by Mysti Parker
“Come on,” I whispered, taking Ashe by the hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”
****
We super-speeded a mile down the road to the town square and stopped in front of the Mueller County Library, built in 1867, as the sign out front boasted.
“When I said somewhere quiet…” Ashe said with a chuckle.
“What’s quieter than a library? A closed one at that.”
We walked around back where the Bookmobile was parked and approached the building, which had a back door with a set of concrete steps much like the one in the back of the prison. No silver, thankfully.
“How do you suppose we get in?” Ashe asked. “They’ll have security alarms, won’t they? Or a security guard?”
“Hmm, let’s see if I can remember…” I walked behind some bushes that lined the wall. “Ah, yes, there it is.” An egress window covered with a heavy iron grate yawned up at me from the mulched earth. I hadn’t been strong enough at the time to open it, but my mother was. I bent and lifted the grate. The rusty hinges creaked, and I winced, hoping no one had heard it. I hopped down inside the egress, my boots slipping a little on the wet leaves and mud beneath.
Ashe looked down into the hole. “Locked?”
“Let’s see.” I didn’t see any evidence of motion sensors, no heat signatures inside either. I tried the screen. It slid open fine. Then I tried the window. I couldn’t be too rough, or I’d risk breaking the glass. It stuck a little, dousing my hopes at first, but then finally gave way and slid aside.
“Come on,” I whispered.
Ashe hopped down beside me. I dropped down into the basement, and he followed.
It smelled just like I remembered – like old books, ink, wood, and musty earth. I stepped across the concrete floor. The only light came from the one left on in the stairwell. It was plenty enough to see the place had barely changed in the decade or so since I’d last slept here. Wood shelves held messy stacks of uncategorized books and magazines. Some of them were just too old to be handled, some were torn or damaged by water or fire, some were donations that had yet to find a home on the public shelves upstairs.
“Well, it’s quiet,” Ashe said.
“Very, except for him.”
The misty form of a little boy appeared in front of us.
Ashe jumped. “Holy shit!”
“Hey, Chip, how’s it going?” I asked.
The ghostly face of a long-dead nine-year-old smiled back at me. His voice sounded far away, like someone whispering at the end of a long, echoing tunnel. “Wren, you're all grown up! I didn’t think you’d come back.”
“Neither did I. This is my friend Ashe.” I did a double take at the tough vampire man frozen beside me. He was bone white, eyes wide as silver-dollar pancakes. “Oh, come on. You’re a vampire. You're a lot scarier than he is.”
"Never seen a ghost before, mister?" Chip asked, his misty head tilting to one side.
Ashe shook his head.
“Wow.” I laughed. “You know, we’re not that different. He’s just without the benefit of a physical body.”
“Yeah, it kind of stinks,” Chip affirmed. “Playing ball is hard when you don’t have hands anymore. But Wren taught me how to concentrate enough to roll a ball to her.”
I smiled, remembering how we had become friends during those nights when my mother went out to work a temp job or hunt for food. We’d played and talked for hours.
“Oh, um…nice to meet you,” Ashe said, relaxing a bit.
“Pleasure’s all mine, sir,” Chip answered, followed by a polite, misty bow.
"Chip died in a fire here back in 1907. He’s pretty famous though. A lot of ghost-hunters have tried to find him.”
“Those fellas are silly,” Chip said, then added in a mocking voice, “Is there anyone here? Can you make a sound for us? What’s your name? Sometimes I roll a ball or poke one of them just to watch them go bonkers. It’s fun.”
Ashe was smiling now instead of cringing. “I don’t blame you for messing with them.”
“I bet they’d wet their pants if they saw your vampire teeth.”
I cleared my throat. “Say, Chip, my friend and I are kind of on a date. Could you go keep watch upstairs and give us some alone time?”
The ghost boy nodded, whooshing away from us with a disembodied giggle. His sing-song voice drifted up the stairs. “Wren and Ashe, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”
“He’s a sweet kid,” Ashe said, pulling me into his arms. “Shame he’s stuck here, though.”
