“I admit it, I do have a lot of sex…just not as much as everyone thinks.” He decided to be honest with her. “The piercing, and my resulting reputation, have made me very popular in a number of clubs throughout the city. I don’t have to spend much time chitchatting in order to get what I need. I go in and, snap, I have it.”
Her face lit up with an expression that was both incredulous and disbelieving at the same time. “So you mean you could enter a club and be going at it with some chick in what…ten minutes?”
“Or less.”
She knocked him in the arm. His bad one. And it didn’t even hurt. “That is so… You are such a man whore. What if that were me and I were the one trolling the bars looking for men to hook up with?”
“Well, I would hope you were doing it because you wanted to and not because you felt it was the only way you could survive.”
Her gaze was blisteringly hot on his face for a moment. What? Did she not believe him? If he weren’t so paranoid that he was reverting and that people would find out, he wouldn’t be nearly such a man whore. Oh, he’d be no saint, but things wouldn’t have gone as far as they had.
Then she flipped her hair decisively over one shoulder and straddled his body. She reached back roughly and his erection jerked when she grabbed it. She lifted her bottom, positioning the tip between her folds.
Oh, God, this was going to be so good, he thought, his toes curling with anticipation. She was marginally pissed off and in charge.
Grasping her buttocks, he rolled his hips upward, hoping to push in farther, but she lifted herself up just enough that the tip was the only part of him inside.
He couldn’t concentrate. What was he thinking about before? Every nerve ending along his shaft tingled with anticipation and demanded attention. His need was as raw now as when she first climbed into the shower with him. She may be the one in control here, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t coax her along. He ran his hands along the smooth skin of her back, feeling her lean muscles, then over the swell of her buttocks until his fingertips touched where their bodies were joined.
Come on, just a little bit more. Please.
“Damn you, Jackson. You’re everything I ran from all my life, and yet, you’re everything I seem to need.”
With an arm on either side of his head, she eased herself down and he slid into heaven. Soft moans and a few loud ones filled the room. It wasn’t until they finished making love that he realized he’d forgotten all about his rules and had kissed her over and over.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NO TRESPASSING SIGN LOOMED up ahead and Jackson pulled his truck to the side of the road, careful not to get too close to the bushes. If he’d known there was nowhere decent to park his nice rig out here in the sticks, he’d have suggested they take her piece-of-shit Caddy.
“Are you sure this is it?” Dense forest surrounded them on both sides and he couldn’t see even a pathway in anywhere.
She opened the glove box for the light and checked her notepad. “Yep. According to Blake, the boy whose friend went missing, they parked just ahead of that sign. There’s an indentation in the bushes that leads to a path, but it’s really overgrown and easy to miss unless you’re really looking for it. He said to look for some trash at the trailhead. Beer bottles, fast-food wrappers, cigarette butts. The kind of litter that high-school kids would leave when they all come out to a place like this to scare the crap out of themselves.”
“Condoms? Pop-can bongs?”
She threw him a sidelong glance. “Do a bunch of partying as a kid?”
“Some, but I’ve broken up my fair share of parties lately. Vampire, human. Youthlings are all the same.”
“Do you have the flashlight?” She grabbed the camera and video recorder.
He flicked it on and pointed it under his chin, illuminating his face. “I need you,” he said in a fake monster voice.
She laughed. “Stop that. You’re freaking me out. Besides, I’ve heard that the people who live in the houses surrounding the Devil’s Backbone have guns and threaten trespassers.”
He laughed. “What? Are you going tell me next that they’re not afraid to use them?”
“I know, it sounds ridiculous, like something from a movie, but that’s the rumor. I heard it from more than one person on Paranormalish.”
“Do you believe everything you read online? But hey, if I lived in one of these houses and kids were traipsing through my yard all the time to get to that old sanitarium, I’d be pissed, too.”
“So you’d use a gun?”
“No, but I wouldn’t do anything to stop that rumor.”
Since there were no streetlights and the moon was behind heavy cloud cover, he could’ve easily shadow-moved in the darkness and gotten to the location in a fraction of the time—but they weren’t in a hurry. He enjoyed walking with her.
“Oh, there’s the blue house that Gary425 was talking about,” she said, pointing. “If we pass that, we’ve gone too far.”
He laughed. “Who’s Gary425? I thought you were talking about Blake?”
“He’s this really sweet guy who follows my blog.”
“Gary425? Why not just Gary?”
“That’s how I’ve always known him,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s his screen name.”
“And you trust guys you meet online?”
“It’s not like I’m meeting him face-to-face. Besides, I’ve gotten to know him pretty well over the years and he’s a good guy.”
“How do you know he’s not lying to you, giving you some fake story about who he is?”
She shrugged. “I suppose that’s possible. It’s not like I cyberstalk everyone who posts on my blog. But you get a feel for people when you’ve been doing this for as long as I have. You can sense the ones with a good heart, those who care about what you’ve written and comment thoughtfully. Even though you’ve never met in person, you develop a sense of trust, respect, even, but it’s not something that happens overnight. It’s not like someone emails me and, boom, I’m accepting an invitation for coffee.”
