All In: Calling His Bluff (Gambling With Love) (21 page)
Read All In: Calling His Bluff (Gambling With Love) Online
Authors: Lane Hart
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Blood Drive
- is a fun and sexy paranormal romance about a lazy vampire who falls for a beautiful girl, and the asshole who will lie, deceive and betray his only friend to come between the two of them.
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Sam West
I pulled the pillow tighter over my head. I was trying ineffectively to block out the sun shining through my bedroom window, and the alarm clock screeching out a horrible pop song. I don't know why I leave it on this shitty radio station, except for it beats waking up to
beep-beep-beep
.
I blindly reached over to the nightstand and slapped my hand around until I found and hit the snooze button, giving myself ten more minutes. Work begins for me at the ungodly hour of eight a.m., and since there were bills to pay and video games to buy, the next time my alarm went off, I'd make myself get up.
I felt the dip in the foot of my mattress an instant before I heard his annoying voice.
"Get up jackass. I'm hungry, and you're going to be late for work."
I grabbed the pillow and swatted at the fat-ass orange and white tiger-striped cat to knock him off my bed.
"Get the fuck out of my room Chris!" I yelled at him. I have got to remember to lock my damn door!
"I bet a slash across your face will get you moving,” he threatened.
"I'll feed you in ten minutes if you'll leave me the hell alone! But I swear, if you scratch me with your filthy shit covered claws, I’ll snap you in half!”
"That reminds me, you need to change my cat litter too, asshole," he said as he finally gave up and sulked away.
"You know how to use the fucking toilet!" I screamed after him.
"I know, but my claws slip and I fall in. Then I have to spend the whole damn day licking piss water off myself," he whined.
Chris had been annoying the shit out of me for years, but he was one of the few friends I had. Five years ago he'd been on the run from the D.R.A and turned himself into a cat. He'd been one ever since because the idiot didn't stir the counter-spell before transforming. It wasn't the cat part of him that bothered me, it was his non-stop mouth. Why the stupid spell left him with the ability to talk was just my luck.
I really should give the guy some slack though. There didn't seem to be an end in sight for his feline days. He'd showed me how to do the spell reversal, and we’d tried it at least a dozen times, but using his kitty blood was always a no-go. Dumb ass.
When the alarm went off again I finally rolled out of the warm cozy bed and headed to the bathroom. I did remember to lock the bathroom door before I found my way to the toilet. My eyes were still closed as I took a piss then turned on the shower and got undressed.
As soon as the steaming water in the shower hit me I finally started to wake up. I washed my face then scrubbed my head with shampoo, feeling more and more like myself. Then I really woke up as my washcloth grazed my morning wood.
Finishing that task only reminded me of my lack of a love life, but it's hard to form lasting relationships with women when you're a disgusting leech.
I grabbed the plush green towel from the rack beside the shower and ran it over my body before using it to dry my dark blonde hair. Damn, I was in desperate need of a haircut, but I just didn’t give a shit. I could use a shave too, but didn't feel like wasting the time on it.
I brushed my perfectly straight white teeth, pulled on the clinic's white logo polo, a pair of jeans and my grey New Balances, then I was out the door.
Shit! My foot was hovering on the first step of the porch when I remembered I didn't feed Chris. I reluctantly turned back around and unlocked the front door, heading to the kitchen. He could just rip open the bag of food with his claws if he got hungry enough, but then I'd be the one who'd have to eventually clean up the mess.
"Hey, Chris," I yelled. "Do you want bologna or cat food today?"
A second later he came bouncing all nimbly-pimbly into the kitchen from his bedroom, directly across from mine. "Bologna! And make it two slices," he answered.
Since he’d been a cat, his food preferences had tended to be that of a regular feline, which was fine with me. Bologna and cat food were cheap, and saved me a shitload of money at the grocery store.
"Fine. Here," I said as I threw the slices on a plate and sat it down on the floor. I hated when he ate on the counter, getting his little white and orange hairs all over everything.
"Thanks man. See ya' after work," he told me.
I turned on the TV in the living room for the poor bastard, then went back out the front door again, this time actually making it to and sitting down in my blue trash filled Mazda 3 Sport.
Looking at the clock on the dash I had a good five minutes to spare, so I made a detour for a caffeine and sugar rush. Luckily the drive thru lane at Donut World was short, and with four coffees and a dozen doughnuts for myself and my equally grouchy coworkers, I headed to the clinic. It would be my Happy Fucking Friday gift to them.
On blood drive days I'm supposed to check in at our headquarters downtown by eight a.m. to get everything packed up before we hit the road. I work at the local blood bank, but usually once a week we take our enormous blood mobile out around the community.
