Blazing Bedtime Stories (3 page)

“I’m from Chicago,” Ulysses offered. “Home sweet home when I’m not on assignment. So what about it?” He winked and motioned toward the picture of Matt Keller. “Can you hook me up with whatever he’s using? I’ve been trying to grow my hair out forever.”

Shay shook her head. “This picture can’t be for real.”

“Oh, it’s real, all right. I snapped it myself my first day in town.

Shay arched an eyebrow at the man. “You touched it up, didn’t you?”

“I never touch up my photos. Unless I’m doing tabloid work, that is. They pay big bucks for me to spray on celebrity pounds.” He wiggled his blond brows. “So how much?”

“How much for what?”

“Your super sonic hair tonic.”

“I haven’t branched out into hair treatments.” She’d never had
to because her facials, body wraps and waxes had been plenty to keep her schedule full.

Until now.

“My bad. I thought you were the one responsible.” He shrugged and glanced around. “Then again, if you had a treatment like that, this place wouldn’t be so empty, would it?”

Amen.

He started to turn and Shay’s determination fired to life. She’d already lost enough of her clientele. “How about a facial?” She indicated the list of services on the wall.

“A facial?”

“The best in five counties,” Shay added.

He eyed the menu for a long moment. “I
could
use better pores.” He motioned to her number five special. “Go on and hook me up with one of those orange citrus cleansers. And if you manage to figure out his secret, let me know.” He indicated Matt’s pic and the hair.

It had to be a wig.

That’s what Shay told herself as she finished up Sue Ann’s facial and started on Ulysses.

She slathered an orange and mango mixture onto the photographer’s face and tried to keep her mind on the task at hand. But she couldn’t shake the mental image of Matt Keller with his hot, hunky bod and his long, vivacious hair.

Ugh.

Had she just used
hunky
and
vivacious
in the same sentence? The two just didn’t go together, which was the point in a nutshell.

Keller didn’t seem like the kind of guy who catered to his feminine side. The one and only time she’d seen him, he’d oozed macho the way Irma Klondike reeked of hairspray and cheap perfume.

He’d worn faded jeans, a plain black T-shirt and worn boots. A straw Resistol had sat low on his forehead, shielding an incredible pair of bright green eyes. Eyes that had peeled away every strip of her clothing at first glance. He’d oozed way too much raw sex appeal to even have a feminine side. That and she happened to know for a fact that he wore regulation white cotton briefs instead of a lace-trimmed thong or cheeky hipsters.

That little tidbit had come from Myrtle Kantor, who’d been in for a sea salt facial and upper lip wax the day of the eyebrow anni
hilation. The old woman had accidentally gotten a pair of his underwear mixed in with her girdles at the Laundromat on the previous Wednesday. Before the running naked with the vivacious hair incident, which had happened on Saturday night—the same night that old Mr. Wintergreen shot the spaghetti dinner video and Shay’s life had turned into the next Titanic.

Then again, what did she know about cross-dressers? About as much as she knew about supersonic hair growth tonics.

She finished spreading on the citrus mask, wrapped a warm towel over the photographer’s face and then turned to wash her hands. She set the timer, snagged the newspaper and eyeballed the pic.

Maybe it wasn’t a wig.

Maybe he really
had
stumbled on to some sort of miraculous treatment. Or maybe he was washing his hair in spring water jam-packed with a high-powered mix of minerals. Or maybe he was taking some heavy duty vitamins or steroids or
something
that had jump-started his hair growth and taken him from short and cropped to long and flowing in less than twelve hours.

She didn’t know for sure, but she intended to find out.

She’d be back in business with a vengeance if it turned out to be the real deal. Which meant she was paying a visit to one Matt Keller just as soon as she closed up shop.

In the meantime…

She set the paper aside, ignored the urge to dive into the pint of Cherry Garcia stashed in her portable fridge in the back, and turned to her one and only paying customer for the day.

