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Two Hot Vampire Romances with Ultra Sexy Bite!
Two erotic paranormal romances...a group of wicked vampires with voracious appetites...
Dear Vampire Lovers,
Hot for a Bite and Bound for a Bite are out now!
These books were previously published several years ago by my "Crystal Green" pen name under different titles for the Harlequin Blaze line (The Ultimate Bite and Good to the Last Bite) . Since my “Chris Marie Green” nom de plume is already known for my Vampire Babylon series, I decided to release the books under this pseudonym after I received the publishing rights back!
I hope you enjoy these dark duets of the night...
Happy Hunting,
Chris Marie Green
Dear Vampire Lovers,
Hot for a Bite and Bound for a Bite are out now!
These books were previously published several years ago by my "Crystal Green" pen name under different titles for the Harlequin Blaze line (The Ultimate Bite and Good to the Last Bite) . Since my “Chris Marie Green” nom de plume is already known for my Vampire Babylon series, I decided to release the books under this pseudonym after I received the publishing rights back!
I hope you enjoy these dark duets of the night...
Happy Hunting,
Chris Marie Green
Hot for a Bite (Book #1)
One sinful night, Kimberly White was bitten by a vampire.
It was the hottest, sexiest thing that had ever happened to her, and his breathtaking seduction changed her from an inexperienced, plain girl into a gorgeous, insatiable woman.
He was mysterious, as dark as the shadows, as wicked as an erotic fantasy.
Then he was gone, leaving her with a constant craving she hasn’t been able to chase away ever since that orgasmic encounter.
In search of more carnal satisfaction, Kim has been looking for her vampire on the sultry Vegas streets ever since, and when she finds him, all she wants is to feel his fangs in her once again.
But Rafe has secrets—and one of them is that he never bites the same human twice, no matter how addicted to Kim he is.
He’s also on the trail of another vampire who’s draining women, and Rafe has no time for attachments like the one he’s starting to hunger for with this human who’s intent on reaching the heights of ecstasy with him…
It was the hottest, sexiest thing that had ever happened to her, and his breathtaking seduction changed her from an inexperienced, plain girl into a gorgeous, insatiable woman.
He was mysterious, as dark as the shadows, as wicked as an erotic fantasy.
Then he was gone, leaving her with a constant craving she hasn’t been able to chase away ever since that orgasmic encounter.
In search of more carnal satisfaction, Kim has been looking for her vampire on the sultry Vegas streets ever since, and when she finds him, all she wants is to feel his fangs in her once again.
But Rafe has secrets—and one of them is that he never bites the same human twice, no matter how addicted to Kim he is.
He’s also on the trail of another vampire who’s draining women, and Rafe has no time for attachments like the one he’s starting to hunger for with this human who’s intent on reaching the heights of ecstasy with him…
Excerpt:
His voice came out of the near-blackness again, his body still hidden. His words swept around her like lethal feathers in the night.
“You wandered out here to find me.”
“And you were waiting.” She leaned back against a pole to help her stay standing. She shielded the phone behind her leg.
“Yes, I was waiting.” Now his voice was inside of her. “For you.”
It was as if the words were stroking her, getting her excited. He had remembered their first bite.
In the back of her mind, she told herself that vampires were dangerous, that this wasn’t a game.
She lazily scanned the area, trying to find the vampire, then tightened her grip on her hidden crucifix and phone that was recording this encounter so she could prove her vampire existed.
A flash of movement snagged her attention from above. She sucked in a breath, recognizing the vampire’s outline as he crouched on some overhead beams, watching her, his hair haloed in the dim light. Gradually, the green of his gaze clarified, as if acknowledging her discovery. Burning green.
“What is your name, luv?” he asked, his foreign tone buzzing through every one of her awakened cells.
“Kimberly. Kim.” It seemed as if he’d asked before, but it’d been an entire year, and she couldn’t quite remember. This time, though, she had the presence of mind to ask right back. “And yours?”
He hesitated, and she thought she heard him laugh. Then he murmured, “Rafe.”
She sunk against the pole a bit. Finally, she knew who haunted her. Rafe.
“So tell me, Kimberly. Why is it that there is a crucifix in your pocket?”
