I broke our embrace – the keys!
“What’s wrong?” he said. Confused for why I jumped away from the couch – and him.
“Why is the magnet on the counter? I heard the keys click against the refrigerator magnet.”
“You’ve been thinking about that magnet since we kissed over there?”
“No. It filled my head on its own.” I flipped the light on and looked at the counter.
I spent an hour after getting back from my sister’s house searching for that refrigerator magnet in both my junk drawer and boxes at the back of my disorganized closet. The steel key ring clung to the magnet in the middle of the counter. “I used it to hang the pictures drawn for me by my nieces and nephews on the refrigerator. And I didn’t move it.”
“You have a cleaning person?”
“Yeah – me.”
“Then maybe you bumped it.” He stood up and walked over to me in the kitchen. His arm tentatively wrapped around my waist. The little hairs on the inside of his arm and his warmth thrilled my sensitive skin.
“How could I bump it off the refrigerator, across the floor, and onto the counter?”
He blinked either from my comment, the kissing, or the bright kitchen light. “This wardrobe suits you in the kitchen.”
“What do you mean?” Odd comment. Only underwear covered me. Irritated, “You mean like I should be cooking like this in the kitchen?”
He hitched his jeans up. They hardly stayed on his hip with the button and zipper open. “No, I think you’re sexy.”
“–In the kitchen?”
He sighed, “In the kitchen. In the living room. In the hall. In the bedroom –”
“Ok, Doctor Seuss.” I looked on the counter and the floor. I didn’t see anything. “Where are the drawings?”
“They probably fell under the refrigerator from the front or down the side. Come back to the couch and we can search in the morning.”
“No – I only recently put them up.” I put my hands to the cold metal, “Help me move the refrigerator.”
Brett buttoned his pants and with a quiet, “Ok,” grabbed the refrigerator and pulled it out.
“It’s dirty back here.” he announced. I’m embarrassed. The dusty contents of half a box of macaroni and cheese noodles sprinkled with rice. I saw an old rivulet of blood dried on the side of the counter next to the refrigerator. “What’s that from?” he asked.
I drew an unconscious breath and covered, “I cut a steak for the grill last month and the juice must have run over the edge.” He would realize a college student’s cash flow left no room for luxuries like steak. The horror of the attack pierced my memory, the blood must have remained from one of the two vampires that Garin killed protecting me. “I don’t see any of their drawings in the mess on the floor. How about jammed in the vents?”
“They flipped over the top of the refrigerator and fell down the back?” Brett looked confused, his eyebrows wrinkling, but he rotated the refrigerator anyway. Cobwebs and dust fluttered in gross sheets on the black tube and wire grid screwed to the rear panel – but no papers.
“Someone was here!”
“But I heard your lock when we came in.”
I rummaged through the junk drawer but the hodgepodge of things from my Mom seemed untouched. The big window across the living room held unbroken and silent of any secrets it may have observed. The television glowered in its usual spot. I pulled the chef knife out of the knife block.
“Isn’t that a cliché?”
“What do you mean?”
“Scary movies always use the chef knife.”
“So?” I knew the knife served well as an effective weapon. It saved my life once already causing a vampire to pause long enough for Garin to rescue me. Could Brett save me in such a situation? Did I need to compare the two men? I’d already pushed Garin away. I didn’t want life around a vampire. But here I stood with a knife again and not preparing a meal.
Brett snatched up the long general purpose knife along with the two tinned carving fork. His strong hands flexed on the handles to get a sure grip. “This knife is a lot longer. Let’s see what is in the rest of the apartment.”
I swept up my blouse with my free hand and held it across my chest. I clenched the chef’s knife. Brett lead and I followed him down the hall to the bedroom.
Brett hesitated at the bathroom doorway trying to choose some words. I saved him by whispering, “It’s ok, my mess getting ready earlier.” He nodded and shrugged forward. He pushed my bedroom door with the fork. The door creaked slowly aside. Dresses, slacks, skirts, blouses, and jackets spilled out of my closet onto the floor and across my bed.
