Halfway to the Grave

by Jeaniene Frost

“All right, luv?”

  It was intimate in a way I’d never experienced, staring into each other’s eyes while he was inside me. I could only nod, since speech was beyond me.

  He moved in me, pulling back just a little and then thrusting forward. The unexpectedness of the pleasure made my breath catch. He repeated the motion, but deeper this time. Before I regained control of my breathing, he pulled himself nearly all the way out and back in with a single arch of his hips that tore a whimper out of my throat. Sweat broke out in earnest on my body, and piercing, primal desire shot through me.

  Bones reached down and flattened his palm against my back, moving lower until it cupped my hips. He pulled me closer, rubbing me against him to coincide with his movements. I quickly picked up the rhythm, and the increased contact made my head spin in excitement. That previous clenching inside me returned, winding tighter with each new stroke until my body burned with a single thought.

  “More…”

  It was a moan of pure demand the rational piece of my mind couldn’t believe I’d spoken. He chuckled deep in his throat, almost growling, and increased his pace.

  My hands, which before hadn’t strayed lower than his back, moved greedily down to grip his hips. Fingers dug into the hard mounds with no care for propriety. I couldn’t seem to touch enough of him or get close enough to him. Every new thrust made it more intense, and I craved the hard slicing of his body into mine like I’d craved nothing before it. Compulsively I kissed him, piercing my lower lip on his fangs and hearing him groan when he sucked the blood off.

  “So sharp and sweet,” he muttered thickly.

  “No more…of that.” My words were spaced in breathlessness.

  He licked his lips, savoring the drops. “It’s enough. Now you’re inside me also.” And he held me even closer, if that were possible.

  I gasped uncontrollably as his movements grew more intense. Earlier hesitation forgotten, I thrashed underneath him, fingernails raking temporary welts down his back. My teeth sank into his shoulder, stifling a scream at the ceaseless friction, and I bit him until I tasted blood.

  He yanked my head back, his tongue ravishing my mouth. “Harder?”

  “God, yes,” I moaned, not caring how that sounded.

  Bones released his control with obvious relish. His hips ground into mine with a tempered savageness that was the most incredible pleasure ever inflicted on my body. The screams I’d held back spilled forth in rhythmic shouts that spurred him on. When I couldn’t stand it any harder, he moved faster, thrusting in a manner that would have been merciless had I not reveled in it.

  Somehow it reminded me of the effect of the drugs. Everything seemed to spin and lose shape except Bones. That far-off roaring was back in my ears, but it was my heart pounding that made the sound. The nerve endings in my loins shredded with anticipation. They lashed and wound together, clenching and unclenching with greater fierceness, waiting for the moment when they would snap.

  At once I was disconnected and hypersensitive of my body. This panting, twisting creature on the bed couldn’t be me. Yet never before had I been so aware of my skin, my every breath, and the blood rushing through my veins. Before the last stretched nerve inside me broke, Bones grasped my head and stared into my eyes. A cry wrenched out of my mouth when the dam burst and the flood of orgasm swept over me. It was stronger than the first one, deeper somehow, and left residual tingles pulsating underneath my skin.

  Above me he groaned, face twisting in ecstasy as he drove into me even more rapidly with his eyes locked onto mine. I couldn’t look away, seeing his control evaporate inside the green depths. He clutched me as he gave in to the passion, kissing me almost bruisingly and shuddering for several moments.

  When I broke away to breathe, he shifted until we lay side by side. His arms coiled around me, keeping our bodies touching. There didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in my lungs and even Bones breathed once or twice—a record, from what I’d seen before. By degrees I controlled my gasping and my heart settled into a nondangerous rhythm. He reached out and pushed the damp hair from my face, smiling before he kissed my forehead.

  “And to think you actually believed something was wrong with you.”

  “Something is wrong with me, I can’t move.”

  It was true. Lying next to him, my arms and legs just wouldn’t respond to any of the commands I gave them. My brain had a back in five minutes sign hung on it, apparently.

