by Maria Amor
“Business? You’re right about that much. It’s not. Doesn’t mean I’m not right. Do you really intend to give up because some pretty bartender tells you to?”
“Hey! That’s not fair!”
“Not much is. Look, if you want to hold off on your regular life for a little while, pay a visit to the address written on the back. If not, that’s your choice. Make the right one.”
The aging man slapped a wad of bills down on the bar and stood just as abruptly as he had interjected with his opinion. He never even looked at her as he headed up the stairs and into the newly chilly air, but she got the feeling he saw her all the same. She got the feeling he saw her better maybe than she even saw herself.
CHAPTER THREE
“Oh Jack! Oh, my god, Jack! Yes, yes, yes!”
The busty redhead he’d run into walking her dog on the street was bouncing enthusiastically on top of Jack, her hands up in her hair in a way that struck him as comical. It was almost like she was putting on a show of what she thought of how a woman was supposed to act like when she was getting her brains screwed out.
It was almost like a joke with a punchline only he could hear, and when he thought about it that way he had a moment when he was sure he wasn’t going to be able to keep from busting out laughing. He wanted to laugh, probably would later, but he wanted more not to cause a scene. Besides, he had been the one to lure her into this scenario in the first place. Not because he had really wanted to, because he hadn’t. It had been more of a game, a game it turned out he wasn’t very interested in.
“Oh god! Yes! I’m close! I’m so close! Are you close?”
Jack made a noncommittal noise, something that seemed to be enough to satisfy this woman whose name he couldn’t even remember. She had been out walking her dog on a dark street with street lamps that only sometimes worked. Jack had been on one of his rambling walks. It was what he did almost every night, at least on the nights when he wasn’t in one of the many vampire clubs popping up throughout the less prestigious areas of Austin, Texas.
The clubs were fine, just like everything else was fine, but every now and then, it got to feeling a little bit boring, a little bit too domesticated. It was at those times that Jack would take to the streets, what his sometimes friend with benefits and fellow vampire called his “ramblings for trouble.” He supposed that was exactly what he was doing, but what was wrong with that? He was a vampire, for Christ’s sake. Wasn’t he supposed to be looking for trouble? Wasn’t that pretty much one of the key elements of being what he was?
“Jack! Oh, Jack!”
He looked up to see her head tossed back, red hair flying, with her mouth open in a permanent moan of pleasure. Her massive breasts were bouncing up and down so enthusiastically that he wondered if they might not just jump up and hit her in the face.
Her hands were splayed out on his chest, her fingernails digging into his skin in a way that would have probably drawn blood had he been a different sort of man. Or, to be more precise, if he had been a man at all.
He could feel the folds of her sex closing more and more tightly around his shaft as her hips gyrated with an enthusiasm that he could only think to describe as admirable. While his mind wasn’t nearly as interested in what was going on as it should have been, his body was responding exactly the way it should be.
He could feel the blood rushing to the one place this chick was really interested and his hands moved up to her waist without even realizing he was doing it. Her back arched further and then she let out a scream. She actually screamed with pleasure and then bucked forward, her breasts grazing his chest as she rode out the orgasm he had given her.
She took his earlobe into his mouth and, with her hips still riding him like he was some kind of a carnival ride, led him to his own happy ending. With a groan, he released himself inside of her, feeling himself quiver with relief.
For a moment, the two of them remained in just that position, both of them in the kind of sex haze that offered life’s most complete distraction. Jack would have been fine with staying that way for a while longer, but the woman who was still on top of him seemed to have other ideas.
“That was totally amazing.”
He made a grunting sound, neither an agreement nor a contradiction, and hoped it would be enough to shut her up. Why the hell did women do this, anyway? Didn’t they realize that no man wanted to have a chat right after sex? Especially not when he was still inside of her, for fuck’s sake.
Like she could hear the thoughts in his head, the chick rolled off him, burying her head in the crook of his arm like there was some kind of actual, real intimacy between them. Jack wasn’t a fan of the cuddling, but he was hoping that she might be content enough with that to stop talking. Fortune, apparently, was not on his side. Go figure, right? Served him right for thinking he could just screw her and not have to pay any kind of price. That kind of thing almost never happened.
“It was amazing, right? Don’t you think it was amazing?”
“It was good.”
“Good? That’s all? You think it was only good?”
Her voice had taken on a pouty, whiny tone that Jack didn’t care for at all. He wasn’t sure what exactly this girl wanted from him, but he knew for damn sure that he wasn’t prepared to give it to her.
She should have known what this was getting into, and if she didn’t, well as far as he was concerned, that was on her. It wasn’t like he had abducted her and dragged her to his apartment, after all. He wasn’t asking her to stay, either.
“It was good. Yeah, it was good. Fine.”
“Fine?! Seriously? Wow, you really know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to be making you feel special. Is that a given when you’re fucking these days?”
She let out an exasperated exhalation of air and leaped to her feet. Jack thought it was probably pretty hard to look indignant when you were buck-ass naked, but this chick was doing a pretty good job of it.
