by Casey Lane
Her gaze moved away from his, but he hooked her chin, forcing her to look at him. “I’ve been a little busy trying to figure things out.”
“Including me?” she asked, her eyes wide with the fear he smelled coming off her.
“No. You’re the only thing that’s right in my life at the moment.” He cupped her cheek and the fear in her eyes abated, turning into a fiery storm of desire.
She blessed him with a beaming smile and then leaned in for another soul-searing kiss. Again, that tingle spread through his entire form, as if kissing her was a reprieve to the numbness. Her tongue twirled with his in a magnificent dance that sucked the air from his lungs. Her hands skimmed over his shoulders and before he had any awareness, her fingers had already unbuttoned his shirt. The sensation of her palms on his chest nearly drove him mad.
Alessandra pulled away from his lips, and trailed kisses over his cheek to his earlobe before her teeth nipped, creating another shock of tingles. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, enjoying the sensations of her hands and mouth moving down his body. “You know, when you touch me like this, I can almost feel tingling in my toes,” he whispered and opened his eyes. “It happened in the hospital when you whispered in my ear, too.”
She looked up from his chest. “Really?”
He met her gaze and nodded. “So, don’t stop. I like that tingly feeling. It makes me think their diagnosis was wrong.” He had studied the x-rays, he knew it was wishful thinking, but there was still a slight chance of the impossible, especially with the wolf blood in him.
She ran her fingers down the center of his chest, down to the elastic waistband of his sweatpants. “How much of that theory do you want to test?”
It wasn’t so much the words as the sultry tone of her voice that stalled his brain. His legs were a shadow of what they used to be with almost two months of non-use, and that played with his confidence. She hadn’t seen how much his lower half had wasted away. The desire that swept though him moments ago, disappeared. It was his turn to look away.
“Jake?” she asked, pulling his attention back to her.
“I don’t know what I can... do,” he said, meeting her gaze. Being this exposed felt unnatural to him. It was as if the tables had turned and he was the one afraid to explore this attraction. “I mean, I know what I can do with my hands and mouth,” he added, with a twist of a smile as he wiggled his fingers. “But as far as anything else...” He shrugged.
“And if I said I wanted to make love to you?”
“I’d be flattered and I’d wonder what you had been drinking in the kitchen,” he answered, and his gaze moved to her hands, now gripping his pants. “But I’m not sure if I have the ability to follow through.” Heat filled his cheeks and he met her gaze.
“Then let’s just view this as relationship experiment number two.”
“What was number one?” he asked, stalling as a measure of panic bit at his skin.
“The hotel,” she said, and pulled his pants clear to his ankles, freeing one foot and leaving the rest bundled around his other ankle. She took off her shirt and pants, leaving on only her sheer underwear.
The flames of desire returned, turning his heart into an aching throb that echoed through every cell. Her hands slowly slid up his legs. The sensation was lost on him, but even in the dim light he could see her progression, and when she dipped down and kissed the inside of his knee, he cursed the gods for not allowing him to feel this. She didn’t turn away from the atrophy in his muscles nor the non-response from his body. Instead, it just seemed to fuel her.
She glanced up at him. “Any tingling?” she asked.
He slowly shook his head.
She dragged her tongue from his knee to the middle of his thigh, and while his breath quickened at the visual, his legs didn’t bother sending the right signals to his brain. He thought his mind would crack when she took the tip of his cock in her mouth. His wildest dream of having Alessandra Tate giving him head was happening, and he couldn’t feel anything but a distant tingle.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Now?” she said.
He shrugged a single shoulder and licked his lips. “Maybe,” he whispered with a voice like sandpaper.
“Well, somewhere there’s a reaction,” she chuckled, and her mouth covered the tip of his growing cock.
Hunter thanked the gods that something was working. They had told him it was a slim chance and to catalogue what triggered an erection if he was able to get one. Alessandra’s mouth. Check. He’d keep that catalogued for a very long time. Her slow head bob sent another wave of tingles through him as did the hollowness in her cheeks as she sucked.
What he wouldn’t give to feel her lips sliding up and down his shaft. His heartbeat picked up and he gently ran his fingers through her hair. “Leigh,” he whispered and she pulled away, meeting his gaze. He cupped her cheeks and pulled her to his lips. He needed to feel her mouth, her breasts... her pussy. God, he wanted to taste her, but before she allowed his mouth to cover hers, she slid her underwear off and positioned herself over his hard shaft.
His gaze remained glued to the space between them as she guided his cock into the folds of her pussy. She moved down his shaft with a moan. He glanced up at her and her eyelids were at half mast, her mouth opened in a sexy pout. She took his hands and placed them on her hips.
Her slow rock turned his breathing into something akin to a pant. The flush of her skin and the hardness of her nipples pulled a smile to his lips. She was enjoying herself. He slid his thumb to her clit, circling at the same speed her hips moved. Alessandra nearly purred and despite not being able to actually feel her pussy milking him, the simple act that Alessandra had given herself to him completely, especially on the anniversary of her attack, brought him closer to his own release.
