever it is the magic shows him. A dead end? More endless road construction?
Whatever it is, he reverses because of it. He turns his little white sedan right around and will more than likely forget he ever drove down this cursed lane.
I wish I had.
Honestly, it would have been easier to believe Kyra had died that night on our eighteenth birthday. It was far easier than learning the twisted truth.
“I want to see her!” I state with an edge biting my tone.
I knew something would happen. I knew the moment she snuck directly into my apartment to confess her worst fears.
Those fears are clearly alive and well now.
“Did it ever occur to you that she doesn’t return that sweet sentiment? Perhaps she has grown tired of keeping the stale relationship with her weak little sister alive.” Everything he says is so condescending and cruel. It pains me not to throat punch him, just to cut into that obnoxiously proper tone of his a little.
I storm forward and maybe I will punch him. Maybe I’ll tackle his scrawny ass to the ground and give him a kick for every single spiteful thing he’s ever said to me over the last two years.
But I only make it one step.
My sneakers hit the red line and before I can lunge at him, he surprises me.
His shoulder slams into my stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I tense for the impact of the sidewalk to crash against my back.
But the collision never comes.
With a fluid movement, he flings my entire body over his shoulder and strides down the Chicago sidewalk in broad daylight. It’s a languid walk of complete casualness as I bring my knee to his chest over and over again, my nails claw into his back with every step he takes. Still, he just carries on as if there isn’t a hundred and thirty pound rabid cat of a woman hissing obscenities right to his very taut ass. God, why is his ass the only thing I can see right now? His slim jeans hang just a little, and I notice that his underwear is black as well, just as I predicted. And his shirt keeps riding up. Are those dimples? He has back dimples?
Stop making my heart stupid!
“Put me down!”
A sparking flick of sound strikes, then I hear him inhale deeply.
Is… is he having a smoke right now?
“No can do, Vega.”
The scent of nicotine hits my lungs as he flicks his ashes right into my face.
“Fucking Lost Boys wannabe!” I slam my fist into his back.
Someone passes by. A woman wearing a sweater and boots stares, but when she looks up at Prey…
“Little sisters. You know how they are. Am I right, Karen?” I can hear the cocky smirk in his tone.
Her face flushes bright red and she scurries off.
“Fucking cock-corpse! Put me down!”
“I would, but then you’d stop with all the pretty compliments, and my ego could really use a boost lately.” Another long drag sends another flurry of ashes into my face. “Tell me more about my dead hard cock, Pretty Pet.”
My fists clench so hard my nails sink through the skin.
“Where are you taking me?” I huff.
“Home. You’ve been ordered to stay home for the next seventy-two hours.” His cold palm against my thighs burns right through my jeans and sends a shiver slinking through my body. “We could have done this the easy way. You could have just left and let me follow you for the next three days, but no. You had to be a literal pain in my ass.”
He jumps over a puddle and my forehead bounces off said ass.
The grinding of my teeth is all I can do. I fold my arms and try to keep warm in my thin long-sleeved shirt.
I didn’t dress to be cuddling the dead today. He’s dropping my body heat just from being near me.
“Then just put me down and you can walk me home.”
“Sounds so much sweeter when you say it like that, Pet.”
My fists tighten beneath my arms as I roll my eyes hard.
“Want me to buy you flowers too?”
I keep my eyes closed and just try to endure the torment.
“If you count all of our little meetings, we would be well past the third date, you know? I hear that means something for you prudish human bitches.”
I exhale slowly.
Only two blocks. Two blocks and I’ll be home.
“Tell me, do you prefer cotton… or lace?” His big palm slides up my thigh and he pushes hard over the curve of my ass. “I bet you’re a cotton cunt, huh?”
And that’s the last thing he says to me before I decide I’ve had enough.
My palm bites into the back of his neck, holding his head firmly while my leg rises up as high as I can manage.
Then my knee clocks into his nose so hard I hear the crunch of bone as I’m falling. The sidewalk comes up fast and my palms break my fall with biting pain scraping into the skin. I’m on my feet and running before he lets out his first curse word.
Or even his second.
The sounds of my sneakers scuffing pavement and the slamming of my heartbeat become one and the same. It’s a psychotic symphony of sound filling my ears that just urges me to run faster. To make it back over to Crimson Road. I have to get there. I have to get over the line.
I have to see my sister.
I turn the corner sharply. It’s an alleyway just before Crimson Road. A rusted dumpster gives way to the rotting stench of old Chinese food. It’s just up ahead. All I have to do is make it just around that dumpster.
It’s just a few feet now...
It’s right there!
It’s—
Something solid strikes the back of my skull, but the pain doesn’t sink in as warmth slides down my head and hair. I blink, and then hands lock around my hips as I fall.
But never land. Black spots caress the edges of the sky as I stare up at the white and gray clouds.
And then Prey’s sneering smile gazes down on me.
“It was just a question. Fuck! I have nothing against cotton panties, Veg
a.” He kneels down between my thighs. I blink slowly at him and try to remember why I came this way to begin with. He shakes his head slowly, his smile faltering as he looks away. “Everything’s a mess. And now you are too.”
His arm slips beneath me and I curl into his chest as the whole world slips away from me.
“Why did you have to be twins?” It’s the last thing I hear him say. It’s a strange statement all on its own but the sadness in his tone is strangest of all.
Two
Kira
There’s a knocking in my skull. It’s the pound of pain that throbs through my head like thoughts trying to claw their way out.
I wince as I open my eyes to the dark, moonlit room. My room.
The floor creaks when I slowly sit up on my beige bedroom rug. A shiver races through me from how damn cold it is down here. The sheer green curtains on the wall to my left hint at a full moon above the sparse night clouds.
“What time is it?” I ask myself in an agonizing groan.
“Almost one o’clock in the a.m,” a rumbling voice answers.
I fling my head up so fast the room spins with violent colors.
“Prey,” I hiss at the man lounging lazily on my bed. His ankles are crossed and all I can dwell on are his dirty boots on my mother’s quilt.
“Whyyyy was I tossed on the floor while you’re making yourself comfy on my goddamn bed?”
His lip curls back as his fingers spread across his chest in feigned insult. “Pet, have some manners. I’m a guest.”
“You’re an assailant. You’re lucky I don’t report you.”
“Mmmm and who might you report me to? The human police?” His laughter cuts through the dark. His perfect white teeth shine in the shadows, so much so that the points on either side are emphasized like the animal that he is. “You’re all weak. Even your protectors.”
That’s the thing about vampires: They think they’re so far above everyone else. They think they can take and use and kill whoever they like. They think the little rules and regulations from their council balance and justify their nasty behavior.