  He grinned and leaned over to lick the nipple closest to him, drawing lightly on it. The areola was oversensitive from his previous attentions, and a thousand tiny needles of pleasure rushed to the tip. When it crested to the very threshold of sensitivity he stopped, repeating the process with the next one.

  Something caught my vision when I glanced down.

  “Am I bleeding?” I asked in surprise.

  It didn’t quite seem like blood and my period was a week away. Still, there was a distinct pink wetness on the crease of my inner high.

  He barely stopped to look. “No, luv. That’s from me.”

  “What is—? Oh.” Stupid question. He’d told me before that vampires cried pink. Guess the other fluids followed suit.

  “Let me up, I’ll wash off.”

  “I don’t mind.” He breathed the words into my skin. “It’s mine, after all. I’ll clean you up.”

  “Aren’t you going to roll over and go to sleep?” Wasn’t that what usually happened? Unless he really, really liked to cuddle afterward, things were taking a markedly serious turn as his hand moved lower, seeking my depths.

  He ceased his ministrations to laugh, raising his head from my breasts.

  “Kitten”—he smiled—“I am far from sleepy.” The look in his eyes sent a shiver through me. “You have no idea how many times I’ve fantasized about you like this. During our training, our fights, the nights I’ve seen you dressed up and pawed at by other men…” Bones stopped speaking to kiss me so deeply, I almost forgot what we were talking about. “And all the while seeing you look at me with fear whenever I touched you. No, I am not sleepy. Not until I’ve tasted every inch of your skin and made you scream over and over again.”

  He bent his head to my nipples once more, sucking them and worrying them with his teeth. The way his fangs rubbed the areolas was frighteningly erotic.

  “One day I’m going to find that old bloke of yours and kill him,” he muttered, so low I could barely hear him.

  “What?” Did he just say that?

  A strong tug from his mouth distracted me, and then another and another, until my concerns melted away under the sensual assault on my nipples. After a while he looked at them and smiled in satisfaction.

  “Dark red, both of them. Just like I promised you they’d get. See? I am a man of my word.”

  Confusion clouded my mind for a second. Then I remembered that afternoon with him trying to burn the embarrassment out of me with hours of dirty talk, and color suddenly flamed in my face.

  “You didn’t actually mean all of those things, did you?” My mind rebelled at the thought, but there was a rapidly beating pulse in my body that treacherously hoped for the opposite.

  He laughed again, low and throaty. His brow arched in sinful promise, his eyes bled back to pure green, and his mouth slid farther down my stomach.

  “Oh, Kitten, I meant every word.”

  I awoke to something tickling my back. It felt like butterflies. Opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was an arm wrapped around me, its pale color nearly identical to my own. Bones was curled lengthwise along my back, hips touching mine. The butterflies were him pressing kisses onto my skin.

  My first thought was, He picked the wrong profession. Should have stayed a prostitute. He’d make millions. The second one was far less pleasant, and I stiffened. If my mother could see me now, she’d kill me!

  “Morning-after regrets?” He ceased kissing me with a noise of disappointment. “I feared you might wake up and flog yourself over this.”

  While he sp
oke, I shot out of bed like I’d been fired from a cannon. I had to think about what to do, and I couldn’t do that in the same room with him. Not even pausing to find my underwear or bra, I just threw on a shirt and yanked up my jeans. God, my keys, where had I put my keys?

  Bones sat up. “You can’t just storm out and pretend this never happened.”

  “Not now,” I said desperately, trying not to look at him. Aha, keys! Grabbing them with clenched fingers, I ran out of the bedroom.

  “Kitten…”

  I didn’t stop.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I DROVE STRAIGHT HOME, MY EMOTIONS IN A tug-of-war the whole way. Making love to Bones had been beyond incredible, and he was right. There was no way I could pretend this didn’t happen. But there was more to consider than just my feelings. Left to myself, I would only be moderately wigged about having slept with him. The main reason for my panic, however, was knowing how my mother would react. I couldn’t tell her, ever. And that meant I had to stop this before it went any further.