He leaned forward and took her breast in his mouth, sucking the hard nub while he still massaged her clit. He moved to her mouth, capturing her tongue in a frantic dance. His entire form tingled as she rode him. Heat pooled in the center of his abdomen and then exploded, yanking a groan from his lips. She pulled away from his mouth arching her body as she let out a howl that sent a shiver through him.
Her body shook with her release and finally her breathing slowed and she relaxed into him.
He stared at the ceiling as she nestled on his chest. “I think I came,” he whispered, astonished by that mere fact. That was something the doctors were sure wouldn’t happen.
Alessandra started to giggle. “I think you did, too.”
He pushed her away from his chest. “I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that,” he said, and her giggles subsided a fraction.
“Well, you did. I clearly felt it.”
He started laughing. There was only one other explanation, but he didn’t smell urine, so it clearly was an orgasm. His toes were still tingling from the power of it and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a bear hug.
“I love you, Alessandra Tate,” he said through his laughter.
“I love you, too, Jacob Blaez.” She kissed the curve of his neck and another rash of tingles flowed through him.
“Marry me?” he blurted. His eyes widened as much as hers at the sudden question, and then he dropped his forehead to her shoulder, cursing himself for such an awkward proposal. It certainly wasn’t how he’d ever envisioned asking her. He had exchanged the idea of him kneeling in the center of a bunch of rose petals for hiding the ring in a dessert. Never had he imagined he’d just blurt out the question after sex. She deserved so much better. Jesus, he didn’t even have her ring yet.
“Did you just ask me to marry you?” She pushed him away so he would have to look at her.
He glanced up at her with his cheeks on fire. “Yeah, well, it just kind of... you know,” he stumbled.
She threw her arms around him and squealed. “Yes! Yes, I’ll marry you!”
Stunned didn’t begin to describe it, and when she pulled away, he asked, “Really?”
“Hell
, yes.”
“You do realize that was the lamest proposal in this hemisphere, right?” He raised an eyebrow.
She laughed. “True...” She leaned in and kissed his nose. “Do you want a do-over?”
It only took a moment for him to think it over, and then he shook his head. “No. I got the answer I wanted. Besides, if I had to make it big and fancy it might take years.”
“I’m not waiting years to marry you,” she said, and yanked on the collar of his shirt, pulling him to her lips.
As their tongues intertwined, his heart sang in response.
* * *
THE END
About J.E. Taylor
J.E. Taylor is an award winning author, a publisher, an editor, a manuscript formatter, a mother, a wife, a business analyst, and a Supernatural fangirl, not necessarily in that order. She first sat down to seriously write in February of 2007 after her daughter asked:
* * *
“Mom, if you could do anything, what would you do?”
* * *
From that moment on, she hasn’t looked back.
* * *
In addition to being co-owner of Novel Concept Publishing (www.novelconceptpublishing.com), Ms. Taylor also moonlights as a Senior Editor of Allegory (www.allegoryezine.com), an online venue for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
* * *
She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children and during the summer months enjoys her weekends on the shore in southern Maine.
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Visit her at www.jetaylor75.com and sign up for her newsletter for early previews of her upcoming books, release announcements, and special opportunities for free swag!
* * *
Sign up for Ms. Taylor’s newsletter at: https://app.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/y2z2x6
A Vampire Calls
Kory M. Shrum
A Vampire Calls © 2017 Kory M. Shrum
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
A Vampire Calls
Careful what you wish for because you just might get…a vampire.
From award-winning author Kory M. Shrum, comes a suspenseful tale about the power of choice.
Lettie Cole lives with her hateful dying mother and heroin-addicted brother. She sees no escape from these toxic family bonds until one or both of her tormentors die.
Until a vampire calls late one summer night and Lettie is presented with a choice: be his next victim or provide him with another…
Chapter One
I watched her for a long time before I killed her.
I watched her step out into the night with blood and shit drying on the corner of her white-collared shirt, and as soon as I saw her, I slipped into her mind. I burrowed deep, quickly, to avoid detection. And just like that, I was one with her thoughts, her body and feelings, and of course, her desires.
I felt her collapse onto the concrete porch and begin the search for a cigarette. If this was what one called a porch. When she was a kid, they called it a stoop. Now more than ever, that’s exactly what it was. The earth had shifted underneath, and the three-step concrete wedge tilted, giving the impression that, at any minute, she’d be pitched forward and land on the cracked and weed-tangled sidewalk.
Sunshine-yellow dandelion heads with their spiny green necks flopped over the remaining concrete possessively. When her father Hennessey had been alive, this sidewalk connecting stoop to long driveway didn’t have so much as a blade of grass poking through. But then again, a great many things had been in order when her father was still alive.
