Page 9 of Space Vampire (Scared Sexy Collection #4)

Chapter Eight

Vlad

One Week Later

D ana is perched in my lap, her fingers flying over the computer console as she searches for information. “We’re lucky you know what you’re doing,” I tell her, even as I nuzzle her sweet-smelling neck. “If it were up to me, we’d be lost.”

Her pulse speeds up under my caress, and she wriggles in my arms, laughing.

“You’re tickling me. And I told you already, it took me years to learn the Homeworld written language.

My old mistress had vision problems, so she had me use all her devices.

She thought I had a brain. One of the few decent aliens I’ve met .

.. present company excluded, of course. ”

“Mmm.” I don’t think of myself as an alien. I’m not one of the mesakkah, nor one of any of the other races she’s shown me pictures of. I’m a splice, a genetically modified creature that’s a little of several things that no one wants to claim. “You forget. I am a vampire.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten.” She tilts her head, her hair sliding to the side and exposing her neck.

Pink marks mottle her skin from where I’ve bitten her, sending a wave of possessive pleasure through me at the sight.

“The fact that you’re a vampire means that our criteria for a safe retreat is slightly different than if it were just me. ”

Is that so? I pause in my stroking of her back. I love to touch her—am obsessed with it. Knowing how good she tastes and how I make her come every time I take a sip? It’s made me completely and utterly possessive of her. “What are the criteria, exactly?”

Dana leans back, relaxing in my arms, and her warm scent washes over me.

Her skin presses against mine, her bare thighs and arms soft and supple against my harder muscles.

“Well. I realize we can’t afford to be too choosy, seeing as how I’m not a person and you’re a test-tube baby, but I thought I’d start with the basics. ”

“The basics,” I repeat. “What are those basics?”

She flicks a finger out, pointing it at the ceiling of the captain’s quarters, where we’re currently stationed.

It has the nicest bed, and Dana insisted we take over those rooms because of that.

“One—we need a place where the government is either crooked or nonexistent, because we’re going to have to bribe our way in. ”

Smart. She’s been going around the ship, searching private quarters and looking for credits and valuables stashed away in hidden compartments.

I thought perhaps she just liked the idea of stealing from the people who have held her captive.

Now I know the truth of it, and I’m annoyed that she’s been doing all the planning and I’ve, well .

.. I’ve been distracted with the touch and taste of her.

The scent of her. The way she comes when I pet her between her thighs.

At least one of us is practical. I’m content to follow her lead. “Good call. What else?”

“Day cycles,” Dana says, turning to look at me over her shoulder. “More precisely, planets that have settlements where the nights are longer than the days.”

“Not space stations?”

“No. I hate recycled air. Once you have the real thing, you won’t want to go back. Trust me.” She wrinkles her small human nose at the thought.

“Are we being too choosy?” I point out.

“No,” Dana says, voice firm. She turns back to the monitor and her fingers tap over the screens.

“There are a thousand solar systems in this galaxy alone. There are forty-one nearby that are settled, and of those close enough for a pod to make it to, there’re one hundred and seventy viable planets.

From those, we can surely find someplace to get lost. And I think I’ve found the perfect spot. ”

“Oh?”

“Yup.” She gives me a smug look and tosses her hair.

“There’s a farm planet three systems over.

Cassa system, second planet from the sun.

It has a slow rotation and a continent close to the pole, which means that winters are long, and the nights are twenty hours out of the twenty-nine in the full day.

There’s only a local government at the northernmost settlement, and I’d bet a handful of credits they can be bribed. ”

I’m impressed. She’s thought of everything. I wrap my arms around her slender form, tucking her against me. “So how do we get there, and when?”

Her eyes are bright as she regards me. “When the pod is fully charged and operational, we can override it. The station here is still in emergency mode.” She twirls a finger, indicating our surroundings.

