Lone Star Vampire - Virgen Vampire Vixen Part 4

Finally, the weight of his stare forced her to look up and meet the heat in his eyes. "I couldn't have said it better myself." He leaned against the wall, still watching her. She hustled Malice and Veronica out, closing the door behind them with relief. "You've got those two on your payroll?" He chuckled. "I inherited them." Eden sighed, rubbing her hand against her forehead. "I'm going to go change before we head out to Crimson Hungers. This dress is all wrong." His hand shot out to stop her. "Are you crazy? You look incredible!" She rolled her eyes. "Incredibly fat, maybe." "Come on, Eden." His hand was warm on her bare arm. "You're not one of those, are you?" "One of what?" "One of those women who has a killer body but thinks she's too fat because she's not built like some bony supermodel." She felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I don't think anyone is going to mistake me for a bony supermodel in this lifetime." "Why would you want to be one?" The vehemence in his voice surprised her. "Are you kidding me?" She tried to keep tears from sneaking into her eyes, but any discussion of her weight always touched the sorest spot in her heart. "Guys love those bony chicks."

"Fourteen-year-old guys who want to impress their friends, maybe." His gaze burned into hers. "You have everything that makes a woman's body what it's supposed to be. You just have more of it."

To h.e.l.l with it. How could she fight a compliment like that? "Fine, I'll wear this dress."

He smiled down at her, his eyes sparkling. "Good."

The crowd of bodies on the dance floor at Crimson Hungers made Cameron uncomfortable, but not for the normal reasons.

There were just too d.a.m.n many people there.

Rex, the owner of the club, had top notch security. A pair of werewolves the size of professional wrestlers scanned everyone with wands. Everyone had their IDs checked against the guest list. No one got in without a hand stamp.

Rex had even made sure that Cameron had a card key to a private VIP room in case Eden needed it. But he knew she'd resent being dragged off to watch the party from a distance, so he'd settled down at a corner table with her.

Cameron stole a surrept.i.tious glance at her as she stirred the ice cubes in her ginger ale with a swizzle stick. She looked about as happy as your average funeral attendee.

"Having fun?" He put his hand on her wrist.

She started at his touch, splas.h.i.+ng ginger ale on the table. "Yeah, it's a good party."

"You don't look very happy." That was the understatement of the year.

He followed her gaze to the dance floor. "Just tired, I guess."

All right, he didn't need a sign from heaven. The woman wanted to dance.

Cameron checked the perimeter. The Speedway Pack was there in full force, covering all the doors and exits. Clow was watching the front entrance. The radio would alert him to anything about to happen.

What could possibly go wrong taking one turn on the dance floor?

"Come on." He rose to his feet and offered her his hand.

"Where?" She stood and took the proffered hand.

"We're going to dance." He began to work his way through the crowd, past the

tables and onto the dance floor. Gnarls Barkley's The Boogie Monster pounded from the speakers. Cameron pulled Eden against him until her body was flush with his. She wrapped her arms around his neck, letting him feel the weight of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against him. He went hard instantly. She was a natural dancer and found the rhythm easily, slowly rotating her hips against his in a way that made him wonder what she'd do on top of him, underneath him, and in a few other positions.

He'd promised himself he wouldn't touch her again. Getting involved with her would weaken his focus. Getting emotionally attached to a client was the equivalent of serving them both up to the bad guys on a silver plate.

But when her eyelids fluttered shut and a soft sigh drifted forth from her lips, his promises were as good as dead. He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath. He held her face in his hands and brought his mouth down on hers before she could protest, kissing her with all the ferocity of desire denied. She made a sound deep in her throat and ground her pelvis against him. A few more minutes of that and he would come right there on the dance floor.

"Let's go." He pulled back enough to look into her eyes. "VIP room." He took her hand and pulled her along behind him while fumbling in his pocket for the card key. He finally extracted it from his pocket with an unsteady hand.

"Dammit!" He squinted down at the key.

"What is it?"

"I can't find the room number on here."

She looked down at the card. "It's on the other side. The one without a magnetic

strip."

Feeling like a teenage boy desperate to sneak out with a girl, he checked the front of the card, and sure enough... Room V7.

He managed to locate the room without any further delays, nearly tearing the door off the hinges in his haste to get her alone.

The door slammed behind them and he had her in his arms, backing her toward the red velvet covered sofa against the wall. "Alone at last," he breathed. She nodded, reaching for him. He offered no resistance.