She gave Ulysses her most persuasive smile. “How’d you like a paraffin foot wax to go with that facial?”

M
ATT
K
ELLER HAD SEEN
some freaky shit in his lifetime. Particularly at midnight during a full moon. But this was early in the evening, weeks away from the big M.

He stared down at the huge hard-on and blinked, half-expecting the sucker to whither right before his eyes. Instead, it twitched and throbbed. He shook his head.

Not that he’d never had a hard-on before, or one as sizeable as the ten solid inches staring back at him. Damn straight he’d had one. Plenty, in fact. He loved women, and they certainly loved him. They couldn’t help themselves. It was Darwin’s theory at its most basic.

As a werewolf, he was the quintessential alpha male. Strong, virile, primitive. Women sensed all three and flocked to him. It was the one and only saving grace in an otherwise cursed life.

Or it had been.

But at thirty years old, Matt had grown tired of the endless stream of women. He was sick of one-night stands. Tired of the constant variety. He wanted a real relationship.

He wanted a mate.

That’s why he’d come to Skull Creek in the first place. Because he’d met Viviana Darland while investigating a murder case up in Washington state, and he’d known in his gut that she was more than an ordinary human.

She’d been more, all right. She’d been a vampire.

He touched the two prickpoints at his neck. He still couldn’t believe it. A
vampire.
Talk about
freaky
.

Then again, he sprouted a snout and fur at that certain time of the month and so he wasn’t one to argue impossibilities.

He closed his eyes as the past few weeks closed in on him. A week ago, he’d left his position as sheriff of a small Washington
town to chase Viv all the way to Texas. He’d been convinced she was The One his parents—both full blooded werewolves—had told him about when he’d turned twenty-one. He could still hear his father’s voice.

“For every male of our kind, there is a female. It’s just a matter of finding her, son. The minute you do, you’ll know it.”

“That’s right,” his mother had added. “She’ll fill your head. Your heart. And just like that, you’ll know. You’ll forget every other woman but her.”

At the time of the revelation, he’d been young and horny and more interested in having a good time than finding his one and only. But over the years, he’d started to feel the loneliness of being “different.” A few years ago, he’d finally grown tired of the nameless faces. The constant variety. The meaningless one-nighters. He’d been looking for his mate ever since.

And then he’d met Viv.

He’d known at first glance that she was different. He just hadn’t realized how different until he’d stumbled on a handful of vampires and a world of trouble. Vampire Viv, it turned out, had been fleeing two vengeful bloodsuckers, and Matt had found himself caught in the middle of their struggle. He’d been bitten by one of Viv’s attackers.

He closed his eyes, remembering the feel of fangs piercing his neck, the draw on his vein and then the nothingness as he’d collapsed onto the motel room floor.

Unconscious, but not dead.

Not even close.

He’d opened his eyes a short while later to find the struggle over. Viv and Garret—the vampire in love with her—had defeated the enemy vamps. They were both alive and well, and so was Matt. Despite passing out, he’d felt as strong as ever. Stronger, in fact. Alive. And hard.

That had been six days ago. One hundred forty-four hours, twenty-eight minutes and counting. And he was still hard.

He’d checked out of the motel and leased a two-story log cabin just outside of town. The house sat atop a large hill surrounded by sixty-three acres of trees and rolling pasture. It wasn’t anywhere close to his spread up in Washington—a five-hundred-acre mountain ranch he’d inherited from his folks when they’d died in
a Cessna crash two years ago—but it would afford him enough privacy to sort things out and come to terms with what had happened to him before he resumed his search for his mate.

He glanced down at his erection. Correction—with what was
now
happening to him.

He threw his legs over the side of the bed and headed for the bathroom. A few minutes later, he stepped into an ice-cold shower. His skin shriveled, but the Incredible Hulk didn’t lose an inch of temper.

Ditto when he opened the refrigerator door a half hour later and let the cold air blast over his naked body. His teeth chattered. His nipples puckered. Even his toes shrank.