Startled out of her haze, Kim straightened, sliding up the pole. She grasped the silver object tighter, still keeping it hidden. “A crucifix?”
“Yes. I discerned a flash of silver as you came outside. Prepared, aren’t you?” For some reason, his voice seemed clearer now. It was as if she’d gotten a hold of herself and a veil had lifted.
“I’m a very devout girl, Rafe.”
Even in the dark, she could feel, more than see, his gaze brush over her. A sigh caught in her lungs.
“Devout in what way?” he asked, his voice low and knowing.
A sudden spike of fear—a very human, stupid, why-am-I-doing-this-again? sort of fear—thrust into her. But before she could react, he was using that voice on her again, his eyes burning bright, tiger, tiger, in the night….
“Tell me, Kimberly. Why the crucifix?”
In spite of herself, she was manipulated into talking. “The League.” She slowly blinked. “We chase vampire rumors around Vegas. This place is a paradise for creatures of the night. Twenty-four-hour, everything-is-always-open opportunity. What happens here stays here, and that makes for a bunch of willing victims who find themselves doing what they normally wouldn’t do at home.”
“You are a…hunter?” He didn’t sound panicked by that at all. Well, maybe a touch concerned, but that’s it.
“More of an enthusiast.”
When he shifted, the light did, too. It brought Kim that much closer to reality, even though she still felt the need to spill everything to Rafe.
Rafe.
“Why,” he asked, “do you find this…investigation…necessary in life?”
Oh, his voice. It ran over her like massage oil, aromatic and soothing.
“After my first bite,” she said, smiling, knowing he knew what she was talking about, “I… Well, sometimes I wondered if I’d imagined it.”
“Your first bite,” he said, as if weighing the words.
Hearing him acknowledge it sent a splinter of crazed yearning through her. “There were nights when I thought I was out of my mind, that it couldn’t have happened. But I knew I was wrong because I could feel the neck wound where you bit me, even after it healed.” Healed too quickly, within a couple of days. “It was a reminder that it did happen.”
“And when the injury disappeared?”
“That’s when I started doubting myself for real. I didn’t know who to tell, who’d understand what happened and accept it. There wasn’t anybody.” Not her parents, her friends, and she didn’t really have coworkers seeing as she was a freelancer.
“You are pained,” Rafe said and, suddenly, his voice wasn’t as hypnotic. There was a sense of sympathy there instead, as if he knew just what agony was because he could feel it flowing through her.
“I got over it.” Her lie echoed against the bleachers.
She clutched the hidden phone, wondering if she should lift it in front of her so she could visually record just a glimpse of this vampire. So she could keep him solid instead of a figment of her restless imagination and longing.
Then Rafe dropped down from the beams, arcing smoothly to the ground, where he crouched in the darkness. Now the only hint of him were those green eyes.
“Tell me more about why you joined this League, Kimberly.”
“I…” She shut her mouth. She shouldn’t tell him everything, even if he was persuading her to do so.
“Tell me, Kimberly,” he said, the power of his suggestive voice overwhelming.
She couldn’t resist him anymore. “That first bite—that’s why I joined the Van Helsing League… Because I needed people who would understand.”
“Van Helsing, named after the most famed hunter in literature.” He sounded amused. “Is this League a dangerous lot?”
“We’ve had limited luck.”
With deliberate ease, Rafe stood, so tall she could feel him hovering over her, his broad shoulders coming to block the light. “But your luck is not so limited tonight, Kimberly.”
To have him calling her by name was almost too much. A deep tremble nested in her belly, spreading heat.
“This proof you seek of vampires,” he said, stepping nearer, soundless in his movements. “Do you realize that it could erase my existence?”
She tilted her head at him. Actually, it’d never occurred to her that a group like the League would have that sort of pull. They were a bunch of amateurs, that’s all. “We’re not out to kill you.”
“Perhaps that is not your intention.” Closer. “But this is where the persecution starts, with a few cries in the night. Then the real hunters come. That is why we do not flaunt ourselves in society, that is why we remain discreet.”
“Discreet? Someone’s sending women to the ER with a lot less blood than they started with.”
