Sweet Blood of Mine (12 page)

Or maybe that was just me and my new phase of hyper-puberty.

I couldn't sense their thoughts so much as feel the sexual beasts lurking behind the civilized façade people wear in public. I grabbed the cheapest crapper I could find and rushed to the front of the store with it tucked under my left arm. It was only when the attractive Asian cashier gave me a startled look that I realized how odd it must look for a chubby kid to be toting around a heavy toilet one-armed without breaking a sweat. In fact, it hadn't even occurred to without breaking a sweat. In fact, it hadn't even occurred to me that the toilet must be something heavy.

Despite her confusion, a part of her grew aroused by my display. Vaporous tendrils of feminine alure hung before me, waiting, wanting, begging. Al I had to do was

—

"No!" I shouted and scared the crap out of the poor girl. She jumped a foot back from me. "Uh, sorry," I said and pointed at my ear. "Teeny tiny Bluetooth headset. Idiot brother. Realy rude, I know." I paid and got out of there.

I cooked up a quick stir-fry at home while Dad snored fitfuly on the couch. He'd apparently returned home while I was out and reeked of stale cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, vomit, and a sickening mix of other unidentifiable odors. The house smeled more like a low-rent bar every day. The odor sickened me even worse now that my nose had gotten a zilion times better at its job. I had to snap him out of this cycle of self-destruction soon. I asked him several times about money while I cooked. He grunted once, roled over, and went back to sleep. I had no idea if the house or utilities were even being paid for. A mountain of mail teetered on the kitchen table. I didn't even know
why
I should care. I was a teenager, not a responsible adult. But I kept imagining me and Dad begging for scraps on the streets after the house was repossessed.

But I didn't know the first thing about finances or making payments. Mom's computer stil sat in her office.

As far as I knew, she'd always taken care of the household money, and one of the few chinks in my parent's relationship had been how awful my dad was at handling it. I turned on Mom's computer and stared at the login screen. Just great.

After trying al sorts of possible passwords and failing each time, I groaned and sat back in the black office chair. The desk was immaculate with every bit of paper filed away and each item on the desk lined up perfectly with its neighbor.

Mom was OCD when it came to cleanliness and pretty much everything else. Which was why a yelow post-it note stuck to the side of the pencil-sharpener caught my eye.

I snatched it and recognized Dad's handwriting.

The username and password gave a cheery wave from the scrap of paper along with some rudimentary instructions for using the computer. I logged in and found a document on the desktop which told Dad in no uncertain terms not to mess with the automatic payments Mom had set up for keeping the bils paid.

But where is the money coming from?
I found the answer after logging onto the bank's website. The checking account had a number with seven figures in it. I counted it twice to be sure and choked back a gasp. Who had my parents robbed to get that much money? I swore under my breath. I thought I'd known my parents. Now I felt like the kid of criminal masterminds. Could the money have something to do with Mom's departure? Were they part of a Mr. and Mrs. Jones type conspiracy? The amount of money in their bank account birthed a milion new questions although it made me feel a lot less guilty about raiding their rainy-day stash.

I scoured the computer for more information but came up empty. The documents folders and everything else were empty. I stared at the system files on the screen and was about to shut the computer down when I noticed a folder that seemed out of place at the root of the hard drive named
Copy of hash codes
. I wasn't a computer expert, but I knew enough that this wasn't a normal system folder even though the name seemed harmless enough. I opened it and found a bunch of files that I managed to open in a text viewer program. Not that it mattered. Something like a combination of gibberish and programming code was al I found inside the files. It struck me as very odd because unless Mom was a secret hacker or computer genius, she couldn't have written this stuff.

Had she made this folder copy by accident while Had she made this folder copy by accident while removing other files? I didn't know but I wanted a copy of my own just in case it might be important to figuring out where she'd gone. I grabbed a flash drive from my room and copied the folder over before shutting the computer down.

I wanted to analyze the files some more, but I glanced at the wal clock and realized I was running late for my appointment with Victoria.

The moment I entered the gym, I knew it had been a terrible mistake. Not because Stacey the vampire was there, but the sheer volume of sweaty sexy girls threatened to overload my senses. I had to think about basebal so hard I felt the veins in my head bulging. Everywhere I turned I was attacked by sexual desires and longings. It was insane. I knew what a victim of Viagra over-dosing must feel like. I puled my T-shirt down a bit further over my shorts and found Victoria in the free-weights section of the gym. The dense cloud of male stink in this area overpowered the feminine alure of the cardio section.

Weights clanged, men grunted in agony, and two muscular guys posed in front of the mirrors that ran along every wal.

Just my kind of place.

"You ready?" she asked.

More ready than you could imagine, babe.
"I guess." I was not looking forward to the torment awaiting me.

We went to the bench press first. She stacked on some meager weight. I pumped it up and down with no problem. She added a couple of larger plates. No problem there, either. I was so surprised with myself, I forgot to be impressed.

Victoria arched an eyebrow at me. "Are you juicing or something? That's over two-hundred pounds and you're not even breaking a sweat."

I shrugged. "I had orange juice this morning."

She roled her eyes.

Before long she had al the forty-five pound plates she could fit on either side of the barbel and just about every dude in the testosterone-soaked iron-pumping section of the gym stared at me with unadulterated jealousy. The barbel sagged dangerously on each end. I pushed it up and down several times without a hint of feeling tired. Victoria stared open-mouthed.

"I don't believe it," she said. "This isn't possible unless you were totaly faking it the other day." She waved her hands in the air over the barbel, apparently looking for invisible wires. She tried to move the barbel, grunting and jerking on it, but couldn't budge it.

