by Kat Turner
“I couldn’t…” Eve’s voice shook as she struggled to finish her point.
“It’s okay. Never mind.” He touched the top of her smooth hand.
“I’m fine. I couldn’t save her soul from whatever they’d done to her, and I sent her somewhere awful. I was honest with her family about what happened, and they blamed me. They’ve threatened me, and now, I can’t explain it, but it’s like she’s haunting me.”
“Haunting you.” Jonnie traced a prominent vein below Eve’s knuckle, wishing he had something more comforting to offer than repeating her own words back to her.
She nodded, shoving her plate away. “Yeah. Look, Jonnie, I’m sorry. For wasting your time. I can leave tonight.” Eve pushed back in her chair, wood grinding against wood.
“Don’t go.” He tightened his grip on her hand, bending his head toward the study. “Perhaps we can help each other.”
“How?”
“The company that made me into a vampire is affiliated with occultists, and they have Hollywood connections. It may be the same people, meaning you might be able to find solutions to your haunting. And help get this girl where she needs to go.”
With apprehension in her gray eyes, she looked at his wall of paper. “So you’re saying that all roads might lead to Rome.” Eve pivoted her attention to Jonnie, the weight in her stare as stalwart as steel beams. In that moment, he knew. They were in this together and could pursue their respective goals as a team. And Jonnie thrived in teams.
“We can start researching tomorrow.” Jonnie cleared dishes as his mind raced with optimism, with possibilities. “I have to get to the arena by six, but that affords us an entire day to work. Why don’t you stay here? You can take my bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch.” Wincing, he washed and dried the plates. His tone came out overly casual, like he was trying too hard to keep her.
“Sounds good, Jonnie. Thank you.” Eve rose from her chair and joined him at the sink, leaning against it with a gleam in her eye as she watched him clean. Half of her mouth curved into a luscious, bewitching smile.
“My pleasure.” He put everything away before stopping his chore to smile back at her. His grin was stupid, all gums and teeth and plenty inappropriate given the dark situation. Yet another burst of kerosene energy ran from core to fingertips. This project was bound to be interesting, and more than a bit of a challenge.
Five
Lying alone in Jonnie’s low, wide bed on a mattress firmer than her own, Eve stared at the hardworking ceiling fan above her head. Warm darkness surrounded her with a broken promise of rest. She couldn’t look at the digital clock’s hell-red numbers anymore, as the sight of the time would bring only despair.
Her senses, warring factions within her body, had reached their familiar heightened state brought about by too much time awake.
The scents of him, smoke and leather, aftershave, and male musk, perfumed the sheets and quickened her heartbeat.
Unfamiliar textures of high thread count cotton twisting around her limbs stimulated her sweaty skin.
Red wine and the flavorful dish he’d cooked lingered beneath toothpaste on her taste buds.
A wall clock ticked off seconds. In the still of the night, the volume of the second hand striking landed like thunder.
Red and blue lights skittered across the ceiling as a police car screeched down the street below.
On the couch, Jonnie slept silently. Beneath them, New Orleans partied on. Honking horns, music, and all manner of whoop and scream penetrated the walls.
Sleep would elude her. Soon that first blush of watery bluish dawn, the light that made her heart harden every damn time she saw it, would bruise the sky. Eve swung her legs over the bed and scrubbed a hand over her face, sitting up to look out the big, cloudy window embedded in the brick wall.
Fuck insomnia. She’d even taken an Ambien. Maybe she needed to talk to her doctor about upping the dosage. Her thoughts raced, her pulse raced, all of it exacerbated by the situation. The strange location. The strange, enticing new man sleeping in the other room.
Keyed up and bored, she padded to the bathroom. The cute, retro space housed a claw-foot tub and a white floor made up of a jigsaw puzzle of ceramic teeth. She absently opened a cabinet drawer, finding a stash of boxed toothbrushes, a few tubes of ladies’ travel-sized deodorant, and around ten packages of makeup wipes. A kick of hurt landed in the center of her chest.
Rolling her eyes, she shut the drawer. So what? He slept with women. Eve had no right to be mad or jealous. At least he was considerate to those overnight guests who forgot their essentials.