Another pause. “And I am here to put a stop to that. There is another…”
Again, his voice wasn’t as hypnotic. Was it starting to wear off of her for some reason?
There was also something about what he said that poked at her. She opened her mouth to pursue it, but he moved toward her with such speed that her words caught in her throat.
His dark proximity rattled Kim, shook her until she couldn’t even gasp. She slumped back against the pole, the tremble consuming her entire body now. He loomed, bending nearer, his aroma a mélange of leafy scents masking a predator in the night.
This was it—another bite….
He sniffed at her hair, then nestled lower, leaving a path of tingling heat. Kim parted her lips, drinking in the seduction, her eyelids going as heavy and thick as the blood dragging down her limbs.
“A sweet drug,” he whispered clearly, as if remembering her scent. “That is what you are…”
Then he paused, honing in on something that she couldn’t sense. He slipped his hand down, his skin brushing hers as he slid her phone out of her grip. He felt cool to the touch.
He ran his thumb over the device, then crushed it in his hand, casually allowing the pieces to sift to the ground.
She opened her mouth to protest but his low growl stopped her.
“What else do you have?” he asked.
At the change in his tone—from charming to downright scary—Kim’s survival instinct took over. Her pulse raged to fight-or-flight speed, and she brought the crucifix out of her pocket, forcing him to freeze as she backed out of the bleachers and into the moonlight.
What had she been thinking? This was a vampire, not some random hot guy…
His voice came out of the near-blackness again, his body still hidden. His words swept around her like lethal feathers in the night.
“You wandered out here to find me.”
“And you were waiting.” She leaned back against a pole to help her stay standing. She shielded the phone behind her leg.
“Yes, I was waiting.” Now his voice was inside of her. “For you.”
It was as if the words were stroking her, getting her excited. He had remembered their first bite.
In the back of her mind, she told herself that vampires were dangerous, that this wasn’t a game.
She lazily scanned the area, trying to find the vampire, then tightened her grip on her hidden crucifix and phone that was recording this encounter so she could prove her vampire existed.
A flash of movement snagged her attention from above. She sucked in a breath, recognizing the vampire’s outline as he crouched on some overhead beams, watching her, his hair haloed in the dim light. Gradually, the green of his gaze clarified, as if acknowledging her discovery. Burning green.
“What is your name, luv?” he asked, his foreign tone buzzing through every one of her awakened cells.
“Kimberly. Kim.” It seemed as if he’d asked before, but it’d been an entire year, and she couldn’t quite remember. This time, though, she had the presence of mind to ask right back. “And yours?”
He hesitated, and she thought she heard him laugh. Then he murmured, “Rafe.”
She sunk against the pole a bit. Finally, she knew who haunted her. Rafe.
“So tell me, Kimberly. Why is it that there is a crucifix in your pocket?”
Startled out of her haze, Kim straightened, sliding up the pole. She grasped the silver object tighter, still keeping it hidden. “A crucifix?”
“Yes. I discerned a flash of silver as you came outside. Prepared, aren’t you?” For some reason, his voice seemed clearer now. It was as if she’d gotten a hold of herself and a veil had lifted.
“I’m a very devout girl, Rafe.”
Even in the dark, she could feel, more than see, his gaze brush over her. A sigh caught in her lungs.
“Devout in what way?” he asked, his voice low and knowing.
A sudden spike of fear—a very human, stupid, why-am-I-doing-this-again? sort of fear—thrust into her. But before she could react, he was using that voice on her again, his eyes burning bright, tiger, tiger, in the night….
“Tell me, Kimberly. Why the crucifix?”
In spite of herself, she was manipulated into talking. “The League.” She slowly blinked. “We chase vampire rumors around Vegas. This place is a paradise for creatures of the night. Twenty-four-hour, everything-is-always-open opportunity. What happens here stays here, and that makes for a bunch of willing victims who find themselves doing what they normally wouldn’t do at home.”
“You are a…hunter?” He didn’t sound panicked by that at all. Well, maybe a touch concerned, but that’s it.
“More of an enthusiast.”
When he shifted, the light did, too. It brought Kim that much closer to reality, even though she still felt the need to spill everything to Rafe.
Rafe.
