Michele Hauf - Forever Vampire

She rolled away from the obnoxious light and her body hugged against Vail’s naked form. He lay on his side, facing her, his eyes open. He touched her mouth. A lash of her tongue in the wake of his touch tasted sex and salt and something sweet that she thought might be faery dust.

“You going to track down the fence today?” she asked.

“No reason to bother. It’s a ruse. You made up the name. I knew it before I even made the call.”

“Then why—why can’t you let me go?”

“Told you.” He gripped her around the nape of her neck, but not threateningly. His finger touched her behind the ear, and she cautioned herself against making a fast move. Some secrets were best kept. “I need the gown, Lyric.”

This guy had a one-track mind, and the replay was growing old fast. “If you had the gown would you let me go?”

“Do you have a gown to give me?”

She rolled to her back, wincing at the sunlight. He thumbed her nipple, but she batted his hand away.

“That was the best sex I’ve had. Ever,” he said, sitting and reaching for his pants. “Thanks.”

She closed her eyes. Men were not supposed to thank a woman for having sex. That was wrong on every imaginable level. So much for bad-boy fantasies. He’d used her.

But she had used him, too.

The best ever? Poor guy, didn’t get around much, did he? On the other hand, it had been so freakin’ good. Her best ever? She wouldn’t admit it to herself.

“I suppose if I take a shower, you’ll dodge out the window.”

“You know it,” she answered.

“I need to go home, shower, and change my clothes. After lying on this bed, I feel … crusty. Which means you’ll be coming with me, sweetie.”

“I’m not your sweetie.”

“No, you’re not.” He exhaled and stood.

Lyric gazed at his bare back and ass. The hard muscles that flexed with his movement defined the dimples at the top of his buttocks. Nice. Without warrant, she imagined him inside her again, pumping hard, filling her, his jaw clenched, and bringing her to climax. A shiver traced through her system.

“Yeah, it was as good as you remember,” he commented over his shoulder.

Lyric leaned up on an elbow. “You know you just had sex with a vampire.”

“I know.”

“You ever do that before?”

“Nope.”

Wow. Most vamps socialized with one another, and a lot dated vampires exclusively and used mortals for sex only when biting them.

“Any regrets?” she asked.

Shimmying up his pants and carefully tucking away his semihard penis as he zipped, Vail shrugged. “Actually, no, no regrets.”

“You seem surprised.”

He picked up her dress and tossed it over her breasts, then leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, slow, delving, most definitely not a regretful kiss.

“I am,” he said. Another quick kiss. “You’ve only just met me, but I’m sure you’ve determined a vampire would not be my first choice to bed.”

“Faeries first?”

He shrugged. “Anything but vampires.”

Way to make her feel sexy and appreciated. Not.

“We were just using each other,” she felt the need to say. It was an ingrained response.

No man had ever looked at her and seen Lyric, the girl who wanted to live in a faery-tale castle. The girl who wanted to travel the world, and live on a tropical island where the houses had no walls and the sand was white. The girl who spent her free time tucked away in a quiet gym in the second arrondissement, suspended upside down from silken fabric because joining the circus was also a real dream.

No, suitors had always seen the advantages to aligning themselves to the Santiago clan. Lyric expected others to use her.

“Don’t sweat it,” she offered by rote.

Vail grabbed her hands as she inspected the torn dress. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

His dark eyes were still smudged with black liner this morning and it drew her focus to the gorgeous blue irises. “What we did last night started out as a means to get what I wanted from you,” he said. “But do you seriously believe fucking a woman is the wisest way to conduct an investigation?”

The kiss touched her at the corner of her mouth, sweet yet lingering, as if wanting to imprint his mark for the world to see every time her smile curled.

She’d been imprinted once already. Lyric twisted her head away from Vail’s touch. She didn’t want another imprint, and needed one like a bullet through her brain right now.

“It was good, Lyric. But I don’t think either of us should beat ourselves up trying to figure the whys and hows of it. It happened. We enjoyed it. Now we step back into our roles.”

“You bad guy, me fleeing you?”

“Something like that. Let’s go.”

“Where?” The dress was a loss. She scanned the floor for her shoes. “Oh right, your place. Why do I have to go along?”

“You think your place is so swanky?” he teased. “The bed was … fragrant.”

She slid off the thing, stunned she’d made love on it, and had snuggled next to the man for a good part of the morning. Yuck. Well, it had been a means to hide out. It wasn’t that she’d intended to live here.

“Fine. I’ll go along for the ride. But you’re not going to trick me and drive me home to Mommy, are you?”

“Can’t. You’re staying with me until I can figure out what deal Charish Santiago made with Zett. Unless you want to make it easy and just tell me?”

“Can’t tell you what I don’t know. Why is knowing the deal important?”

“Because I know Zett,” he said, walking into the bathroom to retrieve her duffel. He dug out the shirt and black pants she’d worn last night and tossed them to her. “The Lord of Midsummer Dark has no interest in vampires. Vampires are the lowest of the low to faeries.”

Lyric tugged the shirt on, then bowed her head. Lowest of the low? Tell her about it.

“Which makes me wonder what mommy dearest was supposed to get in return for the dress. I can’t imagine Zett would have been too generous, even for such a valuable dress.”

“Gown.”

“Whatever.”

Lyric was about to explain that her mother had gotten the immunity to step into Faery and take as she pleased, but then she stopped herself. As Vail had mentioned, faery items were of little value in the mortal realm.

Why did the Santiagos need to steal from Faery? True, they were nearly bankrupt, but it wasn’t as though any item taken from the Faery realm could be fenced to any but the sidhe. And sidhe currency had no value among the mortals.

“What’s going on in that pretty skull of yours?” Vail asked.

Lyric turned a discerning gaze to him. “I’m not sure anymore. I think you’re right. My mother is up to more than I can imagine.”

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