Seven
CJ
The impact of the water is so forceful, it might as well be another car.
Water pours in around us, filling the car.
Baz tries to pull me out, but my seatbelt is tightened from the impact, holding me against my seat. The buckle won’t give no matter how hard I press down.
This is my panic point.
Suddenly, I am ten years old, playing with my seatbelt in the backseat of my mother’s Camry, accidentally tightening and locking it in place. Her words ring in my ears as the water rises against my chest.
“You just had to mess around, Celia Jane. Now you have to deal with the consequences.”
“I can’t. I can’t get out. I am stuck.” My voice is shaky. My hands frantic. And the water rises to my neck.
Baz pulls at the seatbelt, and despite his strength, it doesn’t give.
“Stupid contraptions,” he mutters. “You foolish humans, strapping yourselves to death machines.” He rips the plastic off the side of the car. The belt loop is soldered to the metal frame.
“Seatbelts save lives,” I say as the water rolls up to my chin.
Baz tilts his head at me. “Really?”
He leans down and bites through the tough belt fabric, shredding it at the edge but it doesn’t break completely.
“Damn it!” he shouts, dunks his head underwater, and bites it again.
“Bronco really knows how to make a safety belt.” I tilt my head up to keep my mouth out of the water. “This thing is like, seriously strong. Vampire strong. Hah, I should pitch that to them as a marketing slogan if I make it out of this alive.”
Baz bites a third time and the seatbelt keeps shredding up the middle, not across. He’ll have to bite through every piece.
The water covers my face, and I switch from humor to counting.
One, two, three…
Humans can live three weeks without food.
Three days without water.
Three minutes without air.
I don’t know where I learned this. It is one of those things I just know. The same way I know righty-tighty, lefty-loosey. It is burned into my brain from my childhood. A lesson that was strong enough to stay, even if its origin was lost.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty…
There’s no way I’m going to make it to one minute, let alone three.
Baz bites down on the seatbelt again, just as the clouds roll in over my eyes, and darkness takes hold.
I wake up gasping and coughing on the riverbank.
“CJ, answer me!” Baz yells in my face.
“Jesus, why are you shouting?”
“Why am I shouting? Are you kidding me? I thought you were dead. All the color left your face. And your heart…” He drags his hand down over his own soaking wet, pale face.
Vampires have less color as a general rule, but they’re not as pale as movies and books would have you believe. It’s more of a Swedish complexion, but I’d say Baz is paler than normal right now.
“Did it stop?” I reach up and touch my chest where my heart is. It’s definitely pounding.
“Mine did,” he huffs and falls back into a seated position on the muddy riverbank next to me.
I look around us. We are on a rather pretty, lush, muddy-as-fuck riverbank under the St. Phillippe bridge, and my new car—fun for all of a few hours—is crunched and submerged just under the surface of the river.
“Fuck. I don’t understand. That thing came out of nowhere. What was it?”
“A deer,” Baz answers. “The Bronco is equipped with auto brakes.”
The water laps up onto the mud as though something nearby has shifted.
“We should move. There are going to be gators in here.”
“You don’t need to worry about gators.” Baz sounds frustrated, tired, and a hair annoyed.
I reach up and touch my head where I must have smacked it. It’s definitely bleeding. “I don’t need to be in a car crash and a gator attack on the same day. I don’t think I can handle that. And I’m pretty sure they can smell blood.”
“So can I,” Baz says. “I can also smell gators and sharks and that caramel and pistachio perfume you wear. I’ve got us covered, Duchess. The gators are over there.” He points to the left, as if somehow that’s more comforting.
I glance down at my wrists where I spray my perfume every morning. The fact that he knows the specific scent is not lost on me.
I blink a couple of times and roll my neck around. “Why do I feel so weird? Like, I’m dizzy but also super awake. And my mouth tastes like I got a mouthful of metal or mud or something.” I lick my lips. “Oh God, did I eat mud?”
“It’s blood. I fed you.”
“You what? Am I going to turn into a vampire now?” I reach up and feel my top teeth.
He shakes his head, his annoyance melting into laughter. “You really know nothing about us, do you? It was just a few drops. I dripped it into your mouth, just to get your heart started again.”
“Started? You mean it actually did stop?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you look so pale?”
“Yes. I just need a few minutes to recharge. Bloodletting is tougher on vampires than on humans. We don’t recover as quickly.”
“Huh, weird. Y’all give it out so freely in books and movies.”
“For the gazillionth time, books and movies aren’t real.”
“Listen, I know aggravated moody vamp is kind of your brand, but I’m sitting in a muddy riverbank with a vampire who just restarted my heart by giving me his blood.