“Why,” he asked, “do you find this…investigation…necessary in life?”
Oh, his voice. It ran over her like massage oil, aromatic and soothing.
“After my first bite,” she said, smiling, knowing he knew what she was talking about, “I… Well, sometimes I wondered if I’d imagined it.”
“Your first bite,” he said, as if weighing the words.
Hearing him acknowledge it sent a splinter of crazed yearning through her. “There were nights when I thought I was out of my mind, that it couldn’t have happened. But I knew I was wrong because I could feel the neck wound where you bit me, even after it healed.” Healed too quickly, within a couple of days. “It was a reminder that it did happen.”
“And when the injury disappeared?”
“That’s when I started doubting myself for real. I didn’t know who to tell, who’d understand what happened and accept it. There wasn’t anybody.” Not her parents, her friends, and she didn’t really have coworkers seeing as she was a freelancer.
“You are pained,” Rafe said and, suddenly, his voice wasn’t as hypnotic. There was a sense of sympathy there instead, as if he knew just what agony was because he could feel it flowing through her.
“I got over it.” Her lie echoed against the bleachers.
She clutched the hidden phone, wondering if she should lift it in front of her so she could visually record just a glimpse of this vampire. So she could keep him solid instead of a figment of her restless imagination and longing.
Then Rafe dropped down from the beams, arcing smoothly to the ground, where he crouched in the darkness. Now the only hint of him were those green eyes.
“Tell me more about why you joined this League, Kimberly.”
“I…” She shut her mouth. She shouldn’t tell him everything, even if he was persuading her to do so.
“Tell me, Kimberly,” he said, the power of his suggestive voice overwhelming.
She couldn’t resist him anymore. “That first bite—that’s why I joined the Van Helsing League… Because I needed people who would understand.”
“Van Helsing, named after the most famed hunter in literature.” He sounded amused. “Is this League a dangerous lot?”
“We’ve had limited luck.”
With deliberate ease, Rafe stood, so tall she could feel him hovering over her, his broad shoulders coming to block the light. “But your luck is not so limited tonight, Kimberly.”
To have him calling her by name was almost too much. A deep tremble nested in her belly, spreading heat.
“This proof you seek of vampires,” he said, stepping nearer, soundless in his movements. “Do you realize that it could erase my existence?”
She tilted her head at him. Actually, it’d never occurred to her that a group like the League would have that sort of pull. They were a bunch of amateurs, that’s all. “We’re not out to kill you.”
“Perhaps that is not your intention.” Closer. “But this is where the persecution starts, with a few cries in the night. Then the real hunters come. That is why we do not flaunt ourselves in society, that is why we remain discreet.”
“Discreet? Someone’s sending women to the ER with a lot less blood than they started with.”
Another pause. “And I am here to put a stop to that. There is another…”
Again, his voice wasn’t as hypnotic. Was it starting to wear off of her for some reason?
There was also something about what he said that poked at her. She opened her mouth to pursue it, but he moved toward her with such speed that her words caught in her throat.
His dark proximity rattled Kim, shook her until she couldn’t even gasp. She slumped back against the pole, the tremble consuming her entire body now. He loomed, bending nearer, his aroma a mélange of leafy scents masking a predator in the night.
This was it—another bite….
He sniffed at her hair, then nestled lower, leaving a path of tingling heat. Kim parted her lips, drinking in the seduction, her eyelids going as heavy and thick as the blood dragging down her limbs.
“A sweet drug,” he whispered clearly, as if remembering her scent. “That is what you are…”
Then he paused, honing in on something that she couldn’t sense. He slipped his hand down, his skin brushing hers as he slid her phone out of her grip. He felt cool to the touch.
He ran his thumb over the device, then crushed it in his hand, casually allowing the pieces to sift to the ground.
She opened her mouth to protest but his low growl stopped her.
“What else do you have?” he asked.
At the change in his tone—from charming to downright scary—Kim’s survival instinct took over. Her pulse raged to fight-or-flight speed, and she brought the crucifix out of her pocket, forcing him to freeze as she backed out of the bleachers and into the moonlight.