For all his iron-fisted heartlessness, Hennessey enforced order and supported his family: his wife, three kids, and Kai. His small-town mechanic shop had thrived eventually. Thrived—that was one of the words Lettie had plucked from a battered Salvation Army paperback. The store had whole boxes of them, some without covers, many watermarked and yellowed and smelling like damp earth.
The small town thrived… the page might’ve said, and so had the Coles when her father was alive.
Until his two packs a day caught up with him. With her father gone, it was just Lettie, her brother, and their mother—Charley was already dead. And without the patriarch, no one could keep the order Merek so desperately needed, that they’d all needed, and so it’d gone to hell pretty quick.
Not everything could be blamed on Merek, but a great deal of it could—the bruise on Lettie’s right cheek, for starters.
As if on cue, her wounded cheek throbbed, pulling Lettie from her nostalgia, back to the warm concrete stoop. The night swelled around her. Cicadas chirped as crushed blood vessels rubbed against bone. She dug into her pocket. Her heart skipping a beat when fingers found only cloth. Nothing. The bundle of cigarettes she’d rolled that morning were all gone. If she wanted a smoke now, she’d have to roll one.
Oh, how she missed the days when she could simply tear open a fresh pack of Marlboro Reds, the sound of the cellophane crinkling under eager fingers. The comforting tap-tap-tap of the soft pack against her palm. That first pungent whiff of the tobacco when she pulled the first cigarette free and slid the rice paper under her nose for a refreshing, deep inhale. The spongy filter resistant between her fingers.
But store-bought cigarettes were almost nine dollars a pack. On her mother’s social security check and Lettie’s own unemployment check, store-bought cigarettes were an expense they just couldn’t swing. Especially not with the two packs a day they cleared between them.
Leaning on one hip, Lettie found the pouch of tobacco she kept in a tight back pocket of her jeans. The plastic baggie she used to keep the tobacco fresh crinkled.
Her mother howled from the front bedroom, and Lettie’s whole body tensed at the sound of it. Just the thought of hauling and turning her made her soul ache. If Lettie herself ever got so sick or weak that she couldn’t haul herself up, she’d rather die.
She cursed her brother. If Merek gave half a shit about his own mother, he’d get up and turn her.
But he wouldn’t. He stayed slumped in front of the television, blue-white lights flashing across his skin until the romantic comedy featuring Sandra Bullock gave way to an infomercial about a rotating toilet brush or some acne commercial.
If she was lucky, he’d sleep through the night and leave first thing in the morning. If not, he’d visit her in the dead of night. She thought the dead of night visits were the worst, when he came in like a cat, slow and deliberate. Nothing like feeling a shadow fall over her bed while asleep, that unmistakable heat of another body pressing in on her. Funny how she never felt me.
It could’ve been the open and close of a drawer that woke her, that soft wood sliding into place. Or she’d come awake to the sound of his voice, mid-question.
Once, when he was still high as hell, he’d fallen over her white sneakers and crashed into the closet doors. The cheap panels swung right off their sliding track and punched a hole through the closet’s thin plaster.
She’d pelted him with two thick paperbacks, a pillow, and had even lifted the hollow brass lantern with its crooked and yellowed shade over her head before she realized who he was.
The creeping in her room at night was almost as bad as waking to find him standing over her, watching her, a blac
k unmovable shape in the dark.
Come on Lettie, I know you’ve got $10 somewhere. Maybe up your cunt.
And if begging didn’t work, he’d switch to swinging.
With the tobacco in one hand, Lettie dug in her front pocket for the gold packet of rolling papers with the other. Once free, the cardboard flap flipped up easily with one swipe of a short, gnarled nail. She pulled out a single sheet with a crumpled edge. Not pretty, but usable. And she’d learned to live with much worse.
The window banged open over her left shoulder and her mother howled again. “Lettie, goddamn, you want me to die, do you? A helpless, old woman, and you’re just gonna let me die?”
I could have spoken then. But I decided to remain silent, to continue watching from my secret place.
Lettie’s teeth clenched, her molars grinding on one another. She caught herself and stopped. Yes, smart. She’d work up a migraine that way, and if there was anything worse than dealing with a dying woman who hated the world, it was dealing with a hateful dying woman while a migraine ice-picked away at her skull.
“You’re not old, Momma,” Lettie called. So diplomatic! Can’t you see why I liked her? She wanted to slam the shutter shut on the woman’s arthritic fingers, but instead paid her a compliment. I could never dig so deep for such a vein of patience.
In truth, her mother was only 65, but years of hard living and a third round of chemotherapy made her look like the mummy resurrected in that film Lettie liked. Smoking, drinking, and cancer. Maybe if she’d tangoed with death only once, her mother would have held up better.
“I’ll smoke this cigarette then I’ll be back in, Momma,” Lettie said. “Give me five minutes.”