Only Lycans Need Apply
Page 23
Uh-huh. Now you know the ecstasy I’m talking about.
After another minute or two of sucking on the stranger’s thigh, I felt firm, long fingers under my chin.
“That’s enough, love,” said an Irish-tinted voice. “You’re healed now.”
With great reluctance, I allowed the fingers cupping my jaw to disengage me from the yummy thigh. I sat up, licking my lips to get every dribble of blood (ew, again) smeared on my mouth.
“Where am I? What happened? Where are my kids?”
“Ssshhh. Everything will be explained.” He tilted his head, looking me over in a way that caused heat to skitter in my stomach. “Your children are fine. Damian is watchin’ them.”
Damian? Who the fuck was Damian? Whoa, girl. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Well, crud. The whole breath thing wasn’t working. I didn’t even want to think about my lack of heartbeat. I had to stay calm. I focused on the room and realized I could see everything clearly. What the hell? I had been relying on glasses to see past my nose for almost ten years. With this kind of vision, I probably could see all the way to Canada.
“So . . . with all the, uh, blood-sucking, I’m guessing I’m a vampire now.” Just saying “I’m” and “vampire” together was so ridiculous, I wanted to giggle.
“Yes. We Irish vampires call ourselves deamhan fhola.” He grinned at me. “It means blood demon.”
“Oh. Well, that’s certainly . . . descriptive.” In a bad, yucky, soulless way.
We were in a small white room. It had a long, uncomfortable steel slab sticking out from the wall and we were on it. About six feet from the steel slab on the left side of the room was a door without any visible knob or handle. I looked down at myself. I was in a white hospital gown and I smelled like antiseptic.
I was a vampire.
Jessica Anne Matthews. Vampire.
The stupid giggle erupted and I nearly snorted and snarfed myself into a seizure. “Me. A vampire.”
“Yes.” The guy who’d been my lifesaving snack was leaning against the wall, his knees drawn up slightly. Raven black hair feathered away from his face, the ends of it curling on his shoulders. He watched me with the strangest eyes I’d ever seen. He looked like Pierce Brosnan in his Remington Steele days, except for the color of those eyes. “With eyes like the sea after a storm,” I muttered, quoting one of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride. Those strange eyes were an ever-changing silver that seemed to eddy and swirl like a fast-rising river.
Given his size, my guess was that he was just about six feet tall. He was muscular and trim like an athlete, rather than bulky like a gym freak, with a light dusting of black hair on his chest and thighs.
I might’ve been delirious or crazy or dreaming, but I checked out his package. It was impressive, too. From a patch of black hair sprang a large erection. His testicles tightened underneath my blatant scrutiny and I remembered the soft feel of his balls against my cheek as I suckled his flesh just inches from his groin. His gaze dropped to his penis, his lips curving upward as his eyes met mine again. He seemed to ask, “Want a ride, little girl?”
And you know what? I did. I wanted a ride. I hadn’t had sex in eighteen months. Sessions with the battery-operated boyfriend did not count. The last man I trusted to touch me, to bring me pleasure, had betrayed sixteen years of marriage by doing the same lovely, naughty things to another, younger woman. Then, before I could seek proper revenge, he had gotten killed in a car accident. I always thought it had been a mundane way to go for a man who had ripped out my heart and then stomped it to bloody bits with his cloven hooves.
But I digress.
“Do not have sex with Mr. O’Halloran.” The command echoed around the room. Even with my new vision, I couldn’t spot the speakers.
The Pierce Brosnan look-alike rolled his eyes. “She fed on me like I was the last Twinkie in the box. A little thanks might be in order.”
“If you have sex with Mr. O’Halloran,” said the voice, obviously unimpressed, “you will be mated to him for the next hundred years.”