Colleen fully intended to stay above the waist. There was plenty there to keep her occupied. She was therefore surprised when Wallace covered her hands with his own and guided her touches down Jeremy’s ribs to his hips. He slid both their fingers under Jeremy’s waistband. Jeremy gasped.
“Lose the pants,” Wallace ordered.
“Wallace, we can’t,” Jeremy protested in a thready voice. “Gus is coming over. He’ll be here in an hour.”
“Then we better move fast. Drop ’em, Scarecrow.”
Wallace released Colleen’s hands, so she could fumble Jeremy’s belt open and attack his fly. Her quick actions saved the zipper from destruction, but only just. Wallace yanked Jeremy’s slacks down to his ankles then did the same to his briefs. Free at last, his cock sprang out and up, wriggling like an eager puppy begging for affection.
The temptation proved too great to resist. Colleen took his dick in her mouth and slid her lips down its entire length before it even occurred to her Wallace might want a turn. After all, this whole torment-the-human-slave thing had been his idea. However, he said nothing and made no move to stop her. So he wanted to watch? Okay, then. He could watch her drive Jeremy right up and over the wall.
She set a deliberately slow pace, designed to torture and tease. It felt wicked to indulge herself in this way while indulging him. She let her tongue have its way with his silky, throbbing flesh and made sure to pay special attention to his head and hairy base, which she knew to be his favorite spots. She fingered his balls only briefly and grinned around his cock when he swore at her. Half the time Jeremy rushed through his foreplay and rode her hard and fast. Fun, but not for every encounter. Maybe after this he’d take the hint.
Jeremy blurted something. It came out muffled. Curious, Colleen cricked her neck to see what was going on upstairs. She got a glimpse of Wallace’s wrist crushed against Jeremy’s mouth, and Jeremy’s lips working hungrily. A line of blood ran down Wallace’s forearm.
Holy God, was he—
Jeremy’s hips spasmed, and he came explosively at the back of her throat. Colleen sat down hard on the kitchen floor and swallowed reflexively. Far above her, Jeremy swallowed as well. Wallace coiled around him and kissed his lips and chin. When the vampire leaned back, all smudges of blood had been cleaned from Jeremy’s face.
“Now that,” Wallace pronounced, “was hello.”
“Oh. Oh God.” Jeremy clutched at Wallace’s arms to maintain his balance. He glanced at the clock on the wall and swore afresh. “Gus will be here any minute, and I don’t even have dinner started.”
“Gus will run late like he always does, and you know he’s not staying for dinner. I’ll bet you’ve got time for a shower.” He slapped Jeremy’s naked ass. “Go on, go make yourself pretty. We’ll hold down the fort.”
“You’re monsters. Both of you.”
“Just the way you want us, you bat-loving slut. We’re always happy to oblige. Right, sweetheart?”
Colleen wiped her mouth to buy time. “I’ll make dinner. I was planning to anyway.”
“You heard the lady. Go get yourself cleaned up.” Wallace smacked a wet kiss on Jeremy’s cheek. “Better hurry, before we muss you up again.”
“I hate you both,” Jeremy said, though with a sated smile that proclaimed just the opposite. He paused to brush Colleen’s tousled hair away from her face before he tugged his briefs and slacks back up over his hips. He stumbled from the kitchen without bothering to zip up. At the doorway he paused. “Nobody touches anything until you wash your hands.”
“Yes, Mom,” Wallace said. Jeremy made a face at him and headed for the stairs.
“I should clean up, too.” Colleen started to scramble off the floor. Wallace caught her arms and lifted her easily and set her on her feet. “Thanks,” she said, with a little too much heartiness. “I left groceries by the front door. I hope you guys like Swedish meatballs.”
“I’ll tell you what I like.”
His mouth attacked hers like a predator. Colleen stiffened involuntarily, instinctively. Wallace didn’t seem to care. He took his time, fully exploring her mouth, all the places Jeremy’s dick had been only minutes ago. He withdrew at last with a half growl, half chuckle.
“You and Scarecrow,” he rumbled. “Two great tastes that taste great together.”
