by Mysti Parker
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I snatched up the blood and drank it down, savoring the rich, hot, iron-filled goodness as it slid down my throat and eased my growling stomach. I slammed down the cup and wiped my mouth with a napkin.
“Well?” Ashe asked.
“That was amazing. Can I have more? Please?”
“Of course, hon. I’ve got a whole pint in the kitchen back there. I’ll warm it up for you and bring it out.” Ashe started to protest, but Edna smiled. “It’s on the house. Poor girl’s starving.”
Zac groaned and stood from his chair. “I don’t think I can watch any more of this.”
Edna chuckled. “Okay, then come with me. I’ll point you to the diner upstairs.”
Edna took Harriet’s other wrist and quickly wiped it with alcohol before hurrying to another room with a swinging door, which I assumed was the vampire kitchen. Zac followed her, glancing back at me and Ashe with a frown before he slipped through the door.
Ashe scooted closer to Harriet, picked up her wrist and brought it to his mouth. Her eyes widened slightly as his fangs emerged. He pierced her skin, slowly sinking the sharp tips deeper into her flesh until his lips were seated fully over her artery. Her breath hitched. She made a fist and tightened it, then loosened it in the rhythm of a slow, steady heartbeat.
I watched his chin and Adam’s apple moving up and down, heard the gentle slurping as a tiny stream escaped the corner of his mouth. I wiped it from her arm before it dripped on him and licked my finger. He raised his gaze to mine, his mouth curving briefly into a smile. Yellow light from the table lamp flickered like dancing flames in his copper eyes.
Harriet closed her eyes and let out a quiet moan. Her body gravitated closer to him. She gripped the hem of her shirt as though she had to resist touching him.
I was getting wet just watching Ashe have lunch. I’d never been so turned on by eating before. I mean, who gets turned on by rats and dying homeless people? I made a mental note to find a vampire phone book and get a vampire doctor appointment ASAP.
Edna emerged from the kitchen with a blood donor bag shaped like a juice pouch with a straw in one end. “Here ya’ go, hon. Drink up.”
“Thank you.” I took the pouch from her and sipped. It was good, but like the equivalent of a frozen pizza compared to a homemade one. I sat back in my chair and watched my insta-boyfriend drink blood from a willing human in an oddly sensual dining experience.
****
Harriet’s shift ended, so she left just as Zac reemerged from the kitchen. He looked more satisfied and smelled more like barbeque than body odor.
“How was it?” we asked each other at the same time.
I laughed. “Good, and yours?”
“Extra greasy, but nothing some Tums can’t handle.”
Now that we were all full, I could finally take account of how bad we looked and smelled. But I had so many things to ask now that my brain wasn’t fogged over with hunger.
“How about a shower and a good nap?” Ashe asked as though reading my mind. “We can talk more tonight.”
“Okay.”
Zac cleared his throat. “I’ll ditch the van and come back with your car. I think we should get on the road as soon as the sun sets, so that’ll be about….” He consulted his mobile phone. “Eight-thirty. You have plenty of time to rest up and whatever.”
He grimaced at the word whatever as though imagining Ashe and me in the throes of passion.
“Okay, be careful out there,” I said.
“Sure. Be careful in here, too.” He tossed Ashe a cold glare and left the way we had entered.
Surely the detective wasn’t jealous. I found that quite hilarious. Like I was the Bella for their Edward and Jacob testosterone competition. I’d always thought such a triangle was ridiculous, but I could understand the ego trip. If they decided to brawl over me, I’d insist they do it without teeth or weapons. And without clothes. With lots of oil.
As soon as Zac’s footsteps faded down the hall, Ashe stood and ran a hand through his sandy blond hair. “So…what now?”
“So…” I slowly stood, wondering the same thing. Shower and sleep were a given, but a lot could happen in a few hours. “I think you owe me a kiss."