“He can cross over any time he wants, but he likes it here.”
Ashe searched my eyes, appearing like he hadn’t heard a word I’d just said. His hand drifted to my ass and squeezed. “Have you ever fucked in a library before?”
“I haven’t. Let’s do something about that.” I led him into the unused brick-floored storage room at one end of the basement. It was dark and cobwebby, a relic from the original building.
“Uh, here? I mean, I’m game, but I think my queen deserves better.”
“Watch.” I ventured to an empty bookcase, hoping no one had found what I was looking for. The old, rusty metal shelves had a solid gray MDF board backing my mother had added. I slid one side of the bookcase out. Faint potpourri-scented, musty air whooshed out, and I led Ashe into the little hidden room. My eyes had a harder time adjusting here with the absence of outside light, but I found the oil lamp sitting on the table where we’d left it and the box of matches beside it.
I lifted off the glass globe, struck a match, and lit the wick. The fire blazed to life. I replaced the globe and lifted the lamp to look around at the little cozy place I’d called home for a few months. It had been my favorite place of all. I'd decorated the brick walls with pictures of movie stars and musicians I'd cut out from magazines. Images of Humphrey Bogart and Boris Karloff squared off with Jimi Hendrix and Gene Simmons above the fold-out sofa bed I'd shared with my mother.
“You are just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Ashe said, stepping farther into the room. He looked around at the sheet-covered furniture, dusty books, and cassette radio that sat on a small wooden shelf.
My mother had left it like that, thinking we might return. Instead, she’d whisked me away one night, and we never came back.
I picked up a familiar book. “Mama read this to me a couple times. One of my favorite bedtime stories.”
“Bram Stoker’s Dracula?” Ashe said, one corner of his mouth curved into a half smile. “You know that’s not a how-to manual, right?”
“I do now. For a long time, I thought if I concentrated hard enough, I could turn into a bat.” The funny memory served as a reminder that my mother had left me virtually clueless about how to be a real vampire or that others like me existed. I sighed. Maybe coming here was a bad idea after all.
Ashe went to the radio and pressed the play button.
I thought the batteries would surely be dead, but instead, Janis Joplin’s guitar scratched to life, the bluesy sound filling the small space with music. It charged the stale air and drove out the Debbie Downer mood threatening to ruin my night.
Ashe whipped off one of the furniture covers, revealing an old leather armchair. Then he whisked me into his arms and started dancing with me. Hand on my ass, he pulled me against him, against the hardness I couldn’t wait to enjoy. We kissed, and my symbol throbbed, buzzing in a rhythm like a timer.
It was time. Time to make him mine for good.
“I need to be inside you,” he whispered in my ear. Ashe pulled my shirt over my head, threw it aside. I did the same with his. Pants followed, then underwear. And then we were skin to skin, no barriers, no time to waste.
He picked me up; my legs wrapped around his waist. I could feel the tip of his dick teasing me, making me wet and ready, painfully so. My fangs emerged, and so did his. My eyes locked onto his copper ones that grew redder by the second. He lowered himself to sit on the chair, my knees holding me just a hair’s breadth above his dick.
I'd heard similar lines from a couple of guys I slept with who were drunk and didn't realize I was a vampire. I'd left before they woke and never looked back. But with Ashe, it actually sounded sincere, like something deeper than a one-night stand.
“Enough talking.” I lowered myself in one smooth, quick movement, until he was seated deep inside me. The symbol on my arm shot lightning-hot streaks straight to my core.
Ashe snarled and made a growl that sounded more animal than man. He clamped his hands on my waist. I’d released something powerful, primal. There was no turning back now.
Chapter Twelve
Ashe
Oh. Shiiiiiit.
She was so wet, so tight, so perfect wrapped around my dick that I almost came inside her right then. So I lost myself in the distraction of her full lips and kissed her, hard, rough, almost like a punishment. She moaned as she matched my intensity, her tongue flicking and tasting, and she began to move on top of me, thrusting in time to our kiss. My skin couldn’t get enough of hers, and my hands roamed everywhere, over her ass, up her rib cage to her perfect tits. All the while, the symbol on my arm shot wild hot streaks straight to my cock which. Wasn’t. Helping.
