I lean back and let out a shivering breath as the blood-lust ebbs and flows inside of me, skin pulsing, the interior of the car lit with moonlight, the walls of the alleyway a scoured crimson.
Finally, I get it under control, panting with the release I haven’t felt in hundreds of years.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tammy
I sit in the rear stock room after hours, cataloging the various antiques with the special care my boss, Angelica, impressed upon me the day I started working here. Chipper sits in his blanketed nook at the rear of the room, his chin resting on his crossed paws and snoring softly.
I’ve worked here four days and still haven’t seen a sign of Torsten, which of course makes sense. As I carefully wrap a Victorian spoon in protective packaging – moving my gloved hands with glacial slowness – I reflect that Torsten Haroldsson probably has much more important things to do than come visit some girl he played Good Samaritan with.
As I work, I let my voice fill the space quietly, singing wordlessly as I often do. I like to work out the different notes without the need for lyrics getting in the way. I like to ride the wave of my voice, to try to listen past my own singing and imagine what it must sound like to other people, even if the notion of singing in front of other people makes me want to scream in anxiety.
I glance at Chipper and see his legs twitching in his sleep, lost in doggie dreams.
I smile and sing and work.
Even if I never see Torsten again, at least he was kind enough to give me this job. That’s the message I try to drum into my mind. But the idea of never seeing that silver-haired, mysterious alpha male again causes more anxiety to swirl through me.
The days are okay, but at night when I close my eyes, I can’t help but picture his intense blues gazing into me, or feel the sudden warmth of his hands roaming all over my body.
My womb quivers when I let myself imagine silly, impossible things, like Torsten pushing me onto the hood of his Jaguar and burying his face in my neck, kissing, biting, teasing.
My voice quivers and my song cunts off when I look across the room to see him standing there.
Wearing a suit as dark as night, his eyes glint in the semidarkness of the lamps. One hand is trembling and the other is clenched into a fist as he gazes at me.
“Torsten?” I whisper.
“It’s true,” he says huskily.
“What’s true?”
He opens his fist and in a blinking moment the room floods with deep red light, every corner of it lighting up, but it’s a soft, warm glow, and somehow soothing. I stare at the crimson jewel as wonder crashes over me in unstoppable waves.
“Fancy stone,” I whisper, barely hearing my own voice, I’m so captivated by it.
He closes his fist and steps forward. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was listening to your singing. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of the way the bards would sing in the old days. You have an ancient quality to your voice, Tammy, an eternal note to it. You’re incredible.”
My head swims.
Bards.
Old days?
Is this six and a half foot rugged CEO a LARPer or something?
“Thank you,” I murmur. “I don’t usually sing in front of other people.”
“You should,” he says with passion flaring in his voice.
He stalks across the room until he’s standing over me. Heat radiates from him, fiery tsunamis of it, crashing over me, making me want to catch it, to steal it, to savor it.
“You have a sensational voice, and I’ve heard the very best this world has to offer. Is that your dream, Tammy, to become a singer?”
“It’s a pipe dream, sure,” I murmur, but the sarcasm in my voice flags, hard to sustain under his unflinching gaze. “What is that, Torsten? That jewel?”
“I don’t think you would believe me if I told you,” he mutters.
“Try me.”
He smirks and then stares intently at me.
“Perhaps I could show you,” he says.
“Um, okay?” I murmur.
“Watch me closely. Don’t look away. Okay?”
I never want to look away from you, Torsten.
I stamp down on that silly thought and nod.
“Sure.”
I stare at him, tracing his features with my gaze, the cut of his jaw, the blaze in his eyes, the way his black suit seems barely able to contain his goliath’s body.
And then—
What the—?
I let out a whimper of shock as I turn to find him on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall.
“Try not to panic,” he says.
And then—
Seriously, what the actual fuck?
He’s on the opposite end of the room, leaning casually against the wall as though he didn’t just teleport there.
Chipper looks up, head tilted, as confused about this teleporting billionaire as I am.
Again, he flashes by, a blur of movement and a whoosh of papers on the desk the only sign that he’s even still here, that he hasn’t disappeared.
He blips in then out of existence, leaping around the room, seeming to just vanish and blip into existence.
“Okay, how?” I whisper, my voice a faint ghost. “How the heck are you doing that?”
Chipper must sense the distress in my voice because he leaps up and starts barking, his floppy tan ears suddenly alert and perked up. He gazes at Torsten in confusion, baring his teeth in a growl when he finally comes to a stop just in front of the desk.
“Can I calm him?” he asks me. “We have simple charms, ways to manipulate mortals.”
“We? Who heck are we?”
“Vampires.”
I make a noise somewhere between a laugh, and a gasp, and a guttural choke.
“What?” I snap.
“Vampires,” he states again, as though it isn’t the most ridiculous thing in the world. “May I?”
“Will it hurt him?” I say, and then bring my hand to my forehead. “Wait, what the hell am I even saying?”
“No,” Torsten says, approaching Chipper slowly, hand extended.
