Page 12 of Fangs for the Memories (Budapest Bites #1)

O f course I believed in the monsters.

I just didn’t expect to meet one…or too many to count (pun intended). In fact, I just assumed they gave humans a wide berth, especially with all the hype around them simply to line human pockets.

I definitely didn’t expect to be here, on an actual vampire tour, with a set of vampire teeth hovering over my neck. Cold clawed fingers pricking at my skin.

“Leave them.” A voice rings out in the dark.

I swing my head, not really wanting to see what the light picks out as vampires are decidedly not as nice as the films and books make out. But then they are living corpses so perhaps I shouldn’t be judgmental.

For a brief instant, I catch sight of something which is not vampire and not human, but then my head is shoved to one side and instead my light hits something which is decidedly vampire in a movie sense.

Pale face, dark hair, face twisted into a snarl. This vampire is huge, well dressed, unlike the rest in rags, and staring straight at me with pale, pale blue eyes. He would be handsome if he didn’t look so feral.

“Take the wolf and his mate to the holding area,” he says.

A bag is pulled over my head. I debate for a second or two whether I want to be an annoyance to a load of vampires, but then I decide I do, screaming and kicking as I’m bundled somewhere.

But also, deep in the pit of my stomach, I’m scared for Ferenc as much as I am for myself and I’m worried what the vampires might do to him, especially as, on the brief occasion I cease making a noise, all I can hear are sounds of ripping, snarling, and…squelching.

Finally, clawed hands release me and the bag is pulled from my head as I’m shoved through a door, stumbling, attempting to see what I’m doing and instead running straight into a wall of hard muscle.

I lift my head higher and higher until my flashlight hits a familiar chin.

“Ferenc,” I breathe. “You’re okay.”

His chest heaves and his hands are suddenly everywhere.

“Did they touch you, Grace? Bite you?”

“No, no, I’m fine. I just…didn’t want to give up without a fight.”

“You wanted to fight a thousand vampires who scented fresh blood?” He suddenly stops his exploration of me, and I sort of miss it.

Instead he has my head cradled in his hands and his beautiful dark eyes are gazing into mine.

“I didn’t want them to hurt you.”

“I’ve been killing vampires who dared to touch you,” Ferenc says.

I feel my heart slow in my chest to half a beat or less, or at least that’s how it feels.

“You…have…”

Then I remember what I heard before I was dragged here.

“You are…the wolf ?”

Ferenc doesn’t release me.

“Werewolf,” he says in his delicious velvety voice. “I am a werewolf, Grace.”

“Oh.” It’s all I can say, it’s all I can think, having finally been, almost literally, smashed in the face with the monster world I knew existed but never actually thought I’d come into contact with.

His face is so close to mine, his dark eyes pools of mystery, his soft, full lips so damn near to me, I could just…

When his mouth brushes over mine, it’s as if a jolt of electricity has spiked through my body. No kiss has ever felt like this. It’s as if Ferenc is stealing my soul.

I shouldn’t be letting this happen, but I can’t stop myself. I can’t pull away. His tongue slips between my lips and deepens an incredible kiss into something so possessive I don’t know if it will ever stop.

I don’t want him to stop. I want to be consumed by his kiss forever. It makes me feel alive, as if my existence has been a half life, moving through the world like it was made of air, not really seeing what it was.

But Ferenc’s lips on mine—his kiss, his hands in my hair—they are everything, a burst of color, a beam of light which wakes me from my thirty-three-year-old slumber.

When he releases me, I’m not sure I can stand.

“A werewolf ?”

I study his face. It is as ridiculously handsome as before. There is no sign of wolf, were or otherwise. Ferenc is a man, a big, muscular man.

But then, that’s what being a werewolf means. A man until the moon’s pull proves too much and then there is a wolf.

This time, self-preservation has me pulling back from him.

“I…don’t want to be a werewolf…” I stumble over the words. “Don’t bite me.”

Ferenc studies me for a moment before he throws his head back in a bark of laughter. In a lightning move, he has me caged against the wall.

Yet again, his face is close to mine. This time a sharp set of fangs are in full evidence.

“I won’t bite you, Grace,” he murmurs, “but there’s a good chance I will eat you.”

Why on earth do his words send a shiver through me? Not a shiver of fear, not in the slightest, but a shiver of desire.