I needed more of her. I needed to rut against her like a savage beast. I needed to fuck her brains out, soothe her back together, and then do it all over again.
“Wren…” It was a warning, or the start of one, but one look at her wet, kiss-swollen lips, her fevered eyes, her body writhing hard against mine, and that was it. Any control I might’ve had snapped.
“Wha— Oh!” Her mouth formed a perfect O as I stood us both up, still joined, our hips still thrusting, and dropped us to the fold-out bed which was covered with a sheet.
My hands went protectively behind her head when she almost hit the brick wall, but that was the beginning and end of gentle as I stretched out on top of her. Then I went balls deep inside of her again and again, and my mouth found hers. She met each of my thrusts with little cries and soft moans as she wound her fingers through the hair at the back of my head and held on.
“Ashe… Ashe!” She arched her long neck back, the cords pulling tight. Her slick inner walls pulsed and clamped down hard on my dick, just about ripping it off with the force of her orgasm. Which was fine. So, so much better than fine. But I couldn’t hang on any longer.
I wanted to. I wanted to fuck her straight into next week, but the electric storm surging from my wrist centered all at once at the base of my cock.
Her copper eyes met mine, half open and sated, and she winked.
I came, hard, great waves rippling all the way down to my toes and back again, never-ending. My hips slapped against hers as I kept thrusting into her, and my orgasm lasted so long that she came again. We rode each other through it, eventually slowing, until we lay there grinning like idiots.
Our symbols glowed in matching rhythms like a heartbeat. Like synchronized heartbeats. Weird.
“Damn,” she said, as she hugged me to her chest.
I laughed, feeling lightweight, relieved in every way possible, and almost already halfway asleep.
She blinked at her symbol and rubbed her thumb over it. “That was amazing.”
“It was mostly me and my know-how, and not our symbols,” I said, playing my fingers through her hair. “Just FYI.”
She laughed, a throaty, pure sound that wrapped around me even tighter than her arms. “If you say so, big guy.”
I nuzzled against her chest, my chin grazing the side of her tit, and everything about this felt right. Like we were made to fit together just like this while Wren reigned over the Southern Clan…with four other guys at her back.
Could I be willing to share her? Right now, no. Mostly because I was still inside her, but not just that. Sharing her with other guys would likely trigger some jealousy, even in me. Especially in me. It might even trigger some triggers. I had no right to feel like I owned Wren, though, especially when she had a greater role to play that was more important than the state of my heart. My heart would be fine, for the most part. Or fine-ish. Without her, the Southern Clan wouldn’t be because Queen Ravana ruled without a heart. I’d known that even before she was framing me for murder. Allegedly, I supposed, since I had no proof.
“Your thoughts are louder than our sex was,” she murmured against the top of my head. “Anything I should know?”
“I’m just thinking about you.” I smoothed my hand over her shoulder, mesmerized by the silky feel and the shadows from the oil lamp flickering over it. “Thinking about what’s going to happen.”
“Me too.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Wren.”
“You didn’t.”
“No, I mean…good. But I meant on the inside. I hurt your feelings before at Edna’s Itchen, and I can’t do that again. Seeing that…” I shook my head at the memory of Jessica bruised and beaten, but that had been nothing compared to the hurt and betrayal in her eyes. Yes, it was weird to be thinking about my sister right then, but seeing her like that had destroyed me right down to my soul. It had hurt even more with Wren because I’d been the one who put it there. “Seeing people hurt like that… It’s like my Achilles’ heel.”
“Well, now I know how to manipulate you without even really trying. Thanks for making it so easy.” She pressed a kiss to my forehead and then ruffled my hair. “I’m kidding of course.”
I laughed against her skin. “If you say so.”
We stayed like that, with me still on top of her, and both of us drifted off to sleep. Sometime later, a horrible buzzing chime sounded like an alarm, and I sprang up off of Wren, so groggy that I had no idea what was happening or even where I was.
