“Kansas farmer stock?” I hazarded as I waited for him to come to. “Idaho? From your accent, I’m guessing you’re from one of those flat states where people do Norman Rockwell things like going to potluck suppers and having chores. It’s not only the accent, it’s the whole grim determination thing you’ve got going on, as if staking me is a duty you can’t shirk. Such a shame, sweetie. As I say, these handcuffs could have been put to much better use.”
“I don’t sleep with vampires.” As if he’d been conscious for some seconds and had simply been waiting for the right moment to startle me, Jack Rawls opened his eyes and stared emotionlessly at me. “I meant what I said. Kill me. I’m not interested in eternal life, vamp.”
Without warning he jerked his arms powerfully toward his body and tried to do the same with his legs, like a mustang lunging desperately against restraints. I grabbed two handfuls of his T-shirt and tightened the grip of my bare thighs against his rib cage to avoid being bucked off as he tried to break free, expecting him to continue his fight for a few moments before realizing it was doing him no good. But he surprised me again. Just as suddenly as he’d exploded into movement he stopped—as if, I thought with sharp interest, he’d been in similar situations in the past and recognized when it was of more benefit to conserve his energy than to continue resisting uselessly.
I made a note to add his familiarity with restraints to the list of subjects to explore with the mysterious Mr. Rawls, but my first question was a deliberately distracting one.
“Police issue cuffs, courtesy of a detective on the Maplesburg P.D. who liked playing good cop/bad girl with me,” I told Rawls. “Or was it bad cop/bad girl? Anyway, they’re not toys, Jack, and I got the rope I tied around your ankles from the trunk of your car, so you’re not going anywhere until I say you can. I also ran over your damn nail gun, so don’t bother trying to think of some way you can reach it and use it. Speaking of your car, I’ve got to ask—what’s an upstanding, vampire-hating carpenter like you doing riding around in a vampmobile?”
“I got a deal,” he said tonelessly. “Its last owner died in it.”
When I’d moved his vehicle, I’d turned off the bright headlights, leaving on only its parking lights. My back was toward them but they shone full in Rawls’s face, so I could see every flicker of expression that crossed his features, if there’d been one. But there wasn’t. The only indication of his state of mind came from the cold hatred in his eyes as he stared up at me.
Now, cold hatred isn’t the usual expression men have when they look at me. Unbridled lust, hopeless infatuation, puppy-dog pleading—those are some of the ways men look at me. Even when I’d dumped Terry this afternoon, I’d seen in his eyes that if I’d crooked my little finger as he’d stormed out, he would have turned right around and come back for the chance to spend another night with me. Rawls, on the other hand, had me sitting on his chest with the black lace of my pink panties peeking out under my hiked-up hem and, thanks to the ripped neckline of my ruined slip dress, my breasts practically spilling out of my push-up bra into his face—and still he was treating me as if I was something he’d scraped off his shoe.
I decided that Jack Rawls was beginning to piss me off just the teensiest bit.
“Its last owner being a vampire like you think I am, I suppose,” I said, my patience at an end. “How can I put this so you understand? I’m not undead, I’m a real live female.” A thought occurred to me. “You’ve seen me in the daytime,” I reminded him, clinching the ridiculous argument. “What does the fact that I didn’t burst into flames tell you, sweetie?”
“Fuck all.” If anything, the hatred in his gaze intensified. “I’ve never seen you exposed to the sunlight. Far as I can tell, no one has in a while. Yeah, you’ve shown up here a couple of times in the late afternoon, looking as sick as a dog and wrapped up in scarves and wearing dark glasses. I’ve known a vamp or two in my time who can rise before dusk if they had to and if they take the kind of precautions you do. That hasn’t stopped me from killing them.”
“Then we’d better hope you never run into Tara Reid,” I shot back, pissed by his “sick as a dog” observation, which didn’t take much effort to translate into “skanky wreck.” “News flash, Jack—when a girl’s partied a little too enthusiastically the night before, sometimes she finds jumping out of bed at the crack of dawn and singing ‘Oh, What a Wonderful Morning’ a tad beyond her. She might even reach for the Ray-Bans and be a smidge tardy getting into work. Admittedly, most hangover cures I’ve choked down could better be classified as hangover punishments, but a stake through the heart is going too far, no?”
He didn’t respond. I leaned closer to him, my arms braced on either side of his shoulders. “Okay. If I’m a vamp why haven’t I bitten you by now? For that matter, why did I defend myself with a stake?”
Just as I decided he wasn’t going to answer this time either, he spoke, his jaw clenched. “I don’t pretend to know why you creatures do any of the things you do. My best guess is that you’ll bite me when you’re good and ready, but right now you’re getting a charge out of this.”
“A charge out of what?” I demanded. “Getting nailed to my car?”
His words ground past his teeth. “Out of sitting practically on my face and leaving nothing to the imagination while you’re doing it. Out of seeing if you can make me hot for you by using your glamyr.” He exhaled tightly. “Out of knowing it’s beginning to work.”
I’d had enough. He’d used a nail gun on me. He’d shot my car, destroyed my dress and ruined my whole evening…but all of those were nothing compared to the fact that he’d somehow discovered my greatest fear and dragged it into the light. I still wanted answers from him, but what I wanted more right now was to do to him what he’d done to me.
It was obvious what his greatest fear was. It would be pure pleasure making him face it.
In one smooth movement I pulled my dress over my head and let it drop to the ground. I shook my hair out, looked at Rawls through my lashes and moistened my lips.
“Is it hot out here or is it just me, sweetie?” I purred. Arching my back and squirming my hips against him, I tipped my neck back and began to trail the fingers of my left hand down my body, giving loving attention to the curve of my breasts in my barely there bra. I let my fingers wander slowly toward the lace of my panties. “’Cause all of a sudden I just feel so—”
My throat closed and my words dried up. I pushed a sex-kitten strand of hair out of my eyes and looked across the parking lot at what had caught my attention.
I found my voice. “About running over your nail gun,” I croaked, not taking my gaze from the pool of illumination shed by the farthest parkinglot light. “That might have been a teensy bit rash of me, Jack.”
I heard the tremor in my tone, and all of a sudden I couldn’t keep up the act anymore. I looked down at him. “We’re fucked,” I said flatly. “Three vamps just flew in and landed beside the club. They’re heading our way, Rawls.”
Chapter 4
“I should have known this was a setup,” Jack muttered. “Your undead friends sent you out as bait to catch me off guard, and now the fun begins.” I saw a muscle move at the side of his jaw. “Before the four of you start killing