Five minutes and some serious whimpering later, Meg pulled out a box of golden cakes and fed one to the anxious dog. Babe was getting old. Sixteen to be exact, which meant she no longer had the energy to chase Frisbees or bark at Mrs. Calico’s Chihuahua next door. She’d given up chasing balls, too, and carting in the newspaper. Other than watching re-runs of Sex and the City and eating the occasional Twinkie, she had zero pleasure in her old age.
Meg fed her a second and smiled as she wolfed it down.
The dog whimpered for a third, but Meg shook her head. “Discipline, girl. It’s all about discipline.” She stuffed the box back into the pantry and closed the door.
Babe licked at Meg’s fingers for a few seconds before heading back to the den and her doggy bed, obviously satisfied for the moment.
If only Meg felt the same.
Despite the orgasm, she was still restless. Anxious. Unfulfilled.
Because she was still every bit as invisible as she’d been way back when. That’s why she was taking carnal classes. She wanted men to notice her, to lust after her, to find her completely irresistible.
The way the women were now lusting after Dillon Cash.
She stared at the lifestyle section of the Skull Creek Gazette spread out on her kitchen table and her gaze snagged on Tilly’s weekly column—What’s Hot and What’s Not.
A picture of Dillon taken at Joe Bob’s Bar & Grill blazed back at her. He was boot scootin’ his way across the sawdust floor with Amelia Louise Lauderfield. The infamous Amelia Louise Lauderfield. Number six on Tilly’s Hot Chicks list.
Dillon and a bona fide Hot Chick.
Meg still couldn’t believe it.
One minute he’d been spending his Saturday nights holed up in his computer repair shop, and the next—a few months ago to be exact—he’d shown up in a nearby town at a local honky tonk, of all places. He’d ditched his glasses and swapped his button-down shirt and slacks for well-worn jeans and a T-shirt. Even more, he’d traded his car, complete with seat belts and air bags, for a custom-made motorcycle and no helmet.
It hadn’t been the news of his physical transformation that had startled her so much as everyone’s response to it—every female in the Cherry Blossom Saloon had fallen all over themselves for a chance to go home with him.
Then again, word had it he’d shown up after happy hour, which meant that the liquor had been flowing. More than likely, the members of his instant fan club had been extremely drunk. On top of that, the place was out of town. The women who’d gone gaga over his new look couldn’t have been privy to his reputation.
At least that’s the conclusion she’d come to after one of her customers, Cornelia Wallace, had relayed the rumors circulating around town. She could still hear the old woman’s words.
“He’s having one of them middle-aged life crisis things. I saw a special about it on the Discovery Health Channel. Said the threat of aging makes a man do crazy things.”
“Don’t you have to be middle-aged to have a midlife crisis?” Meg had asked the old woman. “Dillon’s only thirty.”
“Maybe it’s one of them there near-death experiences. They did a 20/20 special about them last week. Said folks do all sorts of bizarre things when they almost meet their maker. Or maybe he’s having a coming-out-of-the-closet moment and he’s fighting it by trying to prove his manhood. Saw just such a thing on one of them cable channels last month. It was all about how this fella actually slept with three dozen women and fathered twenty-two young ’uns just so’s he could prove to himself that he wasn’t buttering his bread on the wrong side. What do you think?”
“I think you spend too much time watching television. Maybe it wasn’t even Dillon over at the saloon. Maybe it was just someone who looked like him.”
“It was him, all right. Heard it straight from Evangeline Dupree, who heard it from her granddaughter, who heard it from her boyfriend who was there having his bachelor party. He swore it was Dillon.”
But Meg wasn’t so sure. Dillon at a saloon? Getting comfy with a bunch of women?
Not the Dillon she knew.
While they didn’t spend a lot of time together now—he was busy at his shop and she was busy with her customers, so they only managed the occasional lunch—she still saw enough of him to know that he was every bit as awkward around the opposite sex as he’d been back in high school.
Up until two months ago, that is.
That’s when things had changed.
When he’d changed.
Not that she’d seen the transformation firsthand. No, he’d been avoiding her, canceling their lunches, dodging her phone calls. She’d stopped by his shop to see him and put an end to all the nonsense that was flying around—there had to be a logical explanation, right?—but the place had been locked up tight. Ditto for his house. She’d even called his parents, but they’d been as confused as she was, and even more determined to hunt him down and find out the truth.
They’d been camping out in his yard for the past two weeks, trying to corner him and save him from himself.
Meg wasn’t one-hundred-percent convinced that the sex object running around town was really him and so she’d taken a less radical approach—she’d left tons of messages on his cell. But he hadn’t called her back.
Because he really was busy with his new social life?
Or because he’d left town for yet another computer seminar?
Everyone had a twin somewhere. More than likely Dillon’s had moved to the next town and his midlife crisis/near-death-experience/coming-out-of-the-closet was simply a case of mistaken identity. One which he couldn’t disprove because he was off learning how to tweak motherboards or dissect USB switches or something.
And the picture staring back at her?
Dillon’s twin.
Maybe. Probably.
