Lisa Renee Jones (2 page)

His gaze locked with hers, his long fingers sliding around her tiny ones, consuming them, the way he wanted to consume her. His stare held hers, sexual tension spiking with an instant charge.

What fit him, was her. And damn he wanted to find out how well. To know how sweet she would be all naked and soft in his arms.

Reluctantly, he released her hand, “Bad night?”

“Bad month,” she said. “That’s how long I’ve been working in the ER. You see I…” She waved off her words. “You don’t want to hear this. You don’t even know me.”

“But I do want to,” he said softly, every damn inch of her.

Her lashes fluttered and lifted. “You do?”

Damn the woman was charming. “Very much,” he assured her. “Tell me about your night. What brought you in here?” She leaned forward, sipping her drink, the shift in her chair tugging her shirt tight over the curves of her breasts, a brush of a nipple puckering beneath thin material, drawing his gaze and thickening his blood.

"Okay then,” she said. “Just remember though. I gave you a chance to run for the hills.”

“I’d be willing to bet you’d run away much faster than I would,” he said.

Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink. “I guess we’ll see about that after you listen to me chatter a bit.

So here goes. You wanted to know what brought me here tonight. Like I mentioned, I‘ve been working at the hospital a month. Before that, I was a secretary. No blood, no pain beyond boredom. Just the plain ole, same ole, everyday. I was miserable. Then two years ago, I turned twenty-five and had this whole soul-searching, what-am-I-doing-with-my-life-besides-typing-memos-for-my-boss thing going on. My mom is gone now and I have no one else, so nothing was holding me back, but me. The result was me deciding I had to blow out my birthday candles and then make the next year count. I had to do something that mattered. So I went back to school and ended up as a nurse at Scott and White.” She crossed her arms in front of her and shivered.

“And that was when the hell started. The blood. The horror. The tragedy. Do you know what happened my first night on the job?” She didn’t wait for an answer, her hands flattening on the bar, as if she suddenly needed extra support. “I had to tell two sisters that their parents were killed in a car accident. Now, tonight, I told one of those sisters that the other was mauled by a wild animal and killed. I had to drive that poor woman home on my break. She had no one to pick her up.”

Evan’s reaction was immediate, instinctive. He covered her hand with his, created a physical connection that strengthened his command of her mind. “I need the address of the sister, Marissa,” he ordered.

She blinked. “I know it. I wrote it down. Three thirty one Maple Avenue.”

“Good,” he said softly, before erasing her memory. “Excuse me, Sweetheart. I have to go make a quick phone call. I’ll be right back so you can finish telling me your story, which I very much want to hear.”

Her eyes softened and she touched his hand with her free one. “Hurry back.” There was a soft readiness to her voice.

“I will,” he promised, wishing like hell it wasn’t for all the wrong reasons.

Tonight, Marissa had done more than gain the attention of a vampire. She’d put herself in the path of a killer werewolf.

The instant Evan let go of her hand, Marissa drew a long, cool sip of her drink. She was on fire.

Which was both unexpected and, she supposed, just what the doctor ordered. She’d come to Shooters for a distraction, a way to escape the bloody hell of this night, and Evan was that and more.

With a sigh, she watched him depart, long hair draped down the center of broad, defined shoulders. Oh how easily she could picture him, savage with passion, naked … on top of her, all that long, black hair draped around his shoulders. She bit her bottom lip. The man was hotter than the Texas sun, and that was pretty darn scorching. The kind of man a woman fantasized about, but didn’t think really existed.

Especially since she hadn’t had a man in her life, let alone in her bed, in a good six months, not since the Austin police officer who’d had a bondage hang-up that he’d taken into the creepy, rather than sexy, territory.

She hadn’t trusted that man to tie her up. Heck, she hadn’t trusted him to touch her favorite Snoopy mug for that matter. Of course, it was a special mug, given to her by her former best friend from high school. Ex-friend because Marissa had called her friend’s husband a cheating SOB when he’d cheated. Somehow, Marissa had ended up the SOB with her friend. But the mug still held memories of a friendship long past, it still mattered to her, still held a special place in her heart. And if a guy couldn’t even manage to be mug worthy, he darn sure wasn’t going to be allowed to cuff her to a bed and have his wild way with her.