“What?” I dared him.
“Looks like someone rifled through the bedroom.”
“Me.” I nudged him aside and set the knife on the top of my dresser while I picked up a sweatshirt and a pair of t-shirts, quickly putting them on. “My money is still on the dresser.”
Brett flipped the curtains back and inspected the window, “Your window looks intact.” He tried sliding the window and seemed satisfied the lock remained in place.
I returned to the front door and opened it. I looked into the hallway, then realized someone could be lurking there waiting to pounce, but relieved to see the hallway empty. I looked at the lock on both sides of the door.
Brett looked too. “Hey, what are these marks here and here? Deep gouges in the lock face and chips of paint there. Like it’s been removed or tampered with.”
“I had the locks changed last month,” but I saw at the end of Brett’s finger gouges deeper than a key scratch around the key hole.
“A brass key wouldn’t mar the surface like this.”
Other things about the lock and the door around the lock appeared violated.
I closed and re-locked the door. I checked the windows and their latches remained tight and unmolested. The fire escape failed to reveal anything, I didn’t see where any paint chips rubbed off the bubbling rust splotches.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t like it.”
“I can stay with you tonight. I know about your old friends –”
I punched his shoulder and put my hand to my ear like a phone and ran my other hand like a big spider, I feared a bug had been planted here.
“– Oh. Ok.”
“Get your shirt on while I get some pants. I’ll be right back.”
-:- Nine -:-
A black driveway cut through familiar tall pines lining the road. Brett slowed the car and turned across the little crown of the road and gently into the downward sloped driveway. He stopped the car by the front steps. Even with my jeans, my pair of pink t-shirts, and my burgundy sweatshirt the prospect still chilled me. The moon cast ghostly streaks of light across the empty grazing field now empty of horses next door while the breezes held their breath in anticipation.
The house squatted firmly in the neatly landscaped property. I knew its masculine dark gray siding embellished with black and red trim from my daylight visits but in the crescent moonlight the colors mutated into a haunted shadowy contour trimmed in bloody danger. The wide cobble brick walkway leading to the front door noticeably absent of any cute walkway lights. I reminded myself that vampires did not need such features nor have a desire to appear cute. A solitary candle burned behind the opaque front door glass flickering out of the depths of the house. Dancing in fear of the vampire that lived here.
Brett stood behind me. His eyes skittering right and left. He rubbed his damp palms on his thighs too aggressively. He understood the type of creature living beyond this portal. I reached toward the door and pressed my hand against the hard smooth wood. Do I really want to do this? I took a short breath and knocked.
The door snatched open revealing Garin in pants but no shirt. My breath sucked in at seeing his sculpted body, a tingling ruffled through my nerves. His eyes commanded mine, smoldering from hostile anger not fully repressed. At the fringes of my sight I saw the length of the hallw
ay littered with two sets of shoes sprawled passionately in confusion as a discarded line of breadcrumbs leading deeper into the house. His red shirt a bloody puddle spilled on the floor nearly to the living room.
Garin’s tongue balanced on his almost wicked lips that softened as his eyes plumbed mine. He asked, “What brings you here? Now?”
“Can we come in?”
Garin stepped onto the porch putting his arm out to herd us into the house. His eyes scanned the extents of his property. Only when confident nothing moved out there other than a great horned owl swiveling its head as it patiently hunted meadow voles did he follow us in and close the door.
“Who’s there?” asked Claire lounging on the couch. The candle light created shadows across her jaws accentuating the tight and hungry skin on her face. She wore one of Garin’s other shirts that hung low over her crossed thighs. Her dress cowered in a crumple against the patio door. Half-empty wine glasses filled from a pair of empty blue Massai bottles tottered carefully on the coffee table. When we entered the room she said, “Oh. It’s you again.” Garin’s dark eyebrows furrowed in the candle-light at Claire.
I accused Garin, “Why did you break into my apartment?”
