After all, Cole was a vampire and blood was like a drug for him. It didn’t surprise her that he wanted to drink the red liquid escaping from her cut. It would be wasteful to just let it fall on the floor, wouldn’t it? What was unexpected was how good it felt to Sam when he lapped at her blood. Mentally and physically, it was extremely enjoyable to let him have her blood. It was a soft sensation akin to being slightly buzzed while stretched out in a beach chair under a palm tree listening to swoosh of the surf. His touch was as soothing as a tropical breeze and just as gentle.
“Yes. It’s so peaceful when you’re touching me,” she agreed. “So good.”
She felt complete and secure when he was running his tongue over her cheek—as worry-free as she’d ever felt. “Do it again?” Normally such a request would have sounded ludicrous, but under the circumstances, it was wholly logical to Sam.
Apparently it made sense to Cole, too. With a chuckle he rolled them into a more comfortable position and complied with her request, pressing his lips to her wound and drawing tiny sips from her. Purple fire continued to dance in diminishing waves across them as their minds spoke to each other and bonds deeper than either had ever imagined possible were forged. Sam willingly lost herself in Cole, and didn’t demur when she felt him delving deep into her mind. Drugged from the purple lightning and his feeding, she welcomed him back inside her head.
At peace and content in a way neither had ever been before, minutes or hours or years passed. Sam neither knew nor cared about how long they lay that way. It didn’t matter.
With a final swipe of his warm tongue, Cole licked her wound one last time. Sam realized the injury no longer hurt. All the pain had been erased by his caring touch. She laid her head happily on his shoulder and looked up at him, sleepy-eyed.
This cannot possibly be happening…Rooms do not turn completely upside-down regardless of noisy malfunctioning vacuum pumps…And fictional characters do not arbitrarily appear even if the rooms do turn over…Because they’re fiction, and fiction’s not real…
Some part of Sam’s rational mind demanded she pay attention to facts, telling her this was all impossible but she had to strain to hear it. It was easier to just ignore that tiny dissenting voice and enjoy the moment. And there was so much that she could enjoy about her current position.
He feels real…
That was enough for her.
Unconcerned by what was and wasn’t possible, she took the time to observe Cole closely, comparing the picture in her mind to the reality of the beautiful man cradling her so comfortingly. Cole was tall and lean, all broad shoulders, long legs, and whipcord strength. She looked him over carefully without forming any valuations or appraisals; her mind was not clear enough to make such judgments. She simply took in the visual picture and filed it away. If her mind cleared, she might put value on what she saw but for now, seeing was enough.
Even so, she couldn’t help but marvel at how absolutely beautiful he was. She’d thought the description of him overblown in the novels but she saw now that it fell far short of the truth. She hadn’t believed anyone could be as handsome as Cole was supposed to be but he was...and then some!
There was a certain aristocratic cast to his features, a hint of delicacy that couldn’t detract from his manliness. A firm chin graced with a hint of a cleft and a finely chiseled jaw assured no one would ever mistake him for a female. Cole might be excessively elegant and suave, but he could never be termed effeminate.
Black as midnight was the usual phrase Marie Desiree used to depict his full, thick hair, but that wasn’t quite accurate. There was a gray tone to midnight, a hint of coloration lingered in that description. Black as midnight wasn’t truly black; Cole’s hair was. As a teenager, Sam used to camp out in a cave in New Mexico with the bunch of wild boys and girls she considered her friends and running buddies. When all the lights were extinguished and the campfire was not yet lit, they were plunged into the most intense darkness she’d ever experienced. That darkness was the color of Cole’s hair.
The inky blackness was at once a startling contrast and a stunning compliment to his ivory skin. He’d have been splendid with a tan, but he was a fictional vampire; pale skin was mandatory. She supposed astounding beauty of face and form were de rigueur for romance novel heroes anyway. He certainly fit the mold. He was everything one would expect an undead hero to be.