“Someone could be using a fake picture, make you think they look like some hot guy when, in fact, they’re a dirty old man. Who is this Gary guy, anyway?”
“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “Everyone uses fake pictures. Hell, for a while, my profile picture was a shirtless Alexander Skarsgard. People don’t actually think ASkars is Icy Shadows who runs Paranormalish. It’s just what everyone does online.”
“ASkars?” Jackson laughed so hard that his stomach hurt and his eyes were watering.
“Shut up,” she said, giggling. “You’re totally going to wake the neighbors. Oh, look. You were right. Condom wrappers. This must be it.”
They stepped around a large pile of grass clippings, probably put there by neighbors to cover up the path, and trekked through the woods.
“So, what’s Gary’s story?” Jackson asked skeptically. “Why is he so interested in the paranormal?”
She shrugged. “Why are any of my followers? Why am I? We find the subject matter fascinating, entertaining, a little scary, maybe. Like the kids who come to the Devil’s Backbone. People are curious about the unknown. And I suppose that some of us are simply looking for answers.”
“You know, you’ve never told me why you started the blog in the first place.”
She pulled her video camera from its case and looped the strap around her wrist. “I’ve told you about what happened to my mom, right?”
He nodded.
“Well, I knew what I saw, but no one believed me, no matter how hard I tried. My great-aunt told me I was lying, that I couldn’t have possibly seen those shadows come alive and take my mom. But I wouldn’t back down. I was adamant. It got so bad between the two of us that one day, sh
e even accused me of being in cahoots with the devil. Ha. Maybe I’ll see him at the bottom of the Devil’s Backbone.”
He held a branch to the side, allowing Arianna to pass.
She continued, “I started the blog as a way to search for the truth, as well as to prove to myself that I wasn’t crazy. That there were other people out there who believed me, who maybe had stories of their own to tell. Turns out there are plenty. Some have had their own experiences, some of them just like talking about it. Paranormalish isn’t some fun little hobby of mine. It’s helped me validate myself and know that I’m not a freak, unlike what relatives had been telling me over the years.”
He’d never really thought about how profoundly the actions of his kind affected humans. Sure, he felt badly when Guardians failed to save someone, but he hadn’t considered much beyond that, never put a face to the pain, till now. It was bad enough that Arianna grew up without a mother because of Darkbloods, but then to be treated the way she was, which had damaging effects on her self-image and self-identity… Well, it pissed him off.
“I can see why you started Paranormalish. I’m glad you found people you could connect with.”
She squeezed his hand. “It means a lot to me that you understand. Not everyone does. That’s why I guard my identity so carefully. In addition to my aunt and uncle, I’ve had friends tease me, a boyfriend ridicule me and employers not take me seriously.”
Instantly he was on edge. “A boyfriend?”
“Yeah, several years ago, back before I started Paranormalish, I blogged under my real name. I wasn’t secretive about what I did. One day, he and his friends got drunk and used my computer to access my account. That’s what’s scary about the internet. With one click of that enter button, things that took months to create were destroyed in an instant.”
“What did he do?”
“He posted pictures of me that I never knew he’d taken. Naked…embarrassing pictures.”
An icy-hot anger flared inside Jackson. There was no excuse for a betrayal like that, especially from someone she clearly had trusted at one time. Maybe the guy needed a midnight visit from a real-life bogeyman.
“My reputation never recovered after that. It got to the point that I finally had enough and shut the blog down. I didn’t go online for ages, and when I did, I had to reinvent myself. That’s when I started Paranormalish. I vowed never to tell anyone who I was again. Hell, Xtark would fire my ass if they knew I was blogging and didn’t tell them, but that’s just too bad.”
He bristled at the mention of Xtark. They were much more than just bastards.
“Does knowing what happened to your mom and realizing you didn’t imagine things change anything now?” He stepped over a downed log then turned around to help her over.
She swiped at a strand of hair that had come loose from her braid. “Well, I do have answers, which is why I started the blog in the first place. It confirms what I knew for years to be the truth, and then some. Oh, look,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Is that it?”
The charred remains of a building sat in the middle of a clearing, its brick foundation crumbling and gaping like an old, unhealed wound. Just beyond it, the land seemed to slope away sharply. The ravine she’d heard about?
She pulled out her camera. “Can you take some pictures for me?”
He took it from her and lifted it up to look through the viewfinder.
“Wait. Not right this sec. The flash could alert the neighbors that someone’s here. I’m going to shoot some video first, get some of the sounds of the woods at night on camera. If you can aim the flashlight low onto some of the headstones, I’ll start taping. But remember, if you hear anyone coming, we need to ditch the light and run.”