It was a little over eight years ago that I had the brilliant idea to go to school and get my certification in phlebotomy. Even as a vampire, I was one lazy son of a bitch. Having to go out and find my own blood sources was too stressful and tedious, especially when giving in to one lust usually led to the other.
Why go through all that trouble of finding someone to bite when I could just work at the place that always had a supply? It's like they were paying me to survive. I don't call taking a bag of blood here or there "stealing" per say. I know humans need the blood donated for accidents and surgeries and all that other blah, blah, blah. But what I do is a freaking public service. Besides, I try to only drink the bad shit.
Since I've been consuming blood for over fifty-eight years I can smell and taste the difference between healthy, sick, and really sick donor blood. Over the years, each and every time I've sniffed or slurped one of the closet deathbed cases, I've been a damn fine Samaritan. I get their phone number from their records, call them right up and tell them that our "laboratory tests" suggest they have an illness, and they should contact their doctor immediately. I've lost count of the number of lives I've possibly saved. Of course our tests will show when someone has HIV and a few other diseases, and the donor might get notified weeks or months after they donate. My way is much quicker.
I pulled into my parking spot in front of the rundown brick building almost ten minutes late, and noticed all three of my coworkers were already there. They overlooked my lateness however, when I walked in the door and they saw what was in my hands. All three ladies converged on me with a, "Thanks, Sam," to grab up breakfast and devour it at their desks so we could hit the road.
Doris was the oldest and shrewdest of my three female coworkers, and technically my boss. In her fifties with salt and pepper hair, spare tire around her midsection, and permanent frown, she scared the shit out of me until I realized she wasn't as mean as she looked.
Then there was Anna. She was in her mid-thirties and a single mom with two small brats. She'd given up on appearances and rocked her ponytail every day without the care or hope of ever finding a man. She’d only been here at the clinic a few years longer than I had, and she pretty much kept to herself, just trying to get through the daily exhaustion that was her life.
Finally there was Betsy, the anti-Doris. Always happy and pleasant to the point of annoyance, she was just out of college and still acted childish. She showed up to work today, just like every day, as if we were having a damn beauty pageant. Her face was caked with bright colors making her look like a clown, and her bad blonde dye job was sticking out and smelled like it held a can of hairspray. I knew Betsy had a thing for me but she was so not my type, and I didn't just mean her blood.
I wasted no time putting down my two doughnuts and coffee. Hell yes I still had to eat and drink regular food, even though I happen to be a bloodsucker. Then, since I was the only male in the building, it was time for me to start loading up all the heavy boxes and equipment onto the bus.
All three of the women were the stereotypical horrible drivers, so I took over the blood mobile’s huge steering wheel, and we made our way through honking rush hour traffic to one of the local colleges. I was all too familiar with the perfectly landscaped and picturesque campus of Madison University.
As every guy in this town knew, Madison had an overwhelming majority of rich bitches attending, most of them all caught up in their artsy-fartsy majors. Twice a year the sorority girls took a timeout from their partying and hazing to hold blood drives. It gave them the chance to put out signs and get on the local news, bolstering their "community service" image.
On a good day the school could usually get about fifty of the four thousand students to donate. Forty-five of those donated to get out of class for the entire day, and the other five gave just because they were decent human beings.
By nine-thirty we already had two takers, or givers as the case may be. The first went to sourpuss Doris, and the second to scatterbrained Anna. Since Betsy was still learning the ropes and mostly doing the administrative paper shuffle, it meant I was up next.
I was still arranging my supplies in the tiny cramped work area on the back of the bus when I heard Betsy tell our next contestant to come on down. I turned around with my professional smile to greet my first donor, then instantly frowned and let out a sigh. Of all the people that could walk through my blood mobile, it was just my luck that I would get stuck with her.
Kate Adams
I was already awake and getting ready when my alarm went off at eight a.m. Since I had nothing else to do other than study, I'd been going to bed by ten p.m. most nights. God my life sucked. I thought college would be different, that I would be different here.
After a year of begging my father to let me leave the house for college I was shocked when he finally agreed. I couldn't wait to get to Greensboro, North Carolina and finally live on my own. I thought my father had given in because of the full scholarship Madison had offered me, but I had been so wrong. I should have been more suspicious of his agreement, especially since for the last eighteen years, he hadn't let me out of the house. Shit, I couldn’t even hang out on weekends with the few friends I had from my all-girls Catholic school.
