VAMPIRE ROMANCE: Moonlight Desires Complete Series (Books 1, 2, &3) (Paranormal Romance Collection, Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance With Sex) (Vampire Romance Boxed Set) (8 page)

Chapter Three

Some mornings you just can't wake up. Coffee may make your limbs jitter and sunlight may make you squint, but there is a heavy daze which prevents you from being a full human being. This is the sensation that Shana felt during her ride in Tom's car. In one respect, Tom's car was the last place she wanted to be, but in another, she couldn't imagine a single setting where she would want to exist. Existence in totality seemed like a burden. Just days ago, life seemed so sweet but today it was as bitter as a cunnilingus in a nursing home.

              Despair was the simple fact of her life. Her soul: a tundra. Eternal love was an eel that wriggled right out from her fingers. Slimy hands were all that was left, and she had no idea how she could ever get a grip. Sensual pleasure would never feel so good again. Well, she could always place a dildo in the freezer, but a sex toy is not the same as a singular man.

              Tom was blathering about something other. “Like, that's your issue babe, you don't think about me. What am I, some fucking doofus? This is just like the time you lost the DVD I was supposed to return to Netflix.
I
stil
l
haven't seen the newest Leprechaun movie.”

              Cleveland's blooming trees blurred into one slow-moving mass. Children playing on its sidewalks were faceless and the people standing on street corners waiting to cross, standing in front of stores hosing down sidewalks and gabbing with one another, may have well have been lifeless statues erected by the city in some grotesque tribute to life as it once was.

              Shana remembered a story that she read in college, an ancient Greek myth about the courtship of gods. Eros had shot the god Apollo with a golden arrow, and Daphne, a nymph, with one of lead. Apollo's arrow made him fall madly for the nymph. Daphne's made her revile the god. Apollo's courtship made Daphne's life hell, and one day as he was in pursuit of her, Daphne pleaded to her father for reprieve. The father turned her into a tree. Shana wished she was a fucking tree.

The car pulled up to a motel.

“Oh, sorry, we should have picked something up, you want anything?”

“No,” replied Shana, with minimal effort used to force air through her larynx to even make a sound.

“Well, I've got some whiskey in the room. You can get a mixer from the vending machine.”

“Ok.”

“They've got Faygo. Woop woop!”

“Ok.”

              The room was a mess. What did she expect? The bedsheets look like a raccoon had been scavenging through them for garbage and it was hard to tell but it looked like there was urine in a ginger ale bottle. The television was left on and some Mexican soap opera was playing. Tom didn't know a lick of Spanish, he was probably just enjoying the revealing dresses. She noticed a pile of crumpled cocktail napkins, a sure sign that Tom had been cranking the hog for likely as long has he had been staying at the motel.

“Want some of this Old Granddad, babe?” Shana shrugged and grabbed the two clean glasses that sat besides the bathroom sink. Tom was taking a swig from the bottle on her return, but she placed the glasses down beside each other on the writing desk, grabbed the bottle from Tom's mouth, and poured two fingers of bourbon in each.

She examined the bottle. “Old Granddad. 100 proof. Strong stuff.”

“Babe, it got lonely. You were with that...” Shana's look said, “yeah, tha
t
wha
t
?” “You were with that vampire and I was just getting torn up.”

A perfunctory nod was all the acknowledgement Shana gave.

“Plus, my old granddad is one of my best friends!” He cackled to himself like a buffoon while Shana downed her glass of straight whiskey and poured another for herself. Tom frantically followed suit as if issued a challenge. Shana drank her second glass of straight whiskey slowly as Tom poured his. She had a hunch that the longer she drank for, the longer Tom would pour, and she was right. Shana poured her third glass while Tom downed his massive second. It was a petite amount that she gave herself, just enough to elevate the buzz into something more serious. When Tom slammed his glass to the table, his feet moved a little as if standing still was too much for balancing.

