So what did a redneck girl from west Texas do when she met the perfect vampire? She let him screw her senseless, and returned the favor.
Sam flinched a little when she thought of how easy she’d been. Her mama, all those years of protestations to the contrary, had apparently raised a trashy slut after all. Cole hadn’t had to do more than kiss her and she was all over him, legs spread, begging him to love her unconscious. She grimaced. What Cole must think of her! She had enough male friends to know how guys talked about girls who were that easy.
She wasn’t really afraid Cole was going to describe all they’d done to his drinking buddies. He didn’t have drinking buddies for one thing. And he wasn’t that sort of man anyway. Still, she couldn’t stop the flush of pure mortification that crept up her face as she imagined his opinion of her morals. Jesus, even Lurleen wasn’t that easy!
And then there was the whole issue of whether or not any of this was actually happening.
Sam considered banging her head on the countertop, but bending over hurt too much.
“So what the Hell do I do now? He’s not even real, for God’s sake.”
The trouble was he had felt real. He had felt very, very real. Shit!
“You do not get emotionally wrapped up with fantasies. That would fall into the ‘needs to be taken away by men in white coats’ category. Just how crazy are you, anyway? Come on!” she told her reflection.
She sighed. And what if he was real? What if he didn’t mind if she was a slut and wanted to be her...what? Boyfriend? How was that supposed to work? He was all big city sophistication and she was a computer programmer from Odessa, Texas with a history of beating up Mexican boys who wouldn’t take no for an answer. The idea of calling Cole anyone’s boyfriend was more than a little laughable. He was too fanciful for so prosaic a term. Cole was someone’s lover, or maybe their affaire de amour. He was certainly too exotic to be Sam’s boyfriend.
She’d grown up rough and rowdy on the border and he was a fancy man. Crap!
Sure, he was rumored to have some sort of bad-boy past. The fans of the novels speculated endlessly over Cole’s hazy background, sometimes suggesting the wildest flights of fancy. They imagined he’d been everything from a Roman gladiator to a Viking marauder to a cousin of Attila the Hun. Sam now knew none of that was true. He wasn’t a dethroned prince of the realm or a highwayman. He was a baronet’s son from County Cork.
Many readers insisted that his background had to be criminal or debased in some way, and his airs were a way of covering up his lowbred roots. Sam had never thought that. She had suspected Cole had been born well-to-do. Well, she had the satisfaction of knowing she was right.
She grinned now at the thought of all those who said he was originally a peasant. Well, he might have been Irish aristocracy and looked down on by his English counterparts, but he’d hardly been out in the fields digging potatoes! He was the son of a minor nobleman.
Acquiring the vampire virus that gave him immortality in exchange for ingesting small amounts of human blood hadn’t reduced his aristocratic standing. Those humans who survived the infection were accounted superior to normal mortals. Nearly two centuries old, Cole was a lord even among those who considered themselves genetically above the rest of humanity.
Sam was the daughter of a west Texas-born wildcatter and a Louisiana truck stop waitress. What were she and Cole supposed to have in common besides their mutual agreement that he was a fantastic lover and hotter than Hell?
And if they could get past the social and financial gap, there was a far more substantial hurtle to overcome. There was his great romance.
Just like every man Sam knew, Cole came with emotional baggage. A gorgeous blonde, blue-eyed piece of baggage named Falcon Matthews. How was Sam supposed to compete with a woman named Falcon? She sighed again, and the thought of banging her head on the ornate marble counter grew more pleasant.
Even the names in this world were exotic. Falcon, Wynn, Cole—they were all soap opera extravagant. And she was plain old Samantha, Sam to her near and dear. She might be in a romance novel world but she didn’t have a romance novel name…Or looks…Or anything else. And she for damn sure had no idea how to deal with the specter of Falcon Matthews.
Falcon was Wynn’s daughter. She was beautiful and every bit as sophisticated as Cole was. And if reality was anything like the novels, she was also a cold-hearted, manipulative bitch who took the concept of betrayal to a whole new level of nasty. Sam didn’t need Cole’s memories to know all about Falcon and their ill-fated romance. It had been a major subplot running throughout the whole series of Marie Desiree’s books.
