by Renee Rose
Deathless Love
By
Renee Rose
Copyright © 2012 by Stormy Night Publications and Renee Rose
Copyright © 2012 by Stormy Night Publications and Renee Rose
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.
www.StormyNightPublications.com
Rose, Renee
Deathless Love
Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson
Image by Jimmy Thomas and RomanceNovelCovers.com
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.
Chapter One
The figurative roof was on fire by the time the Morphs finished their last set at the house party. Kate sang the last note while watching a huge throng of people jumping up and down, cheering. It was amazing that the cops hadn't shown up to shut them down for noise.
Kate gave Fox a satisfied grin as he unplugged his guitar from the amp. “That was good, eh?”
“You rocked it,” he said in his faint British accent. “You okay to hang for a while?”
“Ah...” she bit her lip. Unlike most of the general population, she was actually more comfortable on stage than off, and she didn't really know anyone at the party. But she knew Fox had been flirting with a guy all night and she didn't want to cock-block him. He deserved a good wing-man for once, considering how much he always did for her.
“Yeah, that's cool,” she said.
She helped the rest of the band pack up their equipment as Fox disappeared into the house. She wandered inside and found herself cornered by a rough-looking guy with a tattoo sleeve. He was nice enough, but she definitely wasn't interested. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for Fox or her other band-mates. “I gotta go find my friend,” she muttered to the guy and slipped away without making eye contact.
“Has anyone seen Fox?” she asked the crowd of people standing in the dark kitchen. She pushed through the drugged-out crowd in the living room and made her way down the hallway. She tapped on a bedroom door, and hearing music, pushed it open.
“There you are!” she exclaimed.
Fox was making out with the guy he'd been flirting with earlier. He had him pushed up against the wall and was sucking on his neck. He whirled around when he heard her—and her heart stopped. Fox had blood dripping from his mouth—from his fangs, actually—and more was running down his neck.
Vampire! Oh my fucking God!
She let out a blood-curdling scream and suddenly Fox was right in front of her with a hand over her mouth.
“Shut up!” he hissed. She stumbled backward, her eyes popping out of her head, trying to get away from him and his bloody fangs. He lunged forward to keep his hand on her mouth and kept following until she slammed into the wall behind her. “Shhh. Shut up, Kate.” He looked into her eyes and she suddenly found she couldn't make a sound. He disappeared and reappeared in front of the unlucky guy, who had whirled around in confusion and was staring at Kate stupidly.
She wanted to run, but she was rooted to the spot, horrified and transfixed, waiting to watch the guy she had thought of as her best friend kill the boy-toy he had picked up. He grasped the guy's neck and bent his head down again, but instead of fangs, his tongue extended from his mouth and he licked the blood from the man’s neck, as if he were cleaning the wound. The blood stopped trickling out and soon she could hardly see where he had been bitten. Fox murmured something to the guy, who smiled dazedly, gave him a kiss and turned to walk out. Fox gave him a slap on the butt as he left. Then he turned back to her.
She was crying, silently. She felt as though she must certainly be in a nightmare, because vampires didn't exist, especially not in her world. Not her best friend. He flashed back in front of her again.
“Shh, Kate, it's all right. But no screaming, okay?”
She just stared at him, but her voice came back and her cries were no longer silent.
“Did I hurt you? Are you okay?” He was grasping her shoulders, but his touch was gentle. The fangs had retracted and he looked like he always did. She shook her head, confused enough to wonder if she had really witnessed what she thought she had just witnessed.
“Where's Fox?” she asked between sobs. It was a stupid question, since he clearly was Fox, but her mind couldn't wrap around what was happening.
“Shh… I'm Fox, baby. I'm the same guy you've known for the past three years. I just have a secret, that's all.”
She shook her head.
“Calm down.” He tipped her chin up to his face and when she met his eye, she felt a wave of calm spread through her body. Except it felt all wrong, because her mind was still frantic.
She tried to shove him away, but it was like trying to push a bus. “Don't do that!”
He held up his hands, palms out. “Okay, I won't. Look at me and I'll undo it.”
She didn't trust him. She looked at his pierced earlobe instead of his eyes.
“Kate, it's me. It's Fox. Have I ever hurt you? I haven’t, have I?”
That was true. Fox had been nothing but a friend to her since the day he asked her to be in his band. And if he had been a vampire for the past three years and had never harmed her, she probably was safe with him. She met his eye and felt the adrenaline return to her body, her heart pumping double-time. She took several deep breaths to calm herself.
“Come on,” Fox said, grabbing her hand. “Let's get out of here.”
Fear surged through her again and she dug her heels in. “Where are we going?” she asked suspiciously.
“I'm taking you home.” When she still resisted him, he turned and took hold of her shoulders again. He peered at her with sympathy. “Kate,” he said gently. “Do you want me to erase it from your memory?”
She blinked at him, then shook her head vehemently.
“You've seen this before.”
She felt dizzy at that. “I… I have?”
He nodded, soberly. “I've erased your memories. But it's getting to the point where I've erased too much. I don't want to cause any psychological damage.”