His head jerked around, “I haven’t been over there since the last time with you. Why would I go there anyway? You told me we were done. I respected that.”
I looked at Claire.
“Not me either baby,” she rolled her eyes but then focused on me like that owl finding a meadow vole, “If I did I’d stay and have a drink of you first.”
Garin growled.
Brett said, “Someone removed drawings from the refrigerator that Anna’s nieces and nephews gave her and tossed the magnet on the counter.”
“Why Brett,” She bent her knees toward him. Her leg muscles flexed and pressed her knees tighter, “I didn’t know you came along,” Her shirt gaped seductively, split apart by the smooth arcs of her unsupported breasts.
“Why would someone take the drawings? Everything else is still there or are other things missing?”
Claire fixed her eyes on Brett and absentmindedly flicked the hem of her shirt tail more dangerously up her thigh. Attention getting like the fluttering of a serpent’s tongue testing and teasing the air. Her eyes almost as glassy as a viper, large, and mesmerizing.
“– Did you go over there, Claire?” asked Garin.
“Me? I don’t know where the tramp lives,” her eyes danced in anger at me. The slight curl of her smile returning as she caught Brett’s gaze again. “But when I find out it won’t be pictures I’ll take.”
“Claire – you need to behave.”
“Fine. But don’t blatantly accuse.” She moved her position on the couch as if she might be done playing. For now. She chewed one of her black-polished nails contemplating something.
I faced Garin, “Who do you think was there? Why take children’s drawings and not the cash or electronics or jewelry?”
Claire sighed, “You obviously miss the fine art of Halloween.” She picked up her goblet and took a sip, her eyes piercing mine, “You do that sort of thing to frighten the kiddies.”
“Doing a good job of it.” I said. Claire shrugged her shoulders as the flavor of the drink floated across her tongue.
Garin asked Claire, his hands pinching the back of the couch, “Did you do anything over there?”
“I told you. I don’t know where she lives. Maybe I should find out so I can inspect her security system. Might think she’s still some sort of farm-girl-moved-to-the-city that believes the world respects unlocked doors.”
Brett said, “The door had been locked but it showed abuse.”
“The dead bolt or the handle latch?” Garin asked
“Her apartment only has the deadbolt, no handle latch. The building door has a double set though.”
“The deadbolt is unlocked and locked from outside,” said Garin.
“So?” Brett moved his gaze between me and Garin.
“So if someone had entered they either left out a window or needed to re-lock the deadbolt.”
Brett’s brow wrinkled, “Picking a lock twice?”
“Might be the reason for excessive damage,” I said.
“Or just leaving it picked and open until they left again.”
Claire sighed, “And what does that mean, Master Garin?”
“Good thing you’ve remained pretty for five hundred years,” Garin mumbled. I never remembered him mumbling.
“Petulant young vampires notwithstanding, my love,” she batted her mascara slopped lashes at him.
My jealousy rose amid the fear and anger. Anger for too many different things that I couldn’t sort out. Not now.
Garin announced, “You’re both staying here tonight.”
“Great. Another evening gone,” Claire stood and walked toward the kitchen.
Brett stammered, “What?” I saw his eyes tracing Claire’s hips moving as her feet traced the walk of a runway model. Manipulating.
“Tomorrow when we’re thinking clearer we’ll figure out what’s next,” Garin flashed and like magic his arms filled with pillows and blankets from upstairs. He tossed them on the living room couches.
“I’ll watch the back of the house and Claire can stay on the front porch and guard the part of the front yard I can’t see –”
“– I heard that. Why didn’t you ask first?” Clair said from the kitchen.
“Get some sleep.”
“I’ll need some sweatpants if I’m sitting on the porch all night.”
Garin flashed again and had a pair for her. I barely blinked and she already sat on the porch steps. The front door swung closed in her wake but softly against the jamb, not quite latching. The sweatpants folded beside her on the edge of the step.
Stress and anger drained from me and my body lusted for sleep. I curled up on one couch while Brett laid on the other. I pulled a blanket over me and soon fell asleep.
