by Cara Coe
Simultaneous Lawnmover, duck, punch, pop up, kick, sidewinder, turn, catch her as she falls backwards into me, pop her back up, last turn, and FREEZE!
“Alex!” She came out of her freeze pose and jumped up and down. “We did it!”
I laughed. “Yeah, only thirteen tries,” I said jogging over to stop the video app on the phone propped up on a chair. I held it up. “And we have proof.”
She mopped at her forehead with the back of her sleeve. “That was awesome. I mean, you would think since we made the dance up it would’ve been easier to execute, but damn, that was hard. What are you doing?”
She finally caught on that I was only half listening. I was now bent over my iPod, scrolling through the playlist. Now. Now would be the perfect time. I found what I needed and pressed play.
“I’ve had the time of my life. And I’ve never felt this way before. Yes I have. It’s the truth. And I owe it all to you.”
She eyed me warily. “What are you doing? I’m not jumping into a lift.”
I laughed softly as I walked to her and drew my arms around her waist. “No need. I just want you to dance with me.”
“We just did.”
“No. I want to feel you while you dance with me.”
I pulled her closer until her breasts were pushing up against my chest and I had her in a tight hug. She melted against me and sighed as I began to sway us and sing the sappy lyrics under my breath. When that song ended, the next one played and I felt her go still.
What a Wonderful World.
She recovered after a moment and started swaying again, but it felt different. I could sense her skin popping with nerves. Her movements were shaky. We got about halfway through the song before I felt her lips press against my neck.
“You remembered,” she breathed.
“I did.”
“This is so much better than how it would have originally gone down.”
“Brock was a dick.”
“We’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”
“I wasn’t speaking ill. I was stating a fact.”
She pulled away slightly to lean back her head and look at me. I loved that we were almost the same height. I grinned. She grinned back.
“This whole afternoon goes into my top five afternoons of all time, Before and After.”
“Ditto, T-bone.”
Her lips found mine and she sighed happily into my mouth. My level of desire turned up several notches and my hands moved from her lower back to cup her ass. Luckily her Shoop costume for our dance consisted of a black tank top and a short teal skirt that lifted when she turned quickly, making it easy on my roaming hands.
We tumbled onto blue plastic foam pads with the bars patients used to use to help them learn to walk running parallel above us. Every piece of clothing I removed from her body revealed more of her dark skin that I ran my lips over. I only broke away to shed my own white t-shirt and hideous neon green running shorts she found for me to wear for our performance.
I put her on her back and kissed my way down, eager to taste her, but she stopped me midway.
“I want you inside me.”
“I didn’t bring anything, Tasha. I’ll go down on you, or I’ll do that thing with my hand. I love making you come.”
I moved my palm downwards over her spot and she bucked into my hand, groaning and biting her lip. My pulse quickened. I swear I could finish right now just watching her.
“No, Alex.” Her smile was devilish. “I’ve been taking birth control for a week now.”
“You…birth control? What?”
My hand paused as I struggled to process her words. I needed blood back in my other head. I narrowed my eyes in confusion.
She nodded. Her hand started stroking me. “No barrier. Just you. Okay?”
My answer was to pull her underwear the rest of the way down and push inside her. This woman was going to be the end of me. The delicious, wonderful, toe-curling end of me. It was one of those times when we couldn’t break away from each other. Our bodies were close. My movements inside her were solid and deep. They were accompanied by long, drawn-out kisses and mingled breaths and foreheads pressed together. I felt my climax building, taking over. I started to slow down, but she shook her head and kissed me.
“No. Don’t stop,” she pleaded.
“Tasha-”
“Keep going, love.”
My heart thrummed. My fangs lengthened. I sped up. Faster and faster and deeper until I came undone and my pelvis shoved the whole weight of my thrust behind my release. But she wasn’t finished. As I lay next to her tingling with the receding orgasm, she ran her fingers over my face. Over my arms. Down my thighs. She kissed my neck, my shoulders, down the middle of my chest.
She maneuvered so I was on my back and she was over me, planting kisses in spots I didn’t know could be sensitive. I closed my eyes and let the affection wash over me.
I reached for her – it was her turn – but she batted my hand away and kept working her mouth over my body. After several minutes, she began to kiss the more sensitive areas. My nipples. My thighs. Short tongue strokes over my most sensitive area, bring it around again. She moved up to my mouth and pushed herself against me, rubbing the area with her own.
I gripped her upper arms. “Again,” I gasped and she nodded, sliding down onto me.
It didn’t take long for her to come. She rode me deep and angled forward in long steady movements until her eyes closed and her fingers dug into my chest and her raspy breaths choked out a stuttered squeal. I squeezed her hips as she came, moving myself up into her to fill her up completely as the orgasm reached its height. Then I let myself release a second time.
She was sloppy spent, falling forward onto my chest and letting herself drape over me. I kissed the top of her head and brought my arms around her to hold her there. It took several minutes of laying there like that before our breathing evened out.