Sure, it would be great if he really had managed such a change. Then he could give her some pointers on how to nail irresistible and make it onto Tilly’s Hot Chicks list. But Meg wasn’t getting her hopes up. She knew the hazards of living in a small town. Last year Diana Trucker had been spotted buying a pregnancy test at the local pharmacy. By the time Meg had heard the news from Corny, the woman had been six months pregnant with quintuplets.
People had a way of exaggerating everything.
Which meant, until she saw actual proof of Dillon’s newfound sex appeal, she wasn’t buying one word of Corny’s gossip.
She had her own sex appeal—or lack of—to worry over.
She’d just finished an online How to Sex Up Your Image seminar in addition to several self-help classes at the local junior college—Dressing for Sexcess and How to Lick Your Lips Like You Mean It. If that wasn’t enough, she was now taking carnal Classes being offered in the lobby of the Skull Creek Inn.
At least that’s what she told herself as she showered and dressed. She didn’t want to be late for tonight’s class.
SHE HAD TO BE SEEING things.
Meg sat in the motel parking lot near the corner of the building and stared across the dimly lit walkway that ran the length of the first floor. She stared through the windshield of her Mustang and her gaze zeroed in on the profile of the man who stood in front of the doorway to room four.
He wore snug, faded jeans, a fitted black T-shirt and a pair of black cowboy boots. A black Resistol tipped low on his forehead and cast a shadow across the top half of his face. Dark blond hair curled from beneath the hat brim and brushed the collar of his shirt. He was tall and muscular and…Dillon.
She blinked, but he didn’t disappear. And neither did the beautiful woman pressed up against his back, her arms locked around his waist as she waited for him to slide the key into the lock and open the door.
A heartbeat later, the door opened and he pried the woman loose long enough to step aside and motion her into the room. She slid by him, her hands brushing his crotch before she disappeared inside.
He quickly followed and Meg was left to wonder if Corny had been right and s
he’d just witnessed the transformation of a lifetime. That couldn’t have been Dillon Cash.
Yes. No. Hell, no.
The next few minutes were spent debating between the three as she gathered up her purse and Pleasure Manual, climbed from the front seat and headed for the hotel lobby.
She didn’t mean to slow down, but she couldn’t help herself. She paused briefly at the door to room four, but the only sound she heard was the frantic beating of her own heart.
2
“LET’S DO IT RIGHT NOW,” the soft, breathless voice slid into his ears and sent a burst of yeah, right straight to his brain. “Please.”
Dillon Cash stared at the woman who’d preceded him into the motel room, her eyes gleaming with a mix of passion and desperation. He barely resisted the urge to pinch himself.
No way was this happening.
This was Susie Wilcox, a former Homecoming Queen and now the hottest divorcée in Skull Creek, according to the local paper and Tilly Townsend who’d given the sexy blonde the number one spot on last year’s Hot Chicks list.
Rumor had it Susie was a shoe-in for this year’s list, as well.
She had long, silky hair. Legs up to here. Breasts out to there. Her tiny waist begged for his hands and her heart-shaped ass made his mouth go dry. She’d been the star of his wettest dreams back in high school, and a few dozen erotic fantasies in the twelve-plus years since.
She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman and she was here.
Now.
With him.
And she was getting naked.
She kicked off her high heels, grabbed the edge of her tank top and pulled the cotton up and over her head. Popping the buttons on her jeans, she shimmied the ultra-tight denim down her long legs and stepped free. Her fingers went to her bra clasp and just like that, her impressive DD’s popped free. She stood before him then wearing a pink mesh thong that left little to the imagination and a rosy red flush that said she was as hot and bothered as a woman could get.
Surprise snaked through him, but he tamped it back down and focused on the hunger stirring deep inside of him.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” she said. Her gaze, intense and unwavering, glittered with passion. “About us.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why, but the first moment I saw you tonight, I knew we would end up here.” She smiled. “I feel like I can’t keep my hands off of you.” The smile faded into a look of raw, inexplicable need. “I feel like I’m going to explode right now if I don’t get close to you.” She moved toward him, eating up the distance between them with determined steps. “Very close.”
Maybe she wasn’t privy as to why she wanted him so badly. And Dillon wasn’t about to tell her.
It had started two months ago when a stranger had ridden into town. Jake McCann had turned out to be more than the average drifter. He’d been a vampire determined to lay his past to rest, to slay his demons. Literally. And Dillon had gotten caught in the middle of the struggle.
One minute Dillon had been trying to protect an old friend and the next, he’d had a pair of bloodthirsty fangs—courtesy of Jake’s nemesis—gnawing at his neck. He’d come this close to dying, his life spilling away on the pavement of the town’s main square, but then Jake had stepped forward, shared his own blood, and changed Dillon forever.
Thankfully.
Sure, it wasn’t the most practical lifestyle—no more lounging on the beach or scarfing chicken fried steak. But being bitten and turned into a vampire who thrived on blood and sex—especially sex—wasn’t such a bad thing.
Not to a man whose parents had been a pair of obsessive-compulsives who’d worried about everything, particularly the health and well-being of their only two children. Dillon and his younger sister, Cheryl Anne, had been smothered and coddled to the point that they’d been isolated from their peers. Harold and Dora Cash had never taken their children on a trip to the beach—and risk the possibility of sun damage? Nor had they allowed them to eat chicken fried steak or anything with an overabundance of trans fat.