It was an odd mixture of relief and fear that washed through her. To know that she had seen this before was proof that she was safe with him. And yet knowing that he'd tampered with her mind was profoundly disturbing. She started walking, willing at least to let him take her home.
When they were in his car, she asked, “So were you going to turn him?”
Fox chuckled. “No, love,” he answered with the charming British accent that helped keep him in boy toys. “We don't turn people and we don't kill for blood. I was just feeding. It didn't harm him a bit and he won't remember a thing.”
“We…?” Her mind raced ahead. “Oh. Stella and Dom. Right?” Fox lived with the owner and manager of one of the nightclubs where their band played. She had always thought it was strange that three adults—none of whom were in a relationship with each other—would live together when they all could clearly afford their own places.
He nodded.
“Wait… are you telling me that vampires don't turn people?”
“No. I'm telling you that we don't. You can think of us as rogue vampires. That's why we're in Tucson, Arizona—it's the last place most vampires would want to be.”
“Because of the sun?” She knew she was being slow on the uptake, but her mind couldn't process all this at once.
“Right.”
“So there aren't other vampires here?”
“Nop
e.” Pulling up in front of her place, he turned in his seat to look at her. “So, listen, Kate. I'm going to make it so that you can't tell anyone about this. It's for your own good. Mortals who know about vampires usually either get turned or sucked dry.”
She felt like she was going to cry again. He tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Kate, I promise you're safe with me. There's nothing to be afraid of. Can you believe me?”
Call her crazy, but she did believe him. She nodded.
“Good. Look at me,” he commanded softly. She felt a little wave of something, or perhaps she just imagined it because she knew he was hypnotizing her.
“Do you want to just leave your keyboard in my trunk until tomorrow?”
She nodded.
“Okay, good night. Call me if you need to talk more about it, okay?”
“Okay, goodnight,” she said.
She went into her little adobe casita and made a cup of chamomile tea to calm her nerves.
As the fear wore off, she felt little shivers of thrill running through her. Dom was a vampire. Dom—the extremely good-looking nightclub owner who was the object of almost all of her fantasies—got even hotter in her mind.
* * *
“Mmm, yummy,” said Stella, Dom's bar manager and fellow fang, lifting her eyes toward the door. Kate Strand, the lead singer of the Morphs, had just come swinging through it. She was dressed tonight as Marilyn Monroe—complete with a 50's style dress and platinum curls. Kate's look changed from week to week and she could pretty much rock every look she tried.
“I'll say,” Dom agreed, watching her approach the bar in her black stilettos. She was a lithe little thing—slender with small breasts and hips and more presence than three women combined.
“Oh yeah, she's retro this week,” Fox said absently. It was Fox who had “discovered” Kate and invited her to sing for his band, the Morphs. He was the third vampire in their Tucson nest, and his interests didn't lie with the female sex. Otherwise, he too would surely have been gawking. Pretty much everyone in the bar was rubbernecking her right now. Although she could have been wearing her Spiderman shirt and jean shorts and they'd still be looking.
“Hey, Kate,” Dom said, filling a glass of ginger ale with lime for her.
“Hey,” she said breathily, swinging onto the bar stool next to Fox and beaming at Dom for the drink. “Thanks.”
“Hi gorgeous,” Stella said, sidling over and leaning across the bar to kiss Kate's cheek. “I like the Marilyn thing.”
“Do you? I wasn't sure,” Kate said doubtfully, her personality as enigmatic as her look. To watch her, you'd think she was full of confidence, but when you actually spoke to her she was completely unassuming.
“No, you look hellagood,” Stella said, making a show of licking her lips. Stella went both ways and made no bones about her interest in Kate. Kate laughed. “Thanks.”
“Looks like a good crowd you have here tonight.” She was talking to him, looking nervous about making small talk.
“They come for you, sweetheart. They come for you,” he said easily.
She looked up at him and he could have sworn her eyes went straight to his canines. “Ha. Yeah, right. Thanks for the drink,” she said, not meeting his eyes before she slid off the stool and headed toward the back. It would be an hour or two before the Morphs went on stage.
“She wants you,” Stella said. “And you want her back. Why don't you jump on that?”
“I don't do mortals.”
“You don't do anybody, and that's your problem. If you don't go for her, I will.”
“Yeah, you've been trying for her since the day she started singing here. Look how far it's gotten you,” Fox muttered. “She doesn't really do anybody, so back off of her.”
“She knows, doesn't she?” Dom asked Fox, a serious edge in his voice.
Fox whipped his head up to meet Dom’s eyes. Guiltily. He nodded slowly. “Yeah, but I didn't tell her.”
“You didn't clear it from her mind, either.”
“Look, I've cleared her too many times already. But I made it so she can't tell anyone, so it's cool. And Stella, she's totally afraid of the fangs, so drop any ideas you have for her.”
Stella shrugged.
“I don't like it. I'm holding you responsible for her,” Dom said. Fox had broken one of his important codes: laying low with the mortals. He didn't want any more needless deaths. He had left that life behind him.
“I know, I will absolutely take the check on this.”