But Evan -- he was another story. She had this instant want-to-get-wicked-and-wild urge with the man that threw caution to the wind. And she liked caution. She liked planning and structure. She liked to get to know a guy before she got naked usually, normally. Apparently, not so with Evan.

The fantasy of getting naked with Evan, as in tonight, slid away abruptly as her gaze latched onto the television hanging above the bar, showing a flash of the hospital and then the house where she’d dropped off the sister tonight. Subtitles talked about a gruesome animal attack. A flash of Ellen’s face, the surviving sister looking pale and wrenched with pain, had Marissa drawing another long sip from her straw. And then another.

Her head started to buzz, and somehow that only made the reality of her life, and this day, clamor louder in her head. She had no family, nothing to lose – her mother had died in childbirth, and her father was a drunk who’d kicked her out when she was sixteen. But Ellen, poor thing…

she’d had a wonderful family — a family that Marissa envied — who had been ripped from her life in a matter of weeks. Marissa wanted to help Ellen. She wanted to help people, to make her life count. But the things she’d seen this past month — the pain and hurt, the loss — were eating her alive. She didn’t know if she was cut out for this, and guilt twisted inside her for her own weakness.

“How about another,” Evan asked, suddenly in front of her, and she hadn’t even seen him coming. Which said a lot about how much of a zone she’d been in – Evan was hard to miss.

She drew a sip from her straw and emptied the glass, pushing it toward him. “Considering I’m already buzzing,” she said, thinking his lips looked even sexier with a little alcohol to heat her blood, “that’s probably not a good idea. I’d planned to take a taxi home, but I want to be sure I can actually find the taxi.”

“You weren’t joking about not being a drinker, I guess.” Dark eyes assessed her with a probing, intimate inspection and, she had a feeling, he saw far more than she would have liked right about now. She shook her head. “It’s a control thing,” she said, “which is probably why the ER is exactly where I don’t belong. I can’t control anything there. Nothing. Horrible things happen –

death happens – and I can’t do anything to stop it.”

“You’re focusing on the lives lost,” he said. “Not the lives saved.”

“I know,” she said. “I do. In the logical part of my mind, that makes sense. But I go home and think of the lives lost or the people that will never walk, talk, or see again. Those are the people who haunt my dreams. I left Austin to come here, and I think…it was a mistake.”

“You’ll find a place to put the bad stuff,” he assured her. “It just takes time.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You will.”

He said the words with such certainty, she found herself curious. “You say that as if you speak from experience.”

His lips lifted, but the smile didn’t touch his eyes where sadness danced in the shadows. “I’ll get you that drink.”

“No!” she said, knowing full well her tongue was already waggling way too much from the fuzzy stuff in her head. Most likely her feet would be tripping all over themselves. “I think I better stop. Escape sounded great until my head started buzzing.” He leaned forward, his hands sliding onto the bar on either side of her. “I’ll make sure you get home safely, Marissa.”

She swallowed hard. There was something about the way he said "Marissa," and the heated way he was staring at her, that set her heart thundering in her chest. Did he mean … he’d take her home or he’d get her a taxi?

Marissa didn’t do one-night stands, or first-night sex, or drinking alone in bars. Not normally.

But tonight, nothing in her world made sense. She reached in her purse and slid her keys onto the bar.

Tomorrow, she’d make sense out of the nonsense. She’d be responsible, she’d figure things out.

But tonight she needed an escape. Maybe that escape was a slushy cold drink. Maybe it was Evan. She didn’t know. She didn’t care.

***

Three hours later, the bar was closed, but Evan had ensured that Marissa lingered in her seat, a drink in front of her. He wasn’t about to allow her to leave without him, and not just because of the wolf he was certain would have her in his sight. No – there was more to his desire to keep Marissa nearby. Plain and simple, he wanted her, and not just physically, though there was no question, she got him hot and hard. He was, after all, a male, a vampire male, with primal, sexual instincts that had him imagining all kinds of wicked ways to make her scream his name. But what really had him by the balls was not the desire she created in him, but the way she’d made him laugh when he’d have sworn it wasn’t possible. The way she’d made him smile when he was certain he had no reason. The way she’d made him realize how empty a century of hunting had made him and he wanted to know why, and how, a woman he barely knew could do such things. The time for discovery, both in and out of bed, was not now though.

