Not that it mattered. She couldn’t leave the campgrounds, not even to port home for a few minutes. The stupid dragons had strictly forbidden teleporting, or porting, as vampires called it. Even if she tried to leave the camp, she was too young to port very far. Without knowing where Dragon Valley was located, she’d have to port without a specific destination in mind, which meant porting blind.
Katie shuddered at the thought of porting blind. Horrible things happened to people that ported blind. The synth crystal in her blood could heal nearly any injury, but she didn’t want to test the theory and end up squished in the middle of a mountain.
Sighing, she reached into the nearly empty suitcase and snatched up the last two items. She tossed the fluffy pile of colorful panties into the top dresser drawer, and laid her worn Bible on the nightstand. That was it. Finally, everything was unpacked.
She shoved the bulky suitcase under her bed, the one farthest away from the bathroom. Six girls would make the bathroom the busiest room in the cabin. She could imagine the chaos that would reign every morning. Mixing teenage elves and vampires in a single bathroom was the perfect way to create a daily fight. By adding her into the mix, it was a recipe for disaster.
As a halfling, she wasn’t an acceptable member of polite valley society. Even her grandpa had taken several hundred years to accept her mom and dad’s lifeBond. Full bloods didn’t accept mixed lifeMate couples or their halfling children. It was totally taboo.
“Finished unpacking? Hungry?” The sugary sweet tone in Mitch’s voice was pure payback.
Katie had teased him unmercifully the previous summer. For some reason, Mitch went through puberty a full year before her, while she suffered through an additional year of being a skinny pre-pub. They were twins. They were supposed to do things together. She guessed her body didn’t know that.
“Dumb question, I’m always hungry,” she complained.
Puberty meant she’d be eating everything in site, at least for the next few days. Sídhí puberty was very different from mundane puberty. Sídhí puberty lasted three weeks. Period. A Sídhí juvenile went from stick-thin to adult curves in a short twenty-one days.
A little over two weeks ago, she finally started puberty. Her strength and senses had slowly improved. Soon, she would be tremendously stronger than any human could ever dream of being. Her fangs showed up the first week. As did her ability to port, and just last week she extended her claws for the first time. It was so freaky to have normal fingernails one minute, and two-inch crystal claws the next. She thought they looked like weird grizzly bear claws, only a hundred times stronger and semi-white.
“You’re going to harass me for my final week of puberty, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Of course, you’d think I didn’t love you otherwise,” Mitch answered. His serious tone of voice didn’t surprise her.
Why did she even bother asking?
Katie grumbled for a minute, but she really was hungry. Then she grinned to herself, at least she wouldn’t look like a cartoon stick figure for much longer. Guys never showed interest in someone with a boyish thin figure. No one ever asked her out on a date. Sometimes being Sídhí really sucked.
She couldn’t even delude herself as to why they didn’t ask her. Being Sídhí meant she heard all the human thoughts around. She knew what guys, and girls, thought about her. She didn’t even try to kid herself. She had major self-esteem issues.
Her growling stomach pulled her back to his question. “There’s a ton of food in the kitchen. I’ll cook, if you’ll clean up.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s fine,” he agreed quickly.
“What sounds good?”
His deep chuckle echoed behind her as he entered the girl’s dorm room. “Anything, as long as I don’t have to cook, I’ll eat whatever. That is, if there is anything left to eat after you get finished. You ate that entire pack of Oreo cookies and didn’t even give me one.”
At a few inches over six feet, Mitch had the muscled body of a pro-football player. They both had their mom’s light coloring and elfin features. She reluctantly admitted, even though he was her brother, he was good looking. Though, she’d never tell him. It’d go to his blond head, and there would be no living with him.
“And I saw you snitching that last slice of coconut cream pie mom made. You should be ashamed of yourself for not sharing with your beloved twin brother.”
She grinned as he walked toward her. He was so busy teasing her he didn’t notice the slowly rotating ceiling fan. He had a bad case of tunnel vision, or maybe she should say, once he got something stuck in his thick head, he chewed it to death, it rattled around in his hard head and would not go away.