Tom noticed Shana's black eye. “Hey, your face is fucked up.”

“And yours?”

              The bed was a welcome seat for Shana. She crossed her legs and leaned back on one elbow, glass of whiskey in the opposite hand. This was a rather comfortable repose considering the destitute nature of her current environs. She took in the molding on the ceiling, the yellowed floral wallpaper which couldn't have been changed since Reagan was in office. Fact of the matter was that Shana always found something inviting about a shitty motel. Despite its rancidity, or perhaps because of it, the place expected nothing of you. A nice hotel was a luxury, sure, but there was always the sense that you should be lounging in some stiff, waffled bathrobe instead of a t-shirt with no bra under it.

Tom plopped down next to her on the bed, making her whole body bounce and bit of the bourbon jump over the rim of her tumbler. “I've missed you babe.”

Silence.

“I thought I lost you,” he appealed. Shana replied to this with a nonchalant sip.               Tom sidled up to her and looked at her scalp as he started playing with her hair. The shards that made up Shana's soul craved whatever contact that would come her way, and she let out a lamb's coo at the first experience of human touch. Tom leaned in to kiss her, the gentleness of which actually made it quite nice. After the first, she leaned towards him for a second.

“One second,” and she placed her hand against his chest. The rest of the whiskey went down her gullet and she chucked the glass to the floor. It bounced against the wall and she chuckled. Tom chuckled too. She pulled him down to the bed and they casually made out, sewing the initial stitches needed to mend broken hearts. On their sides, Shana pulled her head back and examined all of Tom's face. He hadn't shaven in a few days (of course) and his eyes were junkie sunken.

Shana remembered this man. They shared a quiet moment. She brushed his thinning hair with her fingers just as he did with hers a couple of minutes prior. She gripped his Avenged Sevenfold shit between her thumb and forefinger, pulling him towards her lips, her embrace. They snuggled tight and kissed for a while until Tom said,

“I killed that vampire. I killed him for your own good.”

              There was no response and Shana made sure to keep her face out of his line of vision since those words alone made tears well in her ducts. He started pecking from her clavicle, up the side of her neck, to behind her ear. He paused briefly on the way when his lips met the scratch marks where the vampire tried to penetrate.

“You didn't kill him,” she breathed.

Tom gave a self-satisfied little huff like a boy who had just won a loogie contest. “Yeah,” he said in between pecks. “I busted that, uhh,” the “uhh” vibrated her skull, “ceiling window? What do you call those ceiling windows?”

“Skylight.”

“Yeah. Climbed right up there and busted it.”

              Shana reached under his shirt and felt his belly, his chest, softly scratching his tract of chest hair. “No, you didn't.” She slid her hand down the torso, which incited a little shiver. “You just burned off his cock.” She unbuttoned Tom's fly and travelled farther down. “He ain't got a cock anymore.”

“But I do.” And she grabbed it. It was not very hard on account of the whiskey. She started to stroke it with a backhanded motion and could feel it grow solid in her grip. Her hand constricted ever so subtly with each successive pull. He sprayed humid air all over the side of his face.

“Yes, you do. You do have a cock.” Shana felt Tom's hand slide up her shirt now, on the hunt for a breast to hold. When he found a nipple and flicked it against the tip of his thumb, Shana gasped and whispered, “do you want to know what that cock was like?” Tom's was growing ever tougher in her hand.

Lost in the moment, Tom did not respond.

“Do you? Do you want to know what that cock was like.”

Weakly, wimpily, “No.” It was the refusal of a man afraid of the truth. Shana felt Tom's member start to throb, and the shaft finally most of the way to tumescence. He melted, and as he cupped and rubbed her breast, she did too.

“It was ice cold.” She grabbed his free hand and guided it to the fly of her jeans. The hand was pushed down to the next button as soon as it had undone the one before it. She placed the paw between her the cotton of her panties and the warm skin of her lower abdomen. “Cold as an ice pop that you buy from a truck in the summer.” He fumbled through her bush to find the wet, warm flesh. “And just as refreshing too.” She gave Tom's erection a determined tug, not giving him a second to think.