He murmurs some words in a language I don’t understand and then waves his hand. Chipper’s bark turns to a goofy grin and he sits down, head tilted as he regards Torsten and then me, as though he’s trying very hard to work out why he was just barking.
“These work on people, too,” Torsten says. “But there’s no pleasure in manipulating a person. Some of my kind, when there were more of us, they delighted in using their powers in that way. But not me. Never me.”
“Torsten,” I whisper, wondering if any moment I’m going to wake up with my forehead resting against the Victorian spoon I just wrapped. “What the hell is going on? You’re not a vampire. Come on.”
“I am a vampire, Tammy,” he says with a firmness in his voice that sounds somehow believable. “And this amulet is proof that you’re the woman I’ve been waiting a thousand years for.”
“What?” I gasp.
He hunts closer to the desk, stopping close to me, his hand tight around the amulet but the light flaring between his closed fingers.
“Long ago, a sorcerer gave me this amulet and told me that it was the only way I could ever become a mortal man again. But for that to work, I’d need to find the woman I was fated to be with. I needed to find a woman who I couldn’t imagine being without. I’ve looked far and wide, Tammy. I’ve searched every corner of this planet in all time I’ve lived and I’ve never felt … never felt what hit me when I scented you in the air the night we met.”
My heart begins to thud in the back of my throat.
The desire to believe him flames inside of me, but I’ve been tricked too many times in my life to just sink into the moment.
My mind starts to leap over explanations, trying to settle on one that makes sense.
Projectors, drugs … freaking I don’t know.
Something that could make it seem
like he was teleporting around the room.
Because this has to be a trick, a twisted game, a billionaire toying with the stupid curvy naïve girl who’s been the butt of far too many jokes in her life.
“When I scented you in the air,” he growls, “I knew you were the one. Your scent stood out over everyone else in the city. I’m stunned I never felt you before, but perhaps it was fate that the wind was blowing toward me and you were close enough on the night I was on the roof. When I scented you, I knew that you had to be the woman I’ve been waiting for my whole long life. And now I have proof. I went to the far north and collected the amulet from the sorcerer’s cave and—”
My womb tries to seize me and throw me up into his arms, but my mind is doing backflips trying to work out how this is all going to come around to me looking like a complete idiot.
Vampire.
Amulet.
Sorcerer’s cave.
What is this, a freaking nursery rhyme?
“So this is why you hired me,” I snap, feeling a blush creep over my cheeks and down my neck. “So that you could make a fool of me. Is this how you get your kicks, Torsten? You pick up girls off the street and try to make them believe this …”
I shake my head, words failing me, and then fly across the room and scoop Chipper into my arms.
My instincts will me to go to Torsten, to grip onto his solid body, and lay my head against his heaving chest.
My desire wills me to clasp his face and tell him I need him as badly as he says he needs me.
He scented me.
He chose me.
But reason tells me this is a trick, has to be, a clever ploy for … for what?
Twisted pleasure?
“I have to go,” I whisper, striding toward the door.
“This isn’t a trick, Tammy,” he says quietly, as though reading my mind. “I’ve never told anybody this before. I’m only telling you because you’re mine. You belong to me. Now and forever. You’re the woman I’ve been waiting my whole damn life for and if you need a little time to come to terms with what happened here, then fine. But you need to know something. I’d never lie to you. You’re mine.”
I shove open the door with my shoulder, cradling Chipper, trying to get my breathing under control as I walk into the night-dark street.
CHAPTER FIVE
Torsten
I smash my bare fists into the cement-filled punching bag, taking chunks out of it as it whines loudly on the specially made bracket.
Cuts open and heal and open on my knuckles.
I pound into it over and over, thinking about the way Tammy ran out on me yesterday, the way she thought I was tricking her.
As if I would ever trick her.
The gym is pitch-black, but my eyes pick out the tiniest shred of light and expand it, lighting it up like the inside of a bulb.
Everything is stark and alive to me as I throw another savage right hook at the bag. A stony crunch noise sounds like shards of cement and leather fly into the air.
A long time ago, one of my kind told me that trying to be with a human would always fail, amulet, or no amulet. They said that mortals were not capable of accepting all the things we could do that they couldn’t, that it simply wouldn’t fit into their heads.
But no.
That’s not fucking fair.
I could scent Tammy’s desire when I told her she was mine when I told her I’d been waiting my whole damn life for her.
I scented her desire but uncertainty flickered in her eyes, as though she thought I was doing this for some nefarious reason, as though she suspected me of playing some cruel trick on her.
I turn away from the bag, making a huffing snarling noise.
My fangs are tingling like a son of a bitch and my shirtless torso is pumping hotly, one second away from blazing blood-red if I don’t do something about it.
Ever since Tammy ran out on me yesterday, I’ve tried to stay strong and fulfill my promise of giving her time to process everything I told her, showed her, and yet the desire to find her scent in the air and find my way to her is too goddamn strong.
Last night, she left in such a rush that she forgot one of her gloves, and now I pick it up and bring it to my nose, inhaling deeply.