What had she been thinking? This was a vampire, not some random hot guy…
Bound for a Bite (Book #2)
A vampire’s erotic revenge is always best when it’s served hot. And that’s Edmond Marburn’s plan as he tracks down Gisele, the female vamp who betrayed him, robbing him of his soul two years ago with her bite.
He’s never going to stop until he has her.
But when he does catch up to his luscious prey, he finds the tables have been turned.
Edmond is no longer the pursuer—he’s now Gisele’s angry captive.
The carnal games are about to begin.
She’s sultry, sensual, and she’s pulling out all the racy stops to tame this beast who has vowed to destroy her.
But what neither vampire counted on was finding something within each other that draws them together in a sexually charged connection—one that binds them, obsesses them, and ultimately goes deeper than vengeance…
He’s never going to stop until he has her.
But when he does catch up to his luscious prey, he finds the tables have been turned.
Edmond is no longer the pursuer—he’s now Gisele’s angry captive.
The carnal games are about to begin.
She’s sultry, sensual, and she’s pulling out all the racy stops to tame this beast who has vowed to destroy her.
But what neither vampire counted on was finding something within each other that draws them together in a sexually charged connection—one that binds them, obsesses them, and ultimately goes deeper than vengeance…
Excerpt:
Gisele was hungry tonight.
As she sat on one side of the hotel atrium’s rectangular bar, the appetite gnawed at her from the inside out, burning through her with an aching destruction that tightened her belly. She had not taken sustenance for a couple of days, so it was time to feast.
Her keen gaze traveled the bar area, with the indoor foliage masking rain-spattered, summer night-shaded windows. Businessmen who had undone their ties nursed that one last beer before bedtime. She could detect slight tan lines on ring fingers, could feel the restless longing for company on a sales trip.
Gisele didn’t even need to reach into their minds to know their stories. The tale was always the same from bar to bar, city to city, state to state.
And it only made hunting for a meal that much easier.
Now her focus rested on one man in particular, a broad-shouldered stud in a pinstriped button down who had already smiled at her for too long, his interest predatory.
She smiled back, taking care not to show her teeth so he would have no idea what he was inviting.
Her pulse hammered, her incisors pushing at her gums in anticipation of tonight’s drink—the blood she needed, the satiation it would inevitably bring.
As a lone entertainer played a synthesizer and sang pop songs, she waited for the businessman to come to her. And, sure enough, he snatched his beer bottle from the bar’s surface and made his way around the corner, aiming for the open stool next to hers.
“You look pretty lonely,” he said, his voice sales-call smooth, his bluegrass cadence telling her that he was local, maybe even from here in Lexington.
She lifted a brow, encouraging him, laying out her trap.
Then, out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Sam, her twentyish-looking vampire comrade, sidling closer to the businessman’s back. Her partner blended into the crowd, his sandy hair spiky, his lanky body covered by trendy catalogue clothing while he listened to music on his phone with earbuds. He seemed like a fraternity boy from the nearby University of Kentucky out for a late-night drink.
But Gisele had also caught something else in her peripheral vision. A flicker.
A scorching feeling, really.
A shiver of being watched and noticed?
She glanced around, but found nothing amiss. Perhaps she was only reacting to the attention men paid to her appearance; after all, she had chosen to wear her tightest, most provocative red dress, and it clung to her body—that of an eternal twenty-two-year-old’s—like an exotic oil slathered over skin.
Even so, she remained alert, her flesh alive with a strange heat she had never experienced in all her thirty-plus years of being a vampire….
During her pause, the businessman had backed off slightly. “Hey, just let me know if I’m invading your space. I only thought you might like someone to buy you a drink. Man, you’re a cool one, aren’t you?”
She turned her full attention on him then murmured, “A drink sounds absolutely wonderful. How about an amaretto over ice?”
His gaze lit up at her barely-there French inflection; she had spent so many recent years in America, educating herself in modern ways and speech that her accent—and many human instincts—had settled to a hint by now.
The dreamy young human girl fresh from university, the wonderer who had sought meaning from movies because she wasn’t getting much from life, was only a brief flashback.
Within seconds, the businessman had summoned the bartender, put a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, and ordered her a beverage that she didn’t intend to taste. She was never thirsty for anything but blood, yet pretending she drank normally was a part of survival.