But his dick? Nothing. Not even a friggin’ shiver.

Desperation rolled through him and he rummaged under the sink for a large mixing bowl. Retrieving several trays from the freezer, he dumped ice cubes into the container. Mustering his courage, he shoved his throbbing cock inside. The tender skin around his penis froze on contact, his balls pulled back and he ground his teeth together.

Holymotherfriggin’sonofagoddamnbitch—

He yanked free and relief swamped him. A feeling that lasted all of two seconds. Until he glanced down to see Super Cock.

He stroked the rigid skin from root to tip and a burst of need went through him. Hunger stirred, urging him on and it was all he could do to pull away. But he did because he knew no amount of jacking off would help.

Been there. Done that.

He’d spent the past six days eating, sleeping and jacking off.

And
streaking buck-naked through town.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember exactly what had happened Friday night. One minute he’d been laying in bed, fantasizing about a hot little blonde he’d spotted in town that day, and the next, he’d been buck naked, hairy and sprinting down main street. Luckily it had been midnight in a map-dot that rolled up the sidewalks at sundown.

Or so he’d thought.

But then he’d opened the local paper the next morning to discover that someone with a camera had been burning the midnight oil. Matt had made the front page, along with the caption
Wolfman? Pervert? Or is Halloween Starting Early This Year?

He was sure most people would vote for the pervert or Halloween possibilities. Nobody in their right mind would suspect the real truth—that he was a normal, sane, self-respecting werewolf who’d had his world rocked by a vampire bite. They would think the new guy in town was playing some sort of practical joke. At least for a little while. Long enough for him to come up with a plausible explanation, something like “he was president of the National Society of Transvestite Streakers” or “he’d ordered a super-charged hair growth shampoo off the QVC.”

Until then, it was a matter of getting his damned body back under control.

Anxiety rushed through him and he was just about to go for another ice dunk when he heard a car engine and caught the faint scent of exhaust. He moved at the speed of light, pulling on a pair of jeans and hauling open the front door.

But there was nothing there. No car coming up his drive. No townspeople coming to lynch him. Nothing but the quarter moon suspended in a star-studded sky. A cluster of surrounding trees. And the sounds.

The buzz of crickets. The flutter of an owl’s wings. The faint scrape of deer antlers on a distant tree. The rustle of a raccoon as it dug through the trash.

In the nearest trash can, which was a full mile up the road.

His senses, already unusually heightened because of his DNA, were jacked up even more. He sniffed and the sweet smell of warm peach pie spiraled through his head. His stomach grumbled and he drank in another deep breath. And another.

Tires squealed and gravel crunched and he knew someone was coming. He moved toward the trees and faded into the surrounding forest as lights flashed and a car pulled into view.

His view, that is. He saw the sprinkle of lights through the trees and heard the sounds even though the car was still a good distance away. A full minute ticked by and the sounds magnified, along with the glimmer of lights, the scent of peach pie and the smell of something else.

Something much more rich and potent.

Something infinitely female.

He sniffed, drinking in the scent as a faded BMW came to a
rolling stop in front of the cabin. The lights dimmed. The door creaked and pushed open and out stepped his fantasy woman.

It was her, all right. Same long, thick hair and voluptuous breasts barely contained beneath a white T-shirt that read
Booty Call
.

He blinked. Wait a second. Make that
Beauty
Call.

He shifted his stance. His erection strained against the denim and his gut ached. The warm scent of peach pie grew stronger. His nostrils flared and his mouth watered. It was all he could do to keep his distance. He’d spent a lot of time fantasizing about her, since he’d first spotted her, in fact.

Not because he felt drawn to her on an emotional level, as his father had predicted. She was human and, therefore, out of the running for mate-of-the-year.

It was purely physical.

He’d been celibate for the past year since vowing to find his mate and she was sexier than hell. And so it had simply been lust at first sight.

