Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years) (10 page)

When he had caught his breath, Danny straightened and grabbed me by the shoulders. "How did he know you were going to be here?"

"What's to say he did?" I jerked my shoulders from his grip and started walking back to the church. Now that I was sure Oscar hadn't been leading Danny into a trap, I was free to be pissed off at both of them.

Danny caught my arm and turned me to him. He held both my wrists this time. We were no more than a few inches from one another. He was still breathing hard and sweating. A delicious salt smell covered his skin and I could see his pulse beating hard in his neck. He was too full of adrenaline to notice that I was exhibiting none of the same symptoms.

It was a good thing, too. If I had broken into a sweat, the pretty white chiffon dress would be a pale pink by this time. Certainly not the easiest thing to explain to someone for whom vampires existed only in print and on screen.

Danny's grip on my wrists tightened. "You've been lying about him from day one, Lee. I want to know who he is."

Let's see, well, he's a master vampire. I think. At least he's got clout over all the other vampires in his little group. He kissed me once. I kind of liked it. His name is Oscar.

Instead of saying any of that, I pressed my lips into a thin line and glared at Danny.

"At least admit that's the same guy who took you from the school."

I nodded. There was little room to deny it. Even if they didn't have Oscar's face on camera, they had enough of his body and long hair captured on video to tell it was the same person.

"Good, now it doesn't matter that you won't see the sketch artist again. I can do it and I won't have to worry about your intentionally screwing up any details."

I felt my whole expression widen. From habit, I drew a deep breath. "He doesn't know anything," I said. "They just used him as a messenger. You'll only put him in danger."

"I'm not stupid, Lee." Danny let go of my wrists and grabbed me by one elbow, turning me on the sidewalk. "I know when you're lying to me. You think it doesn't hurt when you do that?"

I didn't answer and he marched me back in silence to where his car was parked in the church lot. We drove home, still not talking, and then he went into the spare bedroom that served as his home office.

He slept in there sometimes on a fold-out futon. It was always when I pushed a little too hard at him, when he was still trying to play the protector and pretending that he didn't want me as badly as I wanted him. That night was no different.

I went to bed alone...

Hungry...

Vulnerable.

***

I can't say when in the night the dream began, only that it woke me a little before two in the morning. It was bloody and sensual as hell. I woke with one finger against my clit, another in my mouth that was bleeding from a self-inflicted bite wound.

Mija
.

I tried to push the word and the waking images that came with it from my mind.

Now, mija.

My body jerked, my cunt feeling like a fist or incredibly thick cock had just been pushed hard into it. Only, instead of reeling in pain, the walls of my pussy were clenching tight, trying to catch hold of the fleeting sensation and caress it for more pleasure.

You know you want to come, mija.

A fraction of a second passed, followed by Oscar's wicked chuckle inside my head at the double entendre. He was waiting for me, at the church. And while I didn't want to go to him, he was right about my wanting to come. I wanted it bad. And, more than that, I wanted...

Blood, mija.

Yes.
The word was a sigh in my mind.

My sigh.

My acquiescence.

I dressed in the dark and left through the bedroom window, my movements inhumanly slow so as to avoid tripping the security lights Danny had installed in the back yard.

We had driven to services, but the walk to St. Vincent's was less than a dozen blocks. I was familiar with the church grounds. I had trespassed there at night since my mother had first met my step-father. Sandy, as she would much of her life, had lived with her dad back then and Paul had lived at his mother's. In between the two houses were the school and church. Sometimes when Sandy was drunk and mad at Paul, she would drag me back to her father's, taking a shortcut across St. Vincent's. Sometimes she left me with her much younger sister, just six years my senior, and I'd spend the night on the swings while my aunt partied with some of the neighborhood bad boys.

I wondered, finding a door to the church open and stepping inside, if any of those bad boys had ever been Oscar?

"Right now, I only have eyes for you, Lee."

This was no voice in my head. I jerked my gaze to the small hallway that led to the restrooms and, past those, a cloakroom that was unused outside of monsoon season. The doors to the cloakroom were open. The voice had come from beyond the room's threshold.

There was little light in the hallway, even less in the cloakroom. I could still see inside the room with my enhanced vision. There were racks with hangers and a long bench for taking off rain shoes perhaps. But I couldn't see Oscar.

I sniffed the air before I stepped into the room, my nose telling me an instant too late that he was standing alongside the door. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight to him.

I didn't fight him. He had something I both wanted and needed. There was no point fighting him until it was clear he had no intention of helping me.

"Why were you outside this morning?" I only halfway cared what his answer might be. He had fed heavily tonight and I could smell it on him, on his clothes, his skin. As tight as he held me, I pressed tighter still as the blood's odor cloyed at my senses.

"I wanted you to know I'm still watching you...I'm still interested."

"In what?" Shamelessly, I had pulled my arms free and wrapped them around his neck. My body had started doing other things I was only faintly aware of - moving against his with a flex of my hip or chest muscles. He dropped his hands down to my bottom and cupped me closer to him.

"In you, of course." He brushed his lips against my throat, his fangs out and lightly scraping my skin.

I thought back to the day he had blackmailed me into leaving the protection of the high school and my police guard with a picture of my nine-year-old cousin, Casey. He had called me something that day...

"Your freak among freaks?" I said, running my mouth along the line of his jaw.

"Well, Lee, you're a very beautiful freak. Far too beautiful for that
cholo
with a badge you've been fucking."

