The Shopgirl's Prophecy (Beasts of Vegas Book 1)

by Anna Abner

  “Yeah, a couple times.”

  “What was your house like growing up?” Ali asked.

  Connor shrugged. “Before my dad left we lived in an apartment. Afterwards, my mom and I lived with her dad, my grandpa, in a nice house. He passed away when I was twelve.”

  “I’m sorry.” She pressed her cheek to the top of his head. He froze, afraid to move or she’d pull away.

  “Your mom’s still in Cleveland?” she asked.

  “Yep.” His mother’s face swam behind his eyes, from years ago. Her happy face. He thought about her occasionally, but in a vague way. He’d stopped obsessing about her a long time ago.

  “What does she think about your crusade?”

  “She probably thinks I’m dead.” That may even be a relief for her, to stop worrying about him. “She begged me not to go.”

  “She didn’t understand,” Ali guessed.

  “No,” he said. “She read Ilvane’s prophecies like everyone else. Then I told her the Connor from Cleveland one was about me.”

  “She didn’t believe you?”

  The echoes of his mother’s frantic shouting sounded in his ears. It’s not about you! You’re staying here where it’s safe!

  “No.”

  “But you were sure.”

  “I left her just like my dad left,” Connor said sadly. “And I broke her heart.” It was the cruelest thing he’d ever done in his life. He may never forgive himself for abandoning her all over again.

  Ali looked into his eyes. “I don’t have any family left.” She swallowed. “None.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. It hurt him to think of her grieving for the son of a bitch who beat her as a kid. “But maybe you’re better off.”

  When she opened her mouth as if to argue her father’s merits, he spoke right over her objection. “I had a prick for a father, too.” He hadn’t told anyone his stories in a long, long time. Not even Roz. She didn’t care what his childhood issues were, just that he was committed to the mission.

  But he wanted Ali to know. He wanted her to know everything. “He left us for another woman when I was eight. He moved away, and we didn’t see him again. At least, I didn’t. I was never very important to him.” And that was putting it nicely. He’d spent a long time feeling worthless.

  The prophecy merely emphasized how screwed up Connor was, what a monumental disappointment, not only to his father, but to the whole world. He wasn’t sure when he’d decided to prove he was better than all that, but he wouldn’t go back for anything. He loved his mom and wished her happiness, but he belonged in Vegas, fighting the good fight.

  “How did you know the prophecy was about you?” Ali asked.

  He chuckled sadly. His mom had asked him the same thing. His answer had been, “I just do.” But Ali could take the whole truth. “It sounded like me. A giant fuck-up.”

  “That is not you.” She jostled his arm, and her scent enveloped him like a cloud of steam after a hot shower. He straightened, putting space between them again.

  “You are nothing like that,” Ali said.

  “Maybe I was a different person when Ilvane wrote the prophecy.”

  “Impossible,” she said with an arrogant tilt to her chin. “You can’t go from being a giant fuck up to such a decent, caring person in three months.”

  She smiled before curling into his body heat, one hand splayed against his chest. He froze, unable to even breathe. He was so scared she would stop. And scared, too, that she wouldn’t.

  “This hand right here.” She drummed her fingers on his chest, sending vibrations rolling down his abdomen. “Kept your heart beating when you dropped the ball.”

  At the time, dying hadn’t felt like a fumble. He’d fought so damned hard to keep breathing. She had no idea.

  Ali snuggled deeper into him, and Connor wanted to possess her. It was an ache inside, a super-charged yearning for contact. She blinked up at him, caught his gaze, and blushed, perhaps thinking the same thing he was. The game system thumped against her thigh, forgotten.

  “That kiss, earlier,” he said as his gaze fell to her mouth, “was pathetic.”

  #

  Their kiss, pathetic? Ali didn’t think so. More like explosive.

  But she played along. “Was it?”

  The hunger pouring out of Connor overwhelmed her, and every cell in her body received the message loud and clear.

  “We can do better, don’t you think?” he purred.

