SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (227 page)

“A
while
?” She leaned back and looked up at him. Long, dark lashes framed the soft brown eyes he remembered in his dreams. “Two years too long. You and Jack shipped out less than a month after we married and I haven’t seen you since.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Kayla cocked her head to the side, the corners of her eyes narrowing slightly.

Instinctively he knew she wasn’t just talking about his absence; she was talking about her husband’s death. She could say it all she wanted, like the shrinks at the military hospital did, but it didn’t change a damn thing. If he’d just let Jack drive, he would have taken the full impact of the IED instead of his best friend. She would have been in her husband’s arms instead of his.

With all the effort and careful touch he could muster, Cole pulled back from her. Hard to do because he wanted to hold her forever, and yet impossible not to let her go when there was still so much he needed to say to her.

“Come inside.” Kayla slipped her small hand into his, totally unaware of the explosion of chaos she caused in him.

“It’s late. I can come back tomorrow.”

Kayla shrugged. “It’s not like I sleep much anyway. And you’re here now. You came for a reason, right?”

He nodded, his frozen feet finally pulling free of the invisible bond to the concrete walkway to move forward.

* * *

Cole's hand felt cool and dry to the touch, but achingly familiar and comforting as Kayla led him up the steps and through the old screen door of her little house. She hadn’t thought of it as hers and Jack’s for a long time now. Time had a way of changing perceptions. Jack had been gone for twenty-six months. Sometimes her chest ached because she couldn't remember the sound of his voice, or the way his skin smelled.

She'd never forgotten Cole's voice, and his skin had the same warm cedar and clean soap smell it had had since she'd known him in tenth grade. For one, she didn’t remember Cole being this big when they dated in high school, or at the wedding. He seemed larger than life standing beside Jack. They’d made quite a matched set of handsome men. But the military had transformed Cole from merely a gorgeous guy into a wall of lean muscle and serious blue eyes. And she swore he’d grown taller. There was no doubt he changed.

She bit her lip keeping the hundreds of questions she had locked up inside where they couldn’t embarrass her. Still they hummed and buzzed inside her brain in a swarm. Why had Cole come back now? Jack had been gone for over two years. Surely if he was coming just to express his condolences he would have been at Jack’s memorial service. What did he want? How did he feel about her now? How had the war changed him? Deep down, was the guy she remembered still in that big, broad body? Kayla pushed them all to the back of her mind and tried to focus on the here and now.

She’d gotten good at that. One breath at a time. One minute at a time was how you made it through the shock and grief.

She looked around the living room, trying to see it with Cole's eyes. Plain furniture with outrageously colored floral pillows; candles in floral fragrances, and the scatter of women’s magazines across the coffee table pared with a half-drank can of diet soda all marked it as her home alone. A woman alone.

“You want something to drink? Are you hungry?”

Cole shook his head.

She clasped her hands together suddenly at a lost for what to do with them. “Would you like to sit down?”

He shook his head again. Damn. The boy had been nothing if not strong and silent when they’d dated in high school. Apparently military service had only made that streak in him stronger. The constant dull ache in her chest flared painfully to life. His distant demeanor made it all so much worse. It amplified the loneliness, the sensation that she was isolated from the rest of the world by some invisible layer she couldn’t break through to feel normal again. She went ahead and sat down on the couch. Perhaps if she did, he’d follow and at least stop acting like they were totally strangers.

“So...”

“I wasn’t sure you’d still be here. I know they usually only give the families a year on base.”

“Under certain circumstances they’ll approve you for longer. I was just one of the lucky ones,” she replied.

The edge of his jaw flexed and he broke the connection of his gaze locked onto hers. “I brought you some things.”

He dug into the chest pocket of his fatigues and brought out a folded envelope that looked very worn at the edges.

Her face crumpled and her small hands shook as she took the envelope.

“Why now?” The minute the words were out she wished she had a net to catch them and haul them back in. A streak of pain flashed over his features, his brow furrowing as he looked away toward the front door.

“I’m sorry. It’s not any of my business,” she added quickly.