Sam smiled at him. He was every bit as perfect as she’d imagined he’d be even if he didn’t exactly fit the image in her head. He was damn close.
Cole looked down at her and his normally sharp eyes were as dazed as Sam felt. He looked about in confusion, as if he was slowly waking from a drugged sleep.
“Where are we? ” he asked finally. “Is this Heaven?”
Sam blinked and tried to form some sort of coherent thought processes.
“I don’t know,” she admitted after a moment. Her head was as fuzzy and thick as it was when she’d been downing shooters and long-necks all night long. “It looks like your hotel room.”
“So it does,” he agreed. For the moment that was enough.
She snuggled into a more comfortable position and let him take over worrying for the both of them. It was easiest to just let go. She didn’t particularly care where they were. Lying here with him was good enough for now.
“Was there just an explosion?” he asked looking about.
“Mm-hmm,” Sam answered, happily secure in his embrace. “I think so. It felt like it. You smell nice,” she added.
In her pseudo-drunken state, her tangent seemed reasonable. Explosions that might or might not have happened were distant and didn’t matter. He was here and now and he smelled good. At the moment, Cole’s nearness was far more important than any blast. She didn’t give a sheep-rancher’s damn about what had brought him into her arms. It was enough that he was there.
Sam felt more inebriated than she’d ever been in those long ago nights when a honky-tonk was as comfortable and familiar as her home. She was completely disoriented but quite content to remain exactly where she was for the foreseeable future. It took too much effort to worry about it. She was with Cole. That was enough.
“You smell wonderful, too,” he countered, content to follow her tangent. “And you taste even better.” He tightened his embrace and hummed against her ear. He felt safe holding her. His serenity reverberated through her mind.
Sam felt as though she was secure for the first time in years. Her mind might be wrapped in cotton wool but she was happy. Everything was slightly distant and not really vital, not nearly as significant as lying with Cole, letting waves of power and energy flow through her while a comfortably hard form was pressed against her. The sensation was at once calming and energizing. It felt nothing short of wonderful. It seemed to her admittedly addled mind that Cole offered everything her life was missing. She was quite content to remain where she was forever without investigating any whys or hows.
The body pressed to hers shivered as a last discharge of energy caused them both to twitch. With the departure of that unknown power, the fog began to clear slowly from her brain. But she was content to let the process take its time. She was in no hurry to think about much of anything. Sensation was enough for the time being.
Cole took over their still-combined being as his mind began to clear more quickly than Sam’s, and under his direction, they were able to finally process the alien memories flooding both their thoughts.
It finally really hit Sam that this was Cole Grayson, romance novel vampire hero, wrapped so tightly in her embrace. She looked in wonder and concern at the man holding her as tightly as she was holding him. Even though such thing had to be impossible, he certainly felt solid and real. His amusement at her surprise rolled back to her. Of course he was solid and real, his mind told hers. He was every bit as real as she was. He certainly felt completely corporeal—and completely splendid.
Cole shivered again and they both gasped. Then he cried out in pain, and she tightened her embrace
as she tried to process what was happening. Her psyche was swamped by grief and throbbing agony, a legacy of Cole’s most recent experiences. She held him close and tried to fight against what they were feeling.
Cole’s memory was full of excruciating pain, both physical and emotional. He’d believed himself dying just before he’d found himself in Sam’s arms. And now Sam shared his feeling as if it were happening to her. She wailed as the full force of it cut through the gentle, drugged state she was in. It hurt so badly to relive what had happened to Cole. Hardest of all to bear was the emotional devastation. Excruciating as his actual death was, it was far more painful to relive his sense of loss and abandonment.
Forsaken by everyone he cared about, by everyone he thought had cared about him, Cole had finally given up, surrendered. He simply had no will to continue. He couldn’t face life utterly alone, and had welcomed the death sentence that his own brother had pronounced against him.
Cole’s heart, and Sam’s along with it, was torn asunder as he recalled how none of his vampiric brothers or sisters said a word or made the least move to protest Wynn’s order to kill him. There was no compassion or sorrow on the faces of his family as they gathered to watch his execution. Anticipation and glee shone from several of his siblings as they greeted his death with approbation.