Eve examined her tired face in the mirror above the bathroom sink and sighed. She opened the door to the medicine cabinet, feeling marginally guilty for snooping but mostly just fidgety as she surveyed the contents. Two loose, unused cotton swabs. Plastic jar of generic ibuprofen, unopened bar of mid-range soap. Small bottle of expensive-looking aftershave that she sniffed. She closed her eyes, nostrils flaring as she imagined kissing Jonnie’s throat, chin, lips.
Kissing his hard prick. Quit being weird. Eve replaced his bath product and shut the slim door, coming face to face with her reflection again.
She wandered the loft for a bit, running her fingers over the thin, hard spines of his impressive record collection. Inhaling oily polish and brassy metal scents from his guitar stand, she read the titles of books filling his stately, built-in bookshelves. Lots of music biographies: Hendrix, Joplin, Clapton, Ronstadt. Also ones about someone from KISS and someone from Def Leppard.
In the fiction department, Jonnie owned the Song of Ice and Fire series, in hardcover, and a couple of Sookie Stackhouse paperbacks. Some history titles and assorted scientific nonfiction rounded out his book collection.
Endeared, she smiled. “So this is what a famous rock star’s second home looks like.” Her soft syllables danced through the airy loft like sprites.
She’d expected more of a mess. More beer cans and fewer books. Clothes on the floor, porn and cigarette butts, et cetera. But Jonnie was a well-read and down-to-earth man, not some stereotypical hard-partying druggie or crass horn dog. Intrigue sparkled in her veins. Steps bouncy and light, she pulled out a book on haunted New Orleans, opened it, and smelled the pages. She smiled with her eyes shut, smelling him.
A flutter of movement and a wink of light appeared in her peripheral vision and prompted her to turn her head. It came from the kitchen, where gauzy red curtains, mirroring the currant hue of the curry they’d enjoyed, flapped in the night breeze.
She replaced the book and ambled over, enchanted by the buzz of southern witching hour mystery circulating through humid air. Eve threw open the shutters and leaned half of her body out of the window, soft and fluttery feel of her cotton tee and boxers sensual against her skin. On the brick street, a couple stumbled by, arm in arm. Jazz music floated through wrought iron trellises and in between pink and yellow French Quarter buildings. When Eve had her fill of New Orleans vibes, she turned around and prepared to go lie back down.
Jonnie stood before her, watching in silence. He wore the holey Sex Pistols tee and baggy black sweatpants he’d put on to crash on the couch. Brown eyes vacant, he looked a million miles away. He glanced side to side, his movements too slow, too robotic.
A chill bolted up her spine as she gawked, frozen.
Well, obviously he was sleepwalking. Eve laid a hand on her heart and calmed herself with three long inhales and exhales. She was piqued and jumpy from lack of sleep was all.
Best to let it play out and not wake him—at least that’s what she remembered hearing on television. Leave sleepwalkers alone.
He cocked his head as if regarding her, though his stare showed no life. A small, disturbing smile curved his lips, and he turned on a bare heel and marched back to the couch with slow, awful, automated steps. Fear dulling to morbid fascination, Eve followed him.
Still smiling like a dog who’d trapped a pet bird in his mouth, he lay back down on his long golden couch
and pulled a thin white sheet over his body.
She stood over him. The clock ticked down seconds.
Jonnie opened his lips and hissed. She sucked in a thin gasp, a needle of adrenaline stabbing her chest.
Two fangs, long as fish hooks and ivory white, protruded from his gums and twinkled in the ambient streetlight.
His face changed. Subtle at first, so subtle she told herself she was imagining things. But no. Chin and nose grew longer, bonier, spikier. Eyebrows rose to sloped peaks. Everything shifted around, like his flesh was a clay head in the hands of a sculptor.
Jonnie’s eyes, their shape stretched feline and oval, snapped open. His irises gleamed emerald. The pupils weren’t normal. They were vertical.
Eve blinked, her throat seizing. He looked unholy, demonic, abhorrent. Like a monstrous cross between a person and a snake. A nocturnal lizard-being, all heavy viper brow line, pointy features on a lance-shaped face, and lithesome, serpentine body.