Chapter Eight
Ashe
Damn right, I owed Wren a kiss. More than one, all over her pouty lips, and then I’d skip straight to the good stuff and kiss up the insides of her thighs. What would she taste like, feel like when I sank inside her? I got hard just thinking about it. Harder, actually, if that were even possible. I’d sported a chub since I’d first laid eyes on her. Now, as I pushed to my feet to stand next to her, watching her eye-fuck me, I was sure I wore the same expression she did while my dick strained against the zipper of my prison uniform underneath the guard’s uniform.
“I just realized I have on entirely too many clothes,” I said.
She lifted an eyebrow. “We should probably find a solution for that. Like a shower?”
Check, please. A low rumble started deep in my chest. “Only if you’ll join me.”
She grinned, and it was all I could do not to throw her down on the table right here. “I did say you owed me a kiss.”
Still spinning from my insane day, I just about went into a tailspin when I took her hand and hauled balls out of the DBD feeding area. Her touch charged a lightning storm through my skin, reminding me that I was here, and free, because of her. It had been stressful as hell to get to this point, but it was so worth it.
She turned to me, and her grin grew wider, even more gorgeous, fueling my need to kiss her, taste her, be inside her right now.
In the same wood-paneled hallway we’d come in through, I released her hand to push her back against the wall. Roughly, I tilted her head back and covered her mouth with mine, groaning when I could still taste the blood she’d drunk on her lips.
She arched into me, her arms wrapping to the back of my head, her chest pressed against mine. Her lips and tongue matched my intensity, and soft moans rumbled into me and then all the way down to my dick. Then, she rolled her hips into mine, and I just about lost it right there. With a growl, I wrapped my arms around to her ass to grind her up against me. She felt so good, so soft, yet unbreakable too. I wouldn’t have to be gentle with her. Her legs wrapped around my waist, and she used the wall as leverage to dry hump me.
Sweet vampire Jesus, why were we still wearing clothes?
I set her on her feet and pulled away, drunk with lust and blood and freedom and adrenaline. We needed to get to a room. Wren took my hand, her lips swollen with my kisses, eyes bright with hunger, her guard’s uniform top sliding down to reveal her bare shoulder. Fuck it. Who needed a room when the hallway would work just fine?
With a laugh, she sidestepped my advance to just take her right here and pointed to a door marked Bathroom. “I’ll wash your back if you wash mine?”
I groaned low in my throat because I was pretty sure I’d warped back to caveman days and had lost the ability to form words. Female, good. Naked female, gooder.
I followed her in, just barely noticing the blue-tiled floor, the cinder block partition between the restrooms and sinks on one side and the showers on the other, and the low, wooden benches. We headed toward the showers, still clothed, damn it. From the sound of things, we were alone in here, but thankfully the showers were partitioned and curtained.
Wren turned on the water, and I stepped underneath the spray, both of us still fully clothed. I’d worry about that in a bit. More, uh, pressing matters took up my brain capacity. The shock of cold did nothing to cool me down. I wrapped my arms around to her front and kissed the back of her neck while she fiddled with the temperature.
“I think the lever is broken,” she said.
I groaned into her creamy skin. “It’s really not.”
Her laugh turned into a moan when I skimmed my hand down her stomach to rub her through her two pairs of pants. She melted against me, leaning her head against my chest and p
ressing her ass to my straining dick. I slid my hands back up underneath her shirts as she arched her neck to give me better access to the soft skin around her collarbone. She tasted like heat and sex, all wrapped up into a tight, gorgeous package. I ridded her of both shirts, and she turned in my arms to help me with mine.
Like a magnet, my mouth found hers again with enough force to push us both back under the water. It soaked our lips and tongues but made me even thirstier. My hands roamed everywhere over her body, needing to get her out of her bra and pants but also to squeeze her tighter against me at the same time.
She peeled both my guard and prisoner shirts off of me and then ran her hands down my chest, following the streams of water until her fingers rested on the waist of my pants.
Over the sound of the water, a pop rang out. Loud and close enough to separate us. We looked at each other, both of us seeming unsure and very much wanting to go back to what we’d been doing.