Dillon had grown up playing solitaire and chess while other kids went camping and joined Boy Scouts. He’d also been a computer whiz who’d spent his summers reading and taking online courses instead of catching fireflies and going on picnics or swimming down at Skull Creek river.
At thirty-one, he’d become his own boss—he owned the only computer store within a fifty mile radius that handled both new sales and repairs. He was independent, financially solvent, and still a major geek.
Up until two months ago, that is.
“Once a geek, always a geek.”
Susie’s words echoed in his head. That’s what she’d told him back in high school when he’d worked up the nerve to ask her out. He’d gotten a new haircut and ordered a cool pair of jeans and an AC/DC T-shirt online. He’d even invested the money he’d made typing English papers on a pair of contact lenses. But it hadn’t been enough. By then, the damage had already been done, his reputation established. His new look had failed. Even more, one of his contacts had popped out and Susie had ground it into the concrete as she’d spun on her heel, told him to get lost and walked away.
Her rejection had set the stage for many more to come. He’d gone on to have a measly three sexual encounters in his lifetime (not counting the experimental petting he’d done with his buddy Meg back in the ninth grade), and not one woman had ever come back for seconds.
In fact, he’d had a pretty hard time talking them into firsts.
All that had changed the night he’d been turned.
He’d changed.
A gleam of yellow pushed through the part in the drapes and sliced across the carpet at his feet, but it did little to illuminate the rest of the room. He blinked, his gaze piercing the darkness, drinking in every detail of the small hotel room—from the faint scars on the worn dresser to the tiny thread that unraveled at the corner of the bedspread, to the shimmering spiderweb that dangled in the far corner. His vision had improved and sharpened to the point that he had no need of the black coke-bottle glasses he’d worn since the age of five.
His dark blond hair was shinier and thicker, too, his body more muscular and defined. His acne had completely cleared up and his tongue no longer tied itself into knots when a pretty female looked his way.
Now he knew exactly how to talk to a woman.
How to look at her. To touch. To seduce.
He was now a vampire who craved sexual energy as much as he craved the sustenance of blood. More, in fact. And after thirty-one years of near celibacy, Dillon Cash had no qualms feeding the hunger that now lived and breathed inside of him.
His nostrils flared and the scent of warm, ripe woman filled his head. His body responded instantly. His hands itched to reach out. His muscles tightened in anticipation. The blood pounded through his veins. His dick stirred, growing hard, hot, ready.
Still. As great as he knew the sex would be, this encounter would just make him that much more anxious for the next.
Another woman.
Another rush of succulent, sweet, drenching energy.
He needed it. He thrived on it. He fed off of it.
Gladly.
Unlike the vampire who’d turned him, Dillon wasn’t the least bit anxious to escape the hunger. Not when it came with so many perks. He knew he would inevitably miss his humanity. He would then get as serious as Jake about finding and destroying the Ancient One, and putting an end to the vampire curse once and for all.
After he’d broken Bobby McGuire’s record for having slept with the most women in town.
Bobby was a legend in Skull Creek. He’d held the number one spot on the town’s Randiest Rooster list for a record twenty-eight years, right up until he’d turned forty-eight and had had his first heart attack. The doc had put him on a strict No Excitement diet, and he’d been booted off the list. Before however, he’d been a major gigolo rumored to have done the deed with over three hundred women, a count he’d recorded by carving notche
s into his pine headboard. That proof had sold for over two thousand dollars last year at a local charity auction when Bobby, now an old man, had donated a houseful of furniture and moved to a retirement community in Port Aransas.
Over the years, some had called Bobby a sex maniac. Others had called him a liar. A few had even said he was delusional.
But no one—not a single soul—had ever called him a geek.
Not that Dillon cared what other people thought. Nor did he have any desire to land himself on the notorious list.
This wasn’t about proving something to the folks of Skull Creek. It was about proving something to himself. After so many years of having zero luck with the opposite sex, he’d started to think that maybe, just maybe, Susie had been right about him.
He’d never really thought so. He’d always walked the straight and narrow because of his parents. He didn’t want to cause them any more grief. He’d caused enough as a child when he’d nearly gotten himself killed.
It had been his seventh birthday and he’d been determined to camp out down by the creek. His parents had said no, but he’d snuck out anyway. He’d been walking around without shoes near the water and had stepped on something sharp. In a matter of days, a small puncture wound had morphed into a full-blown staph infection.
A near fatal infection that had turned his parents from normal and easygoing people to smothering and obsessive caretakers in less than six months.
Cheryl Anne was too young to remember—she’d been four at the time—and too young to blame him for the stifled life she’d been forced to lead. But he remembered how things had been before the incident. His parents had been fun-loving and adventurous back then. And Dillon? He’d been outgoing. A risk taker with a zest for life.
He’d buckled under the guilt, suppressed that lust and obeyed his folks from then on. To everyone else, he’d seemed like a quiet, shy, timid kid, but deep inside he’d been just the opposite.
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