But still, he processed the deceit. “Stop. Please.” So Shana let go of his hard-on just as he started to rub her. “No I didn't mean that. I meant...” But her return to action derailed him.

“Do you want to know how big it was?” He did not but he had turned totally dumb. “I couldn't tell you, honey, if this is something that happens after death. I know your hair and nails keep growing in the grave. But your cock...” She was taking off his shirt with her free hand. He followed and pulled down her pants and her underwear simultaneously.“His was huge. Eight inches, maybe more.”

This made Tom's efforts all the more frantic. He was racing against her stories for the chance to pleasure this woman.

“Oh, I've never had a man that good. No living man, at least.”

Tom pulled down his pants, leaving him totally nude. There is something especially pathetic about an insecure man who is also nude.

              He entered her and she moaned. He took his cue and gave a deep thrust. She moaned again, briefly this time. “He was not my first, but he was the first good one.” She did a slow wiggle with her hips to adjust to Tom's rhythm. It was tough sometimes, since Tom moved to the beat of an off-tempo drum when they did it. Had she been more aware, she would realize that their inability to sync coital movements was a simple issue of chemistry.

              She flipped him onto his back and took the reins. She made sure that he was thumbing her clit whenever it wasn't flush against his pelvis, grinding. She was putting her mouth to his ear, nibbling and taunting, “The things you must learn by walking this Earth for hundreds of years...”

              Whenever Tom was about to come, his movements would get real jerky and his gyrations much shorter. She lifted off of him and his jaw slacked in shock. Shana waited for a moment then mounted him again. They continued until she felt those pre-orgasmic pelvic jerks and she lifted off him again. He let out a cry like a hurt rabbit. She mounted again, this time rubbing herself as she rode him, finally reaching her own climax.

              Her ecstasy brought Tom to the edge of orgasm again but this time she did not dismount until the second before he would ejaculate. The force of the spurts sprayed everything from his mouth to her chest plate. His eyes shut as he writhed in satisfaction, unseeing of Shana's deranged celebration of a small victory, grinning like the devil at the sight of this wretched man covered in his own sperm.

              After a few minutes, Tom got up and took a massive swig from the whiskey bottle. He did not look Shana in the eyes, but he did look back at her back on the bed, still only exposed from the waste down. The bottle met his lips again and he just about finished it off. He crawled into bed and Shana made him into the little spoon.

Chapter Four

When Shana awoke in the morning, it was in a pool of Tom's urine. Tom would always cackle when his brother would say, “a man reaches a point in his life when he stops puking shit-faced and just pisses the bed.” At least people actually vomit in the toilet.

              It was light outside, and Shana found the sun rather inviting. She couldn’t wait until she got back to her sister's house to wash the urine off her legs. A cellphone caught her eye on the way out. She entered Tom's password and made his lock screen wallpaper a picture of himself naked, laying in a urine-soaked motel bed.

              The first thing she saw when she walked into her sister's house was Nate, eyes red and puffy, sitting on Suze's back as she did pushups. The count had reached “forty-two, forty-three, forty-four” when Nate got up to hug his sister-in-law.

“Where have you been, Shana?”

              The embrace allowed for some silence, and a long embrace it was. A hug between family is such a simple joy. So easing, so restorative – a reminder that humans can transcend through intimacy, through a simple configuration of arms and bodies. “I was with Tom.”

Suze looked over mid-pushup and ceased. She looked into her sister's eyes expectingly. Shana looked deflated. Suze looked away.

“Have you heard from that detective?”

“Yeah,” said Suze as she propped herself up onto her feet. “He told us he found a body, a small boy’s body.”

Wind evacuated from Shana's gut.