“Could you fall even more in love with me?” I asked jokingly into her hair.
“Not if you were the last vampire on earth,” came her muffled reply.
I smiled. “Liar.”
She turned her head to look up at me, her chin jutting into my chest. Her dark eyes turned serious, drinking me in with an intensity that socked me in the gut. I had to hold my breath as she said it. It was quiet and thick with emotion: “You got me.”
Chapter 30
Her
Alex and I moved to his bed where we fell asleep tangled underneath the sheets. He had fallen asleep first and I’d scooted closer to him and pressed an ear to his chest. His heart was beating in a steady, strong pulse. The sound of it was an audible sedative and it wasn’t long afterwards that I nodded off as well.
But we were awakened several hours later by the sounds of footsteps pounding down the nearby stairwell.
I sat up with a start. Footsteps?
Alex sat up just as quickly beside me and met my eyes. He looked as jolted as I felt. But then his face registered something I wasn’t experiencing. Fear. Expected fear.
In a fluid moment, he leapt from the bed, turned and took a hold of my wrist. He used the restraints on either side of the bed to secure my arms.
His eyes were wild with concern as they met mine. “I love you, Tasha. Please don’t forget that no matter what happens. Please.”
I pulled on my wrist. “What is going on?” I asked frantically.
He didn’t answer. He shrugged into his shorts and threw on his shirt, buttoning it haphazardly and skipping the bottom two. He took the blanket and covered my naked body. All this happened in rushed seconds and no sooner had he retreated to the corner of the room, fumbling with some syringes than a team of people came walking into the space.
I say team because that’s the only way to describe them. They moved in unison, one in front, two behind, and yet two more behind them, stopping together in the doorway and each looking up and down, this way and that as if the hospital room held secrets they needed to seek out with t
heir gazes.
One of them, a girl in standing behind the guy in the lead, landed her gaze on me and it didn’t move. Her eyes narrowed into slits.
“Long time no see,” the guy in front said, shrugging out of his jacket. He draped it on the end of the hospital bed and finally trained his eyes on me. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Alex turned from his corner and pushed on the end of the syringe. A clear liquid expelled a few drops from the point. His smile was foreign to me. It was a tight strain, unnatural looking and twisting his face into an expression I’ve never seen.
“Hello, Vince. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“No. Why would you? We cleared this place two years ago. No one is supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be in Los Angeles.”
Alex shrugged. “I had a hunch on the way there and made a detour back here. Got caught up in my research.”
“For a year?” Vince glared at him. “We found your car running on the 105. We thought you’d died.”
“I hopped a motorcycle,” Alex protested, standing a little taller. He matched the other guy’s glare. A challenge. “I had to jump on this while it was fresh in my mind. No big deal.”
Vince backed off slightly but kept his expression hard. “Well, some of us worry over your hide, Alex.” He glanced at me. Curiosity leaked into his features. “A human? I didn’t think there were any left.”
“She’s vital to my research,” Alex said in an offhand tone. However, his body stiffened and he angled it slightly to come between me and the team of what must be fellow vamps. “Let’s go in the other room and I’ll catch you up with my research.”
My mouth was pursed into a thin line in fear. The girl vamp kept glancing at Alex suspiciously. His eyes also kept darting back towards her. I didn’t know what I should do.
No matter what happens…
I waited, deathly still, and allowed Alex to maneuver the situation. He rolled his eyes as he turned towards me. “Of course this means she’ll have to wait,” he said in an irritable voice as he approached the bed. I wanted to trust him but instinct took over and I began to thrash in my restraints.
I hated his eyes. They raked over me with annoyance as I fought. He tapped the side of the syringe with his finger, then held my forearm down and pushed the tip into my vein, depositing the contents into my body.
I silently glared the word traitor at him but he refused to meet my gaze.
And then he grew fuzzy.
And then I slept.
Chapter 31
Him
I was going to tell her.
Every single day I woke up thinking, This is the day.
And then I just couldn’t. I would clear my throat at breakfast and then let my resolve die in my mouth when her eyes met mine over her bite of oatmeal. She usually grinned, probably remembering the other activity we called breakfast that filled her up but not in the full stomach kind of way. How could I risk losing that grin? How did I even broach the subject?
Hey, Tasha. Remember how you assumed there was no one left in the world except the two of us? Well, actually…you’re the only human I know of and we live in a land populated only by vamps. Want some jam with your oatmeal?
I just wanted to live in our bubble a little longer. In my experience, revelations with Tasha have always ripped holes in our relationship that were jagged and angry and painful before they were healed. I understood that it was a necessary part of our growth, especially since I held a wider knowledge of how times are post-Sweep and she was just discovering what was outside of her backyard.
But these past few years have been painful for me and I didn’t know I could be happy like I was when I was with her. And I was selfish. I didn’t want to risk it yet. I thought I had more time.
But apparently, I didn’t.