She stood with her hands on her hips, a look of disgust in her eyes and her large, perky breasts pointed at him with nipples that were still hard. Or maybe hard again. Hell, maybe she was one of those girls who got like that any time she got any kind of excited, whether it was sexual or angry or something else entirely. It wasn’t like he would know. He didn’t know anything about her.
“You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?”
“I believe I’ve been told.”
“So like, what’s your deal? You just charm random girls and bring them home? Just so you can be mean to them after you get what you want?”
“Look,” he propped himself up on his elbows, feeling himself losing his patience with this whole scene. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about. You asked me a question, I answered it. It was good. It was a good way to pass a Friday night. It’s not winning any awards or anything. If you don’t like it, feel free to leave.”
“So now you want me to leave?”
“If you like. Or stay for a while. Although I don’t know how long I would leave my dog tied to a street pole if I were you.”
She made a little screeching sound and threw the closest thing she could find. It happened to be a very old, very expensive vase that sat on one of his bedside tables. He moved his head as it went soaring through the air and shattered when it hit the wall behind him. He turned his neck to survey the damage and then turned back to look at the one who had thrown it. If he had been losing his patience before, it was more than gone at this point. She must have seen it, too, because she stopped her screaming and took a quick, uncertain step backwards.
“Are you done?”
“I don’t know,” she answered with a false toughness neither of them believed. “I haven’t decided yet. Are you done being an ass?”
“No, I don’t believe I am. What I can tell you, however, is that I believe it’s time for you to go. I don’t care for people destroying my things. I must say, you’ve overstayed your welcome.”
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br /> She made a strangled sound that landed somewhere between a yell and a sob and bent to retrieve her clothing as quickly as she could manage. He didn’t move as she dressed, didn’t say another word. He knew he should feel bad for treating her this way, but it was an emotion he just couldn’t manage to muster up.
All he did was watch as she gathered her belongings and stormed toward his door. She opened it, but turned, yelling out to him to make damn sure he got an earful of her parting words.
“Pricks like you always get what you deserve. I hope you know that. I don’t even know why I went with you in the first place, but I hope to god I never see you again. You’ll get what you deserve. You’ll get what you deserve for sure.”
She slammed the door hard enough to knock a picture off the wall, something else expensive and irreplaceable. But then again, that was what most of the things he had decorating his place were. That’s what happened when you had lived for almost two hundred years.
You collected things that most normal people would have been happy to see in just a museum, let alone right in front of them. All those precious things should have meant something to him. They probably had, at some point. But now? Now, they were only more things for him to look at and not find terribly exciting. That was one of the major bummers about living forever that nobody ever told you about. Things got really fucking stagnant.
“Bravo, Jack. I mean really, job well done.”
Christ, the hits just kept on coming, didn’t they? Not that this was a hit he was all that upset about. Scarlett Belmont was the kind of girl who had a habit of coming and going as she pleased. She’d done so ever since the two of them had met, somewhere around the year 1900 in a dirty little hovel of an apartment in the not-so-nice area of Paris.
Out of the many women Jack had experienced, and he’s guess it was somewhere well into the thousands at this point, she was the only one who’d ever stuck. Not that it was anything special. More so it was an occasional meeting born out of familiarity and whenever Scarlett happened to be around. Jack thought of her as a kind of an alley cat. She had never taken to being tied down to one place, one home.
She wasn’t even content to live a long-term nomadic life as many of their kind did. With Scarlett, staying put in one location for even a month was almost impossible. Jack would go whole years without ever seeing her and then he’d look up and there she would be. Just like she was now.
“Scarlett.”
“Oh lord, don’t you just know how to make a woman feel special?”
“Not doing it for you?”
“No, darling, not at all. If you aren’t careful, I’ll think you aren’t happy to see me. Please, tell me that’s not the case. You’ll hurt my feelings. You know how delicate I can be.”
“Delicate? Please. Delicate is nothing I would use to describe you. Not now, not ever.”
“Oh, all right, but you could have at least pretended. Played along with the ruse, shall we say. You never know, do you? Maybe I’m looking for someone to make me feel more feminine. Maybe that’s why I’ve come here to begin with.”
As she spoke, Scarlett bent and undid the straps of her incredibly high heeled sandals. As she did so, her mahogany hair, set in rich, loose curls, fell into her face. She looked almost more animal than human. That was the kind of vampire Scarlett was. Her body was lithe and supple, her heart shaped face and wide blue eyes making her look caught somewhere between girl and grown woman.
She was heart-breaking even to look at, but the sweetness of her appearance was nothing but an illusion. It was an illusion she used to her advantage, that was for sure. She gave Jack a veiled look, like she knew exactly what he was thinking (which, come to think of it, she probably did) and then perched on the end of his bed. No, not on the end of it. Not on the foot of the bed the way a person might.
She literally sat on the foot of the bedframe, perching on the antique brass foot board as if she weighed nothing at all. She was nothing human. Even if Jack hadn’t known that, he would have been able to tell by looking at her now. He felt the same complex stirring of emotions he had felt about her for more than a century. There was a part of him that loved her, and an equal part that felt something very close to loathing.