Falcon wanted to prove she was one of the genetically superior elite who could survive infection with the vampire virus. Wynn hadn’t wanted to risk her life when there was no need and had forbid any vampire to transfer the virus to her. Unwilling to accept her father’s refusal to turn her into a vampire, Falcon schemed and manipulated and flat-out lied until Cole had turned her. The resulting rift between Cole and Wynn had left Cole banished from his vampire family and at war with his brother and overlord. Falcon used her beauty and wiles to keep Cole separated from his family and at her bidding for the next five years. Cole had fallen for her lies easily. Sam ground her teeth until they hurt whenever she thought of Falcon.
It never failed to amaze Sam how otherwise intelligent men couldn’t see when a no-good woman was using them for their own ends. Redneck hicks or old money preppies, they were all the same. She’d seen it happen often enough in real life that the plot line in the novel hadn’t surprised her though it made her madder than Hell. Cole didn’t deserve to be treated the way Falcon treated him.
Worst of all, Falcon didn’t even try to make him happy. Cole was absolutely miserable for most of the time he was with the blonde. With her newfound knowledge of Cole’s life, Sam knew just how unhappy Cole had been and how much being separated from his family had hurt him. He hid it well, but he wasn’t really meant to be a lone wolf. Cole needed to be loved by at least one person to feel like his life had meaning. But Falcon never loved him. And when her perfidy was finally revealed in such a way that Cole could no longer pretend she wasn’t the sweet, gentle creature she pretended to be nor that she felt anything for him or any one else, he was heartbroken.
The coup de grâce came when Cole found out that Falcon was using the vampire powers he’d given her to indiscriminately kill any mortal that angered her or stood in her way. She was conscienceless in her pursuit of power. She was consumed by her need to take over her father’s vampire kingdom and usurp his political power. Her obsession with gaining Wynn’s throne had finally led her to the attempted murder of a family of innocents. They were no threat to her and had done nothing to deserve death, but they stood in the way of her expanding power.
Cole had done what he had to and stopped her. But killing her had nearly destroyed Cole. And Wynn had taken revenge on Cole in the worse possible way, declaring Cole a murderer and sentencing him to death.
Through whatever fluke of science or magic or God’s grace that flung Sam into Cole’s world, he lived through it all and survived his execution. But Sam wasn’t sure if he’d continue to survive. At some point, the ghost of Falcon and what had happened would rear its far-from-pleasant head and Cole would have to deal with it. If he could. Sam wasn’t sure about that.
Even though Falcon was gone, she’d left hideous scars on Cole’s heart. Sam felt them when she was joined to him. Sam wondered if he’d ever be able to trust or give his heart to anyone again. Cole couldn’t exist alone. If he couldn’t get over Falcon, he’d give up again and allow circumstance to end his life.
Scanning the memories he’d planted inside her head, Sam felt like crying for how utterly Falcon had managed to eradicate what little trust Cole had in anyone. He hurt so badly. Sam wanted to make all that hurt go away.
Yeah, like that was even possible.
“Get it together, why don’t you? He loved Falcon. It doesn’t matter
that she was a lying piece of jumped-up white trash; he loved her. And it hasn’t been that long since he was forced to kill her,” she told her reflection severely. “What do you want to do? Play Rebound Girl? Aren’t you a little too old and too sensible for that kind of crap?”
Yeah, way too old. Way too sensible.
Shit. She suddenly hated the thought of being old and sensible. She wanted to be the one to love Cole and give him what he needed, fucked up as that idea was. And it was completely screwed up, of course. She was hardly the type of woman Cole could love.
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t real. He didn’t exist. He was a character in a novel. She might as well have a crush on Indiana Jones. She took a deep breath.
“He’s not real.” Maybe if she repeated the phrase enough times, she’d believe it.
The problem was that unreal men did not leave hickeys on your neck and whisker burns on your thighs. They didn’t make your body ache. They didn’t leave the area between your legs so pleasantly sore you could barely walk.