Cole put up a hand to stop her. “No. It’s fine. If I were in your shoes, I’d be asking the same thing. Right after Jack died, they pulled me in for a special training and reassignment. This is the first time I’ve gotten leave. I’ve got a five-day pass to come back and set my things in order before they ship me out on assignment again.”

“Oh.” Kayla couldn’t think of how to reply. So many other reasons had circulated in her head for so long, that she’d almost made herself believe he’d stayed away as some kind of last promise to Jack. Her thumb smoothed over the folded envelope in her hand. It was still sealed. “What’s this?” The long pause without an answer made her glance up at him again. His eyes were quickly growing bloodshot and the muscles in his throat and jaw ticked.

“It’s the letter he had on him the day he died. He was going to put it in the mail bag as soon as we got back to base.”

She knew that look. Cole was hiding something from her. He was not getting off that easy.

“Why didn’t you mail it?"

“I didn’t want to chance it getting lost.”

She nodded. “You’re lying.”

“What?” His dark brows drew together in an angry line.

“I could always tell when you were lying. You know that. You wanted to give it to me yourself. You weren’t worried it would get lost. You wanted to see me.”

Cole let out a heavy breath, his hands at his sides clenching into fists, then releasing. “I just wanted to make sure you were ok,” he responded gruffly.

That
was the Cole she knew. She couldn’t stop the soft smile that lifted the corners of her mouth. “You always have.”

“I also needed to give you these.”

He picked up her right hand, cradling it in his own and placed in her open palm Jack’s wedding ring and dog tags. Kayla couldn’t move. Gently he closed her fingers around the cool metal, then let his hand fall away. She looked up into his face. The grief and sorrow welling up in her were mirrored back. Jack and Cole had been close.

She swallowed hard, then opened her hand and picked up the wedding band, rolling it between her fingers. “I loved him.”

“I know you did. And he loved you.”

Kayla shook her head. “Let me finish. I loved him, but it wasn’t much of a marriage.”

“Kind of hard to build a marriage when you barely get to make it through your honeymoon before the groom is shipped out. You guys had, what, four months together?” Cole cleared his throat, but he was still standing, still poised to make a break for the front door. But she didn’t care. Just having him in the same room again made her world seem more normal.

She glanced up and him. God he was big. He was appeasing her, trying to make her feel better. “Do you miss him?” Of course he did. She'd never seen two men closer.

His lips flattened in to a grim line. “Every day. You?”

“Same.” Her hand closed around the dog tags, until the edges of them cut into her palm. Cole held out a hand, a lifeline as far as she was concerned, and she took it, rising from the couch and stepping closer to him until he folded his strong arms around her and she leaned into his broad chest. He smelled of sunshine and arid heat, shaving cream and clean male. For the first time, in a long time, the numbness melted away. It felt good to be held. Wonderful. Safe. The burning heat behind her eyes burst into tears she could no longer hold back. The sensation of his cheek resting against the top of her head nearly undid her last shred of control.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said, his hand running slowly, soothingly over her back in small circles. He let her cry her heart out on his shirt.

* * *

Cole was immobilized, transfixed by her. Even if his Vector Force commander had materialized out of thin air in Kayla’s living room, a trick he himself was still trying to master, he didn’t think he could have followed a direct order to release her.

For the first time in forever, he was exactly where he wanted to be, with the woman he loved, with her soft skin and silky hair pressed against him. And yet he knew it couldn’t last. He’d lied to her again. Nothing was going to be the way it was. Not ever. He was a vampire, part of Vector Force, and had no rights to a relationship with her, or anyone else. Not ever again. The past needed to remain the past. It was best for both him and her. And now that he’d had a chance to see she was alive and well, and given her Jack’s things, he needed to go, before something he couldn’t control happened and harmed her.

She sniffled and the pain of her tears and the musty odor he identified as the smell of sorrow became pungent. What would happen if he used a glamour to help her forget? It wasn’t a legitimate use of his vampire powers, but what the hell. One glamour wasn’t going to get him booted out of the force. They used it all the time as a weapon.

