Blood Doll Read online

  “Do you have a hotel room anywhere? I can imagine you’d like to have fresh clothes that fit.”

  “I hadn’t found one yet,” she said through chattery teeth. The wind had obviously gotten to her—her cheeks were pink from the cold. At least here, the afternoon’s warmth had melted the majority of the snow. Most of it had been reduced to salted slush piled up in the gutters. “My car is at the Alewife T-station. My stuff is there.”

  “We can go get it and find you a place to change,” he replied, and started to run again. It wasn’t hard to adjust the course, and in a matter of minutes, he was placing her on her feet and taking her by the hand. “Lead the way.”

  Still shivering, Lana led him toward her car. Not at all surprising to him, she stopped in front of a red Volkswagen Beetle—the old model. The car, despite her severe nature, seemed a good fit for her. Opening the hood of the car—it always messed with him that the engines were in the back on these things—she lifted a small duffel bag and started for the restroom at the end of the deck.

  Again he resisted the urge to follow her and convince her to do wicked things, but only just. When she reappeared in heavy clothing with her hair pulled up into a high ponytail, he sighed.

  Christian opted to let her drive into town—this late in the evening would leave her plenty of parking options, plus it would make for an easier and more scentless getaway should they have to make one. Instead of taking the driver’s seat, she handed her keys to him.

  “You know the city better than I do,” she explained as she settled into the passenger seat. Once they were on the road, she turned to face him. “To get to Sarah, you said I have to become like her… you mean I have to become addicted to vampire blood and be willing to become one, don’t you?” With his lips pressed into a grim line, Christian nodded. “How long does Sarah have left?”

  “I haven’t seen her in weeks now…but judging by the level of addiction and the way she was treated last time I did see her, I’d say a week. Maybe less.”

  “Then I don’t have time.” Lana threw herself back against the seat with a growl of frustration. He felt her pain—it might be her sister, but Sarah was also his friend.

  He steered the car into a nearly empty parking lot next to an all-night diner and ushered her inside. The clothes she wore tonight were much more fitting for deep-winter weather such as the unseasonable nor’easter they were under, though he felt a momentary mourning for the loss of her slim curves. Placing a hand in the middle of her back, he pulled out a chair for her, then seated himself across from her.

  “There is time,” he said, but was unable to finish his statement, as the waitress appeared at his elbow. He ordered two cheeseburgers, and dismissed the girl with a wave of his hand. “As I was saying,” he continued when the girl was out of earshot, “there is time, but the process is not easy.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning instead of becoming addicted over time, the transformation takes place quickly. Hours, not weeks.” Lana stared at the tabletop while he spoke. Her silence unnerved him, but he couldn’t blame her. This was not the best of circumstances by any means, and with so little time, it meant a bit faster pace than either of them would like. When he continued, he spoke in a much lower tone so not to draw attention to the conversation. “The whole point is to take in the blood, whether by intravenous injection or by draught.” She paled a bit, but he kept going. If she meant to do this, neither of them had time to worry about queasiness. “For the transformation to take effect fastest, it would require mutual bloodletting.”

  “As in…I drink from you and you drink from me?”

  Christian didn’t realize that he’d wanted her to jump to that conclusion until she did. He couldn’t even begin to imagine her drinking the blood of another man. He didn’t want to imagine it, because he wanted to be the one with his mouth on her skin.

  That she was even considering the proposal surprised him. He wondered how long it would be before she snapped, before she woke up and realized that she had been so focused on her sister that she had walked into a nightmare with open arms.

  The waitress appeared again, depositing two plates of greasy food before them, but Lana made no move to eat. She continued to stare at the table, her gaze hazy as she mulled over the idea. The longer he looked at her, the hungrier Christian got. And though it was no consolation, he picked up the greasy, half-bloody burger and bit into it.

  No, bovine blood was certainly no consolation.

  “How long would it take?” Lana asked after several moments of silence. She shook her head and her eyes seemed to clear. Then she looked up at him, and her cheeks turned a warm, tempting pink color.

  “If timed carefully, just a few hours.”

  “What happens if it isn’t timed right?”

  “You take in too much and turn.” He bit into the burger again, and her face crumpled in confusion.

  “I thought vampires couldn’t eat human food,” she said, and glanced down at her own plate. Her stomach growled.

  “Vampirism isn’t like you think, Lana.” He placed the burger back on the plate and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Like I said, we eat and drink, we breathe, we have heartbeats. We also crave human blood and will wither and die without it.”

  “That’s kind of gross,” she replied, startling a laugh out of him. However, the laugh quickly died as he spotted two familiar faces peering through the grimy door at him. He looked straight at her, reaching across the table to take her hand.

  “Are you planning to eat?” he asked. She looked down at the plate, then back up at him.

  “Why?”