I laughed at him calling Danny a
cholo.
There were no khaki pants or flannel shirts in Danny's wardrobe. He was college-educated, well-groomed and all around damn good looking. Even with Oscar's unnatural perfection, I would have preferred to be wrapped in Danny's embrace, running my tongue over his throat, pressing my mound against his erection.

Oscar was clearly reading my thoughts. "But you're here with me, Lee. So maybe he's a homo and not a
cholo
."

Starting to think I wasn't going to get a drop of blood from Oscar, I drew back as far as his embrace would allow. "You're the one obsessed with another man."

He laughed and spun me so that my body hit hard against the wall. With one hand around my throat, he pinned me in place while his other hand undid the top button of my jeans.

"Unreasonable, maybe, but I was hoping you'd show up in the dress from this morning." He pushed my zipper down and slid a finger beneath the band of my lace panties. "And that bare excuse for a bra you were wearing under it."

Easing his grip on my neck, he started stroking my clit. "I had visions of me down on my knees, your dress up around your hips while I licked that sweet pussy of yours."

That's what he'd done in the dream, almost making me come alone in my bed. I was starting to tremble now from the memory, the force of his words and expert strokes.

"Slide your jeans down, Lee."

I obeyed, shamed by the eagerness of my quick movements.

He let go of my throat and offered his own as he pressed his chest against my breasts. He pushed, forcing me higher up the wall, letting my knees bend and my legs spread around his hips and the wedge of his hand between my thighs.

I bit into the flesh of his neck as his fingers entered me. It was blood for blood as I felt my healed maidenhead surrender to his hard thrust.

"Does Officer Danny know you can be such a little slut, mija?" Oscar teased.

I growled but didn't release my hold on his throat. His blood was a rich chaos of other peoples' memories and emotions. I held it in my mouth, pressed my tongue flat against his neck as my lips formed a tight seal against his skin. He eased his fingers from me to tease only the clit, rubbing, flicking and tugging for tortuously slow minutes. And then he was several fingers into me again, hard and deep in one breath, breaking me all over again.

"And how do you hide this, mija? Fresh and tight and new every time he fucks you..."

When I didn't answer, he filled me thicker, only his thumb outside me, stroking my clit. It was a feral exploration - my teeth, his neck, the merciless thrusts of his fingers in my cunt. We ground against each other until I lost control, releasing his throat as my orgasm exploded inside me. Oscar dipped his head and kissed a line along my collar bone as his hand still teased my pussy. With no thought of any consequences, I leaned my head back against the wall, my face turned up toward the ceiling with my eyes closed as small tremors of pleasure continued to rock through my body.

I had no idea the church had installed a security camera in the room or that I would soon be sitting in a small office of the Maryvale PD watching a night vision playback of the whole scene.

***

I could hear Danny's teeth grinding as the video played. It was just the two of us in his office. He was sitting behind his desk. The door was locked and the shade on the window that looked out onto the larger bay of desks was down.

He was holding the remote to the VCR and I could hear the plastic casing creak from his tight grip. I watched, chewing at my bottom lip until I could taste blood. I didn't ask him to stop, just sat straight backed in my chair absorbing the pain I was causing him while I kept my gaze focused on the screen.

When the tape reached its end, Danny tapped the remote against his desk. "Should I rewind, any part you missed or want to see again?"

I shook my head stiffly. His question was rhetorical, meant to hurt and it did. But I couldn't allow myself to cry - how would I explain the blood tears? I wanted to, though. It was all I could do to hold them back. And maybe my tears would have eased his anger and hurt, both of which were clearly at a boiling point.

"Really? Because I'm kind of partial to when you tilt your face up to the camera - right before you dress and leave and then your friend trashes the place."

My own anger surfaced, but it wasn't directed at Danny. Oscar had made sure before leaving the church that someone would look at the security camera footage.

"Do you have anything to say, Lee?"

If I looked at him, I would cry. If I opened my mouth to say anything, I would cry. I sat still, thin lipped and unblinking.

Danny stood and took the tape from the machine. Slowly, he pulled the videotape out from its holder and looped it around his hand.

"Father Craig..." His shoulders tensed and he dumped the empty cassette into his trash can. He ran the loose tape between his thumbnail and the side of his index finger. "Father Craig brought me the tape after recognizing you from services."

The wait while the whole of the tape played through his hands again was agonizing, but I couldn't break his silence. When the last of the tape had been squeezed through his grip, he balled it up and shoved it in a gym bag.

"He doesn't want anyone to know..." He stopped again, clearly thinking about what I'd done inside the church and that Father Craig, his priest, had seen at least some part of my actions. "He doesn't want this affecting the school or church's reputation, so, no charges against you or your...friend."

His patience broke completely and he slammed his hands down on the arms of the chair I was sitting in. He jerked the chair, with me in it, closer to him as he bent down. Sticking his face in front of mine, he stared hard at me.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

I love you. I'm sorry. Why the fuck did you have to sleep in your office last night?

I said none of those things, just stared back.

He broke away and wrapped his hands around his head for a few seconds. His hand shot out, stopping open palmed a few feet from my chest. "Give me your cell phone."

I reached into my pocket, pulled out the cell he had given me and handed it to him. He thumbed through the call list and texts. I knew he'd find nothing but the messages we had sent to one another while he was on duty. Outside of school, he was the only one I talked to and I hadn't given anyone the number.