“So when the base ship is in emergency mode, pods can be manually rerouted to a viable planet without too much issue. The theory is that any escape is better than no escape. Used to be that the Homeworlders would rig a ship to the captain’s biological imprint, but if the captain went down, so did the whole ship. Fascinating, huh?”

“Mmm. So when do we go to this Cassa world? Tomorrow?”

“If the pod is fully charged by then, yes. I’m already downloading the maps to the Cassa system.

I’m also downloading ones to three hundred and twenty other systems, so by the time they figure out where we’ve gone, we’ll be off the radar.

It’ll take four months for the pod to get there, but we can go into stasis through all of it and wake up to fresh air.

” The look on her face turns to one of bliss, as if she’s already breathing in cool breezes.

My heart sinks. There’s one massive flaw in this plan. “I can’t go into stasis, Dana. A body in stasis is kept fed through a nutrient feed, and that doesn’t work for me. I need blood, and regularly.”

“Oh.”

“You can leave me behind.” I grit the words out reluctantly, but I mean them.

If only one of us can escape, it should be her.

Once they figure out my blood issues, they’ll sell me to some gladiator school somewhere.

But Dana is miserable as an overlooked, half-starved pet.

She deserves freedom and I want her to have it.

It’s obvious that while this station is not human friendly, it’s really not made for vampires.

“Nonsense. I’m not leaving you. If we can’t sleep, then we’ll just both stay awake. You feed on me and I’ll snack my way to the Cassa system.”

I’m surprised at her offer. “The pod is very small.”

“Then I hope you don’t mind me being in your face,” she teases. “Besides, we’re already crawling all over each other every chance we get.”

“You’d truly do that for me?”

Dana leans back against me, looping her arm around my neck. She drapes herself over me as if she owns me ... and I love it. “You think I’d let you starve? Or stay behind so they can experiment on you some more?”

“No.” My voice is gruff, my fangs extending to brush my tongue in response to my emotions. “I just don’t want you trapped—”

“I don’t want you trapped, either. We’re in this together. The enemy of my enemy is my best friend.” She leans farther back in my arms, until she’s looking up at me. “My lover, in fact.”

“I like that.” I cup her fragile jaw, caressing her with my thumb.

“So, small change of plans.” Her hands flutter in the air as she talks, her mind already hard at work on the new problem.

How her owner never saw her as intelligent is beyond me.

I’m impressed at her craftiness. “I’ve got money and some clothes prepared for the trip.

We’ll get supplies and cram as much as we can into the pod.

I’ll craft a ration list so I don’t run short, and we’ll just squeeze a bunch of noodles into the pod with us.

Luckily it’s just enough food for one person, right? ”

I nod. If she’s there, I need no food but her. I don’t even need water. Dana’s all I need.

By the end of the day, I’ve helped Dana pack and repack the supplies we’ll be cramming into the emergency pod with us.

The food is vacuum sealed into tiny pouches that expand when moistened, but each one still takes up some room and our quarters are extremely limited.

To make matters worse, she’s going to eat only once a day.

“It’ll be just like when Nasit feeds me,” she jokes.

I don’t laugh. I don’t like that she’s going to go hungry because I can’t go into stasis. “We can pack more.”

“I don’t think we can, actually,” Dana points out as she lines up the bags of supplies in the hall outside the still-charging pod. “We’re going to need room to move around.”

“Like you said, we can just be all over each other like we are now.” I move closer to her and wrap my arms around her, because I can’t get enough of touching her.

Of tucking her smaller body against mine and feeling her warmth, her softness, her sweet scent.

“We’ve got a whole station here, and we still end up sharing the same chair and the same bed. ”

“True, but—”

“No ‘but,’” I say. “You deserve to eat just as often as I do.”

“Hmm.” She seems like she wants to argue, but her fingers stroke lightly over my arm. My cock—and my fangs—respond, both lengthening. “Well, we can pack the pod and see what we can squeeze in.”

“Let’s do it, then.” Because I’m absolutely going to find a way to get more supplies into the pod. She’s not going to suffer. Not under my watch.