  My grandparents were on the porch, drinking iced tea when I pulled up two hours later. They looked like a postcard of Americana with their white hair and plain clothes, faces weathered from time.

  “Hello,” I greeted them distractedly.

  There was a hiss from my grandmother. Immediately afterward came a bellow of outrage from my grandfather. I just blinked at them.

  “What’s the matter with you two?”

  Curious, I watched as my grandfather turned three shades of red. After all, it wasn’t like I hadn’t strolled in the next day several times before, and they’d never commented about it. They’d adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it came to my late nights.

  “Justina, get on out here, girl!” He ignored my question and rose to his feet. A moment later my mother came out, her face as bewildered as mine.

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  He answered her while still shaking with wrath.

  “Just look at her. Look at her! You can’t tell me she wasn’t doing anything wrong last night! No, she was consorting with the devil, that’s what she was doing!”

  I blanched, wracking my brain to figure out how he found out I’d slept with a vampire. Had I grown fangs? Reaching out, I fingered my teeth, but they were as square and flat as normal.

  The gesture enraged him further. “Don’t flick your finger off your teeth at me, missy! Who do you think you are?”

  To her credit, my mother at once began to defend me. “Oh, Pa, you don’t understand. She’s—”

  Her voice abruptly choked as she stared at me with a lesser look of shock.

  “What?” I demanded, frightened.

  “Your neck…” she whispered, disbelief in her eyes.

  Terrified, I pushed past her and ran to the nearest bathroom. Were there fang marks? God, had he bitten me without my realizing it?

  Once I stared at my reflection however, the reason for their reaction became clear. Erratically spaced and in different shades of blue were four—no, make that five—hickeys. No telltale puncture wounds from a vampire’s teeth, but plain, unmistakable hickeys. Opening Bones’s shirt, I saw that my breasts bore similar marks. Good thing this top didn’t have cleavage or they’d all have fainted dead away.

  “I know what those are!” Grandpa Joe roared at me from the porch. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, running around, not married, staying out all night. Ashamed!”

  “Ashamed!” my grandmother echoed. Good to know they still agreed on things after forty-three years of marriage.

  I went upstairs to my room without answering them. It was definitely time for me to seek alternate accommodations. Perhaps that apartment would be vacant immediately.

  To my utter lack of surprise, my mother followed me.

  “Who is he, Catherine?” she asked me as soon as she shut the door behind her.

  I had to tell her something. “He’s someone I met while I was out looking for vampires. We, ah, have something in common. He kills them, too.”

  No need to go into further details. Like a very important one regarding him being one.

  “Is…is it very serious between the two of you?”

  “No!” My denial was so vehement she frowned. Great, didn’t that sound nice? No, we can’t have a relationship because he’s technically dead, but my God is he gorgeous and fucks like a Trojan.

  “Then why…?” She looked genuinely puzzled.

  Sighing, I lay down on the bed. How to detail mindless lust to your mother?

  “Well, it just happened. It wasn’t planned.”

  A look of horror crossed her face. “Did you use any protection?”

  “It wasn’t necessary,” I answered truthfully without thinking.

  She clapped a hand to her mouth. “What do you mean, it wasn’t necessary? You could get pregnant! Or a disease!”

  It took a lot of effort to keep me from rolling my eyes. I could just imagine my reply. Good news, Ma. He’s a vampire and an old one, so no pregnancy or diseases. It’s impossible.

  Instead, I just told her not to worry.

  “Don’t worry? Don’t worry! I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to drive into the next couple of towns where no one knows us, and I am going to buy you condoms! You’re not going to end up young and pregnant like I was—or worse. There’s AIDS now. And syphilis. And gonorrhea. And even things I can’t pronounce! If you’re going to engage in that kind of behavior, then at least you’re going to be safe about it.”

  She grabbed her purse with a determined gleam and headed toward the door.