After freshman orientation I knew exactly why he was so gung-ho for me to come here. It might as well have been a nunnery. And I could've made do with the fifteen percent male population, if fourteen percent of them weren't gay. I could count on one hand how many possibly straight guys I'd come across in the three weeks since school started. To top it off, I was a nursing major, so there was no way I’d meet a decent straight guy there. Hell, at this point I'd take an indecent one.
But just because my father didn't let me out of the house or date didn't mean I was completely inexperienced with guys. If he knew the things that went on every summer in the dorm rooms at church camp he'd burn that place to the ground. But even Stephen, the guy I met this past summer and fooled around with every night, turned out to be a prude. Despite our escalating groping in his room he always stopped things when they started heating up because he was "saving himself for marriage." I was really starting to think there was something wrong with me.
When the Student Health Center had been giving out condoms during orientation I'd grabbed up a handful, but didn't really feel they were necessary since, a.) It seemed impossible I could get pregnant since I'd never had a period. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d actually gone through puberty, and b.) Based on the way things were going, the condoms would probably expire before I got around to using them.
As I brushed and blow dried my hair in the mirror I tried to figure out what it was men found so repulsive about me. I was short and thin, but I was pretty sure guys didn't mind that sort of thing. I at least had somewhat of an ass and a decent chest.
I had even considered dying my hair a different color. I got compliments from other girls about how pretty my long, natural auburn hair was, but maybe that was the problem. Guys didn’t want to date me because I was just a shade away from being a soulless ginger.
It probably didn't help that I’d always been really shy and quiet. Growing up with a protective father there had never really been anyone that I could just hang out with or be myself around. I was pretty sure that the girls I went to school with acted all bubbly and obnoxious, and that seemed to work for getting them one-night stands. But I was definitely not looking for that either.
Giving up on trying to figure out why I was social leper, I started looking for something to wear so I wouldn't melt in the ninety degree heat and suffocating humidity I had endured every day in this freaking town. At least I'd been able to go shopping since I've been on my own. My allowance for groceries had been spent on establishing a less conservative closet while I lived off of cafeteria food and oodles of noodles.
After I put on a jean skirt, thin button up blouse and my wedge sandals, I drank a glass of milk for breakfast, then grabbed my bookbag and phone to head out early. The sororities had posted flyers in the nursing building about their blood drive going on today. I knew the blood bank’s supplies were always low, so I wanted to try and get over there to donate. I had to get an early start so I wouldn't be late for my ten o'clock Biology class.
My apartment was in a great location, with the school's campus only a block away. My scholarship included room and board in one of the dorms, but daddy wanted me to have an apartment off campus. I was pretty sure he thought I'd be less likely to join a sorority or go to parties, and he was right. My living situation only made it more difficult to make friends. I didn't have a roommate, and none of my entirely female neighbors had bothered to say anything to me other than "Hi," when we passed in the hallways.
As I started toward the University's food court I couldn't miss the giant blood mobile parked up against the curb. My nerves suddenly made the milk in my stomach turn sour. I'd never given blood before, or even seen it done. As a freshman in nursing it was now or never with blood and needles, but as queasy as I felt just thinking about it, I might need to go ahead and change my major.
I walked up to the table right outside the bus. Two other girls were filling out forms on clipboards and talking to a woman wearing a shirt with the blood bank's logo.
“Hey, thanks for coming by! Would you like to sign up to donate today?" she asked when she saw me hesitate on the sidewalk.
I took a deep breath. I could do this. It probably wouldn't be as bad as I thought it would be.
"Um, yes, I think so," I mumbled.
"Great! Just fill this out and you can go right on in and get started!" She was way too bubbly and happy about donating blood this early in the morning.
I put down my name, date of birth, and contact information; then I went through the dozen or so more difficult questions. Nope, no blood diseases, never been out of the country either. I answered the rest of the question with a shaky hand then handed the form back to the hyper woman.
"Great! Everything looks good so come on up with me," she said, jogging up the bus steps after she read and approved my answers.
As I climbed the steep steps, I held onto the rails for dear life. At the top I could see the two other girls who were ahead of me reclined in chairs with needles already in their arms and bags beside them filling up with blood. The claustrophobic bus was too warm, and it felt like the walls had started spinning around me.
"You can go right down there to the last seat. Sam should be all set and ready for you!"
You're a nursing major, you can do this! I pepped talked to myself. I tried to avoid looking at the needles sticking out of arms as I walked past their seats to the back of the bus. I kept my eyes on the empty reclining chair, assuming it was my destination.
As I approached the chair, the young and unbelievably gorgeous technician turned around and smiled at me, making my already unsteady steps falter. His eyes roamed over me and then he frowned. It was like he'd been expecting someone else and was disappointed it was only me. Pretty much summed up my life.