“Took him 20 minutes before he told us the body bore no resemblance to Luke. Described a little elbow sticking out of water and a pond getting dredged and the precise location of every abrasion and scratch that the poor boy had on his body. Took him 20 goddamn minutes,” she performed a quick stations of the cross, “before he remembered to tell us it wasn't our boy.”

“We were sobbing. Well I was sobbing. Suze, she was keeping strong like she does. Thought she was going to reach through the receiver and strangle the motherfucker though.”

The back of a chair propped up Shana by the arm. A painful high had made her head light, but relief washed over her.

              Suddenly, she found her arms constricted against her torso. Suze was hugging her as tight as she could manage. Her sister's tears wet the shoulder of Shana's shirt. Somehow one arm gained a little bit of mobility and she rubbed Suze's lower back with a firm touch and steady motion. “Shh” bled from her teeth into her weeping sister's ear. Suze pulled away. “I wish you had never made Tom come out here.” Suze started wailing, and Shana this time gave her the strong embrace. “It's ok. It's ok.”

Nate rattled his keys. “Hey, let's settle this over some chicken.”

              Now Suze was a bit of a health nut and Nate wasn't a big eater and Shana was much more a fan of granola and tofu, but there was a tradition in family that when there were sorrows to be drowned, fried chicken was in order. It started a few years back when Shana was visiting, actually. Nate got a call from his sister-in-law in Akron that his brother was found in the backyard with slits running down the length of his wrists and inner forearms in an educated attempt to let demons out through his veins. On their drive down to the hospital there, they stopped at a fried chicken joint and found themselves feeling much better.

              They sat down in Maude's with a big bucket of chicken, a pile of fries, and some coleslaw. If you ever want to lend joy to a group of adults who have no hope left, bring them to a chicken spot. No words were exchanged for the first 15 minutes of the meal, until Shana got a text. She reached into her pocket and drew out her phone, but it immediately slipped out of her greasy fingers. She grabbed a napkin and muttered to herself, ultimately relieved that the screen wasn't cracked.

“That Tom texting you?” asked Suze with her mouth full.

It was a number Shana didn't recognize. Her sister got no response, and she put her phone back into her pocket to get back to work on the chicken.

“I'm sorry that I called Tom.”

Shana looked up from the thigh she was picking skin off of. “He's bad.”

“Well hun, he's not great, that's for sure.”

“He's bad for me. If I go back to Long Island, I'm not going home to him.” She resumed picking off the skin, and munched on little pieces of it that she tore off.

“Well, I'm sorry. It's just that that vamp––”

Shana shot her a look.

“I'm sorry.”

“It's ok. It's fine. Shit happens.”

They resumed eating for a bit and then Shana blurted,

“He pisses the bed when he's drunk. Who wants a lifetime of that?”

The three laughed heartily. What a tool, they all though to themselves. What a loser.

Shana's phone vibrated in her pocket again and this time she wiped her fingers outright.

Same number, second text. She checked it just to get rid of the notification.

Text 1: “cum2 LV cemetery”

Text 2: “now”

Mr. Clean. How could she forget about Mr. Clean. But the cemetery?

Mr. Clean texted back. “only option. safe w/ me.”

“Hey, uh” Shana started. Nate and Suze were joyously munching, cherishing their brief moment to willfully forget the familial tragedy that they were currently suffering. “Hey can we take this stuff to go?”

“And go where, hun?” Nothing came between Suze and indulgence.

“The, umm, cemetery.”

The munching halted.

“Like, Lake View Cemetery.”

Red was the color Suze's face quickly turned. “So we can see that undead friend of yours?”

“Suzy,” Nate appealed, “it's barely sunset. Bloodsuckers can't take the daylight.”

“Then why do we need to go there, Shana?”

“I don't know. I've got a feeling, I guess.”

              Suze placed a chicken leg to her mouth, biting and chewing as slowly as could be, maintaining a stony glare at Shana the whole time. Upon swallowing, “Ok. Nate, get a lid for the bucket.”