The Nightlife San Antonio: (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (7 page)

Adrian
sat there, watching him. Cornered,
busted
.

“You’re not in trouble
, son. The military can use sociopaths with some decorum and sensibility. Men like you do quite well in the field, as your record shows. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the politicians running the U.S. have sociopathic tendencies. But it’s a damn shame, Corporal.”

What was the shame? The fact that he didn’t feel guilty? The fact that he actually enjoyed killing people, probably a lot more than he should?

“Sociopaths are the loneliest people in the world. They don’t really care about anyone else, and they don’t know how to love. They don’t ever really connect with anyone. They pretend to be like the rest of us, but they don’t even understand what it means to be human.”

T
hat’s me, the big pretender. Corporal Adrian Faulkner.

* * * *

Cool fingers traced along his stomach. Cool, wet lips touched his collar bone. Soft fabric covered breasts squished against his chest as eager lips suckled up the line of his neck. The prick of sharp teeth slid into the left side of his neck while cold arms with a wiry strength gripped him firmly around his torso.

He moaned in pain a
s the teeth dug in deeper, a pincer of small needle-points, but then the pain washed away in a flood of wondrous euphoria. As if dropped into a gushing river of joy, Adrian’s body was wracked with throbbing happiness.

His cock hardened, standing straight up in his boxer shorts and his hips bucked with the phenomenally awesome experience. Cool
, strong limbs wrapped around him to hold on tight, riding his convulsive joy. Fingers gripped his erection and stroked his full length.

Her skilled, steady
hand milked him as he shuddered in explosive release. “Oh My God!” The cascading pleasure threatened to drive him out of his mind. It just wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop.

She tugged
on his cock, harder and faster, as her teeth seated deeper into his neck. Adrian could feel her powerful suction draining away his life fluids, but he didn’t care. He floated in a new plane of reality, lost in the tempest of the most overwhelming experience of his life.

His cock firmly in her hand, her needle-sharp teeth slid off his nec
k. A cool wet tongue cleaned his neck thoroughly while her hand continued its pump-squeeze-slide routine. The woman knew how to give a hand-job.

He emerged from the fog of euphoria into the d
imly lit reality of his bedroom and the crazy chick’s face mere inches from his own. She grinned at him as she licked her lips, revealing the oversized canine teeth of a predator. This was no dream.

The woman had taken a solid bite out of him and stroked him off in the proce
ss.

Her low, sultry whisper vibrated in his gut.
“I wanted to show my appreciation for your help.”

“Sure
is good to be appreciated.” Regardless of her freaky chompers and the red sheen of his blood on her lips, he couldn’t help but grin back at her.

I must be high or losing my mind.

She snuggled in close and pressed her breasts against his arm while wrapping her legs around his thigh. Her lips just barely brushed his earlobe. “A little later, after I rest some more, I’ll prove to you just how much I appreciate your help.”

He considered her warm hand around his wet cock to be
solid proof, but he held his tongue. Adrian had learned a long time ago to take what he could get. He’d take that crazy piece of ass any day of the week.

* * * *

The sensation of being wrapped around his strong, warm body infused her with a feeling of contentment, satisfaction. She had this man to help her, and he didn’t seem to mind if she bit him. Well, he had complained a little, but nothing major.

This man was her only touchstone with reality. With no name, no history and no place to go, this man seemed her only source for answers.
He was her entire world, and he trusted her enough to let her sleep on top of him, fondling his erection. And he didn’t try to maul her. Trust is something earned, rarely given freely. She would have to give him the same trust in return.

Not much choice in the matter.

But for the first time she felt safe enough to sleep, to know that he would be there when she woke up. To know that she could feed when she needed to.

This man covered all her bases, even as his hand covered her ass in a warm squeeze.

* * * *

A pounding on the door woke Adrian from a sound sleep. He wasn’t expecting anyone. His parents never once showed up unannounced, and they knew he slept in from working the night shift.

Bang, bang, bang
.

Fuck.

“What the hell!”

He pushed the covers off and encountered a cool body wrapped around his torso,
one hand down his shorts. “Goddamn.” The girl hadn’t wasted any time making herself at home.

He peeked under the covers to see if she was wearing anything. Yep,
still in the t-shirt and shorts he had put on her earlier. So … the hand-job wet dream wasn’t actually a dream.

Interesting.

Bang, bang, bang
.

“Son of a bitch!”

He shoved her to the side and flew out of bed, straight for the front door. Somehow a cast iron skillet found its way into his right hand as he snapped through the locks and opened the door. He was cocked back and ready to swing. Full-on battle mode.

Luckily
, he recognized Detective Coronado’s pudgy face just in time to avoid smashing him to a bloody pulp.

“Whoa
, tiger, take it easy!” Coronado tried to step out of reach, but Adrian kept moving in on him, pushing his fat ass out to the edge of the front porch railing.

“What the hell are you doin
g? Don’t you know I sleep through the day? Don’t you know I work for a living?”

“
Hey, calm down! Drop the frying pan. I just want to talk.”

He still had that thing cocked back for a nose-crusher
. Adrian knew the weight of the pan would easily turn Coronado’s face to mush. He’d done it with the butt of his rifle several times in Iraq, and a cast iron frying pan was more substantial. But this was not Iraq, and the detective would lock him up for months if Adrian let that baby fly like he wanted to.