Perverse interest, like a twisted cousin of sexual arousal, shimmied up her midsection while she beheld the creature before her. He gave off a subtle light, a glow as cold as the moonlight streaking the panels of his hardwood floor. A light that didn’t warm.
Transfixed, she slunk closer to him. The fiendish face made her hot, made her pussy clench. Acting on wild impulse so new to her, she mounted him on the couch, feeling his tense muscles and hard cock beneath her. He slid a hand up her shirt, slowly, staring at her with those evil eyes.
His touch was ice, yet it seared with the heat of Hades.
Eve woke up in bed, limbs leaden and slow, like she was trying to swim through a river of molasses. Eyelids were iron curtains she struggled to lift. Her world hung suspended, upside down, in a state of utter disorientation.
After a few seconds, her blurry vision focused on a white blob perched between her breasts. Twin laser pointers of red eyes peered down at her. The zombie squirrel. Terror shot through her veins like lighter fluid as her vision adjusted to the darkness.
The hideous little thing’s state of decay had progressed. The face was barely more than a bloody skull with a few rancid meat strips clinging to bone.
“Burn the witch and make it dead. Burn the witch and cut off its head.” Miasma, the acrid odor of decomposition, flowed from its moving lips and flooded her lungs. The funk of a thousand graves stole her breath and left her wheezing.
A lone tendril of translucent red smoke curled out of her mouth and into the squirrel’s open jaw.
Eve fell out of bed, clutching her chest, gasping. A heavy, heavy weight had been there, pressing into her lungs until they had stopped working. She’d been dead for a little bit. She knew this for a fact. Finally, her heart resumed its beats. She knelt on the hardwood floor, sucking wind, fists balled at her sternum. Dreaming, or awake? She floated in some in-between, her bearings gone.
“I’m alive,” she assured herself as she came back to full consciousness. “I’m breathing again.”
On her knees, she mentally catalogued her symptoms and chalked them up to an adverse reaction to the Ambien. Still kneeling, hands clasped over her heart like some supplicant prostrate before a dark chaos god, Eve composed herself.
“Eve? Sounded like you took quite a fall there, you alright?” Jonnie’s sleepy voice startled her; his gentle hand on her shoulder made her yelp. She rested her hand on his, finding his skin warm. She looked up at him, at his concerned face and messy hair.
Some twisted part of her was a little disappointed he wasn’t the deathly frigid monster-man of her dream. She crammed that dirty little piece of candy into a junk drawer in her brain before it could entice her anymore.
“I’m fine.” She rose on rubbery legs, Jonnie’s firm grip on her upper arm offering assistance. With a graceless tumble, she fell into bed. Eve felt her forehead, halfheartedly feigning illness in some lame attempt to cover her embarrassment and save face. “I might be coming down with something.” Ugh. Did you really need to add that?
Jonnie sat on the edge of the bed, his posture straight, watching her in silence for a beat. Sensual talons of guitarist’s fingers fanned over his defined kneecaps. Black hair hung in his face, shielding his eyes while emphasizing his jawline and his high cheekbones. The aroma of that aftershave she adored drifted to her nostrils.
“You have a nightmare, love?” A gravely note in his voice, husky and thick, rekindled the residual sexual arousal from her dream. It ignited a dark fire deep in her body, deep in her subconscious.
She snapped her gaze to his. The moment their stares locked, the atmosphere changed. Air grew dense with realizations of desire, unspoken yet mutual. Inevitability danced in the space between them like a charmed, sensuous cobra. “Are you here to make me feel better?”
“Come here.” His words were a tender order, a sumptuous drink of wine with notes of macho arrogance, sweet surrender, and humble request.
Time stretched to infinity as communion flowed between them. They rode one wavelength, in sync.
Beside herself, caught up in the vapor swirling around the loft, strangeness heightened by the ebony shroud of the small hours, Eve sat up and pulled on Jonnie’s shoulder. In a single, silky motion, he slid a hand up her cheek and brushed his nose against hers. At the feel of skin on skin, she tightened her grip on him.
Emboldened, she allowed her touch to make initial explorations of his body. She rubbed his collarbone, then his long neck, with the pad of her thumb. He arched his back and moaned. His sound of pleasure made her pussy dampen. Newly siren-like for this man, she permitted her lips to hover a millimeter from his, taunting him. His breathing changed, sped, the sound filling her with a head rush of female sexual power.