He wiped down the counter, working toward closing up the bar, focused on getting Marissa out of here safely. To ensure the wolf didn’t target her, as he normally did the friends and acquaintances of his victims.

All but done with the façade of this night’s bartender duties, he cast a quick, seductive glance at Marissa, making no attempt to tame the primal heat in his stare. She wasn’t for him, he told himself silently. She was a forever kind of girl, and not the kind of forever he could give her.

Nevertheless, when she smiled shyly at him, his groin tightened, cock thickening against his zipper, and he knew he wasn’t walking away without fucking her every which way she’d have him.

He tossed the rag down, and rounded the bar, eliminating the counter that had separated them all night, to stand beside her, his hand on the back of her stool. She turned to face him, the scent of her teasing his nostrils, his arm creating an intimate enclosure, trapping her between the counter and his body. She was his in that moment and the idea appealed to him far more than it should.

One tilt of his head and his teeth could touch that delicate, pale neck. His lips her lips. His body her body.

She glanced up at him, her long, dark lashes fluttering with a combination of uncertainty and desire, her pupils dilated with the effects of the alcohol she’d consumed.

“You really are…tall,” she whispered.

“And you,” he said, brushing a finger over her chin, “really are beautiful.” And innocent. Too innocent and perfect for the likes of him.

She shivered. “Tall and a smooth talker, I think I should be afraid.” Her palm slid down the bar.

“Ouch!” She drew her hand forward, red pooling on her index finger, a splinter of wood sticking out from the red center.

Instant lust fired through Evan as he took the opportunity presented and snatched the splinter away before he drew her finger to his lips. The sweet taste of her blood exploded on his taste buds, filling him with lust, desire -- fueling the sexual side of his vampire nature, when he already wanted this woman to the point of white-hot demand. His gums tingled, his recessed cuspids threatening to extend.

His eyes met hers, the scent of her arousal, the taste of her blood, seeping through him with a demand that he claim her, claim satisfaction. Somewhere in the back of the bar a door slammed shut. The sound was a jolt of reality that shook Evan just enough to calm the beast inside him threatening to take control of him, of her.

Slowly his tongue swirled around her finger, and then he released it, inspecting the area where the splinter had been.

“All better,” he said.

A stunned look etched her features. “I was right,” she whispered.

His brows dipped, “Right?”

“When I said I should be afraid of you,” she explained. “Because there is no way that what you just did should not bother me but it…”

He leaned close, sliding his face against hers, his lips near her ear, his mouth far too close to the vein he hungered to puncture -- for his own good – most certainly for her own good. And yet, he found himself asking, “Aroused you?”

She drew a breath. “Yes.”

“As it did me,” he assured her, and silently wondered if perhaps it was him that should be afraid of her, for the way she stole his reserve, his caution. His control.

He leaned back, offering her his hand to help her stand. “I won’t bite,” he promised. “Not unless you ask me to.” And damn how he wished she would, how he wanted to convince her she should.

She laughed, nervously. “I’ve never asked a man to bite me in my life,” she said, pressing her palm against his.

He brought her fingers to his lips. “Then I could be the first.” Her eyes went wide, “To bite me?”

“In the most pleasurable of ways,” he assured her.

She blushed. “I must be drunk,” she said, “because I so believe you. Probably a sign I need to go home.”

“I’ll drive you and take a cab home,” he offered. “Then you’ll have your car tomorrow.” She considered him a moment. “I should say no.”

“But you’re going to say yes.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and smiled. “And I’m going to blame the alcohol in the morning.” His hands slid to her waist. “Blame means regret,” he said. “And I don’t plan to let you have any regrets.

“Pretty confident there now, aren’t you?”

He took her hand. “Very.” Confident tonight would be hell. Confident that no matter how much the thrum of desire urging him to find a bed, rip her clothes off and bury himself inside her, he wouldn’t act on those desires. Not when she’d been drinking.