Oh yeah. The library. A normally quiet place. What was that sound? I lurched in the direction it came from while Wren groaned and rolled to her other side, hiking up a blanket around her bare shoulder. I had no idea how long I’d slept, so if it was daytime, people in the library could surely hear the noise.
I kicked through our discarded clothes, scanning the entire area, when my phone slid out of my pants pocket and onto the floor. The screen flashed white in time with the chime, indicating…something. I picked up the phone and looked at the screen. Jessica’s number had texted me back multiple times in rapid fire, one for each of the annoying chimes.
Team Edward.
He’s vampy.
He’s rich.
He’s hot.
He drives like a maniac but believes in seat belts.
I’m also on Team Jacob.
Why choose?
Where’s my $5000?
I texted back: Have you fed Edgar?
There were only a handful of people who knew who her pet iguana Edgar was, and I happened to be one of them. She would figure out it was me she was texting. I figured if I got a text back, she wasn’t trying to hide from me in shame. If she didn’t text me back, well…I supposed that meant she didn’t want to talk to the person she’d called the cops on. Or...something had happened to her, but it didn’t.
The phone lay quiet in my palm as Wren slept like the dead beside me. I had to admit this stung a little, this long pause from Jessica. She might be dialing the police right now to have them track this number since it could have been her who’d sent them to her apartment to arrest me. I’d told her Devin was dead, after all. Didn’t matter, at least the phone part. I’d chuck it in a dumpster soon enough.
But first, since I was up, might as well take care of some business. Like leaving instructions with Ben and Joe to shift ownership of Invite Us In Cleaners to them if they didn’t hear back from me within a certain timeframe. I gave myself three days to clear my own name of two murders, and if I didn’t, I would need to vanish for a very long time, hopefully with Wren. According to the news articles I looked up to gain some insight, even I could believe I was guilty.
I must’ve fallen asleep on the bed while reading about
what a horrible person I was, because I woke to lips skimming up my jaw and a soft hand sliding over my chest. I sure hoped I knew this person. And I sure hoped her name was Wren.
I groaned low in my throat as I turned my head to face her, then smiled at how perfect she looked lying next to me. She reached up to touch my jaw and grazed her lips over mine, her yellow eyes dancing with firelight and heavy with lust. Her hips drove into my side once, twice, dry-humping me from underneath her blanket while she ran her tongue underneath my bottom lip.
My dick, already hard, hardened even more and throbbed to be inside her. “Good morning to you too,” I said and wrapped her up closer so she could feel exactly what she did to me.
“Guess who I dreamed about?” she purred.
“Gene Simmons?” I pointed above the bed to his poster.
“You guessed it.” She pushed me flat on my back, freed herself from her blanket, and straddled me, her wetness pressed right up against my pulsing balls. Then she began to grind against me and leaned down, trailing slow kisses up my chest. “God, you’re good.”
“Damn right.”
I wasn’t even inside her yet, but I was this close to coming. Yet just like before, I wanted all of her at once.
She arched her back, which thrust her ass into the air, and I grabbed it and squeezed. My other hand went to the back of her head and fisted in her hair until she found my mouth with hers. Our tongues battled at the same tempo as our bucking hips. I slipped my hand from her ass and slid it down her smooth stomach, and then down farther to feel just how wet she was. We both groaned when I pushed two fingers up inside her.
“You’re fucking drenched, Wren.”
Her hips began to go wild, pressing her harder into the palm of my hand, but I quickly replaced my fingers with my cock because I was sure she was about to come. I slid my dick home, feeling her tighten around me, feeling how slippery and amazing she was, and she kept up the same pace as she had on my fingers.
She arched her back and sat up, which rocked her tits forward into my hands. I fondled them, leaned up to suck and bite them, and then she came with a violent shudder. She cried out as she squeezed around me, but I silenced her with a hard kiss. Her pulsing wetness, and the heated sparks from my wrist symbol, pulled an orgasm from the base of my spine and unwound it fast, straight into her. We swallowed each other’s groans, held tight, and then sagged against each other when the last of the aftershocks faded.