Taste. She had the taste of Jeremy’s blood on her tongue now, stolen from Wallace’s mouth. “I saw what you did,” she said. “You made him drink your blood.”
“I can’t make him do anything. You should know that by now. He only took a gulp or two, same as I did. We do it all the time.”
“You’re turning him into a vampire.”
“No way. I’d have to drain him for that to happen. A sip every now and then won’t hurt him, and he knows it.” He leered at her wickedly. “In fact, it gets him horny. Want to go surprise him in the shower?”
“Don’t you ever quit?”
“Never. When you quit, you die. I’ve been fighting dead for way too long.” He pulled her more tightly against him. His lips teased a line down her cheek to her neck. He made no attempt to bite down. His hand crept under her blouse and found her nipple through the thin barrier of her bra. Colleen gasped and pressed into his caress.
“This is why I keep going back to chicks,” he murmured. “Dicks are a blast, but sometimes I just miss tits.”
“You’re so deep.”
“Don’t get all self-righteous with me, sweetheart. You’re not any different.” He scraped his teeth along her throat while his hand continued to torment her breast.
Colleen knew she ought to be terrified. She’d just seen him bite and drink from Jeremy. Right now, though, terror of him was the furthest thing from her mind. She made no effort to escape, even when he released her breast and transferred his hand to her thigh. His palm slid brazenly inward and upward, stopping just short of the spot that ached the most for his touch.
She tightened her legs to trap his hand. Without meaning to, she growled aloud.
Wallace answered in kind. His finger pressed against her panty-shielded slit. “I know you, sweetheart,” he rumbled against the pulse in her throat. “I’ve been in your head. There’s a predator inside you. She likes to play with fire. You’re as close to a bat as a breather can get. No wonder Scarecrow’s so hot for you.”
The reference to vampires doused the fire Wallace was playing with. She pushed at his chest. “I should get dinner started.”
He caught her arms. “Stay.”
“Gus is coming over. We need to get ready.”
“I meant when this is over. Stay with us—him. Will you stay with him?”
Taken aback by his intensity, Colleen stumbled over her answer. “You mean live here? With both of you?”
“Forget about me for a minute. Think about him. You care about him, right?”
Care sounded so inadequate when she considered her feelings. “It hardly matters, does it? He belongs to you. He loves you.”
“That’s because he’s an asshole. A stupid, stubborn, human son of a bitch.” He looked away from her to the corner where he’d tossed Jeremy’s shirt. “He’s going to die.”
Colleen’s blood dropped a good ten degrees. “But he’s—”
“Mortal. He won’t let me turn him. I keep asking, and he just laughs. He says he’s happy with the way things are. Well, I’m not.” His undead body mimicked a sigh. “Maybe that’s just as well. He’d make a sucky vampire, no pun intended. But being mortal’s suckier. Mortals age and die. I used to be the old man of the team. Now Annie and Gus are older than I am. Someday they’ll be gone, and so will he, and I’ll still be like this.”
Tentatively, Colleen touched his face. “Maybe he’ll change his mind.”
“He won’t. Jesus Christ, I thought I was stubborn. He’s got me beat by a long shot.” He wound his fingers through her hair. “I guess mortality has its perks. I look at Annie and Gus, and I can see how happy they are. I want that for him. If he’s going to stay h
uman, then he deserves someone to grow old with, somebody he can have a family with. A real family, not a flock. That isn’t me. That can’t be me. He shouldn’t want to give up his life just to be my bitch. He should have the life I got gypped out of.”
“Maybe,” she said tartly, “he doesn’t want that. Maybe, just maybe, he really does love you. It sounds to me like he’s capable of making his own decisions.”
“Yeah, well, Scarecrow’s got a history of making piss-poor ones. I don’t want to see him having regrets when he’s eighty. I’d rather see him surrounded by grandkids, with his wife by his side.” He smiled wistfully. “Grandkids would be nice. Especially if they had your eyes.”