Jonnie moved forward, and she inched back before he caught her lips. Teasing him, keeping him on his toes, stoked her desire. What would he do, how would he respond? A dark glimmer crossed his narrowed eyes. Not quite the monster face, but sharply sexual, a mask of arousal finished with a touch of danger. Seeing him like this made her hot and swampy, a bayou at midnight under the spell of sex magic.
“You gonna let me kiss you?” he murmured, tilting his head. Jonnie touched her bottom lip, pulling it down with one finger to expose the wet part.
In reply, she moved in for the kill. Their lips met in a crash. Animalistic hunger fit for the pre-dawn darkness, Dionysian vibes teeming in gravid, southern air, swept her away. His mouth was hot and dry, then wet as he invaded her with his tongue. Her sex slick with arousal, she pushed her own tongue in, stroking his, her hand sliding down his back to feel his slopes of shoulder blades.
Eve’s sexual aggression was alien to her, as forbidden and unknown as voodoo. She traced his spine, claiming the very backbone of him.
Heartbeats murmured in the minimal space between them as he slipped a hand up her shirt, caressing her side with his warm, callused fingers.
“Yes,” she managed to murmur against his plush yet masculine lips, drunk on his scent. He explored her ribs with an assured touch before slipping his hand upward to graze the bottom of her breast. Her nipples tightened; her thoughts turned to mush.
“Yes.” More sophisticated words and phrases had long since abandoned her.
Mouths molded, sucking and probing. His weight pressed into her, firm sinew and bone on female softness. Two bodies dancing in the dark, they moved as one and lowered onto the bed. He moaned again then, into her lips, and she spread her legs.
Eve made a study of his thin hips, points and angles filling her palms. She’d never imagined slender could be so sexy, so different, so cool. But she wanted to feel every centimeter of this slim rocker’s taut, lean, gymnast’s body. She pulled at his shirt, yanking the hem over his navel.
He took her cue and tugged it above his head, flinging it to the ground with wild, dangerous determination apropos to the situation. Now he was kneeling between her widened legs, looking down at her. She propped herself on her elbows and ran two hands over his olive skin, learning his form. Slight show of ribs,
suggestions of hard bars against smooth flesh. Hairless torso, twin silver hoops impaling each small nipple.
In an outrageous moment of wanton impulse, she tugged one metal loop. “That feel good?”
He growled a little and lowered on top of her, brushing his lips against her neck. “Makes my balls ache, love.” Hot, fast breath breath tickled her throat as he nuzzled a patch of skin just above her clavicle.
Eve arched into Jonnie’s featherlight kisses, rubbing the spots where his legs met his midsection. His erection, stiff as a poker under bunched, thick cotton, rubbed the swollen target between her legs. She bucked into him, matching his thrusts so they moved in tandem.
He growled, the sound from the dream, and slid a tongue as rigid as his dick up her neck. He lapped, licked, striking some tingly pressure point behind her jaw. Sex noises, sounds of desperation and craving, flowed from her mouth. Her clit throbbed. Every nerve ending came alive, became electric. Her own drumming pulse thumped in her ears.
“Do you want to bite me?” she whispered like they shared a secret. Which, in a sense, they did.
“Of fucking course I do.” Pelvic thrusts quickened the pace of his erection, dry humping her barely clothed, wet and ready sex. Teeth brushed her skin, points nicking oh so slightly…the fangs? Her core squeezed at the thought, and fresh wetness flowed from her.
She grabbed his firm ass in two handfuls, pushing him into her needy female flesh. His rock-hard cheeks clenched in her squeezing palms. “Do it while you fuck me.”
Such behavior was so unlike Eve she legitimately wondered, for a second, if she’d fallen under an actual magic spell. Sex for her was typically undertaken as a prim, practical affair, a polite rite of passage dealt with after third dates that went well enough and obligatory, awkward conversations about STIs and birth control.
When it happened for her at all, Eve had intercourse. Sometimes she climaxed and sometimes she didn’t, but she sure as hell didn’t fuck. And hot damn, had she been missing out.