Honeymoon Bite (Golden Vampire Legacy)

Honeymoon Bite

By

Sharon Hamilton



Copyright © 2012 by Sharon Hamilton

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Dedication

I want to thank my friend and early critique partner, Tina Folsom, for helping me bring my vampires to life.

Thanks to my Tuesday Group: Arletta, Kent, Robin, Ronn, and Shane. And to Marlene Cullen for bringing us together in the first place. To Pam and Rochelle for their critical eyes.

Also to my husband for his immortal support and for putting up with the interference from other family members who said, “She’s writing
what?”

Chapter 1

Anne looked down on the sleeping form of her new husband and, God help her, he looked like the first man she would murder. Nestled into his arms was the naked body of her maid of honor.

This made the second time today the bride had caught them together. First was at the reception. In the bathroom.

Monika’s dress and Robert’s tux were trampled and splayed over the chair and floor, along with a spilled bottle of champagne, cream satin shoes, a long taffeta slip, a hot pink push-up bra, and Robert’s new black socks.

“Not exactly what a bride wants to see on her wedding day.” Anne spoke without emotion. These weren’t the soft lilting tones she’d gushed when reciting her wedding vows that afternoon. Her statement caused the reaction she’d hoped for. Monika bolted up, her eyes crossed but wide open. She clutched a sheet to her chest. Robert scrambled to the floor.

“Don’t bother to put your pants on,” Anne delivered.

“Honey—Anne,” Robert said in his I’m-so-sorry-I-got-caught voice. His tanned face used to melt her insides, like when he smiled and it was if the sun had come out from behind the clouds. But today his charm wasn’t going to work. The bride had murder on her mind.

“I’m so glad you’re all right. We were—” Robert began.

“I’m fine. I can see how worried you are. Touching.” Taffeta and satin rustled as Anne reached down to the handle of her wardrobe roller, stuffed to bursting with brand new clothes for her honeymoon, most with tags still on them. She made sure her money, passport, and airline tickets were still zipped into the top pocket.

“Your dress, Anne.” Her former best friend pointed to the red stains down the front. “Is that blood?”

“Catsup. Not blood. Not yet.” Anne saw them both flinch.

“Now wait just a minute.” Robert climbed back into the bed and put his arms around Monika, but he’d tucked his body safely behind hers. “I’m sorry about all this, Anne. I’ve been a fool.”

Monika turned around and looked at him in a drunken gaze. Maybe she was wising up already.

“No. It wasn’t going to work, you asshole. Don’t you think your timing sucked? Couldn’t you have done it before we did all this?” Anne lifted her skirts as if to curtsy. Robert relaxed and hung his head on Monika’s bare shoulder.

Anne grabbed a black rain slicker and rolled her the bag that contained her trousseau out to the hallway. Whispers came from her bedroom. Unzipping the bag, she extracted the red and black outfit she had planned to wear on the plane—the one with the plunging neckline. She locked herself in the bathroom, then shimmied out of her bridal gown and slipped into her new things. Her feet found a comfortable home in her favorite pair of black Crocs, the ones decorated by her bachelorette buddies with little bride and groom charms surrounded by red hearts.

No way.

She grabbed Robert’s toenail nippers from the vanity and snipped off both the bride and groom, but left the red hearts there. Romance wasn’t dead. But her marriage sure was.

Robert stood in the hallway, clad only in his shorts. “Where are you going?”

“On my honeymoon. I planned it. I paid for it. I’m going.”

She descended to the ground floor of her house, and then realized her wedding gown was still draped over her left arm. A convenient row of black plastic garbage cans out at the curb for an early morning pick up became the gown’s final resting place. The nuclear tufts of stained and shredded white organza looked like tissue paper stuffing for a tall wedding present.

The limo driver waited by the opened door and cast her a smirk.

Second leg of Plan B. So far, so good.

Anne dove in the back seat of the limo and allowed herself to be swallowed by the groaning black leather. She hunched down, bent her knees, closed her eyes, and leaned her weary neck against the headrest as the driver sped towards the San Francisco airport. They rushed down the freeway, leaving the bucolic countryside of Sonoma County behind and entering the thickening traffic and congestion of the Peninsula. Her driver kept looking at her even after she’d told him, for the second time, she would still be going on the honeymoon but
without
the groom.

A glance in the mirror fished out from the bottom of her carry-on confirmed most of her mascara was now located on her cheeks and chin, so she squirted a drop of lemon-scented hand cream into her palm and used it to wipe off the black excess. The driver sneezed, then apologized.

Today, she’d rather smell good than look good. She wasn’t going to let a man touch her for, well, it would be years. She was sure of it. Maybe never.

A group of high school kids first stared at her behind tinted black windows, then began a quadruple moon, butts pressed to glass. She eyed their suspicious happiness.

Perfect.

She sighed.

Life goes on.Nobody cares. Get used to it.

How could she have been so naïve? She pondered the events of the day. The wedding had been perfect. Even Robert seemed to get into it a little. They had kissed during their first dance, a nice, long, languid kiss that was probably done to impress the ladies, she realized in hindsight. He had that cat-that-ate-a-hundred-dollar-koi look to him, with those baby blue eyes of his that roamed all over her body when she turned and caught his expression. He was saying something to his friends who were also giving her close inspection.