And now she didn’t even know where he was. She had no idea when he’d left or when he’d be back. She couldn’t feel him in her head any more. Without that mental connection, she felt empty and more alone than she ever had before.
Who knew if Cole was even coming back?
There wasn’t much in the bathroom to show he’d ever been there. She peeped in the hamper provided for used linens. There were other towels in it. He’d bathed before he left. She checked the closet. His clothes hung neatly inside with a row of expensive shoes arranged below them. His toiletries were tucked away just as neatly. She could smell his cologne, subtle and pleasing as it wafted gently out of the closet. She smelled it again when she sat down on the side of the bed. It rose from the pillows. She buried her face in them so she could inhale his scent and remember the sensation of being surrounded by it, and him.
Where was he? Where had he gone? Her toes touched something cold and metallic and she picked his watch up from the floor. They must have knocked the Rolex off the nightstand at some point, along with the lamp and the phone. The phone they’d put back when it beeped insistently and wouldn’t stop. The lamp still lay on its side. She couldn’t bring herself to pick it up. She looked down at the watch in her hand. Like the toppled lamp, it gave solidity to her memories and proved Cole wasn’t a fantasy.
Okay. So maybe he did exist. That didn’t mean he’d be back. She knew Cole could walk away from his possessions without a qualm. He’d done it before. That thought brought a band of pain to her chest. She castigated herself for being paranoid in addition to being delusional.
She wandered back into the bathroom and tried not to think about what would happen if he didn’t come back. She had enough problems at the moment without worrying about what might or might not be.
Sam wasn’t really sure where she was or how she had gotten there. Hell! She wasn’t even sure she was really there. She might just be lying in a hospital somewhere in a coma. Didn’t people write stories like that all the time? Wasn’t there even some television show about the adventures some poor kid had while he was in a coma? In all likelihood, she was doing just that. This was one big knock-on-the-head induced dream. And if it wasn’t, she was in a world of trouble, as her mama had been fond of saying. She’d disappeared from her world and landed here. If she was really in the world of The Vampire Encounters, then there were people back home looking for her.
Or were there? Aside from the job and Lurleen, who was there who would care if she dropped off the face of the planet? No one. Not a blessed soul. Sam’s family was small. Her parents and grandparents were all dead. Her brother? She sniffed at the thought. Frank appeared when he wanted money or a place to stay for free. Once Sam had put her size seven boot down and made Frank help with the bills when he was sponging off her and wouldn’t lend him a dime, he quit showing up.
She had fond memories of Frank as a child, but the broken-down drifter who appeared at her door in worn-out boots bore little resemblance to the kid she’d made stick pistols for when he was five years old. His tales of how he needed just enough money to ride in one more rodeo, of how he knew he could win this time, of how it was just bad luck he wasn’t in the money already had long since ceased to make her feel sorry for him or want to help him. Now they just made her head hurt.
The last time he called her, he’d been highly insulted when she wouldn’t lend him money so he could tie one on with his friends to celebrate his best score on a bronc yet. It wasn’t good enough for him to win, of course, but he still thought it worthy of tying a good one on. She told him to let his friends buy his drinks. He swore at her and declared he was moving to DFW for good since she didn’t love him.
Sam hadn’t contradicted him. She’d just as soon Frank took himself off to Fort Worth and stayed there. It sure as Hell wasn’t her fault he was wasting his life on crazy dreams of being a rodeo man. Dreams were well and good but not when you couldn’t even scrape up the gas money to get from El Paso to Midland-Odessa.
Not that her dreams were any less crazy, she had to admit. She was the one who had half killed herself on a night of wild sex with a vampire that didn’t even exist.
She definitely needed to bang her head on that marble counter now. All this circular thinking was making her dizzy.
Sam looked at the mirror again as she reached up to towel her hair. She realized belatedly that she had no clean clothes, no toothbrush, no deodorant, no anything. Hell, she didn’t even have a hairbrush. Her clothes were trashed. She’d made the mistake of redressing at some point and the garments hadn’t stood up to an overly enthusiastic Cole well at all.