Wren licked her lips and glanced down at my dick pressing painfully against my soaked, too-tight pants. “That pop wasn’t you.”
“No.” I stepped in closer, telling myself to hell with whatever that sound was. “It definitely wasn’t.”
She grinned, and I lifted my hand to her face to wipe a wet piece of platinum hair from her forehead when there was a loud bang. It sounded like the bathroom door bursting open.
Both of us jumped and stared out through the curtain as if we could see anything behind its cream opaqueness. The air in the bathroom changed, not just the hot steam escaping through the open door but also the sense that we weren’t alone. And three was definitely a crowd.
Was that Zac? I leaned against the wall of the shower stall and peered out through a crack in the curtain. A shadow moved along the floor, moving toward the toilet side of the bathroom first even though our shower was obviously on. Making sure that side was empty before they came for the naked shower people, no doubt. But we weren’t nearly as naked as I wanted to be. A bad thing under normal circumstances. A good thing if this person was trouble though. Maybe they just really needed to piss.
I turned back to Wren who was peeking out the other side of the curtain. She shot her arm out to catch mine and squeezed, her body tense. A warning. Shit. I needed a weapon, anything to get us out of here. My options were a cracked green bar of soap someone had left in the tray in the wall, and an empty travel-sized bottle of hair conditioner.
Awesome. Why did survival lately feel like a test I didn’t study for?
The curtain fluttered, and not because of us. Someone was coming, and not the happy kind either. I had the element of surprise in that I knew they were here, but I doubted that would be enough to get us out.
Keeping my eyes glued to the fluttering curtain, I pushed Wren back against the wall opposite mine, out of the way, I hoped. I waited, my whole body coiled tight. Then, when a slight shadow darkened the curtain, I took the spraying shower head and wrenched it out of the wall.
The curtain snapped open, and a vampire I’d never seen before wearing black ops gear stood there with his silver bullet gun already aimed.
Wren jumped at him. Shirtless, soaking wet, and sexy as fuck, she knocked the gun from his hand and immediately followed that with a wicked left hook that looked like it really rang his bell.
I stood there like an idiot with a shower head in my hands. Water gushed from the hole in the wall behind me and seeped out onto the blue-tiled floor around Wren’s boots and the vampire she was currently punching holes in. And the similarly dressed guy creeping around the bathroom’s divide behind Wren’s shoulder.
So, I would get to use the shower head after all. Things were really looking up these days.
The creeping guy lifted his gun at Wren’s back. I shot out of the stall, my shoes slipping along the wet tiles, and collided with him. The butt of his gun slammed into my jaw so hard I spun into the wall face-first. I bounced back before I fully recovered my senses, and the guy hit me again in the exact same place.
Pain exploded, times two. Fucker.
I went down with a splash in the already inch-deep water, feeling every single tile as I hit.
“Ashe!” Wren shouted behind me.
“Leave him alive!” the other vampire shouted at the exact same time.
Me. He was talking about me. They wanted me back in jail, alive, but they didn’t look like police.
Wren cried out, but I didn’t see what happened. I was too busy staring down the barrel of the gun pointed at my head by the guy who’d hit me.
“Drop your weapon,” he ordered.
Fuck that. I’d destroyed some perfectly good property to get this shower head. I lifted my free hand in surrender, released one end of the shower head, and slowly moved like I was going to put the rest of it down too.
Then I flashed it out toward his gun so it jerked the barrel away. He fired. Tile exploded right by my head, but I was already surging to my feet before he could aim again. I crashed the shower head into his nose, then punched him in the ribs, then in the nose again, the same exact spot. Ha! Blood squirted, and he tripped over the water onto his ass.
Movement blurred at my side, and I started to swing, but I caught myself. It was Wren, looking mighty pissed, her face cut and bruised but still just as gorgeous as ever. She splashed toward the vamp, who scrambled for his gun that he must’ve dropped. I kicked it out of his reach and then picked it up.
“Who are you?” I demanded and pointed his own gun at him.