I wasn’t the only vamp to survive The Sweep. There were camps of them in a lot of the major cities. My serum had been used for years before The Sweep in the vamp community to supplement blood bank feedings. Vince and I as well as a handful of other vamps and vampires had created stores of them and sold them on the vamp market. During The Sweep and after when money was nothing more than something to wipe your ass with, we turned philanthropic. We rationed the serum instead of selling it. Security was set up around the remaining blood banks to protect the source and the stores of serum were kept secret. City scouting for remaining humans became routine. Not only to generate more blood, but to protect them. With starving vamps, surviving humans were becoming casualties quickly.
I helped with the efforts at first, but the whole ordeal became so sickening for me I faded further and further into the background, lending my help in the form of research. I’d already figured out how to create more serum with less than half the blood originally needed. As long as I kept producing, Vince and the others didn’t give a shit if I refused to round up humans.
Unfortunately, even the rounded up humans couldn’t escape a tempted vamp. Until Tasha, it’d been almost two years since I’d seen one. This resulted in power struggle over the remaining stores. In this new society, control of those stores equaled power.
“What’s with you?” Vince asked angrily, breaking me from my thoughts.
I shrugged. I just finished showing him my progress on my research. The blood serum was known to many. I had started it at the same time I started medical school before vampires started dying off in The Sweep. The virus study was known to few. There would be several vamps wary of having live viruses sitting in a lab. Many would vote to stamp them out despite my arguments that there could be latent strains anywhere, ready to mutate.
The fetus study is known to no one. Until now.
I told them all about it. I needed something big to explain my secretive detour to Houston, which actually really was my third project. I spent a lot of time in Houston’s medical center while in pre-med and I knew what resources awaited me here. I told no one because I didn’t want anyone here with me. I wanted a dead city, a quiet place. I wanted to pretend my world wasn’t reduced to the slap hazard society of leftover vamps that kept changing the rules to tussle for power.
I also told them about it because I needed a large distraction to eclipse Tasha. She could not be the most interesting discovery.
I failed. She tied as the most interesting discovery.
“What about the girl?” Vince demanded. “How could you find a human and not report it to Clearance?”
“Clearance is nowhere near here,” I replied. I used a bored tone so that the balance of power didn’t shift to him. I didn’t want him or anyone else to think I was answering to him. “And I wasn’t leaving my research to fall apart to hunt them down and turn her in. I have it under control.”
“You shouldn’t have even come here.”
I rolled my eyes. “The news about my work on fetuses does not leave this room. I’m only telling you because you’re here.” Tasha’s words about what I was doing rang in my head. Cattle. “The result of this research is a person, so we’re going to approach this cautiously.”
“Can it be done?” Vince demanded.
“Well, that’s what I was trying to figure out before you came barging in here.”
I let my eyes float over the room. Vince has always led one group of vamps or another. They were always roaming from city to city, barking out orders. His knowledge of the stores of the serum gave him that power. With him were two of his right hand men, Xavier and Trent. Decent vamps, just trying to scratch out a place in this hell on earth. The woman with them I knew well. Intimately well. Jade Draven was my ex-girlfriend. She belonged to nobody. Her presence here with this group only meant that for now, she was entertained. For now, she was under Vince’s skin.
The last vamp, a very tall and lean red head in a black t shirt and camouflage – that one I didn’t know. His eyes were aloof. He studied my makeshift rooms with interest, seemingly ignoring our conversation but I had a feeling he was filing away every word.
Vince opened my notes an
d skimmed through my work.
“Who is this guy?” I asked Jade quietly, jerking my head towards the tall vamp.
She smiled mischievously. “That handsome thing? He calls himself Ike. Can’t get much more out of him, though.”
“Well, what’s he doing with Vince’s crew?”
“Apparently he can fight really well. He broke up a fight over serum in Los Angeles. Took on four vamps by himself. Vince invited him to come along but I have a feeling Ike will only be here as long as it suits him.”
“He doesn’t seem like the lackey type,” I commented.
Jade shrugged. “He’s quite the mystery.”
I glanced at Jade as she watched him. A mystery meant amusement for her. So that explained why she was really here.
Vince looked up from my notes with questions in his eyes. He swept his gaze around the room before settling it back on me. “We need to talk.” He flicked his head towards Xavier and Trent. “Scout the hospital for supplies. We’re going to be here a little while. Ike, do a quick perimeter search to make sure no other humans were missed. Jade, do you mind babysitting Alex’s find?”
Jade scowled. “Not my idea of a productive afternoon.”
I attempted to keep a similar scowl off my face. “She’s out cold, Vince. I gave her a high dose.”
“Since when is extra caution ever a bad idea?” Vince pulled Jade into a hug, his hands roaming down her body intimately. I looked away. “I’d appreciate the favor,” he told her softly and her scowl wavered.
“Fine,” she said. “But I always collect.” Her face transformed into one of confidence as she found a way to appease Vince while getting something out of it. With one last look at me, she left the room and headed towards where Tasha slept.
Vince dropped my folder on the table between us.
“You have good work,” he said, almost grudgingly. “Promising. But your fails at are one hundred percent.”