He held his ground as the crunch of grass echoed in his head. She was heading for his front porch, her curvaceous ass outlined by a snug pair of jeans. Her bottom swayed slightly as she walked, an enticing motion that made him swallow. Hard.

A faint
clink
and a softly muttered “darn it” pushed past the frantic pounding of his heart as she dropped her keys. A strong, sharp aroma joined the warm, sweet smell of peaches.

She was nervous. Scared, even.

Desperate.

That truth became evident as she retrieved her keys, pulled back her shoulders and mounted the porch steps even though it was obvious she didn’t want to be there. Still, she balled her fist and knocked on the door. Once. Twice. A third time.

Finally, she turned, her gaze scanning the trees that surrounded the clearing. She stopped when she reached him, as if she could see through the darkness to the place where he stood watching her.

She couldn’t. He knew that. Yet, as he stared at her, into her aqua colored eyes, he felt as if she saw him as clearly, as distinctly as he saw her.

What the hell?

The question echoed in his head along with her stats. Her name was Shay Briggs and she needed his help. He wasn’t sure how he
knew, he just did. She ran the local spa specializing in facials and innovative beauty treatments. She was a once-upon-a-time pageant winner who’d recently been humiliated by her asshole of a boyfriend. She was still hurt, but she’d channeled the pain into something productive. Anger. Determination. Which was why she’d made the drive from town.

She’d seen the front page news like everyone else. But instead of writing him off as a practical joker or, worse, a lunatic, she’d taken the picture seriously. She’d bought into the sudden hair growth and now she wanted his help.

She turned back to the door, killing the endless string of information he’d picked up from her gaze.

He closed his eyes and tried to digest this newest revelation. He’d read her thoughts. He’d read her friggin’
thoughts
.

Sure, he’d always been able to sense things. He was a werewolf, for Christ’s sake. He could smell fear. Taste despair. Pick up on the tiniest rush of excitement.

When he’d spotted her in town, he’d sensed her longing right away. He’d seen the glimmer of excitement in her gaze when she’d looked at him. Felt the push-pull when she’d forced herself to turn away because she obviously hadn’t wanted to be attracted to him anymore than he’d wanted to be attracted to her. He’d even smelled her disappointment, as potent as his own, as she’d climbed into her car and driven away.

But those were emotions, not thoughts. He’d never been able to read anyone’s
mind
.

Before he could dwell on the notion, Shay knocked on his door again. Her ass swayed ever so slightly, drawing his full and undivided attention.

An image popped into his head. The two of them on the front porch. His hands on her bottom and her legs up around his waist. His cock plunging fast and sure and deep into her hot, voluptuous body.

His groin throbbed mercilessly and he knew then that no amount of cold showers or hand-jobs would get him out of this stiff fix. He needed a real woman for that.

The woman standing on his front porch.

The thought struck and another visual rushed at him—the two of them on the king-sized bed inside. Her legs spread and his hips
pumping between them. Her arms around his neck and his mouth on her breast. Her nipple straining against his tongue and her body arching into him. His fangs sinking deep and her blood rushing into his mouth—

Wait a second.

Wait just a friggin’
second
.

Blood?

He was a
werewolf.
He howled at the full moon, ordered his steaks rare and, once upon a time, he’d had wild, primitive sex with whichever hottie had vied for his attention. But he’d never sank his teeth into any of them. Sure, the smell of blood turned him on and stirred his baser instincts, but he’d never
drank
the stuff.

The world seemed to fall away in those next few seconds. The normal night sounds faded and his super-charged vision narrowed until the only thing he became aware of was the female standing on his porch.

An awareness that went deeper than her lush body.

The beat of her heart thundered through his head. His gaze fixated on the thrum of her pulse at the base of her neck. The scent of her blood—so warm and ripe and musky—teased his nostrils. A shudder ripped through him.

What the
hell
was happening to him?

Even as the question struck, he knew.

The vampire bite.