Before he could answer, though, Wren circled to his back, put him in a choke hold, and squeezed until a loud crack echoed around the bathroom. She let out a wild battle cry as his head came clean off. Then she tossed it aside like it was a bad coconut and skipped back as his body slumped to the floor. Blood spattered the tiles around the twitching vampire.
I blinked. I’d never actually seen someone do that before.
Wren stood, her face hard and unflinching as if she did this every day. It was a different expression than when she’d busted me out of jail. Either that, or I was an entirely altered person, seeing her from a brand new, darker perspective now that she wasn’t dangling my own freedom in front of me.
She flicked her gaze to me, and her face softened. “I probably should’ve waited to do that until after you got your answer, huh?”
“Yeah,” was all I could say.
“I usually have no interest in what they have to say.”
Usually. I glanced behind me at the other pile of dead and headless corpses. Never mind these vampires. Who was Wren? This was the second time today she’d left a trail of bodies. Was this something she did every day? While a small, I-need-serious-therapy part of me thought it was kind of hot, another small part of me wondered if maybe I’d be better off in jail. She’d dragged me into a killing war I wanted no part of, even if one side was gunning for me. Though, yeah, to be fair, she’d also dragged me away from jail. I needed to push aside the rush my sudden freedom gave me, tell my dick to behave, and then have a sit-down with Wren to see if she’d eventually kill me too. Just because she’d set me free didn’t mean I could trust her. Or fuck her in the shower.
This was what I got for thinking with my dick. My freed dick, at least in the figurative sense. Almost literally too.
A surprised cry sounded from somewhere nearby, and I had a feeling we would have more company if we planted ourselves here for too much longer. I crossed toward the open door and pressed my back against it to peer out, aiming the gun I’d stolen at the ground. Farther down the hallway, trickles of blood spread over the floor from the dining room.
Shit.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Wren whispered behind me.
She was right. The sun was still up, which meant the vampires had black op’d their way in…somehow. Unless Zac had come back with some wheels, we were stuck. Unless Wren sicced herself on all of them, and I’d rather she didn’t. Just because I’d planned a murder I’d never carried out didn’t mean I was a big fan of killing.
“Come on.” I took her hand and pulled her out of the bathroom. We could hole up somewhere, maybe capture another of those vampires and get him to talk.
My and Wren’s wet feet slapped the floor, punctuated with a steady dripdripdrip off the few clothes we wore. We were leaving a wet trail right to us. I hadn’t seen any towels in the bathroom, but I did remember seeing some napkins in boxes near the shelves by the stairs. Better than nothing. We headed in that direction.
I handed her a package of napkins, then pushed her inside a small broom closet, flicked the light on, and left the door open just a crack to hear if we were about to be ambushed.
“Take off your clothes,” I said, simultaneously hating and loving the sound of those words.
“Only if you say that exact same thing to me later.” She grinned and leaned over to peel her wet pants down her hips, giving me quite the eyeful of perfect cleavage contained in her black lace bra. Smooth legs climbed a long, long way up to matching panties. She gave a little shake of her ass when her pants snagged on her foot.
Vampire Jesus, help me. I tore my eyes away and somehow got both pairs of soggy pants down over my boxers and raging boner, at least the third I’d had today, all in the short time I’d known Wren. If we weren’t constantly running, I could go somewhere and deal with it on my own before I drilled Wren. Grilled Wren. Grilled. Had a discussion.
Fuck.
Through the crack in the door, another armed vampire passed, dressed similar to the two in the shower.
Wren, without any sound, started to spring out after him, but I caught her elbow, spun her around, and covered her mouth before she could protest.
“You don’t have to kill everyone, Wren,” I hissed.
She flinched as if I’d struck her, and I hated the way she was looking at me now, with hurt and a little revulsion, exactly how Jessica had looked at Devin that night. That look dropped my gut to my knees, especially since I’d put it there. But Wren didn’t need to kill everyone. She needed to know that. Or maybe she did know that and didn’t care.