Tears began to flow from Sam’s eyes again as she remembered Cole kneeling before Wynn Matthews, too devastated by the defection of everyone he thought he could count on to even protest whatever was to come. No one cared.
If Wynn didn’t care enough to spare Cole, if no one in the family cared enough to step forward on his behalf, what was the point of continuing? Broken and hopeless, he welcomed Death, even as torturous a one as Wynn dictated—death by fire. Why not? His heart burned with sorrow; his body might as well burn, too.
The first touch of the torch had hurt so badly, he’d been unable to hold back his cry of pain. As his agony grew, reaching an unsupportable level, his mind disconnected from his body and he no longer felt anything at all. Numb and seeming to float away from whatever bound him to the world, he knew he was dying at last. As fire ate at his body, destroying it, his last coherent thought had been grief for all the love he’d given that had not been returned. Falcon, Wynn, and his family—not a one of them had any feeling for him at all. Remorse flooded him. Everything he’d done had been a waste. His life held no meaning. And now he died, unloved and alone. Whatever tortures Hell might hold for a vampire such as he could be no worse than dying in solitary misery.
No one cared.
His final thought was a prayer that he could find a single person in all of creation that would at least grieve his passing.
Sam sobbed for his hurt even as the agony of his death faded from immediacy into their now combined memory.
Cole wiped the tears that flowed down Sam’s face.
“And it seems God does hear prayers,” he said, his eyes soft and filled with gratitude and wonder, pain gone from their depths. “You cry for me. You grieve for me. So this must be Heaven rather than Hell,” he remarked. “How extraordinary. Either God is remarkably merciful, or I wasn’t as horrible a person as I always feared I was.”
Suddenly he grinned at her, a boyish flash of pure joy that hardly seemed appropriate for a man who’d just died a horrible death.
“Hello, Samantha. It’s truly a pleasure to meet you,” he said with sincerity. “Though that hardly seems a proper greeting for someone I know so intimately.”
He paused for a moment to simply look at her, and then laughed joyfully.
“I know everything about you,” he said in amazement and then laughed yet again. “Birth date, social security number, the color of your underwear, everything. Now how wonderful is that?”
She hadn’t thought of it quite that way. In fact, she really hadn’t taken the opportunity to consider all the ramifications of the extraordinary event that had taken place. As soon as her mind began to clear, she’d been assaulted with Cole’s recollection of torturous death. That hadn’t been wonderful in the least...or had it? Even now, she could feel Cole’s immense gratitude for what he saw as salvation and forgiveness. Without sharing what he’d experienced, would she be able to understand what he felt now?
And was wonderful the correct descriptive term for their experience? She thought for a moment and realized it was. Her mind was full of memories that weren’t her own but they only made her understand Cole perfectly. Everything that made up Cole Grayson flowed and flashed through her head. She found herself in complete agreement with his assessment.
“Oh, yes. Perfectly wonderful.” She couldn’t come up with a single thing to add. Wonderful was the exact word to describe the moment.
As she slipped more and more into some clarity of thought the whys and wherefores began to gain importance. How could she possibly be wrapped in Cole Grayson’s arms as she wept for his death? Not only was he supposed to be dead, he was never really alive. Regardless of how substantial his body felt against hers, he was a fictional character. How was any of this possible?
Sam was dreaming. That was the answer. She had been knocked out cold and was dreaming. She was surely hallucinating or having delusions or whatever it was that people had when they were unconscious on a floor somewhere.
There was no way she could actually be lying on a bed in what looked like an expensive hotel room with Cole Grayson lying on top of her. First and foremost she reminded herself again, he was a make-believe character in the romance novel series The Vampire Encounters. Second, he was a vampire, and vampires did not exist. Third, if you could somehow discount the first two reasons why the whole situation was impossible, men who looked like Cole never gave Sam a second look—or even a first one in most cases.