He claimed her mouth, desperate with hunger to taste her, to consume her, to immolate them both on the altar of pa.s.sion. She didn't stop him when his hands skimmed the backs of her bare thighs until he met the stretchy lace fabric of her panties.

"Have you ever had a man go down on you?" His breath came in gasps.

She shot him a wary look. Just as he'd expected, she wasn't very experienced. That was all about to change.

"Get on the couch. No arguments." He steered her down onto the couch and knelt in front of her, parting her legs. He placed one over each shoulder, giving himself the kind of view that wet dreams were made of.

Her thighs were full and smooth, the skin as soft as rose petals. And between them... sweet lord. A swath of black lace and satin covered the small triangle where heaven waited.

She drew in a sharp breath when he skimmed his hands up her inner thighs. He didn't stop until he had her dress pushed up.

Silently he moved closer, pressing his lips against her mound through the thin fabric of her panties. He dragged his lips lower, flicking his tongue against the hot center of her, inhaling the perfume of her desire.

He knew that hers would be the sweetest p.u.s.s.y he'd ever tasted.

Mewling kitten sounds broke forth from her throat, and she ran the palms of her hands over his stubble-covered head. Experienced or not, it was plain to see her raw instincts were leading her on. He tightened his grip on her thighs and ran the tip of his tongue down her hot cleft, leaving a trail of moisture on her panties.

His c.o.c.k ached with need, and when she'd had the chance to come at least twice, he would bury it inside her and thrust them both into oblivion. He would bet his entire gun collection that she was a virgin, and he'd never had that particular experience with a woman before. But he would do right by her, pleasuring her senseless before claiming his own reward.

A scream tore through the room. At first he thought it was Eden, but one look at her told him that she was as surprised as he was. And then the first bullet punched its way through the steel door. He barely had time to pull Eden to the floor before more shots rang out, a deafening rain of bullets coming from seemingly every direction.

He threw himself on top of her without thinking twice. She didn't scream, didn't move -- she simply held herself motionless beneath him, an expression of sheer terror on her face.

The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving Cameron's ears ringing. A bullet had lodged itself in the door.

It was silver.

Someone knew what they were doing.

A crackle zapped through the air, and a shower of sparks came from somewhere near the ceiling, giving Cameron just long enough to pull his gun before the building was plunged into darkness.

Chapter 7.

"Get the f.u.c.king car over here now," Cameron barked into the radio. Trent, the werewolf on the other end, responded in the affirmative.

He pulled Eden behind him, trying to keep his composure. Not an easy thing to do with bodies being wheeled out in bags.

"Who would've done such a thing?" Eden sobbed. He couldn't look at her, not with tears running down her face and terror in her eyes. If he let himself get caught up in her emotions, he'd lose it, and someone had to hold it together with the kind of s.h.i.+t they'd endured for the last half hour.

Thank G.o.d for cell phones. After they were ambushed from outside with silver bullets, some handy little vampire scout had cut their electricity. If some of the party guests hadn't called 911 on their cell phones, the death toll would've been twice as high.

As it was, there were more dead vampires and s.h.i.+fters than he'd ever seen in one place, and that was saying something. Their entire crew had survived, and everyone at Katya's table had ducked into a VIP room. But blood ran everywhere, like some apocalyptic nightmare.

"What now?" Eden clutched his hand.

"We get you out of here." He tightened his grip on her hand. "Sable and Lisa are packing a bag for each of us, and we're going to swing by the house long enough to pick up our stuff." He turned to catch her as she swayed. The left heel of her shoe had broken. s.h.i.+t.

"Then what?" She made a clumsy swipe at her eyes with the back of her free hand.

His jaw clenched. "Then we're going to haul a.s.s."

"Oh my G.o.d." Eden came to a dead stop behind him. He paused, turning to follow her gaze to the brick facade of the Sanguine Guest Quarters across from Crimson Hungers.

He would've echoed her shocked sentiments, but his voice stalled in his throat. For scrawled across the wall in letters too big to miss was a single word, written in blood so fresh it still dripped in tear-like streams to the sidewalk below.

The word was Eden.

Eden played with the radio, changing stations restlessly. "Your presets suck."

Cameron sighed. "Put it on Vampire Radio. Maybe they'll have some news about what happened tonight."

