Microsoft Word - The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance.doc (50 page)

“I’m OK with everything.” Sol answered, fixating on the  pink top hat of her right nipple. “It’s been a great boost for my  dental practice and I was always a night owl anyways. You  ready to come back to bed?”

The night began to fade away and the horizon  became a bright line in the East over the roiling waters of Gowanus Bay.  Sol felt panic stir in his stomach. He couldn’t bear to let this nymph, this Venus, this peaches-and-cream  titbit  for his love bites leave his arms.

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“Er,” he said as the blonde lay  on her back staring at the  ceiling, her expression unreadable. “I know this will sound a bit  sudden, but  ”–

She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “But?”

“It’s nearly daybreak. Why don’t you hang out here for the  rest of the weekend. I just bought a new plasma TV and I own  an extensive CD library. It’s quite impressive.”

“OK,” she said, her voice curiously flat. She studied him for  a moment and squeezed her eyes shut. “Sol,” she said. “How do  you feel about me? Tell the truth.”

Sol’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. “The truth? To tell the truth I’m crazy about you. I hope it doesn’t scare you off. I .  . . I don’t want you to ever leave.”

The blonde sat up and turned her lovely back towards him.  She slipped out of bed and went to the dresser to retrieve another cigarette. Her fingers with their red tips seemed to shake a little as she pulled a Camel from the pack. She scrabbled among the spilled contents of her purse for the lighter, then flicked it, the flame lighting up her face. Her blue  eyes glittered as she turned to Sol.

“I’ll have to bite other guys, you know.” Her voice was a

challenge. “A girl has to eat.”

“No problem! Me too, I mean I guess me too. It’s just a  meal. We can work it out.” His brown eyes lit up with hope.  “Are you saying  ”–

“Yes? Yes. I’m saying yes. I mean in this life it’s hard,  difficult, to find somebody with the same  –  the same outlook.  You know what I mean?”

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Sol didn’t, but nodded. His gaze had fallen to the intriguing darkness between her thighs  and his attention had drifted to other things.

“What I’m saying is,” the blonde continued, “we only just  met, but sometimes you know right away that this is it. This is  the one. Is that what you’re saying to me?”

Sol dragged his thoughts back from her crotch. “Bunny,  I mean, Sunny, you are the woman I have dreamed about,” he said with total candour. “Whatever you want, it’s fine with me.  Are you nearly done with that cigarette?”

She stubbed it out and moved languidly; her movements were fluid, graceful and erotic as  she came back to the bed and stretched herself next to Sol. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him, her tongue probed his mouth. He briefly thought of her overbite: new invisible plastic braces, the best ones on the market, will fix it. Then Sol  stopped thinking of anything.

Later, in the dim light of a gathering dawn, London also known as Sunny  –  or if Sol preferred Bunny (she had made the names up anyway)  –  spoke again, her tantalizing lips just inches from his. “Solly,” she whispered and his  heart fluttered, “I need to know, are you really making a commitment to me. Me, nearly a perfect stranger?”

“I feel as if I’ve always known you. I’ve dreamed of you.  Longed for you.” For Sol that was as close to poetry as he had  ever come. “I’m yours. For  ever if you want me. Whatever you  want I’ll give you.” He was a man who had lost his heart.  Reason had flown. He was driven by a primal need to merge and  release the hungers gathering in his soul.

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The blonde smiled, her teeth very white. “You know, I think  I want to rearrange the furniture in the bedroom. I’m very into feng shui,” she whispered.

“Huh?” Sol’s eyes fluttered a little as he felt her fingers  move over his belly.

“But later. Right now, take me, you mad fool.” She giggled  and spread her legs to receive him once more.

The bed shook. The walls vibrated. The dresser holding the blonde’s purse rocked. A business card, which had been resting precariously on a tissue, tumbled to the floor. It lay there face up and, if Sol Tytel had not been occupied  elsewhere, he could have read:

Blanche Stein, Matchmaker

‘I will find someone perfect for you’

Brooklyn, New York

212-555 -1212

Author’s note: Any similarity to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental and that includes all my relatives in  Brooklyn and Florida, especially my cousin Glenda.

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H unter’s Choice

Shiloh Walker

“
S

hit.”

The cold wind cut through her clothes like she wasn’t wearing anything, blew her hair into her face, made her eyes water and generally made it twice as  hard to do what she needed to do. But she didn’t look away from the couple in the alley and, other than that quiet curse, she made no noise, made no movement.

She held a crossbow in one hand, kept the other on a pair of military-issue binoculars with night-vision capabilities and a built-in digital camera. She was more used to using the cross-bow than the binoculars, but up until a year ago, the only time she’d ever used the crossbow was out on a shooting range.

That had been another lifetime ago.

Before 22 February 2007.

The day her life changed forever  –  the day her twin brother and his wife, Sara’s best friend, were found murdered in their hotel room while on their honeymoon.

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Joseph and Darla had been the only family she had left and to lose them would have been devastating, no matter what. But to have them so brutally murdered and to live with the gut-deep belief she’d never know who’d killed them, made it so much

worse.