So it followed that she’d whacked her head hard enough to knock herself out when she’d been thrown from her desk. Like Cole, she had vague memories of an explosion. So she had to be lying insensible in her cube and not in what looked like an expensive hotel room. Still, the sheets beneath her felt soft and smooth where they touched her bare skin. Air conditioning was blowing cool across her face and Cole was pleasantly heavy, though his weight was making it a touch hard to breathe and her left breast was feeling a bit squished. Pleasure and discomfort combined, it all felt extremely real.
Sam blinked up at Cole, trying to remember what it was he’d asked. Oh, yes, he was both confused and exultant because he knew everything about her and had all her memories. She could perfectly comprehend his confusion. “Yes, I understand. I remember everything about you. But it’s all sort of jumbled.”
“Yes, a bit. What a completely fascinating experience! I’ve never felt anything to compare,” he said with a grin.
She couldn’t help thinking what a really beautiful smile he had. He just seemed so happy and was so open about it. It nearly distracted her from what he was saying.
“As a vampire, I feel bits of a person’s life when I’m feeding but nothing like this.” His smile grew. “I know you. I truly know you.” He laid a slim finger on her forehead. “There’s nothing in there hidden from me.”
She felt heat spread across her cheeks.
He frowned slightly though his smile didn’t waiver.
“Now, now. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s quite astonishing and extremely marvelous actually. I don’t think I’ve ever been sure exactly how anyone felt about me before.” The smiled softened a bit and the sparkle in his purple eyes turned gentle. “It’s...heartwarming to know there actually is one person who’d sincerely care a bit if I cease to exist. Someone will miss me after all. I didn’t believe there was such a person in all of Creation.” There was gratitude and pure wonder flowing from him.
“You shed tears for me.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Never be embarrassed by that. It’s a gift for which I can never thank you sufficiently. You’ve no idea how very precious that is to me.” He paused and tilted her chin so he could look at her. “But then again, you actually do know t
hat, don’t you?” He laughed suddenly. “I’ve always wanted to meet a woman who understood me. Sad to say I had to die and find one from another world to accomplish that.” He quirked an eyebrow as he thought about her otherworldliness. “So I’m fictional? My life is a novel? That’s...extraordinary.” He chuckled softly. “And perhaps a bit frightening.”
Sam laughed with him. “I’m the one who should be frightened. In all likelihood, I’m suffering from a concussion. I’m lying somewhere unconscious having hallucinations.” She smiled at him and couldn’t dampen the desire that suddenly surged through her. She knew part of it was her own body and mind wanting what she had fantasized about for so long but an equal measure was flowing from him.
Don’t you want me? A part of his heart and mind demanded she answer him. She couldn’t lie or hide her response. He’d know immediately. Her thoughts were his the instant they formed. Did she want him? Well, of course she did. He was so beautiful and so in need of love, how could she not want him? She wanted him intensely as much as she’d ever wanted any man. She smiled up at him.
“You’re right; it’s a wonderful hallucination. Let’s hope the doctors or whoever’s tending me don’t wake me up too soon.”
Cole shifted so he lay half-across her. She could feel his hardness pulsing against her thigh and his desire burning deep in her mind. As he looked down at her, shared craving shone from his eyes, darkening them to amethyst.
His deep voice settled over her like roughened silk as he said, “Let’s hope they never wake you up. I believe I want to keep you right here.” He pressed closer and pushed his hips against her soft thighs before he brought his lips down to meet hers.
The instant Cole kissed her, Sam knew sex with Cole Grayson was going to be everything Marie Desiree had led her readers to expect and then some. Desiree’s fade-to-black style could not convey the glory of the man. She’d left much to her reader’s imagination, but Sam had never thought it would be anything quite like this. Maybe Sam’s imagination had not been up to the task Desiree set for it. If just his kiss was this good, Sam couldn’t surmise what actually making love to him was going to be like.
Vampire Encounters - Second Chances Page 3