"Lemme see that," said a guy roughly the size of a buffalo, with bulging arms and a shaved head. He lay down on the bench, muttering curses to himself. Then he started slamming his chest with alternating hands while screaming obscenities. "You can do this, Buddy! Come on, Buddy, you got this! Make momma proud!" He pushed on the barbel. His face went from pink to purple in about two seconds. His veins bulged and pulsed alarmingly.

"Do you need a lift-off?" I asked.

He roared. He screamed. He said terrible things about his mother and his upbringing. He gave up. Stood.

Glared at me. Then held out his fist for a bump folowed by the asteroid explosion that makes life worth living.

"You're the real deal," he said with a shake of his head. "Man, you gotta tel me what you're on."

"Teenage hormones," I said.

He wandered away, cursing and mumbling. A few other muscle-bound dudes grumbled to themselves. I could make out most of what they were saying despite the mournful howling of a country singer on the ceiling speakers. What in the world had Stacey done to me?

"We're not done yet," Victoria said, face glowing redder than her hair. She marched me down a hal, into a redder than her hair. She marched me down a hal, into a private office, and sat down on the corner of a desk. I sat opposite of her. She looked
pissed
. "What kind of joke is this?"

"It's not a joke."

"You come in here weak as a lamb the other day, now you're pumping more iron than should be humanly possible. Look at you! You're chunky, not muscular."

"Thanks. I appreciate that."

"Something's going on here and you're not leaving until I get some answers."

My eyes settled on the ghostly vapors hovering around her. Without thought, I latched onto them just like I had the woman in the grocery store. Victoria's scarlet face paled. Her eyes widened while her mouth formed a shocked "O". I stood. She jumped up from the desk and attacked me with a sloppy wet kiss. Then it was a tangle of limbs and clothes as we made out on the desk.

My second brain demanded I rip off her clothes and go al the way as a hand ran up her bare calf, her toned thighs, and further onward to glory. The hopeless romantic in my other brain told me to resist. I wanted her so bad I couldn't take it anymore. She was apparently gripped by the same notion because her hands fumbled with the knotted drawstrings on my shorts as a war of thoughts raged in my mind.

Rip off her clothes. Pull her hair. She is yours.

Dominate her!

What about true love? What about saving your
virginity for the perfect woman? This is your gym
instructor, for goodness sake! Snap out of it!

The hopeless romantic part of me was right. I was about to blow my virginity on a woman I hardly knew, much less loved. Katie was my true love. Even if she hated me.

Even if she thought Brad was the one for her.

I knew this wasn't right but my body refused to listen. Victoria had a death grip on my shorts. I tried to think about basebal. No good. I focused on Katie, the love of my life. For a second, I thought it worked. Then my hands moved to help Victoria with my drawstrings. I was going to lose my virginity to a woman I didn't love and there was nothing I could do about it. What teenage boy wouldn't trade places with me right this moment? What kind of a moron was I? Wasn't this what I realy wanted?

To have women want me? Why else had I asked Crye—

Elyssa—to help me?

Elyssa.

Her fiery violet eyes flashed in my head for a brief second. My body froze up. Victoria laughed in delight as she puled loose the knot. I targeted the door to the office and bolted for it, spinning around as Victoria's death grip on the drawstrings puled them clean out of my shorts. I stumbled out the door, back into the gym proper and bowled over a guy who was warming up with stretches.

After apologizing and puling up my shorts, I casualy walked for the exits as if I had not almost had sex with my trainer and dropped my drawers in front of a strange man.

Despite my frayed nerves, I felt recharged and better than ever. I felt as if I were taking a part of Victoria with me. I had read in Cosmo losing your virginity was like that. Technicaly, I hadn't lost my virginity, but I could have if I'd realy wanted to, and wasn't that almost as good? I faced the rows of treadmils lining the entrance to the gym and pumped one fist in the air—since my other hand was holding up my shorts.

Startled looks greeted my burst of post-almost-sex enthusiasm. I didn't give a crap. I stepped outside, barely resisting the urge to skip like a child with a lolipop to my car. I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle and my improved senses interpreted this information. Something female but not quite human approached from behind.

Entering the dark parking lot with little more than my Entering the dark parking lot with little more than my almost-sex with Victoria on my mind had been a mistake.

The hot sensation burning between my shoulder blades felt alien compared to what I'd sensed from the women inside the gym, but something about it seemed very familiar. I spun around in time to see Stacey's delicate white fingers reaching where my back had been.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and jacked her against a windowless black van with a theme that hovered somewhere between the A-Team and child molester. She let out a surprised cry. Her eyes widened in delight.

Thankfuly, the elastic band on my shorts managed to cling to my waist instead of dropping to the ground.

"My little morsel. You've changed." She smiled prettily and with a touch of innocence.

"Don't try your tricks with me. What are you?"

Her irises, swirling amber pools of hypnosis, tried to draw me into their depths. I shook off the effect and reached for the hot sensuous vapors that swirled around her, as I'd done with Victoria. They slipped away from me like steam in the wind. Stacey flashed a wicked smile and purred. Abruptly she jerked her arms free, spun us around and pinned me to the van. Then she licked my face and peppered me with hot kisses.

"You." Kiss. "Are." Kiss. "So." Lick. "Desirable, my tender little morsel."

I tried to push her off me but despite my newfound strength, she had leverage and was in better shape. I wasn't entirely helpless, though. I ducked under her arms and crawled away on my knees. My shorts chose this moment to fal down. She clutched her ribs and burst into hysterical giggles.

"What's so funny?"

"You are a true delight. It's such a bloody shame I cannot drink you in." She inhaled a deep breath and regained her composure, though a radiant smile lit her face.