The question of
 
who
 
would  go unanswered. But Sara knew
what
 
had killed them. A  creature that couldn’t exist, that shouldn’t. A monster that looked just like a man, acted, walked, talked, sounded like a man. She’d been watching this one for a week now. Something about the way he moved, the way he watched people, had set off an alarm  in her head.

He shifted a little, lifted his head away from the woman in his arms. The lighting in the alley was too damn dim but Sara was used to it. These freaks never made a move unless it was someplace dark and shadowy. Through her night-vision binoculars, Sara watched as the woman unbuttoned the man’s shirt, pressed her lips to his bare chest.

The man’s head fell back and Sara grinned with fral satisfaction as his lips parted, revealing exactly what she’d suspected.

Two sharp, ivory fangs.

“Got you,” she muttered, snapping a picture, then setting the  binoculars aside and lifting her crossbow. The woman was about  to get a very rude awakening but Sara figured it was better the  woman see somebody get shot in front of her than have some  bloodsucker drain her dry.

Behind her, the wind kicked up. Her ears caught a strange rustling sound, a quiet, muffled thump, and then she heard a voice. A familiar voice.

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“Not a good idea, Sara.

She spun around, keeping the crossbow aimed and ready, as she faced the man she hadn’t seen in a year. Wyatt Cooper.  Blood rushed to her face and a sick sensation of panic exploded inside her.

Stunned, she blinked and squinted at him in the thin light, but there was no mistaking that face. With her heart racing, she lowered the  crossbow to her side. “Wyatt?”

He glanced over her shoulder and she had the weirdest sensation that he knew exactly what she’d been doing. Her heart kicked up a few beats, slamming away at her chest wall with a force that left her breathless.

A faint grin tugged at his lips. “Fancy running into you here.” His gaze lingered on her crossbow. “Weird place for target practice.”

“Ahhhh . . .”

“I seem to recall you being a bit more talkative than this.”  He cocked his head, still watching her with that faint,  amused  smile on his lips.

“Yeah, well, you caught me a little off-guard. What are you

doing here?”

Wyatt shrugged. The cold wind’s knife-edge didn’t seem to

bother him as it blew his hair back from his face.

He looked incredibly out of place, she realized, but Wyatt was the kind of man who would always stand out. Under the open trench coat, he wore a dark shirt, which shimmered in the faint light, and dark  trousers. During the one week they’d spent

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together, he always looked like he’d stepped off the pages of

GQ.

Well, when he hadn’t been naked and on top of her. Or

under . . .

His shoes were more suited to pacing the floors of a board-room than a busted-up, litter-strewn rooftop in the Chicago’s  West Side. But he moved across that rooftop like he did  every day of his life, unconcerned by the cold, by her weapons or the way she watched him.

“What are you doing here?”

He slid her a look as he approached the hip-high brick wall

where she’d spent the last two hours. “Looking for you.”

“Looking for me.”
 
Shit
. Alarm bells started to sound. Time  to make a run for it. Her binoculars and one of her bags lay just  a foot away. She could grab them. Grab them and get the hell  out. “Why are you looking for me?”

“I’ll answer that question after you answer one for  me.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared down into the alley.

From the corner of her eye, Sara followed his gaze. Her heart sank to her feet as she realized he’d distracted her at the worst possible time.

Down in the alley, the vampire was feeding. The woman stood still, almost passive, in his arms and there was a look of utter rapture on her face.

Damn it, damn it, damn it
! Jerking the crossbow up, she

aimed quickly, knowing she’d only have a second . . .

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Less. There was no time to aim before Wyatt moved,

grabbing the crossbow out of her hands with uncanny strength.

“Give it back!” Sara reached for it, but he slipped away.

“He’s going to kill her.”

If she thought her words might have had some sort of impact on him, she’d thought wrong. “No, Sara. He’s not. He isn’t going to hurt her.”

“You don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”  Fine. Screw the crossbow. She reached under her shirt, pulled  out the Glock holstered at the base of her spine, watching him  from the corner of her eye as she aimed. Again, she never even  saw him move until he was pulling the gun away.

“Unfortunately, Sara, I do.”

Something cold and ugly moved through her and she lifted her head, watching as Wyatt moved to stand in front of her. He studied her face with grim eyes. If her instincts hadn’t already been screaming at her, they would have started, just from that look.

“What are you doing here Wyatt?” she asked again, her  voice hoarse. She asked  –  even though a part of her already  knew the answer. “How did you know I was here?”

Last year, just days after Joey had been buried, Sara had met a sexy stranger with eyes the colour of amber, silken black hair and a wicked smile. She wasn’t the type to pick up men in bars, wasn’t the type to go back to a hotel with a guy  she’d known only hours. But she’d done so with Wyatt. And she remembered it all in vivid detail.

She’d spent one week with him, one week in which they rarely left his hotel room. On the seventh day, she’d slipped out

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of the room while he’d been in the shower and she hadn’t seen

him since.

She’d thought about him way too often for her peace of mind and what few dreams she had that weren’t nightmares had been centred around him  –  hot, sweaty, dreams that left her aching and needy and lonely when she woke in her solitary bed.  They left her wishing she could be different somehow, that she could move past the mission she’d set for herself.

She thought of him  –  wondered if he ever thought of her

and figured the uber-sexy man had long since forgotten her.