All the while, Sam inched closer to the businessman. Gisele knew her partner well enough to realize he had noted where their mark had stowed his wallet in his pants pocket.
Sam’s human life as a pickpocket on the streets of late 19th century New York came in very handy.
“So where’re you from?” the businessman asked.
She negligently flicked her wrist. “Here. There.”
“Ah, see, I told you. A cryptic, cool woman.”
“No. I’m just not much for settling down.”
For good reason, she thought, as the businessman took a swig of his beer, gave her a lingering scan, and beat his fingers on the bar in time to the disco synthesizer. During the last two years, she and Sam had moved quickly and frequently, surviving in their own way, fugitives from yet another vampire—one whom she had created in the aftermath of a crisis.
Edmond.
While she tasted the memory of his blood on her tongue, his image clouded her mind, just as it did so often. Thick, careless brown hair, sloping cheekbones and a lithe, dangerous way of moving… Thinking of him made her hot and restless. But his amber eyes always cut into the fantasy because they’d been intense with the hatred she had earned when she had robbed him of the humanity he had so desperately fought for….
The impulsive half of Gisele yearned for her created vampire to find her, to be near. Yet as a disillusioned creature, Edmond wouldn’t come in peace. After all, he had been in search of a soul, haunted by centuries of emptiness. And knowing that the only way for their kind to get their souls back was to kill their creator, Edmond had hunted down his estranged maker, drawing Fegan out of the shadows by draining blood from human women in Fegan’s territory.
Ultimately, Edmond had murdered his master, reclaiming his soul and reaching his dream of becoming human again, thus gaining the fulfillment he had lacked when he had first been turned into a vampire.
But as revenge for terminating the beloved mentor who had adopted Gisele when she had been but a new, confused vampire herself, she had turned Edmond back into a so-called monster.
Afterward, she had flown from him in an act of self-preservation, thinking that his old friends, the other vampire-turned-humans, might gather weapons and slay her for what she had done to Edmond.
The thing was, ever since biting him, he had become a part of her—an extension of her own self—and she couldn’t forget how he had made her crave more of his blood and his presence.
Even though they had never had sex, which could heighten the sensation of a bite, there hadn’t been a taste like Edmond for her. Ever.
Oddly enough, she didn’t feel that way about her other created vampire, Sam. She never had to chase away an ever-present ache with him. So why did she long for another taste of the vampire who hated her? And why was the craving like nothing she had ever experienced before?
Warped, that was what she was because, if Edmond ever caught her, she had no doubt he would exact vengeance. Besides, Gisele was now the only thing standing between Edmond and his soul.
As the businessman nattered on, the bartender delivered Gisele’s beverage, and she cupped the glass in her hands, the ice sweat making her palms wet. Why hadn’t she just left well enough alone when Edmond had murdered Fegan? Why had she bitten and then turned him again?
Why even ask? Fegan, her surrogate father, had meant everything to her.
Yet now that time had passed, she sometimes thought about finding Edmond herself, just so she might palaver with him—to seek an understanding or, if it came down to it, to tame him into an acceptance of their new bond. Taming him would be a matter of survival since it wouldn’t do to have a vampire running around intent upon ending her existence.
She brushed off something that a human might define as remorse. It wasn’t so much an emotion as an acknowledgement that she had brought more trouble upon herself by recklessly exchanging with Edmond.
“So you’re one of those free spirits,” the businessman said, having no idea that she had tuned out of the one-sided conversation for a while.
“Yes.” Back in the seventies, as a human, she had been into free love, having her share of men with no attachment to any of them. The trend continued even now, although she wouldn’t call her physical expressions “love.”
“I’ve always liked that kind of woman,” he added. “I could tell right away that you’re a little different from most gals I see on my road trips.”
He was no doubt inviting her to ask about his profession, but Gisele had been through so many hunts that small talk bored her. She knew what he wanted, and the quicker he believed he would get it, the better.
Bluntly, she slid a hand onto the top of his leg near his pocket. He sucked in a breath, and she knew it was not only because he could feel the coolness of her fingers through his trousers.