“That won’t happen.” Colleen struggled to free herself from his embrace. He refused to let her go, which only made her angrier. “What do you think I am anyway, some toy you can throw at your boyfriend? Maybe you’d like to bounce me against the wall and play catch.”
“C’mon, sweetheart, you know I know better. You’re not the kind of girl who gets handed around. You’re too tough for that.” He grinned. “You’re a female me.”
“That isn’t a compliment.” She renewed her struggles until he relented and released her. Colleen stepped out of reach. “So, how would it work? Would you bite me, too? Make me your slave? Breed us like a couple of pedigreed dogs? How’s that any different from what the other vampires want me for?”
She regretted it the instant she said it, even before Wallace’s expression hardened. Of course it was different. He was different. She looked away from the flash of red in his jungle eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“The hell you didn’t. You’re scared. I get it. You don’t like bats. There’s not too much to like about us. I told you, this isn’t about me. It’s about Scarecrow. Do you love him? Do you want to make him happy?”
That was only half the question. She caught the rest like a desperate whisper inside her mental ear. “What about you?” she said. “Would my being here make you happy?”
Wallace took her hand and placed it against his chest. “I don’t know if you can feel it, but my heart’s beating. It does that when I’m around you. Sometimes it’s a once and done. Right now it’s going full out. It’s never done that with anyone else but him. When I’m near you, it’s almost like I’m alive again.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Not that it matters. We both know I’m not. And you’re mortal, too.”
She looked into his face, the face that had been thirty-two years old for over three decades now, and would go on being thirty-two for possibly decades more. Without Jeremy. Without Annie and Gus. Without her. She swallowed hard. “I have to think about it.”
“Fair enough. It wouldn’t be an Ozzie and Harriet white-picket-fence kind of life. More like Ozzy and Sharon. Scarecrow, you, and the Prince of Fucking Darkness.” He snorted. “Maybe if we paint the picket fence black it’ll work.”
“There won’t be children. There just won’t. There can’t be.”
He raised a brow. “Hey, it’s not like I’m forcing you. It’s just, you and Scarecrow together, y’know. Nature does tend to take its course.”
“Not with me.” She looked away. “There won’t be any children.”
“Okay.” He let go of her hand. “Just stay with him. That’s all I’m asking.” He glanced toward the clock above the sink. “Gus should be getting off work about now. With the drive time, and the way he dawdles, we’ve got maybe forty-five minutes to make ourselves presentable.”
She started to speak when she heard Jeremy moving around upstairs. He must be out of the shower. When she turned back to Wallace he’d put the length of the kitchen between them. He bent to pick up Jeremy’s shirt. Colleen headed for the front door. The groceries she’d left there made an excellent excuse.
“Don’t forget to wash your hands,” she tossed back over her shoulder.
“Pushy bitches everywhere,” he grumbled. “I’m surrounded.”
Chapter 13
Gus arrived twenty minutes later than Wallace’s generous estimate. Wallace looked pointedly at the kitchen clock. “Kiss my balding bean,” Gus said. “You try walking out on a teenage girl who’s convinced her whole world is ending. For ‘whole world,’ read ‘dick of a boyfriend.’ Her parents are acquaintances of ours, so they dumped her and her drama in my lap.” He thumped Jeremy on the back. “You’re doing teen counseling now, right? I think I’ll dump her in yours. One look at you and she’ll forget all about Mr. High School Running Back Dickwad. I’m pretty sure that isn’t his real name.”
“Thanks,” Jeremy said. “How soon should I tell her I live with a man?”
“Wait for Daddy’s check to clear. Mmm.” He’d spotted the sandwiches Colleen and Jeremy had opted for in place of cooking. “Those look good.”
“We figured you’d want to eat on the run,” Wallace said. “What have you got for us?”
“Not a whole helluva lot. The little we pieced together, though, doesn’t look good.” He plucked a turkey sandwich from the tray and crammed a huge bite into his mouth while he dug papers out of his briefcase. “Annie typed it up to save your eyes. I’ll take one of these home as a thank you.” He handed the papers to Colleen with a fatherly pat on the arm. “Good, you’re already sitting down. You’re not going to like this.”
