The Day Shift - Prequel Short Story #2
“If you want to know the truth, he came on to me like stink on shit and wouldn’t take one no for an answer.”
He said nothing, but his attention snapped to me.
“After I told him off, I pretended to fall asleep so he’d finally shut up. He’s rude, crude, and vulgar when no one is around to hear him. I’d be happy if you never assigned me to work with him again, but I didn’t want to whine like some neophyte who just learned to lap blood from a wound.”
Adrian’s scrutiny twisted my insides with apprehension. Some said he could see the lies in a person’s soul. If it was true, I had nothing to hide, at least. Nothing except my huge crush.
“You’ll submit a report.”
“Yes, sir,” I muttered.
“In the future, it would behoove you to mention any similar infractions against our code immediately to whoever is above you in the chain of command.”
“I’m not going to tattle every time someone screws around with me.”
His brows rose, and the enormous, granite wall that always stood between him and the rest of us crumbled slightly.
For one moment, he seemed approachable and genuine concerned, with unmistakable emotion on his handsome features.
“This isn’t grade school, and I don’t view legitimate reports as tattling.
A coven is one’s family and where a vampire should feel safest. If you don’t feel safe enough in Peter’s company to work a shift with him… ”
I snorted but declined further comment. Maybe I was jaded, but I’d seen what happened when the elite were accused of wrongdoing.
“Emmaleigh.”
“I can handle Peter. He doesn’t scare me. He’s just a dick with an overinflated ego.”
Maybe I imagined it, but I thought his mouth lifted in a faint smile. He ticked off another box on his inventory then resecured the lockbox lid. “All right. I think we’re good here. You want exterior or interior monitors?”
“The exterior is fine.”
We settled into matching leather chairs for what I imagined would be hours of silence, our elbows close enough to touch if I only shifted a little to the left. I smelled his cologne, or rather, the natural musk of him beneath it, a scent more alluring than any fabrication sold in a bottle.
“You know, I’ve seen a lot of vamps come and go from Dartmouth over the years,” he offered.
The uninvited morsel of gossip raising my brows. “Why? It’s beautiful here. Why would anyone want to leave?”
“Stevens doesn’t take shit from anyone.”
“Uh huh. Speaking of shit, what do you think of the mess that went down in Texas?” I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to capitalize on his conversational mood, accustomed to stern reprimands or Adrian answering me in monosyllables.
“I think they came out lucky that their entire coven wasn’t wiped.” He shrugged. “Council is still hunting for the rest of the perpetrators who flew the coop, and it’s only a matter of time before they track the last of them down and stake them out in the sun.”
“A bunch of idiots,” I mumbled.
He looked over at me, steely eyes focused on my face. “Aren’t you glad you transferred away from them last year?”
“The year before last, and yes, I am.”
“Has it been that long?”
So much for my secret hope that he’d noticed me at all.
“Yeah. Two years next month.” I cleared my throat and tried to focus on the monitors. “Anyway, I’m glad I’m gone. What they did was stupid, moving in on werewolf territory and organizing an attack on their Alpha.”
“It didn’t do much to create goodwill,” he agreed.
“We’re all kind of public enemy number one in the paranormal world now. I mean, everyone hated us before, and it’s only gotten worse. It’s only a matter of time before all of these shifter clans pull together and come after every vampire coven they can find.”
“There may be enmity between us, but they won’t commit genocide,” Adrian assured me.
I had my doubts. “Yet. They’re not ready to do it yet.”
“Trust me. They know there are worse things out there in the world than a few vampires.”
Worse than us? I shivered. “Like what?”
He left me in suspense. When I twisted the leather seat to face him, Adrian had fixed his attention on one of the monitors.
He didn’t answer me, tapping one of the screens in the security mosaic instead.
Its touch-sensitive interface expanded the screen and zoomed in on the subject of his interest, two younger vamps tiptoeing down one of the manor’s many corridors.
One of them opened a closet door, and both dipped inside.
“Aren’t you a little old to be a pervy peeping Tom?”
“They have rooms. They should use them.”
“The neophytes don’t have privacy. They’re paired up like college dorms, remember?”
He grunted, and I sighed. Silence fell with the weight of a theatrical curtain, restoring the mood back to the usual, somber tone between us.
“Someone’s been nipping into the blood bank during daylight hours,” Adrian volunteered.
The sudden admission startled me, and I blinked at him. “Why haven’t the other watches reported them, then?”