While he was distracted by her touch, Sam deftly moved in closer, slid out the man’s wallet, then went back to his room until they could meet up again.
After she had fed.
“How would your wife feel about this?” Gisele asked, squeezing his thigh for emphasis.
The businessman’s skin grew ruddy. “I…”
Gisele tilted her head, considering him. “No need to explain. You have an unhappy marriage. I understand.”
She tightened her grip ever so slightly, then slid her palm down until she came to the middle of his thigh. There, she inserted her fingers between his legs.
He fumbled his beer onto the bar, spilling it then righting it again. Then….
Zzzzzzmmmm-- It was the same rattling-hot sensation of being watched too hard, too intensely.
A shiver—an erotic thrill—consumed her, and she glanced around the bar, scanning for a source of the electric invasion. But she didn’t see anyone’s gaze on her.
Then all traces of the zinging discomfort were gone. Just like that.
Gathering her composure, she leaned closer to the businessman. His blood pumped wildly, and she absorbed every throb through her fingers, through the air and into her skin.
So hungry….
“Just wondering,” she whispered. “Is this how you improve your marital relations? By honing your libido on the road so you can please your wife with your new expertise?”
The businessman swallowed, and there was guilt in his gaze. Yet just as Gisele started to hope for him to remember his wife and go back home, his eyes went hazy with desire again.
And to think—she might have sought out someone else for the night if he had changed his mind.
The music of his heartbeat pummeled her ears and danced in her belly, escalating her taut appetite.
Putting on a saucy grin, she slid off her stool, her fingers trailing out from between his knees. If he wasn’t going to back out, then she would go forward.
“Lighten up,” she said, donning a charming smile. “I am only giving you grief. Married, engaged…I don’t mind.”
Then she crooked a finger at him, backing away toward the bar’s exit. He followed, just as she knew he would.
Now she would go through the rest of the routine: get him to her room, soothe this willing victim with her voice and mind, take her fill of him, then stop the flow of blood from his wound with the psychic fusion of her touch, leaving crusted puncture wounds that would heal soon enough. Her bite wouldn’t cause him to become a vampire—it would take a blood exchange for that—and a caress to the temple would cloud the details of the interaction, providing her a measure of secrecy.
Fegan had often laughed at her insistence on “fixing up” their victims after a bite, calling her—and the rest of his family—“vampires with soul.” But none of them had been as old as Fegan, or as in need of more stimulation than in his younger days….
Forgetting Fegan in her growing hunger, she led her victim through the hotel lobby, knowing that, tomorrow night, she and Sam would repeat a similar process for his own meal. Sam had taken his sustenance earlier, and the newer vampire required more frequent feedings. Gisele herself wouldn’t need to hunt again for a few more nights—not unless she required some stimulation.
She turned the corner into the first-floor hallway where she had already checked in to her own room. Her body was pounding, her veins growling in famished greed.
She glanced over her shoulder to offer encouragement to her prey, but before she could open her mouth, a room door opened and she was bowled over by the same jolting awareness she had sensed back in the bar--
The rattle of silver was the only sound she heard as a chain wrapped around her bare shoulders, her arms, dragging her into the dim room where the door eased shut before the businessman had even entered the hall.
The silver sapped energy from her skin—from her core—and she fell against a wall, sliding down as her fingers grasped for purchase.
Vaguely, she heard the businessman’s voice outside as he called for her, but she could not answer. She didn’t have the strength.
Silver…a weakness of every vampire she knew….
“Hello, Gisele,” her captor said from behind her, his tone edged with a schooled British accent that danced over her skin with its refined danger, then plunged into her and left her gasping.
Her senses filled with a scent—a remembered taste—that had haunted her for two years.
Gisele turned to see who it was, even though she already knew.
Edmond, looming like a tall avenger in a bulky World War II-type military coat and gloved hands that were holding her chain as if it were a leash. His mouth tilted in a cruel smile—a gentleman hunter who had caught his prey—and his eyes blazed with fury, his high cheekbones lending him a triumphant arrogance.
Finally caught, she thought as her body dissolved into a charged need that split her from sex to chest, leaving her open to him.
More vulnerable than she had ever been in life or even in this existence…