Fuck.
It holds the scent of her hand, which has touched every part of her.
If I smell deeply enough, I can scent her sex, the tangy sweetness of it, the way it promises to clutch tightly around my manhood. I can’t stop myself from imagining myself pumping inside of her, unleashing my vampiric fury, and taking her raw and hard.
As I stroll across the gym to the shower room – all in darkness – I imagine flitting across the room last night, taking her by the shoulders and leading her back to the desk. In my fantasy, Chipper is never there.
It’s just the two of us.
I grab her and lead her to the desk and then bend her over.
“You’re my mortal,” I growl, pushing her so that her ass is sticking right out. “You’re my dirty fucking mortal, Tammy.”
She looks at me and moans.
Fuck, fuck.
I tear off my shorts and step into the shower, her scent still writhing through me even if I’ve left her glove in the gym. My manhood is rock hard as my mind returns to the fantasy, hot water blasting down my naked body as the shower cubicle begins to pulsate red.
I need to control myself.
I need to master my desires.
But I can’t.
Not with her.
I think about tearing down her pants and revealing the roundness of her ass, her panties clinging to that pussy, that pussy whose scent has already made a sizzling home inside of me.
“I’m going to spank you like you fucking deserve,” I’d snarl, smoothing my hands softly over her ass cheeks, making her feel every goddamned moment. “Beg me to spank you. Beg me to fucking own you, Tammy.”
She begs me in that voice, that glorious, beautiful voice that I heard singing in the stock room.
I reach down and grab my cock, unable to stop myself any longer. I haven’t touched myself in a long, long time, even before I stopped feeding. I’ve become a master of discipline and self-restraint.
And yet with Tammy, the urge is too powerful, the image of her curvy-as-hell body too prepossessing.
I imagine the way she’d whimper as I spanked her, rubbing my cock, coating it in the hot shower water as precome slides up and down my shaft.
I close my eyes tightly and see her sticking her ass out further and further, even as her cheeks turn red with my carnal spanking.
And then I take my manhood and grind it between those beautiful round ass cheeks, thrusting harder and harder with each pump of my hips.
“I need to taste it,” I snarl in my fantasy, letting go completely now.
And then I do something I could never do in real life.
I lean down and sink my teeth into her juiciness.
I let out a growling sound as I pump my hand quicker up and down my shaft, the fantasy so vivid I can taste the sweetness of her blood, the way it would swim around my mouth, infusing me with her energy. I’d be able to taste her womb, her desire to give me an impossible child, everything. I’d be able to sense how close she was to creaming for me as I sucked greedily on her beautiful ass.
I throw my head back and roar when I feel the pressure building in my balls.
So close, so close.
And then – somehow – I let go.
“No,” I growl, opening my eyes and staring at the shimmering walls.
I force myself to breathe slowly.
I won’t waste a single drop of my seed, vampiric or not, on this shower wall. Every drop I have deserves to be inside of her, where it fucking belongs, shot deep into her body so that it can take root in her womb.
Children.
I never had children, someone to continue my legacy, and I just know that Tammy would make the perfect mother.
But that only works if she agrees to
the ceremony to turn me into a mortal man.
If she even believes that any of this is true.
I slow my breathing down until my body has stopped its pulsating, and then I wash and get dressed slowly, taking my time as I slide into my silver suit.
Part of living this long is knowing never to rush.
Like with Tammy – I just can’t stop thinking about her – I won’t rush for a moment.
I’ll take my time as I lay her on her back and open my mouth wide, sucking on her entire pussy, her clit, and her lips and her greedy fucking hole. I’ll suck it all until she can’t help but writhe and cream in my mouth.
And then I’ll gulp every drop and—
Stop. It.
My mind has never been this captivated by a woman, but with her, it’s impossible to resist, as though she’s a sorcerer who’s cast a spell on me.
As I walk through my mansion outside the city and to the garage, I can’t help but let my mind roam over an image of Tammy standing in the kitchen, her back to me, and her luxurious oaken hair falling in waves down to her shoulders. Her voice filling the air softly and heavenly, and all our children gathered around her, desperate for a sneaky taste of whatever dish she’s making.
It’s so easy to imagine walking up behind her and kissing the top of her head, enveloping her in my arms, hugging her tightly to me, and telling her I always knew she was the fucking one.
I climb into my window-tinted sedan and let out a growling sigh, a sigh that has no air behind it, but sighing is a habit that’s surprisingly difficult to shake even for a vampire as old as me.
All of this rests on the question of if Tammy is even going to want to see me again.
I can’t stop thinking about the way her features warped when she found out what I truly am, the disbelief that flittered across her face, the resentment, as though I was the world’s biggest monster for putting her in the position to have to storm out on me.
I drive through the city, taking my time, the light of street lamps bouncing off the rain-slick roads. Star and moonlight find its way through the clouds and several buildings are strewn with Halloween decorations, more than one Dracula statue grinning toothily at me as I drive past.
Her Vampire: An Instalove Possessive Vampire Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 207) Page 3