Desperate and Dateless (2 page)

The party was being held in an intricate vampire holding, multiple large rooms joined together by connecting corridors and side rooms. It lay on prime land not because it was only fifteen minutes drive from the nearby city, but because the large complex had at least a mile of clear, vampire-owned land surrounding it in every direction outward from the building.

One of the original settlers on this small planet had been a vampire, and he had staked this piece of land out as his own when the township had been settled and built.

Everyone knew it was owned by the vampires. Kids with their brand-new Cruiser licenses often dared each other to drive out here, try to climb the security walls and see if they could run to the outside edges of the complex, tag a wall with a laser-gram sticker, and then run away without being caught.

Half the time the vamps picked up the kids, pulling them inside one of the front rooms and scaring the crap out of them. The other half the time they let them get away with it.

Vampires,
Vicci snorted to herself,
who the hell understood the breed?

She felt positive they let the kids get away with it half the time simply to beef up the stories that circulated.

Even though she could still hear the faint bass beat from the music pounding inside, the whole night seemed to enfold her in its dark purple depths. The silence and enormous open space that surrounded the large complex soothed her heightened senses. The stars twinkled merrily above her, casting faint light over the still land.

Vicci smiled as she lowered her face to look at the man who stood so close to her. “So,” she started with a smile in her voice, “Prince Vladmir, huh?”

The handsome vampire grimaced. “I had hoped you didn’t hear.”

Vicci cocked her head to one side and leaned back against the solid wall behind her.

“Are you an old Prince or a new one?” Vicci caught her breath as the vampire took a step closer toward her. He caged her with his arms, pressing his palms flat against the wall. Vicci closed her eyes for a moment.

“Does it really matter?” he asked softly against her cheek.

Vicci took a deep breath, taking in a lungful of his spicy, masculine scent.
Does what matter?
her brain asked, completely lost in the intoxicating smell of him.

He stood so close to her, his hard, warm body enveloped her. Vicci had never felt helpless a day in her life. As the youngest child with five older brothers, she had learned at a young age how to take care of herself. Working for years as a merc didn’t add any feminine softness into her. While she had mellowed since leaving the Unit, she hadn’t exactly become a stereotypical “helpless” woman.

Yet trapped against a wall with a hot, aroused vampire caging her, Vicci finally understood the small taste of feminine surrender she seemed to have in the wetness of her mouth.

It felt incredibly addictive.

Vicci shuddered as Vladmir slowly bent his head. Just as she had imagined, the tips of his hair grazed her skin first, sensitizing her to him. Next she felt his warm breath, caressing her skin, causing her to shudder in excitement and need. Finally, she felt his satin-soft lips press down into the juncture of her neck and shoulder. A slow, caressing kiss warmed her skin as it covered her, making her pussy damp and her knees weak.

Unconsciously, she raised her hands, grasping his slim waist for support. Pulling him toward her aching need, she moaned aloud as his groin aligned with hers. She could feel the heavy heat of his erection through her uniform and the faux leather of his pants. Arching up into him, Vicci pressed her hips into the cradling embrace of his thighs.

When Vladmir pulled his head back with a slight gasp, Vicci felt a thrill of anticipation course through her.
Where would he kiss her next? Her lips? Her breasts?

With two fingers, he tilted her chin up, and eagerly she rose onto tiptoes to greet his mouth as it came crashing down onto hers with a fierce, wild abandon. He hungrily kissed her, as if she were the last lifeforce-giving being in the universe and he had been starved for weeks.

Vicci didn’t feel any fear. The warmth of his body alone showed her he had fed well recently. There would be no desperate craving from him tonight than for more than a bit of emotion.

She raised her hands until she cupped the face that so eagerly devoured her lips. Opening her mouth slightly, she chuckled as his tongue slid silkily inside without even a moment’s pause. It was as their tongues dueled that she noticed the sweat on his face.

Vampires don’t sweat,
her mind reminded her. Yet despite this knowledge, she could see for herself that a few trickles of sweat dotted his forehead and upper cheeks. Vicci mentally took a step back. Wondering if his age as a vampire might somehow make him feel warm, even when he needed to feed badly, Vicci decided to pry a bit.

She brought his face closer to hers and bit his lips gently, enticingly. Pulling herself back infinitesimally, she released him, raised herself onto tiptoes and pressed her forehead against his.

Steady…
she breathed to herself. She had never tried to do this while in the middle of a make-out session with someone, let alone attempt to penetrate the mind of a vampire. Disconnecting her mind from her body, she gently tried to pry into Vladmir’s thoughts.