Raised voices and an increased throng of bodies alerted him to a skirmish in the middle of the club. Dom called over to the bouncer at the end of the bar. “Jim.”
“I'm on it,” his bouncer said.
“Get them out. But don't make a scene.”
“I know, I know, Jedi mind trick, right?” Jim grinned at him, tapping his temple.
“That's right.”
He didn't like to have any kind of drama go down in his club. He'd taught the bouncers to treat offenders suavely, giving them the greatest possible chance to leave with dignity, even if they did have their arms held by two huge ex-military guys while they walked out. He watched as Jim and James—yes, his two regular bouncers had the same name—cut through the crowd, separated the two belligerents and led them out, one through the front door and one out the back. He could only hope they'd wait to be sure a fight didn't pick back up in the parking lot. The last thing he needed was the kind of trouble a drive by cop car would spot.
* * *
The stilettos were driving her nuts. What had she been she thinking? Standing in the women’s bathroom, putting lipstick on before her first set, Kate was having a hard time balancing. Stressed out with writing the proposal for her master's thesis, she'd ingested three Starbuck's Venti Lattes earlier in the day and now she was having a near panic attack from all the caffeine.
She rubbed lipstick off her canine tooth. Her fang. She shivered, remembering seeing Fox's bloody fangs last week. She had ended up calling him several times that week, firing questions at him like, “How old are you?” (179 years old) and “How old were you when you were turned?” (20) and “Why are the three of you rogue vampires?”
That was the most interesting answer. “Dom had a spiritual crisis in the 1970's and swore off killing,” Fox had said. “Then he packed up and moved to Tucson.”
“And you and Stella followed?” she'd asked.
“Yeah. I like the way I feel when I'm with Dom. I feel more like my mortal self. Less soul-less,” Fox had explained.
She wanted to grill him more about Dom, but didn't want to make her interest that obvious. Now that she knew, she could see how all the clues had been there: Stella, Dom and Fox's relationship was so odd for one thing, with all three living together in one compound like a family. Tighter than family, really. They had pale faces and felt cooler to the touch. And Fox could never rehearse before dark.
The main clue was their pointy canine teeth, and now that she thought about it, she remembered that sometimes those teeth had seemed longer than at other times. Last night she'd been paying attention and had seen Fox's grow before her eyes when he saw a guy he was digging on. And all three were drop dead gorgeous, especially Dom. He was all lean muscle and not too tall, which made sense since he was born in a different century. He had wavy brown hair that fell just to his shoulders, and black-lashed hazel eyes—the kind that popped against his darker features. Looking into his beautiful face was an almost unsettling experience, which was why she was most often tongue-tied around him.
She'd told Fox the idea of being bitten creeped her out, but the truth was, there was something extremely intoxicating about the idea of vampires. She'd spent the entire week imagining Dom biting her neck. He was the fodder for most of her fantasies, although she would never act on them. God, she couldn't even look him in the eye when she talked to him.
Someone grabbed both of her breasts from behind and she shrieked and whirled around. Stella was grinning a toothy grin
at her. Kate had never been with a woman, but if she could pick one, it would be Stella—especially now that she knew Stella was a vampire. She could just picture her dressed up as a dominatrix, spanking her with a riding crop. She shook her head and pushed that crazy thought out of her head. Stella stepped past her into a stall, blowing her a kiss.
Kate went to the bar and ordered a shot of Herradura, to take the edge off the caffeine buzz she had going. She threw it back and bit into the lime as a shudder ran through her, then took her place on stage, kicking off the damned stilettos. The caffeine/alcohol mix made her want to jump around, so she veered from their agreed upon set and called for some of the punkier songs they knew. The great thing about the Morphs was that the guys could usually pull any cover song she named out of their asses.
The first set went well, and the effects of the shot seemed to have taken the edge off. The bar was way too crowded now for her to squeeze in there to get a drink, but Nanette, one of the cocktail waitresses, came right to the stage as they finished to take their orders. “Ginger ale and lime?” she smiled.
“Yes. And another shot of Herradura.”
“You got it. You were great, by the way. As usual!”
Kate smiled her thanks and hunted for the stilettos. There was no way she was walking through the bar in her bare feet. Fox had waited for her at the edge of the stage and he took her hand to help her through the throng. He was good like that. Sometimes she got overwhelmed by people trying to get her attention when she came off the set, and lord knows drunk people weren't good about picking up on her subtle cues to back off. She wasn't good at being rude. Or even firm, really. On-stage, Kate was a rock-star—a sassy, confident bad-ass—but once she was done with the set, she was only good at smiling and saying the things she thought people wanted to hear.
She gripped Fox's hand tighter when she was groped by some random person while she was squeezing through the crowd. Fox pulled her in closer to him and gave the throng behind her the stink eye. She gave him a peck on the cheek. He really was her best friend. She loved that he was not even slightly “vagiphobic” as some of her gay friends called themselves. He had no problem fronting as her boyfriend to take the pressure off her and she had no doubt he would defend her with his fists (or fangs?) if it ever came down to it.