Page 159 of Red Rooster

“It’s a little late to get a conscience now,” Nikita said. His gaze didn’t quite meet hers, though. A muscle twitched in his cheek. She read it as guilt.

She took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I…” She trailed off, shook her head. What could she say? They were her friends, her family – her lover, even. She knew what they were, and what they had to do to survive.

“I’m not angry,” she said, and she wasn’t. Just bone-tired, suddenly. Emotionally drained in a way that left her feeling small and hollow. She was a naïve child playing with elemental forces she couldn’t fully understand or control.

She stood up and took her trash to the can at the curb. Wrapped her arms around herself and walked slowly back to the cars, still parked at the pumps, totally in the way. The crowd seemed to have thinned, though, more late-night truckers than families at this point. She moved past the Expedition, all the way to the opposite curb, staring out through the little copse of scraggly fruit trees in the wide median that separated the parking lot from the highway beyond.

A whippoorwill called. A cool breeze lifted her hair. Under the smell of spilled gasoline and truck exhaust, it was almost peaceful.

Lanny had always had the purposeful, bouncy walk of a boxer, and vampirism hadn’t changed that. She heard him coming, and tensed in anticipation.

He stepped around in front of her with one smooth movement, so his moon-silvered face became her view.

His hair had grown longer than he usually let it get, thick, loose curls on top that she wanted to twine her fingers through. One fat loop fell onto his forehead and stuck to the faint sheen of sweat there. He carried himself loose, painless, confident. There was something artfully rumpled about him now that she hadn’t seen before: not the glazed, bourbon-induced slouch of a late night, but a self-assured sprawl. A magnetism.

She wanted to put her hands on him.

“Are you freaking out?” he asked.

“No.” His eyes seemed to shine, wide and hungry as a junkie’s. “Are you?”

“I–” He shifted forward a half-step, and beneath the loose satisfaction lurked something that still wanted. Another step. Another. His body bowed, curving to make space for hers, face above hers now, and…oh. She got it, then.

“Okay, awkward question. Does feeding get you all…” She made a gesture.

He let out a breathy laugh and grinned, teeth flashing; she saw the sharp tips of his fangs. “Guess so.”

Trina felt her pulse speed up, felt her palms tingle with anticipation. She was a grown woman, a homicide detective, and she told herself, firmly, that she wasn’t someone who got off on danger. She wasn’t drawn to bad boys.

Then she reached up and fingered the curl of hair on Lanny’s forehead, threaded it back into the rest of his hair.

The smile fell off his face and a sound very much like a low purr filled the space between them; she could hear it rumbling in his throat.

“Probably be a bad idea to run right now,” he said, voice strained.

“Yeah, I figured.”

“Um. But, you can go, if you–”

She pushed both hands through his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers.

He hesitated a moment, stock still. But then she teased at his closed lips with her tongue, and he came alive. Shifted in close, pressed against her, and she felt the play and ripple of muscle under his clothes. His hands latched onto her waist, and his mouth opened against hers. A possessive kiss; wicked flex of his tongue.

She expected him to taste of blood, but he didn’t. Only sweet red wine vinegar. Once she’d thought it, though, she couldn’t chase the thought away: he’d drank blood from a man’s throat.

It hit her like she was learning it for the first time: Lanny was a vampire. She was kissing a vampire.

She tightened her hands in his hair until he grunted against her mouth and lifted her off her feet.

He carried her effortlessly, up over the curb and into the trees, their swaying, dappled shadows. He pushed her up against a gnarled trunk and broke away from her mouth, trailed his lips down the side of her throat. She felt the faint scrape of his teeth, and when sensation spilled through it, it wasn’t cold fear, but hot, reckless excitement.

They’d circled one another awkwardly ever since his turning. She’d put off this moment, holding him at careful arm’s length, because she’d thought it would frighten her to let him in close, skin-to-skin, within striking distance. She’d thought it would be awkward, strange, and terrifying. But when he closed his mouth over her neck and sucked lightly at her pulse, liquid heat gathered low in her belly.

She tipped her head back against the bark of the tree and opened her eyes to see flashes of starlight through the leaves. She couldn’t bite back the breathless sound that left her lips, electric with sensation.

His hands moved over her, restless but gentle, up under her shirt, over the bare skin of her stomach and waist. He unfastened the button of her jeans, but only tipped his fingers into the waistband, shaking with restraint, but waiting for her.

“Trina,” he said against her throat, lips skimming back up her jaw, searching for her mouth again.