Brett fidgeted in his sleep. The blanket sprawled across the back of the couch and cascaded over him to the floor. Except where one long leg languished over the edge of the cushion like a diving board suspended by his hip and his foot behind his other knee. The blood rushing around his body picked up the coolness from his exposed knee and circulated it back under the warmth of the blanket. Brett wrinkled his nose and shook his head aside. Deep REM sleep flipped his eyes back and forth rapidly under his eyelids.
The front door whispered open and the cat quiet feet of a vampire padded softly along the hall and into the living room. She listened to his blood circulating. Claire glanced to the rear brick patio and saw Garin sitting in one of his pristine white Adirondack chairs arranged around the fire pit. Garin watched the woods and yard out toward the horse fences and the fruit orchard beyond.
She stalked around the couch. The tails of her shirt floated up her slight movement as she knelt next to Brett. She put the flat of her fingers above the height of the hairs on his knee and hovered her hand back and forth feeling the warmth of his leg – especially where the large artery ran through his thigh. Studying him. She leaned her head over his leg and smelled him. That smell of earthy humanness emboldened her. Quiet and serene in the room but full of energy under the blanket. Like enjoying the fragrance of a glass of wine before the first violent sip.
The vampire licked her lips. Her tongue compressing those full lips and moistening them in a generous arc. She bent her fangs down toward a wicked embrace with that artery. The tips of her fangs pressed against the skin. Slowly. The skin stretched down in two little puckers holding vainly against the savage points. But like biting into the casing of ball park franks the skin popped and in that rebound Brett’s flesh pushed the vein into those sharp points. And the blood flowed. Against the blood flow she released vampire venom that coursed like a narcotic drip back into his circulatory system. The femoral artery made the circulation of that venom rapid.
Brett moaned quietly in pleasure as the venom wrapped around his sleeping mind.
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br /> She laid her hand against his inner thigh and slid her touch along his smooth skin to his briefs in discovery. She reached over the intensity of the elastic and stroked her finger along his manhood. It yearned for her finger tips. It lifted and solidified. She petted him carefully and nudged back the elastic. She snapped up her head and her fangs retracted. She kissed and licked him. His heat throbbed in her mouth with each pump of his heart. She massaged him again with her fingers. He glistened as she climbed up on the couch to straddle his hips. The blanket pushed back with her knee as she did so. She guided him into her so she faced his legs and could watch Garin.
In a hazy dream, Brett moved his hands up to hold the sides of her buttocks as she moved rhythmically up and down. Her nipples thickened and her body washed in pleasure. She moved. He moved. She took. He gave. She took again and again as waves of orgasms splashed through her body. Her back arched and her strong sexual muscles squeezed and could nearly break him. No modesty in her action. Rough and slow. Hot and wet. She knew when to pause allowing Brett’s throbbing inside her to back away from its own cliff. She touched herself sustaining her own plateau while she paused. She’d had five hundred years to figure this out. A cougar of cougars wrapped in the body of a twenty-four year old.
Fast and slow the passion escalated. Intensity she grasped and rolled about with her hips intensifying the motions and their effects. Her shirt rubbed against her breasts and inflamed her nipples in resonance while she rotated her hips and moved her pelvis slowly up and down.
She became too much for Brett’s body. The venom dream wove between half wakeful reality and deep disturbed slumber. She surfed too close to the crest, taking too much, enjoying too much, and couldn’t halt his reflexes this time. The humming and rattling of his throws inside her brought more waves of pleasure as she climaxed in unison.
She stepped off the couch and straightened him up. She squeezed the sweat from his brow into his hair on her way back out the front door and licked the saltiness from her finger tips like finishing a bag of chips. She came into the cool night air, raised her arms and stroked fingers of both hands across her temples and out through her long black hair. A grin strove to find a settling place on her face as her toe nudged the door shut with a quiet click behind her. She sat down on the porch. The spasms between her legs and pelvis subsiding satisfyingly.
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3) Page 7