Man he wanted to so bad. Who did this son of a bitch think he was, waking h
im up in the middle of the day – especially when Adrian had a sweet piece of ass in his bed?

Ooops.
Girl, bed, cops, bad situation
. Like flipping a switch, Adrian turned it off, went straight into cover-your-ass mode. He set the pan down and turned to close the door behind him. He made certain his body blocked the detective’s view of his apartment.

Adrian
turned back to Coronado, channeling all the calm he could find. “Okay, now that I’m awake, what the hell do you want?”

The d
etective stared at him, a bit of surprise and shock on his face. Oops, another one of those inappropriate moments. Adrian often found himself struggling to meet with people’s expectations for civility and propriety. Someone always had their panties in a bunch, no matter what he said or did.

Coronado frowned then stood up straighter, away from the railing. “I need your report, now. We have a serious situation. The woman you picked up the other day, the
multiple gunshot victim, she escaped the hospital last night. We need to know anything she might have said, anything you noticed. Every detail counts.”

Adrian smiled. H
e couldn’t help it. “You lost her, eh? Don’t have a clue where she is?” The idea they didn’t know where to look gave him a perverse sort of pleasure.

Coronado frowned again. Chalk up another one on the inappropriate tally.

“No, we don’t. And every minute she’s on the streets is another chance for whoever tried to kill her to finish the job. We are pretty certain we know who she is. There are warrants for her in multiple jurisdictions, and she’s also wanted by rival cartels. There’s a chance this woman is the one they call La Reina, some kind of mythical drug queen out of South America.”

Adrian
filed that away for later discussion, sometime after he tapped that ass good and hard.

“So, you just want to arrest her
, right? That would look pretty damn good on your resume. Maybe catch a raise, your picture in the paper. Big, bad drug lord taken down by San Antonio PD. Coronado saves the day.”

The detective frowned even more
and started to protest, “Listen you little –”

“No, you listen. I will get over to your station and make a report when I get there. You know damn well all I saw was blood on the tile and fucking cockroaches. You know damn well that woman was out col
d, almost died on us in the ambulance. She never said a word, not one single word. So, unless you have a reason for standing here, ruining my day off, go shake down somebody else to get your drug bust. I ain’t the one.”

Coronado stared
Adrian down, a cold, calculated glare. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are with your frying pan, running around in your boxer shorts like a goddamn MMA fighter, but you would be wise to have some patience and respect when you deal with me or anyone else on the SAPD. Smartass gringos like you get bagged for six months just for talking shit to a police officer.”

Adrian glanced down at the cast iron
, considering how easy it would be to get that frying pan wrapped around this asshole’s face before the detective could pull his gun and click off the safety. These fat pigs don’t even know what it means to be in a real war. They ran around with their flashing lights and spit-shined shoes, and they have never once been to a place where every corner, every street, every window, hides an enemy with an automatic weapon or an IED filled with nails and homemade explosives.

He could take this cop down in a second and hand
him his ass on a platter. But, he knew that would be stupid, foolish, a huge mistake. Still …

Times like this Adrian longed for a return to the combat zone, where the rules of engagement were clearly defined an
d usually in his favor. Just for the hell of it, he grinned again. “I said I’d be there, and I’ll be there.”

“Better watch yourself.
Take your meds or whatever you need to calm down. Get rid of that shitty attitude.”

Adrian stood there staring at him, his hand itching for the cast
iron that would flatten Coronado’s face permanently. Not too many guys get up after having their skull caved in. Adrian hadn’t seen one yet.

The detective waddl
ed off, shaking his head, hurt pride in action. Adrian double-bolted the door behind him and watched out the peephole as the detective made his way to his unmarked police car in the parking lot.

A split-second later a smil
ing-tanned visage passed across his view and tapped on the door.

Fucking Crenshaw.

So much for getting any damn sleep, or a piece of ass.

Adrian groaned
, unlocked the double bolts, and jerked open the door. Crenshaw retreated hastily with his hands in the air. “Don’t hit me with a frying pan, bro.”

Crenshaw
grinned like an idiot. Must have watched the whole thing from his peephole. Of course, he wouldn’t come out to say hi when the cops were around. Crenshaw’s probation officer had a
zero
police contact policy.

Adrian couldn’t help but laugh. They would probably be laughing over this one for days. “You know how I am when I get woken up too early.”

“Dude, I swear you’re a fucking vampire the way you sleep all day. I thought you were gonna brain him for sure. Wish I coulda recorded that shit. Sure you’ve never been to prison? You got balls the size of Texas.”

Blue balls maybe
. Adrian looked back over his shoulder, to the open bedroom door, and the glimpse of pale forearm draped off the mattress. All he wanted was to go back to bed, but the world had conspired against him. The world and Crenshaw.

Adrian was wide awake now.

“Yeah, I was sleeping pretty good. Last night was rough.” Adrian recalled the woman in his bed as she had clamped around him, sucking on his neck, so much stronger than she should be …

“
Cool. I’ll let you get some sleep.”

“A little late for that. I’m up now.”

Crenshaw looked like he was headed back into his apartment door, but then he stopped and pegged Adrian with a searching look. “You didn’t have nothing to do with that woman he was talking about, did you? The drug queen?”