For all his teasing, she should let him walk into the fan, but his head would break her ceiling fan.
“Mitch,” she said, pointing up at the fan in warning.
He ignored her, chattering on about how much she was eating during puberty. He was almost there.
“Mitch!” She waved her hand to stop him, waiting for the inevitable ker-chunk.
“Aargh!” He bellowed and his eyes bugged out. Ducking at the last minute, he neatly avoided the thin wooden blade of the fan. Looking up, he glared at the fan.
Katie’s laughter filled the room. Talk about priceless. Though, she was glad his cement-hard head hadn’t broken her ceiling fan.
“Very funny, Katie. Ha ha,” he grumbled, turning his good-humored glare on her. His lips twitched trying not to laugh with her.
“I tried to stop you.”
“Just wait until you start your growth spurt. Next week you’ll be whining and complaining that nothing fits anymore.”
He dropped onto one of the six beds lining the room. The poor thing groaned under his weight, there was nothing tiny about him. He was solid muscle.
“I think it might be sooner than next week. I’d guess a couple of days max.” Her clothes were loose, but they irritated her skin. Every time she moved, she felt the brush of her shorts and soft cotton halter-top slide against her sensitive skin. Her skin had started tingling yesterday afternoon. She sighed in resignation, being tender was normal a few days before she started the final growth spurt.
“Honestly,” Katie said. “I can’t wait. I’m so sick of wearing boys slim cut jeans. To think, I’ll actually have…”
“Laa! Laa! Laa! Laa!” He loudly bellowed with a sick look on his face and fingers stuck in his ears.
“I was just going to say hips,” she said, planting her hands on her hips. She grinned at his pained expression.
He gave a long-suffering sigh and removed his fingers.
She couldn’t resist the urge to tease him. “Oh, and I’ll finally have boobs.”
Her giggles turned to laughter as his mortified expression turned beet red. He tried to say something, but only a gurgle came out, while the tips of his pointed ears turned rosy red.
The words barely left her mouth, when she felt someone watching her. She turned and found herself looking into a set of piercing blue eyes. She skimmed his face and then took in the whole deal: deep blue eyes, silky black hair, tall, muscled, and gorgeous. Definitely, the most gorgeous guy she’d ever seen. She honestly didn’t have the words to describe what he looked like.
How could Katie think of words, when he made all her brain functions cease to exist? For just a second, she forgot where she was and even how to breathe. Her body went from laughter to a hot flush, even the tips of her fingers and toes tingled with sparks of awareness.
Wow, talk about making a great first impression.
He casually leaned against the door frame, watching her as she gave him the once over. He was nearly as tall as Mitch. And she thought her brother looked like a pro athlete. This guy put her twin to shame. He looked a bit stunned as he stared back at her. She briefly wondered if she wasn’t the only one having trouble breathing.
Then it registered. Her heart stuttered to a complete stop; her eyes widened and she stared at him in mounting alarm.
&nb
sp; He was a vampire. A full blooded vampire!
His stunned look changed to shock. His eyes slightly narrowed and his gaze flickered across her face, taking in her small pointed ears as they peeked past her thick hair. She groaned and felt her face and ears fill with blood, turning her light golden tan into a deep red blush.
She was humiliated. He must’ve heard them talking about her current lack of feminine curves. She wanted to crawl in a dark, deep hole and hide.
His eyes settled on hers, she finally remembered to breathe. Sucking in a ragged gasp of air, she vaguely realized, breathing didn’t come easy.
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Photographs used for Forbidden Temptation of a Vampire cover: 1.) Lightning1 3.20.11 JPEG . dreamstimefree_952921; Lightning by Sandra Henderson; http:// www.dreamstime. com/stock-image-lightning-rimagefree952921-resi3241390 - Lic. Under RL-LL Terms 2.) Public domain image; west to east full moon www.nasaimages. org 2.18.11 ~ Fonts used: http:// typodermicfonts.com/pages/web-fonts
Exile: Sídhí Summer Camp #3 Page 30