“What’s the bad news?” Wallace asked.
“In a nutshell? Hang on to your hats, kids. We think the commune may have been way older than a once-and-done blood bank, and it may have been more than just a blood bank.”
“What do you mean, older? Like, back to the sixties?” Colleen said, thinking of hippies.
“Try 1860s,” Gus said. “Maybe farther back. For vampires, that’s not such a big deal. Barring stakes and sunlight, they can hang around a while. That isn’t the kicker. This is—we think it may have been the same women.”
“The women?” Colleen’s throat went dry. “No. My mom was human. All the moms were human. They went out in the daytime. I saw them.”
“Let me rephrase that. Of course the women were human. However, there were earlier blood banks. We were checking for similarities when Annie spotted this.” He flipped through the papers until he reached a copy of a newspaper article with a dateline of August 17, 1903. “This was from Billings, Montana. A group of women held captive in an isolated spot. One was a prominent rancher’s wife and another was a judge’s daughter, that’s how names got in. Here’s the list of rescuees.” Gus tapped his finger at the end of a column. “Any look familiar?”
They all did. Oaks. Lake. Waters. Waterson. Forrester. Colleen refused to read beyond “Forrester.” She felt sick.
“Woods and waters,” Jeremy murmured.
“The same names,” Gus agreed. “The same families. Of course the paper didn’t mention vampires, but I’m betting that ‘posse’ that freed them was made up of slayers. There’s another story in there, too, somewhere. Nevada, 1947. This time a senator’s daughter made the news. Same setup, remote hideout, group of captive women. The girl’s name was Jeanette Bollinger. Her mother’s maiden name was Woods. There could be others. It’s hard to tell. Most of Allen’s info was secondhand, and names didn’t always get mentioned. We got lucky with these.”
“Is this normal?” Colleen asked. “I mean, when vampires put together a–a blood bank, do they keep going back to the same families? Like a tradition or something?”
“I’ve never heard of them doing that,” Gus said, “but vampires do tend to fixate. If this is the same flock, and it’s starting to shape up that way, then for some reason they’ve fixated on these particular women. So far, it looks like we’ve got at least three instances involving the same bunch. Each time there’s a break in the operation, they pick up again with their victims’ descendants. That’s fixation plus.”
“Why? Why us?” Colleen aimed this at Wallace. “What’s the attraction?”
“How the hell would I know? It’s not like they send me the newsletter.”
“The same families,” Jeremy said. “The same bloodlines. Always women, so they can reproduce. Like—” He caught Colleen’s expression and snapped his jaw shut.
She finished for him. “Like pedigreed livestock. For a breeding program.” She looked to Gus. “Breeding for what?”
“You got me,” Gus said. “I’d say blood, since that’s all a vampire’s interested in. Even that’s a stretch. Blood is blood to them.”
“Not always,” Wallace said grimly. “There are different degrees. Some people really do taste better than others. Maybe they’re aiming for more iron. Or low-cal. Maybe after centuries of sucking on cholesterol-choked vics they want to shuck some weight.”
“Not helping,” Colleen muttered.
“We can rule out docile temperament.” Wallace patted her shoulder. Even his touch had a smirk in it.
“It may not be blood at all,” Jeremy said. “What about your psychic powers? You can hear vampires. Maybe that’s what they want. And look at the relatives of some of the victims. Judges. Senators. Rich men. Women vampires could telepathically control, who could give them access to money and power, would be worth more to them than blood.”
“An excellent theory, Dr. Watson,” Gus said, “except none of the women from the Woods and the Waters fit the high-society category. As near as Annie and I could dig up, they were all just average girls from average families. Not a Lucy Skywalker or Harriet Potter in the bunch. Same thing goes for their daughters. Unless,” he added to Colleen, “you plan to marry the president.”
“It doesn’t matter. None of it.” Colleen caught the flatness in her own voice and snorted bitterly. “They’re wasting their time. Whatever they want, they won’t get it from me. I can’t have children. The Forrester bloodline ends here.”
Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 16