He smiled at how she had it all planned out. He didn’t tell her that if a neighbor even so much as opened up a door, he’d hear them. But Arianna took lots of footage and photos, and not a single neighbor yelled at them for trespassing.
“I guess it is just an urban legend,” she said, pocketing the camera. “No ghosts, no demons, no thirteen steps leading into the ravine, where you could see the mouth of hell.”
“Yes, but that boy still went missing from here.”
“Do you think it could’ve been vampires?”
When she reached for his hand almost involuntarily, he smiled to himself. He liked that she instinctively considered him someone who’d protect her.
“It’s possible, yes.”
“Would you…you know…be able to smell them if it was?”
“Depends on how long ago it happened. Scents deteriorate quickly, especially in the rain, but then, I’m no tracker, either. I haven’t picked up on any lingering Darkblood scent around here, if that’s what you mean.”
“According to Blake’s brother, who still claims that the missing boy hadn’t been with them—”
“Their minds could’ve been wiped by the Darkbloods who took the boy.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.” She glanced around nervously and pointed. “They were exploring the far side of the ravine over there.”
“When did the boy go missing?”
“Around the time Krystal did. I remember because I was so distracted by what had happened to Krystal that I didn’t answer Blake’s email about his missing friend until a week after she turned up.”
“So, that means both disappearances happened around the same time?”
“A little too coincidental, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yep,” he agreed. “I’ll bet it was the same ones who took Krystal…or at least they were taken for the same purpose.”
Her eyes went wide. “You mean that party?”
He remembered a young victim, forced to dress up in a fireman’s costume. They’d gotten to him too late. Could that have been Blake’s friend? “Unfortunately, there were several sweetbloods we were unable to save that night.”
She was quiet for a while as they walked back down the path, their footsteps, night insects and the faraway howl of a coyote the only sounds they heard. “Well, at least you caught the ones responsible.”
Most, but not all, he almost said.
Once inside the truck, he turned to face her. “Does it seem less necessary to you now? The blog?” She looked confused, so he added, “You know, now that you know what happened to your mom and that it wasn’t your imagination, do you think you’ll stop blogging?”
He hoped her answer would be yes. Since he was part of the world her blog was trying to expose, he didn’t know how he could keep seeing her if she said no. Maybe now that she had answers, the blog wasn’t as important to her as it once was. She’d wrap up a few loose ends and then close it.
Although human and vampire relationships weren’t common, he knew of several couples, including Dom and Mackenzie, where things had worked out well. They met, fell in love. She became a changeling and made Dom a father. If only he could get this reverting shit under control, then a future was definitely possible with Arianna. Or at least he hoped it was. He had a pretty good idea Arianna felt the same way about him. He certainly had never been happier, more satisfied since the night she came crashing into his world. She complicated his life in the best way possible and he didn’t want things to end.
“While it helps to know the truth, it doesn’t change things. Paranormalish has become a part of me.... And I love it. Like I said, those people depend on me and I…well, I depend on them, too. They accepted me when no one would. Which is why I’m so grateful to you for helping me tonight. It means the absolute world to me. I hope you know that.”
With their fingers intertwined, he stroked his thumb over hers as an ache formed low in his gut. She was dedicated to the blog and he understood why—it fed her soul when nothing else would—but it made a future between them impossible.
“Are you like a bottomless pit, or what?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” he said, stuffing the first one into his mouth. He had a high metabolism for everything. Blood, sex, energy and food. He did nothing half-assed, and that included eating.
“I got a message from Krystal’s mom.” Arianna put the peanut butter back into the pantry. “She gets out of rehab soon and wants me to bring her back over to eastern Washington.”
“Is she ready to resume being a mother?” Jackson asked skeptically, licking the honey from his fingers.
“I sure hope so. Krystal really misses her.”
“How do you know she’s not going to slip up again?”
“I don’t think anyone can predict that. But you know, I really don’t blame her. I wasn’t the only one who had a tough time after my mom disappeared. My aunt wasn’t the same, either. They were fraternal twins, you know, and were very close. She was on all sorts of antidepressants and soon began to self-medicate. That’s when things got out of control.”
Another human life destroyed due to the actions of Darkbloods. He crumpled his napkin into a tight ball.
“Do you think Krystal will be safe over there?” Worry lines creased Arianna’s forehead.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Kip owes me a favor. A big one. I’ll send him over to see if he can detect any evidence of Darkblood scent in her little town.”
“What do you mean, he owes you a favor?” Lily asked, striding through the door. “What did you do for him?”
Shit. The woman didn’t need to know everything. “Nothing.”
“Excuse me. Hello. I’m his trainer.”
“Yeah, and that doesn’t make you his mother, either.”
“Hmmph.” She wrenched open the refrigerator and stuck her head inside.
“It was man-stuff, Lil. Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” He stuffed another sandwich half into his mouth and turned back to Arianna. “If Kip comes back with an all clear, it should be fairly safe over there. Darkbloods don’t usually bother with small towns because they’re too far away from the majority of their revenue sources.”
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