She had nothing but her wallet and her novel. The wallet had been stuck in her back pocket and somehow the book had remained in her hand until she landed here with Cole. She hunted about and found a rich terry robe. It was prettily packaged with a logo of some sort which she didn’t recognize immediately. Then it clicked. She was suddenly thankful for Lurleen’s fixation with the movie Pretty Woman. This was the hotel from the movie, the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
She thought for a moment and berated herself for being stupid. Of course this was the Regent Beverly Wilshire. All she needed to do was look into the memories Cole had given her and she would know where she was. She knew when he checked in and where everything in the suite was. Damn, but she was an idiot.
Sam shook her head in self-deprecation. She hadn’t been this messed up since she’d spent a week getting wasted in Nogales with some college buddies a good decade ago.
She stared into the mirror again and tried to think without going in circles, but found it wasn’t really possible. With a sigh she gave up and fingered the tie to her robe. The humor of the situation struck her. Lurleen kept wanting to book the hotel’s Pretty Woman holiday and was always begging Sam to agree to come along. Sam always refused, claiming she didn’t have the money, though in truth she really just never thought it would be much fun. She didn’t share Lurleen’s fixation with the movie and had no interest in fancy hotels. And here she was smack in the middle of a suite to rival anything Julia Roberts had slept in.
Fate surely did have a sense of humor, she mused. She had always made fun of Lurleen for her obsession with the retelling of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. Now it looked like Sam owned less than the Beggar Maid and had no idea where her King Cophetua had wandered off to.
Lord, what a mess.
Sam sat down on the little vanity chair and laughed until tears flowed down her cheeks and her sides hurt more than they had when she woke up.
* * * *
Sam was sitting cross-legged on a very comfortable couch, wrapped in the big terry robe and attempting to coil her wet hair into something resembling a respectable knot from what passed as a braid when Cole strolled in.
“I went out for a few things,” he said with a half smile that made her insides turn to water. “I ordered something to eat before I left and with my usual impeccable timing, it arrived just as I d
id,” he added, motioning to the hotel employee that followed him. He waved a hand and the waiter pushed his white-draped cart through the door and began to set the table.
Sam couldn’t quite believe it. She wasn’t sure if she should be angry at his nonchalance or just grateful he’d returned.
Cole had come back. He hadn’t left for good. The thought that he might have left her alone had niggled and pinched at the back of her mind for the last half hour.
He took in her startled expression.
“What?”
She blinked a couple of times before she managed to answer.
“Nothing. Just...Well, I’m happy to see you.”
His smile was blindingly bright.
“I’m happy to see you, too. I rather missed you.”
He sat a pristine white shopping bag on the coffee table. There was a gold logo on it, but she was too far away to see it clearly and couldn’t decipher it.
“What’s all that?”
The vampire shrugged. “As I said, I popped out and picked up a few things I thought you might need.”
He sat down beside her and began to take packages and bundles from the bag, scattering them across the coffee table. He surveyed her critically and raised an eyebrow at her untidy braid.
“First order of business,” he said as he dug about in the bag. “A comb!”
* * * *
“Cole!” Sam protested as he pulled at her earlobe with blunt teeth. She jerked her head toward the waiter putting the final touches on the beautifully set dinner table.
His chuckle reminded her that he was supposed to be the evil vampire in the novels, not the good one. “My dear, I’m sure that young man has seen far more in his career serving the famous and near famous than a gentleman simply showing proper satisfaction upon returning to his lady.”
She frowned but couldn’t really be angry with him. His lady. Cole might talk like an escapee from a movie of the week, but it certainly sounded nice when he said things like that. And when he looked at her with purple light flickering in his eyes she was pretty sure he could talk her into stripping naked in the middle of the capital building in Austin and letting him do her in the rotunda for the world to see. She freely admitted that he had her completely whipped. She was more than willing to do whatever he wanted.
Vampire Encounters - Second Chances Page 5