Don’t tussle with me about what’s real and what’s not.
I’m learning as I go. Here,” I hold my caramel and pistachio scented wrist out to him.
The side eye he gives me could kill.
“You took care of me, let me take care of you.”
He grimaces and turns away from me.
“Hey, dickhead. I promise to fight you later. But for now, for the sake of fighting off gators if I need you to, I’d like you at full strength. Take a few pulls, would you?”
He grumbles something in French, grabs onto my arm like it’s a chicken wing, and bites in just barely, making little pulls with his lips. Little suctions that light every electrical impulse in my body.
The throbbing between my legs hits immediately. Only, this time it isn’t pleasurable in the ways it has been so far. It isn’t sweet or hot or fun or sexy.
It’s fucking carnal.
I fight an extremely strong impulse to bite him back.
I reach over to the side and grab onto a log with my free hand, digging my fingernails in.
I close my eyes and lean my head back. The seam in my jeans creating pressure against my clit is excruciating, and I press myself into it, my lower spine rolling in a way I didn’t know I was capable of, especially after almost dying in a horrific car crash.
And then I realize it isn’t my jeans. It’s Baz’s hand. Between my legs.
Jesus-fucking-God-yes.
We are literally amid wreckage, muddy and bleeding on the side of a river infested with gators, and I am grinding Baz’s hand as he ever so gingerly sips my blood.
He pulls me onto his lap with swiftness and ease, and pushes my shirt up over my breasts.
I sigh, feeling him hard and ready against me and the pressure is even better than his hand. I roll my hips forward, desperately wishing these pesky pants would get out of the way, and Baz leans in, engulfing my left nipple with his lips, and sucks three times before I feel teeth penetrate my skin.
I cry out, not even bothering to hold back. I couldn’t if I wanted to. He moves his mouth over my nipple expertly sucking, no, suckling. I moan loud enough for the gators three counties away to hear.
I look down, and Baz’s eyes are up and trained on mine.
I’ve given head plenty of times in my life, and know that eye contact while doing it enhances things… but I've never been on the receiving end of that scenario.
My eyes start to roll back in my head as Baz suckles. Ugh, I'm going to lose it. I’m going to come right here. Right now. Right now.
He pops off my breast, releasing me just long enough to say, “don’t you dare close your eyes, Duchess. Keep them on me. That is not a request. That’s an order from your king.”
“You’re not my king,” I manage to say between breaths.
“Not yet,” he says and brings his mouth to my other nipple.
My orgasm hits harder than the car hit the water, slamming into my clit and pulsing out to the rest of my body like shockwaves. Baz continues to pull little suctions of blood from my nipple until the shockwaves turn into gentle ripples. Finally he releases me, muddy and bloody and spent.
He never even took my pants off.
“Are y’all okay?” A voice yells from the bridge and I look up.
There’s an older couple standing on the edge where the Bronco broke the side rail. “You need help?” the woman yells.
“Or privacy?” the man adds.
The mortification waves roll in as the orgasm waves roll out.
“We’re fine, thank you,” Baz answers calmly. “No need to call the police or stay. You can continue on your walk.”
And they do, as if they hadn’t just caught us mud-humping under a bridge.
Jesus, who am I right now? What would my mother think?
“I'm sorry,” Baz says. “I'm not supposed to do that.”
“What?” Disappointment heats my cheeks. “Why not?”
“This is a business arrangement. I’m not supposed to touch you. I crossed a line.”
“Um, I'm okay with it.” To be honest, I wish he’d crossed it a bit more.
“We’ll talk about this later. Right now we need to get back home. Are you alright?” He checks me over.
“Mhmm. A little tired.” Not necessarily from the accident. That orgasm was next level.
He gently inspects my head wound. “This may need stitches. It’ll scar if we don’t get you back to Wes soon.”
“What about the car?”
“Leave it. We’ll get you another one.” Baz offers me his hands and pulls me to my feet.
“What about Elliot?”
“You are more important. We are taking care of you first. Period. Then we will see to the douchebag… assuming Wes lets you out of the house again. He’s even more protective than I am.”
I don’t get that vibe from Wes at all, but I don’t argue about it right now.
With the adrenaline wearing off, my head hurts… a lot.
Baz slips an arm around my waist and helps me up the muddy bank.
“Come on, Duchess. Let’s get you home.”
I take one last look at the river. At the mangled guardrail. At the faint outline of my brand-new Bronco beneath the water.
Then something on the road above catches my attention.
“Baz?”
He follows my stare.
There, standing perfectly still at the edge of the trees, is the deer.
Watching us. And I might just be crazy, but it looks… angry.
It takes one slow step backward.
And disappears.