It was the way the two of them were together. They had always been that way and would go on like that until either the world ended or one of them decided to make a last stand out in the desert and go the way of the ancient ones who were too tired to keep on living. One thing was for certain. Predator or not, which she surely was, Scarlett had zero problems looking feminine.
“Is that it then? Are you looking to get some compliments? If so, you know you’ve come to the wrong place. I’ve used up my compliments for you long ago.”
“That’s true. Although you could always give it a try.”
“Interesting. Do you have any compliments for me?”
“For you? Oh god no. You’re such a mess, after all. But then you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I guess I did. Still, you do seem to keep showing up.”
“Yes,” she sighed, her lip poking out in a pout that was insanely sensual. “You’re right about that. A glutton for punishment, I suppose. And then there’s the comfort of the familiar and all of that. Really, there’s no excuse for it. I should just go back the way I came.”
“No,” Jack answered quickly, hating himself for wanting her to be there at all. “Don’t do that. You haven’t even told me why you’re here.”
“Because I’m bored, that’s why. Why else would I be here? I must say, I’ve already been infinitely entertained since being here. Who was that woman?”
“Honestly? I have no clue.”
“Of course, you don’t. So why were you so awful to her?”
“Was I?”
“Oh, come on. You know you were! And apparently, it was for no reason at all!”
“I thought it would be fun. I was wrong. I let her go though, didn’t I? I could have made her stay, but I let her go. That should count for something, don’t you think?”
“Oh brother. It should count for something? Spoken like a true man. Always wanting your actions to ‘count’ for something, you men. I suppose it does, although the poor girl won’t ever know what a bullet she’s dodged by being thrown so unceremoniously out of your loft. Oh well. Such is the plight of the put upon, isn’t that so, love? To never be given the credit they deserve.”
“Ha ha. Fine. I see your point. Now seriously, why are you here, Scarlett?”
“Really, for no reason in particular. I just felt like it was time to blow back into town, see what kind of trouble you lot have been getting into. Are the Austin crows still the same?”
“Roughly. You know how it goes. Vampires come and then they go. They choose to move on the way that you so often do, or else they choose to go the way of the elders.”
“Has that happened here?”
There was a sharp tone to her voice that Jack didn’t often hear. It was the only thing that gave away any concern on her part at all. The rest of her, her posture and her beautiful, impassive face, gave the appearance of her having not a single care in the world. Only Jack knew better. He had known her long enough to be able to see through some of the minute cracks in her almost-flawless veneer. Even so, she remained largely a mystery to him, and also, he thought, to herself.
“Of course, it has. It always does. Texas is a good place for it. You know that. So much dry land the closer you get to El Paso. The desert is the perfect place to go to die.”
“Except that it’s worse than death.”
She was right about that. Jack didn’t doubt it for a moment. To die was one thing, and one thing that man and monster feared alike. To allow oneself to turn to stone, though; that was another thing entirely. The amount of desperation a vampire must feel to subject himself to such a fate was incomprehensible.
Even thinking about it gave him a little shudder and when he looked at Scarlett, he could see that a dark cloud had passed ov
er her face. It was only when she noticed that he was looking at her that it cleared. Old friends or not, she would not tolerate looking weak in front of him; not in front of him or anyone else.
“Well, that was foolish of them. We’re better off without the ones like them, our race. It’s too weak to be born. Now, if you aren’t terribly opposed to the idea, get up. I’ve heard the number of vampire clubs in this city is staggering at this point. I think it’s time you take me out to see what’s changed.”
Jack was terribly tired, but he wouldn’t tell her no. Besides, what else was there for him to do? He could sit around and brood like he had so frequently been doing these past days (or months, really), but that was beyond boring. At least with Scarlett, there would be a shot of something interesting cropping up. Possibly dangerous, but definitely interesting as well. He stood, his thoughts on which club she might like to visit best. It was the sound of her clearing her throat dramatically that brought him back to where he actually was.
“Um, Jack?”
“Hmm?”
“Were you planning on going like that?”
He looked down and saw that he was completely naked. She grinned, shook her head, and headed for his front door.
“Don’t tempt me, Jack. There’ll be plenty of time for that later, if the mood should strike me. For now, I’ll be waiting outside. Make yourself decent. I’m ready for a drink.”
*
“Oh. My. God.”
It was going to be too awful to tolerate. She could already tell. It wasn’t often that Delaney allowed herself to get really, truly smashed, but last night she most definitely had. The loss of her job had hit her harder than she would have liked to admit. Sure, she could say that she had basically quit, but at the end of the day did that really matter? Like, at all?
Fired or quit, it all boiled down to the same exact thing. She was now out of a job, and that was a bad thing. She had rent coming up, for one thing, and debt she needed to pay. She had all the bills an adult was forced to carry except that now she didn’t have the funds to take care of them. And on top of that, she now also had the most banging headache she could remember having in a long, long time.