Had he ever loved her? Just a little? The chill in her heart sent an arctic telegram to her eyes and froze her tears in place.

Does it matter?

Later it had been time for the cake cutting, but there was no Robert anywhere. No one could find him. As Anne looked around the guests, she’d noticed Monika was missing as well. That’s when she got a bad feeling.

She was on her way to check the downstairs dressing room again when she thought she had heard something. With her ear to a bathroom door, she recognized the familiar grunts of her handsome groom and the heavy breathing from a well-used partner. The smooth glass doorknob rattled as she slowly opened the bathroom door. It had to be done. She had to see it. See the reality of it, that her husband’s faithfulness had lasted less than three hours after they had taken their vows.

Robert was banging Monika in her pale blue gown, her cream slipper-clad feet bouncing in the air while he humped her. Her pert little ass was cradled in the shallow lavie. Monika’s eyes grew the size of grapefruits when she saw Anne, and she struggled to sit up. But Robert would have none of it. He was far too focused on the home run, pumping with thrusts that sent Monika’s body bouncing between tufts of egg white chiffon.

It was not the ending to her wedding day Anne had expected. She closed the door and heard panicked voices on the other side.

She whipped out the hundred-dollar bill her Uncle Osborne had given her earlier in the day, and with her clutch deeply embedded in her armpit, hailed the sleepy limo driver. Robert had hired one of his regulars to take them first to the house and then the airport. The man had been clearly surprised.

Bet he knows more about my husband than I do.

She had time to kill, and that was exactly the right way to put it.

“Just drive, but get me back to the house before five to pick up my things.” She gave him the crisp Franklin bill.

“No, ma’am. I’m paid for the whole three hours until your flight. I’ll take you anywhere.”

Can you find me a new groom? Someone who isn’t a serial cheater?

“Then just take the hundred as a tip. Oh, and go inside and get me a bottle of champagne, one that’s opened.”

While waiting in the purring limo, Anne found her tears were threatening rebellion, but a look to the crowd of happy revelers made her suck it up. The driver appeared with two bottles of champagne, one corked and draped with a freshly starched white napkin. Several family members had spilled out on the steps behind him and stood there gawking, as if watching a traffic accident.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she zeroed in on the frosty neck of bubbly. She took a swig that wound up mostly in her nose.

Her driver stifled a laugh, then commanded their ship out onto the highway, speeding through lush green vineyards arranged in rows so unlike her life right now.

Anne fiddled with the wedding band, but it was stuck. She’d have to get it cut off as soon as she got back.

She’d starved herself for days and now she wanted a burger, one with bacon and guacamole, so she had the driver pull into Burger Palace. With her white dress flowing behind her like froth from a waterfall, she ran barefoot into the popular spot, then stumbled on her shimmering skirt, almost doing a face plant at the order counter.

She managed to get out her order, then sat down and waited for her number to be called, layers of the flounce partially covering an older gentleman on her right, who maintained a brittle smile, and a young boy leaning into his mom on her left, who didn’t. In fact, his mother quickly shuttled him elsewhere. Anne twirled her dark brown ringlets, still entangled by tiny crystal clips, and studied the faces in the room all turned toward her. Strangers stood, mostly in shocked silence, or whispered among themselves. Someone tittered.

A bride can’t have a burger on her wedding day?

Except this scene had been just bizarre. Checking outside, she was relieved to see her limo driver still maneuvering for a parking spot that didn’t block the parking lot entrance.

“Number sixty-seven,” the loudspeaker squawked.

Yep, that’s me. Number sixty-seven.
She wondered what it would feel like to be a number one as she paid for her burger and fried zucchini.

Just for a day, or a night of love. To be cherished and maybe even worshiped, just for a day.

For once in her life, she’d like not to have to share a man with another woman, or worse yet, another man. Was that too much for a girl to hope for?

She got back in the limo, where the driver watched her eat in the back seat, the bottle of champagne wedged between her legs. She dripped catsup down her front and ate pickles from her lap after they fell from the oozing burger, then directed the driver to take her back to her husband and former best friend for the showdown.

But the burger had tasted heavenly. Sinful. It was probably the closest thing to being a bad girl she could ever be.

Well, that had brought on a wave of tears. She’d had a good, satisfying cry, in her wedding dress smeared down the front with hamburger sauce, on her wedding day.

 “It says Anne Balesteiri. You are recently married?” The Homeland Security officer, who looked like he could play for the Forty-Niners, checked over her passport and ticket.

In a cruel twist of fate, Robert’s mother, the elder Mrs. Balesteiri, had gifted them the tickets and had used Anne’s new married name.

“Just today, as a matter of fact.”

He looked around to see if he had missed the other half of the happy couple.

“I’m traveling alone,” Anne wheezed and gave a casual cough, batting her eyes at Mr. Homeland Security Charles Atlas. Raising her chin, she added, “My husband will join me soon,” she said with emphasis on
husband.