  Ali leaned a fraction of an inch nearer, and that was all the encouragement he required. Connor cupped her face in both hands and kissed her, his mouth soft and searching. Her fingers slid up the rippling muscles of his back and settled on his shoulders. He was warm, solid, and a little dangerous.

  His left arm encircled her waist, pulling her into his lap and he groaned, the noise rumbling through his chest and echoing in hers. She melted into him, straining to deepen the kiss, to seize every part of him at once. Her lips parted, and his tongue teased inside. Oh, Lord.

  Ali panted, her fingers furrowing through his hair. “Are you smelling me?”

  “Mmm.” His muffled response vibrated through her neck, and her eyes fluttered.

  “You like the way I smell?”

  Connor sat back in order to see into her eyes. “Alina, you’re delicious.”

  Good answer.

  She rotated her hips ever so gently, and his hands grasped her thighs, his fingers biting into her flesh.

  “How do I smell?”

  He closed his eyes, as if differentiating every particle. “Peaches. Honey. A hint of pumpkin.” He breathed in again. “And a saltiness on your skin.”

  “And you like it?”

  She ground her hips against him, and a wildness flared behind his eyes.

  “I more than like it,” he swore. “I want to taste you. Everywhere.”

  Her insides liquefied, like a chunk of ice left in the sun. Everything south of her navel thrummed. Before she could say the words, I want you, I need you, I will beg if I have to, he captured her mouth in a bruising kiss.

  Connor’s fingers gripped Ali by the hips, as if she were in danger of floating away. Even through layers of clothes, she felt his heat and the outline of his erection. She moaned as his hands collided with her breasts. Fabric rustled. With a frustrated groan, he tore the shirt over her head, breaking their kiss.

  Her shirt sailed across the room, and his warm mouth brushed her left breast. His tongue, slick and smooth, lapped at her nipple, and she couldn’t focus on anything else. Her head fell back, and her eyes rolled up in her head.

  Lord in heaven, he electrified her.

  He pinched her gently with his teeth, and she feared she might levitate right out of her skin. Beneath her rear, he was hard. A kind of frenzy overtook her, and her hands fisted his shirt. She wanted him inside her.

  With a tiny squeal of surprise, Ali landed on her back. Connor hovered, staring hard at her mouth.

  “I can’t get enough,” he groaned. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get enough.”

  She recognized the same desperate hunger in his voice that gnawed at her.

  Drowning any last doubts, she wiggled out of her pajama bottoms while he watched. She wanted him, all of him.

  His fingers drew parallel lines down her abdomen toward the patch of blonde hair between her legs. He urged her knees apart, widening the V of her thighs.

  Her control slipped a notch, and her extremities tingled with power. She didn’t open her eyes to check if she glowed. She didn’t care. Instead, she arched her back and begged him, in very precise language, not to stop. His tongue raked her slit, and her hands tangled in his hair. She pulled hard. He didn’t seem to mind.

  His shirt hit the floor, and his pants disappeared from sight. He crawled over her, blocking out everything else. A wild, mewling sound tore from her throat, her hands reaching for him as the light sprinkling of hair on his chest feathered her nipples.

  He slid into her, and she lifted
her knees higher to better fit all of him. He pressed inside, stretching her.

  “Kiss me,” she hissed.

  He dipped his head, but not to her lips. No, he suckled at the pulse point below her jaw. With each thrust of his hips, his sucking intensified. If he weren’t so annoyingly noble, his fangs could be inside her now too. She closed her eyes and dreamed he drank from her as he dragged the sharp points of his fangs over her throat.

  He rolled against her and their lips met in a slow, warm kiss. He nibbled at her lower lip, and she opened to him. She couldn’t get enough. He could kiss her the rest of her life, and it wouldn’t be enough.

  “Bite me,” she begged.

  Connor sank his fangs into her throat, and a delicious fission zinged through her, fanned by the friction bursting between her legs. He thrust into her again, and then again, synchronizing the motion of his hips with the pressure of his mouth and lengthening each stroke until she couldn’t contain the pressure a second longer.