He shrugged. “Either they’re in on it, or they’ve missed it. That’s why I arranged to sit on this watch.”
Our coven’s blood bank operated on the honor system.
Neophytes didn’t receive access to the fridge until they passed the initial training stage, and the rest of us were limited to a respectable three bags a week.
Those able to compel humans to a state of amnesia were allowed to hunt among the rest of the population in New England as long as they obeyed three simple rules: go unseen, never kill, and make the humans forget afterward.
“Must be nice, getting to pick your rotation.”
On the screen, the closet door opened, and the two disheveled younglings emerged. Adrian’s brusque chuckle drew my attention.
“What?”
“Didn’t last very long.”
“There’s a reason it’s called a quickie.” Still, I had to agree. Had that even been five minutes?
His gaze fixed on my face in a smoldering look that made my breath catch and my pussy clench. “Trust me, Emmaleigh; there’s nothing quick about a good fuck.”
“Are you saying you couldn’t get a girl off in five minutes?”
“I could, but where’s the fun in that?” His voice lowered to a husky growl, colored by the hints of his original accent muted by decades of living in America. “Why guzzle the entire bottle in a sitting when you can savor it sip by sip?”
“Some might consider it a challenge, a way to prove their prowess.”
“Was that a challenge?”
Was it? I resisted the urge to fidget and stared back at him, meeting his gaze head on. “Maybe it was.”
He leaned forward in his seat and looked me up and down. “It’s either yes or no. There’s no in-between.”
“Yes,” I said on a moment of brash impulse, not believing for a second he’d follow through.
I was wrong.
Quicker than the eye could follow, Adrian moved against me, and his mouth came down over my lips.
Startled, I gasped against him then surrendered to the sweep of his tongue, savoring the unique, masculine taste.
It was more than a kiss; he practically devoured me, dominating my mouth with confident strokes.
Before I could recover from the shock of receiving a kiss from my crush, he hauled me up from the chair and put my back to the wall without breaking our hungry exchange.
Pinned by his body, his hands remained free to grasp the band of my leggings and tug them down my hips, revealing the lacy, semi-translucent triangle in front and my shaved mound.
“You’re wet.” His voice rolled, rumbling like a purr.
One strong, long-fingered hand cupped me between the thighs, teasing back and forth, while I craved the sensation of skin against skin—his bare fingers against my slick folds, his cock pounding into me until I couldn’t remember our purpose for being in the damned control room to begin with. “Is someone excited?”
Yes. God, yes.
His teeth scraped across my throat without breaking the skin. While my breaths quickened, his downward path continued, teasingly avoiding my breasts, lingering briefly at my navel, until he nipped my inner thigh and nudged my legs into a wider spread.
I looked down to see him kneeling on the floor in front of me.
No. He couldn’t possibly intend to…
“Four minutes,” I whispered.
His tongue lapped against the thin, dampened silk shielding my slit from his lascivious intentions.
Before I could try to shove them down, eager for the wet stroke of his tongue, he raised my left leg over his shoulder, then my right, and propped my body against the wall.
I grabbed onto his head, clutching two fistfuls of his dark curls as I released a pitiful whine.
His mouth and nose pressed against the silk, soaking through the fabric, never once dipping beneath the barrier.
It was maddening and wonderful all at once.
He touched me everywhere but where I wanted, tracing my divide and kissing my outer lips.
My clit throbbed with an undeniable ache each time he left me unfulfilled by skimming past it.
Despite my sexual frustration, it seemed too good to be true, like an improbable fantasy concocted by my drowsy mind. Did I really have this centuries-old and powerful vampire kneeling in worship between my thighs, gazing up at me with undisguised hunger in his sterling gray eyes?
Gonna be so mad if I’m dreaming. So damn mad.
By the time he found my clit, I was at the breaking point. He held eye contact as his thumb kneaded in playful circles, rolling over the tender button in one direction then the other.
Three minutes left? Or was it two? I’d lost track of the time.
“Adrian,” I whispered. “I need… I’m so close.”
“Mm…” One graze of my inner thigh with his teeth preceded the moment I’d been waiting for all along.
His lips surrounded my clit, only thin fabric between his tongue and my swollen pearl.
Pleasure gathered within me then swelled to the surface as waves of euphoria shuddered through my core.
Crying out, I tugged his hair with both hands, no longer able to control my actions.