Vicci only wanted a sense of his hunger, a hint as to whether he wanted her for sex or blood. Sex she would give quite willingly. Blood…blood was a bit too intimate for a quick fling.

Breathing steadily, Vicci pressed her mind into his, and received the shock of a lifetime. Inside his head was only static, a dark, hungry need, but so alien to her she couldn’t even begin to work anything out. She felt her body being pressed harder into the wall, so she withdrew her mind.

“How long have you known you could complete a Vampire Soul’s Circle?” he asked her, panting hard.

Vicci bit her lower lip, thinking about her answer. There would be no use in denying the point, yet something within her rebelled at admitting it to him right now.

“Why are you sweating?” she countered. Vladmir moved back and wiped a hand across his forehead. He didn’t seem overly surprised, yet neither did he look nonchalant about it either.

“How much do you know about my kind?” he asked without answering her question. Vicci tried to marshal her thoughts and gather her knowledge. With the blood pumping hotly through her system and the endorphins crashing through her body, clouding her mind, her thought process seemed sluggish and taxing.

“Umm…” she procrastinated, “why don’t you give me the highlights? I don’t know the significance of a sweating vampire.”

Vicci felt the blood zing even faster through her system as her partner firmly clasped her wrists, lifting them above her head and pinned her sexily against the wall with his hips.

He pressed into her body and she couldn’t help the moisture pooling in her panties. When he lowered his head to breathe against her neck, reminding her of every cheesy Old Style vampire movie she had ever seen, the acceleration of her heart had even more blood pounding through her body.

“Vampires sweat when they go into heat, when their time of being fertile comes around and their proper mate is with them. You must know vampires are born, not created like in the vids.” He paused and Vicci nodded, her brain might be sluggish but she wasn’t stupid. “Well, in order for us to procreate, we need to be fertile. Once every thousand moon phases or so we enter into heat. With any luck, a compatible woman is with us, and voila, a new little baby is created.”

Vicci had trouble breathing for a moment. She had a sudden, flashing vision of holding a tiny baby with her large gray eyes and Vladmir’s deep dark brown hair. She saw herself cradling him gently in her arms.
Their son,
echoed in her mind. The picture was as sweet and seductive as anything.

Vladmir kissed her, bringing her back to reality. With the sweet vision clearing from her mind, she couldn’t help it as she melted into his embrace. Her hips aligned with his and her body took over from her mind. She only knew the fiery need pounding through her system.

She moaned in denial as Vladmir pulled away from her, reached out her hands to grab his shoulders and pull him back toward her.

“It’s always been your destiny to complete a Vampire’s Soul’s Circle. Why have you been fighting it?” he asked casually.

A lifetime’s worth of denial and suppression flooded back into her mind. Vicci reluctantly pulled herself fully upright and sidestepped out of his warm embrace. Looking back to the entrance, she knew she would have to get back to work.

For a shining moment in time, she had actually considered living the fantasy, indulging her body and mind in the better-than-fantastic sex one with her powers could share with a vampire.

And now reality snapped back into place. She was a fighter, a bouncer, a merc, a security woman. She was no seductive sex siren. She couldn’t spend every hour of every day wallowing in the sensations of being a vampire’s sex slave. Much as she might wish it, she had carved out a completely different life for herself.

“I create my own destiny, Vampire,” she said harshly, more to remind herself than to inform him. “I am no man’s sexual slave. I rely on no one except myself. Fate might have configured me to be compatible with your kind, but no man rules my world. I answer only to myself.”

Taking one last look at the sexy vampire, Vicci headed back in to the Vampire Ball.

“I didn’t get to be Prince of all Vampires by democratic votes, Vicci.” Vicci forced herself to not turn back, to not look at the gorgeous man trying to seduce her. “I got where I am today partly by luck, but mostly from sheer grit and determination. I don’t want some mindless female who will jump when I say so. I think we have a lot to offer each other. Go back to work, Vicci, but you’d better be prepared. I think we have a whole lot more to say to each other before this is done.”

Vicci titled her chin, determined not to cave in to the sexy timber of his voice. While his words might be rough and aggressive, the tone with which he spoke to her was seductive, sensual. He obviously thought she would be an easy conquest.

She would prove him wrong.

Vicci stalked to the door and, pressing her thumb onto the pad, opened it to let herself back in. Without a backward glance to the drop-dead handsome vamp behind her, she entered back into the Ball.

She had work to do.