  She screamed as she came, the orgasm bursting inside her and rearranging every single one of her molecules.

  #

  Not much could have woken Connor from the sweet, post-sex coma he was enjoying. But eventually consciousness returned and he realized the female calling his name wasn’t part of his dream. His skull buzzed as if a witch spoke spells over him, but it wasn’t Roz. He opened his eyes and though it was dark, he saw her beside the bed. Ilvane. The Oracle herself.

  “What the hell?” he hissed.

  “See, you’re not the only one who can order a spellspeaker around. Don’t forget I have the Coven on speed dial.” The adolescent seer flipped her hair and smiled, all girlish exuberance and sparkly eye shadow. “So, what’s new?”

  Connor’s arms tightened instinctively around Ali where she slept across his chest, her cheek on his shoulder. A fierce protectiveness expanded within him like nothing he’d ever felt. He’d kill to keep her safe. He’d die for her. Oracle, or no Oracle.

  “Ilvane,” he greeted in a barely audible snarl.

  The Oracle sighed dramatically. “Call me Caitlyn.”

  This obviously wasn’t a quick pop-in. Ever so gently, he slid out from under Ali’s warm little body and yanked on a pair of pants. Before he left the room, he threw a quilt over Ali’s bare back.

  He gestured for Caitlyn to meet him outside, and he made it past the garage without waking either girl inside the house. Far enough away not to be overheard, he spun on his guest.

  “Caitlyn, what have you seen?”

  “You’re so cute.” She scrunched her nose. “If you weren’t infected, and I wasn’t a psychic projection…” She quirked her eyebrow. “No? Oh, well. Back to business.”

  “What. Happened.”

  “You, silly.”

  He frowned. “Please make sense.”

  “Why are you playing house in the desert with Anya from Nadvirna when the infecteds are prepping an invasion?”

  “I’m not,” he grumbled. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “You cannot take a vacation right now.” Caitlyn looked him up and down. “No matter how much you want to.”

  His insides churned, and an angry shame swamped him. Why not? Why did he have to be Connor from Cleveland? “Look, her being here at this particular time cannot be a coincidence. What does it all mean?”

  “Cryptic, oracle stuff. But you can bet the farm Olek knows exactly who and what she is. You cannot let him take Anya.”

  “I won’t.”

  “No matter what.”

  Connor stilled, seeing past her pink streaked hair and exposed, bony shoulders sprinkled with glitter to the all-powerful seer she was. “How bad is it going to get?”

  “Bad.” Caitlyn sucked in a breath. “If Olek takes her to St. Peter’s Hospital, it will stir his army into a frenzy. They will invade Las Vegas.”

  “Never gonna happen. There are too many people in Las Vegas. They have weapons, and they know how to use them. The army captured Olek’s horde once. It shouldn’t be too tough to do it again.”

  “I’m telling you what I see. Olek believes Anya’s return is a good omen for him. He believes she’s his queen bee. With her at his side, he’ll overtake Vegas, and then he’ll have an army of over half a million infecteds at his beck and call. From there, he can infect the world. Half the population is vampires. The other half is blood donors. And then it’s game over. There won’t be enough of a resistance to fight back.”

  “Is this the apocalypse?” he asked, his voice wobbling the tiniest bit. Was this the end that he’d brought about by freeing Oleksander?

  “Still unclear.”

  He groaned low in his throat, disliking very much her non-answers. “At least tell me how to stop it.”

  “I can’t,” Caitlyn said. “It’s part of my contract with The Powers That Be. But if you can keep her away from Olek, then drinks are on me. If you can’t, we’re all screwed. And by we, I mean the human race. You cannot lose her. One of the most important jobs in the world right now is protecting that girl, and you’re screwing it up.”

  “You told me to stay away from her.” Connor distinctly recalled lots of screaming and head holding.

  “That’s old news. Things change.”