It was tempting. Very tempting. He could help her and she’d never know he’d been the one to ease her pain. He slid his finger gently beneath her chin and lifted her head so he could look into her eyes. They were red and puffy, and small shining trails marked the smooth skin of her cheeks. “I can help you forget.”

A spark lit up deep in the brown-sugar depths of her eyes. “I’d like that.” Her words came out a whisper of breath, sweet and warm. But before he could lock onto her gaze to create a proper link for a glamour to have effect, she closed her eyes, leaned up on tip toe and pressed her soft, willing mouth to his.

Welcome Home, Vampire: Chapter Two

For a moment Cole’s whole world coalesced into one perfect moment where her sweet lips melded with his. The kiss stripped away any sense of where he was, or why. All the world boiled down to just this woman intimately connected to him. Here. Now.

And then his conscious hit him upside the head with a proverbial sledgehammer.

Hey, asshole. You're kissing your buddy’s wife. Smooth. Bet he’d really appreciate it.

Cole instantly broke off the kiss. Kayla’s creamy skin was flushed with just a hint of pink and the heat in her brown eyes could have scalded him like a fresh cup of coffee. Her lips, now a deeper pink and slightly parted as her breath came faster, begged him to taste her again. But Cole held himself in check with a level of discipline that would have made his drill sergeant proud.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said, perhaps a tad too brusquely. The sparkle faded from her eyes and she pulled further away from him, crossing her arms over her chest. Great. He’d hurt her feelings. Not what he’d intended. But then none of this had been what he intended.

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Then exactly what
did
you have in mind?”

Yeah, like he had a prayer of explaining his vampire state or his powers to any civilian, let alone a woman who knew him better than anyone except his dead friend. Cole shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Won’t happen. We had our time and it didn’t work out. I’m just here as a friend.”

Kayla’s hands dropped slowly and came to rest on her hips. “You are not seriously going to friend zone me, are you? We were sixteen. I hardly think that counts as a mature relationship, do you?”

He tried to smile, he honestly did, but it just hurt too damn much to remember how they’d been together. She’d been his first time, and he’d been hers. And it had been a total, fumbling nightmare of adolescent horniness. It had gotten better, but that had been then. This was now. And now, was way, way different.

“Your Jack’s wi—”

Before he could finish the word she placed a smooth, warm finger over his mouth. “Was. I
was
his wife. And I’m glad I was. But that’s in the past too. What we do, right here, right now? That’s up to us. No one else.”

Cole narrowed his eyes. Perhaps she had a point, but then her good point was totally blown out of the water by his twisted, freakish reality. Could vampires even mate with humans without hurting them? Of course he had the requisite parts, and God knew he had the desire, but would making love to Kayla have the potential to kill her?

He didn’t know.

Too big a risk to take.

“Look, you’ve got five days of leave, right?” she pushed.

“Yeah.”

She grabbed his hand, holding it loosely in hers, her fingertips brushing his. “So instead of just letting this go without giving things a shot, how about we date as adults? Just for a few days. No strings attached.”

Cole lifted one brow in question. There were always strings attached. “You want me to take you out?”

“More than that. I want us to take just a little time to get to know if there’s something we missed along the way when we were kids.”

Cole’s gut clenched. That familiar queasy feeling he had at the memory of Kayla dumping him returned all too easily. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“I happen to think it’s a great idea.” Her mouth lifted in a sultry smile that about sent him to his knees.

“But you don’t underst—”

She again put her finger on his mouth, this time brushing it back and forth in a distracting fashion that ramped up all his senses and threatened to give him the mother of all hard-ons.

Control. Focus. You can not vamp out on her, corporal.

“I don’t have to understand. I’ve learned to live in the moment since you’ve been gone,” she said, the seductive edge to her voice unmistakable to a regular man, however a vampire could sense the increased pheromones she released into the air, like an aphrodisiac. “I’m not just letting you walk away before I know we don’t deserve to be together.” Kayla wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing her mouth perilously close to his.