Eden echoed his sigh and tuned the radio to the vampire station. The eerie sounds of Nox Arcana drifted through the speakers. She slumped down in her seat and stared out the window of the SUV into the dark night.

"It was nice of Vance to loan us his beach house." She turned to look at Cameron's profile. How unreasonable was it that she wanted him to mention what had almost happened between them before the shooting started? With everything that had happened that night, their few minutes of mutual heat naturally wouldn't be foremost on his mind.

So why was it foremost on hers? She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think of something else. How her people had gone with her to the party to protect her and had almost lost their lives for it. How someone wanted her dead badly enough to shoot up an entire club with silver on the odds of hitting her. Not to mention that little Surrender, Dorothy style message in dripping blood waiting for her when she finally got out of the bullet riddled club.

"This is Penny Dreadful with your KVMP news," a smooth voice intoned over the speaker. "While tonight's shootout at local vampire haven Crimson Hungers has left authorities with more questions than answers, one thing is certain -- incoming empress of the Gulf Coast Court, Eden Lockhart, was an undeniable target of tonight's attack.

Calls to Lockhart's representatives were not immediately returned. Police say she has been taken to a secure and undisclosed location. In other news..."

Eden switched the radio off with a curse. "How long until we reach the beach house?" The deserted highway, shrouded by the looming shape of dark trees, made her uneasy. Without the radio, there was nothing to disrupt the hypnotic hum of the wheels.

"It'll be another hour or two before we get to Corpus. It takes longer on these back roads, but the fewer people who see us, the better." He kept his gaze on the endless stretch of dark gray highway ahead of them. "We should be safe there. Vance and Mr. Charles are the only ones who know where we're going."

She leaned her forehead against the cool gla.s.s of the window. "As long as we get there before dawn, I'm good."

He gave her a brief glace. "We will, I promise."

She knew he'd keep his promise. It was scary how much she trusted him. But then he'd rolled on top of her, ready to take a bullet to protect her. If that didn't inspire trust, what would?

"I know one thing." He continued to stare at the road.

"What's that?" She turned to face him.

"When we get to Corpus, I'm driving through Whataburger and getting us the two greasiest cheeseburgers in the great state of Texas." He shot her a grin, and she burst into laughter. She was about to comment that she'd wondered if she'd ever laugh again when the sight of something standing in direct range of their headlights stopped her.

"What the..." She peered out at the creature, noting its height of around four feet and its scaly green appearance before it vanished, rising into the air in the blink of an eye.

"Mother of..." Cameron leaned forward, slowing the vehicle just as the thing slammed into the winds.h.i.+eld with a stomach-churning splat.

The vehicle spun as Cameron struggled to control it. The sound of screeching tires mixed with the unearthly scream of the creature, and Eden couldn't keep from adding her own terrified shouts to the mixture.

The thing had its face pressed to the gla.s.s, a trail of slime and blood smearing in the trajectory of its pug nose. Its eyes were pure reptile -- flat, black, and cold.

Cameron pulled to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and the creature slumped against the winds.h.i.+eld, gasping. Eden shrank back.

The thing had a mouthful of serrated teeth, like the b.a.s.t.a.r.d offspring of a shark and a piranha.

"If anything moves, shoot it." Cameron took the automatic pistol from his shoulder holster and put it in her lap. "You know how to turn the safety off?"

She stared at him. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?"

He took the gun from the back of his waistband and turned the safety off. "Shooting it."

"You can't go out there!" She reached for him. "That thing could eat you alive!"

He rolled down his window. "Not if it's dead."

Before she could get another word, he fired into the creature's body. It let out a piteous wail and slid to the end of the hood. He fired again and didn't stop firing until the gun was empty.

Blood smeared all over the winds.h.i.+eld and the hood of the SUV. Eden closed her eyes and said a prayer.

Cameron rolled up his window and pulled into reverse, turning them slowly back onto the highway. The creature rolled off the hood of the car with a thud.

"An honest-to-G.o.d Chupacabra." He stared out into the darkness. "I've lived in Texas almost all my life, and that's the first one I've ever seen."

"Do they travel in packs?" She rubbed her head with her hand. A few hours ago, had she actually been on the dance floor with this man's arms around her? It had begun to feel like another lifetime.

Before he could answer her, a small herd of the creatures appeared in the headlights of the car.

"Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t." Cameron swerved the car around and took off in the opposite direction. Another handful of them waited on the other side.