  “But Mom…”

  I followed her downstairs, trying to convince her not to leave, but she ignored me. My grandparents eyed me from the porch, faces drawn together like thunderclouds as my mother got in her car and drove off. It was definitely time to call that landlord.

  The landlord, Mr. Josephs, told me I could move in the following weekend. It couldn’t come soon enough. I occupied myself with showering, shaving, brushing my teeth, anything but wondering what Bones was doing. Maybe I was worrying for nothing. Maybe it had just been casual for him, and I wouldn’t even have to tell him it couldn’t happen again. After all, the man was a couple hundred years older than me and a former gigolo. I certainly hadn’t robbed him of his virginity.

  A car pulled into our driveway around six, and it didn’t sound like my mother. I looked out the window, curious, and saw it was a taxi. A familiar bleached head appeared next as Bones got out of it.

  What was he doing here? Another panicked look revealed my mother still wasn’t back, but if she showed up now and saw him…

  I ran down the stairs so fast, I tripped and landed in a heap at the landing just as my grandfather opened the door.

  “Who are you?” he demanded of Bones.

  I was mentally coming up with a story about him being a fellow college student when Bones answered him in perfectly polite tones.

  “I am a nice young girl here to pick up your granddaughter for the weekend.”

  Huh?

  My grandmother poked her head out, too, mouth open at the sight of Bones in her doorway.

  “Who are you?” she parroted.

  “I’m a nice young girl come to pick your granddaughter up for the weekend,” he repeated the odd line, staring her directly in the eyes with a flash of green. She soon got the same glazed look her husband wore, and then nodded once.

  “Oh, well, isn’t that nice? You are a nice young girl. Be a good friend to her and set her straight. She has love bruises on her neck and didn’t come home until this afternoon.”

  Sweet Holy Jesus, why couldn’t the ground just swallow me? Bones stifled a laugh and nodded solemnly. “Don’t fret, Grannie. We’re going to a Bible retreat to scare the devil out of her.”

  “Good for you,” my grandfather said in an approving voice, expression blank. “That’s what she needs. Been wild all her life.”

  “Go have a pot of tea whilst we pack, bo
th of you. Off you go.”

  They went, still with empty eyes, and trod to the kitchen. Soon I could hear the water being sloshed into the kettle. They didn’t even drink tea.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?” I asked in an angry whisper. “If only the movies were right and you couldn’t come in unless invited!”

  He laughed at that. “Sorry, luv. Vampires can go anywhere they please.”

  “Why are you here? And why did you trick my grandparents into thinking you’re a girl?”

  “A nice girl,” he corrected me with a smile. “Can’t have them believing you’d taken up with a bad sort, can we?”

  I was in a rush for him to leave. If my mother came back, it would take more than a flash of his eyes to convince her that he wasn’t what she’d see him as—her nightmare, come to life.

  “You have to go. My mom will have a heart attack if she sees you.”

  “I am here for a reason,” he said calmly. “Not that I want you to be involved any further, but you were very emphatic last night that you wished to be informed if I discovered where that club was. I have. It’s in Charlotte, and I’m flying there tonight. I bought you a ticket, if you want to go also. If you don’t, I’ll just go into your kitchen and convince your grandparents I was never here. That way you won’t have to explain my presence later to your mum. It’s up to you, but you have to decide now.”

  I knew what I would choose, but I was still rattled at how this could have been a very ugly scene. “Why didn’t you call instead of just coming over?”

  His brow arched. “I did. Your grandfather hung up on me as soon as I asked for you. You really ought to get a cell phone. Or remind them that you’re twenty-two years old and it is appropriate for a gentleman to ring you.”

  I left the gentleman comment alone. “Yeah, well, they’re old-fashioned, and they kind of lost it when they saw my neck—which was very inconsiderate, by the way! Leaving all those ‘Been there, done that!’ stamps for them to see!”

  A grin tugged at his mouth. “In all fairness, Kitten, if I didn’t heal supernaturally, I’d be covered with similar markings, and my back would be a river of scars from your nails.”