  He thought prophecy was prophecy. It never changed. “Should I send her back to London? Would that stall him?”

  “Sure. But just because you get her out of the country doesn’t mean she can’t come back. Or be brought back,” Caitlyn reminded him.

  “So, where does that leave me?”

  “I still can’t see yet whether you fight for the white hats or the vampires. So, go easy. You have no idea how all these little decisions push you in a single direction. If you go dark side, would she follow you?”

  “I don’t—” Was the seer hinting he would go bad? Become Dark Connor?

  “Forget it,” Caitlyn said, “just listen for a sec. This is a critical time. Big stakes. The biggest. I don’t care what you have to do, but do something. Because he’s chomping at the bit for the power inside her.”

  “I saw it.”

  “Then you know, if she loses control it gets bad for a lot of people.”

  “It didn’t look that dangerous,” he said.

  “Don’t let the cutesy color fool you. There is powerful mojo brewing inside her.”

  Here she went again on the Anya Is Dangerous train. Roz would love this. But it did Connor no good. He was well on his way to falling in love with the girl. Ditching her was out of the question. He wasn’t even going to contemplate holding her out as bait. All he could do was protect her. But how?

  “Then help me. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I said what I came to say.” She backed away, as if she might fade into the desert.

  “I have to go to the hospital,” he called after her. “And kill him. That would end everything. Right?” No reaction. “But what do I do with Ali? Where’s the safest place for her right now? With me? In London? Somewhere else?”

  She mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key.

  “Goddamn it, Caitlyn,” he roared. “You can’t tell me half a prophecy! Help me.”

  Her psychic projection flickered like she was about to disappear, but at the last second she jogged forward several steps and reached out a ghostly hand. “Connor,” she called, “I had to write your prophecy in such a way to get your attention, that’s all. You’re not a fuck up. You never were.”

  The portal closed, and she vanished.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ali woke to kisses on her cheek and in her hair. “Good morning.”

  “You’re beautiful when you sleep,” Connor said, his voice low and throaty.

  “Mmmmm.” She snuggled deeper into a warm, hand-sewn quilt as sunlight streamed through the window. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. Nine-ish.”

  “How long have you been up?”

  “I’ve already been for a run.”

  She clutched the quilt t
ighter to her bare breasts and fingered the spot on her neck where he’d suckled. It didn’t feel different, maybe a little tender. On the other side, her stitches still itched, though the wound was closing.

  “It’s healing fast,” he said. “Thank goodness.”

  She laid her hand on his bare arm. “Last night was…I liked it. It was…” She didn’t have the words for how much she’d liked it. The memory of his bite raised goose bumps along her arms.

  Connor stared at the cotton sheet near her feet as if not really seeing it. Ali squeezed his arm, and he startled. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” he said, stretching out beside her and cramming a pillow behind his head.

  But she knew something was bothering him. The lines on his brow and the tense shape of his shoulders told her as much.

  “What’s on the agenda for today?” she asked.

  “Today’s a free day,” he said, his gaze returning to the rumpled sheets. “A day off. What do you want to do?”

  Straddle you. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not with Roz in the front room gearing up for battle. Well, Ali knew what she didn’t want to do.

  “I don’t want to think about vampires today.”

  “That might be kind of tough,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up, “since you’re sleeping with one.” Despite the teasing, Connor seemed distracted, and she didn’t enjoy witnessing the shadow of fear, hunger, or whatever it was crossing his face. His handsome, kissable face. Ali lay down, dismissing her messy hair and giant hicky, and slid her hand over his smooth abdomen, pressing her cheek into his shoulder.

  “You know what I mean.”

  He rolled toward her, and their lips met in a slow, lingering kiss. He nibbled at her lower lip, and she opened to him, groaning as their tongues made first contact.

  He ended the kiss with a noise of frustration.

  “You’re so addictive,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Okay, no shop talk. What would you rather do?”

  “Let’s go for a hike,” Ali suggested, scrutinizing his expression, trying to figure out why worry lines had appeared around his mouth.