  “Because I think we’re about to have company. We need to make a quick exit.” She grabbed two fries from the plate and shoved them in her mouth whole, which puffed her cheeks out like a squirrel. Christian smirked and patted her hand before pulling a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and throwing it on the table. “Chew fast, sweetheart,” he said, rising from the booth. She grabbed the burger, took a large bite, then grabbed her straw and stuffed her mouth further with soda. Shaking his head in amusement, he took her hand and led her to the side door just as the front door opened.

  The pair watching him paused, then whispered something to each other that was lost in the din of the restaurant. Christian tugged her out the door and started down the sidewalk at a brisk pace. Beside him, Lana chewed the mouthful of food quickly, fighting to swallow it without choking. Any other time he’d have laughed at her, but he heard the door of the diner open and the pair following them call his name.

  “Chew faster,” he urged, picking up his pace. Lana was nearly running when she swallowed the final time and gave a weak, gagging cough.

  “What’s going on?” she choked out.

  “We’re being followed.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly.” He swept her into his arms and began to run. Nine blocks later, Christian ducked into an alley and dropped her to her feet. “Do you trust me, Lana?” She looked up at him, her eyes wide and perfectly round, and nodded. “Then just go with me on this, okay?” She nodded again. He peered around the alley wall, listening as the footsteps moved in. “They’re coming,” he said, turning and walking her back into the shadows. He pushed her back against the wall and took her face in his hands. “Just go with it,” he said, and kissed her.

  This was no tentative first kiss. Christian pressed his full body against her, pinning her to the wall as he threaded his fingers and laid siege to her mouth.

  Chapter Five

  A tremor of delight winged through Lana’s belly. With his body pressed so fully against her, she could feel every ridge of muscle, every twitch, and every beat of his heart. Or was that her own? Either way, it didn’t matter. He tasted of rare meat and grease, and his fingers, like ice, danced along her hairline as his tongue swept into her mouth and tangled with hers. As his slid his fingers over her shoulders and around her back between her and the wall, she let go a desperate whimper and leaned into him. The
re was no denying now how badly she wanted him.

  The kiss seemed to go on forever, that sweetly erotic push-pull that made her lightheaded and reckless. When he finally pulled back, he sighed and pressed his forehead against hers.

  “I have wanted to do that since I first saw you,” he said with a weak chuckle. “And I want to do it again and again.”

  “That’s not a good idea, considering we’re being followed,” Lana said, still trying to be reasonable. Christian turned his head, but failed to hide his smirk. “What?” she asked, looking at his sheepish expression.

  “They bypassed us a while ago,” he admitted. She should have been furious with him. Logically, she knew she should probably slap him or punch him. But after that soul-rattling kiss, all she could do was thank her lucky stars that he hadn’t stopped sooner. “I was being selfish, and I want to be selfish some more.”

  “Then we should probably go,” she said, though what she meant by that, she wasn’t quite sure. “Let’s take my car this time. I don’t want it towed in the morning.”

  “Good idea. Let’s go,” he replied, taking her hand and tugging her out of the alley. Before he could put his arms around her she stretched hers toward him, curling against him as he started off down the street. Her cheeks stung from the icy wind, and he gave off no body heat to help, so by the time they stopped by her car, her teeth were audibly chattering. She handed over the keys again, and slid into the passenger’s seat.

  He pulled the old car onto the main road, shifted it into a reasonable gear, and reached over to take her hand. As he threaded his fingers through hers, Lana realized that she was in way over her head. She had all but given a vampire the okay to bite her. Her sister was almost one of them, and before it was over she would be too.

  Then it hit her that she was talking about vampires as if they had always been real to her. She looked down at her hand, twined around Christian’s, then up at his pale face, and the world began to swim. It felt like she was caught in the throes of a horrible nightmare; one that she couldn’t seem to wake up from.

  She had considered all of these things, of course, but through the shock-filled haze of the last twenty-four hours. When she wasn’t so close to it all, it seemed a little clearer. She could sort through the blur and pick out the incidents one by one. Now that she had time to stop and truly think, to put the pieces together and make sense of everything she’d learned, all she found she had learned was that none of it made sense.

  At all.

  “Christian?” she asked to break the silence. Her voice sounded weak and reedy, even to her own ears.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s it like to be a scab?” In the darkness, she watched his face contort. He thought about it for a long time, and as the city lights disappeared in favor of suburban sprawl and patches of forest, he sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.

  “I don’t really remember,” he said. “There is a constant craving, a sort of mindlessness that leaves you feeling lost. I mean, you’re lucid the whole time, but it’s like being lucid from inside someone else’s head.”

  Lana leaned back against the seat and stared forward, trying hard to ignore the feeling of Christian’s thumb brushing gently over her wrist. Despite that, and no matter how hard she tried to reroute her mind, she kept circling back to the same frightening thought.

  “If we get in there, will Sarah know who I am?”

  After a moment of silence, Christian said, “I wish you hadn’t asked that.”

  “She won’t know me, will she?”

  “I’m sure she’ll know you,” he replied. “But I can’t promise she won’t try to bite you.”

  She also wished she hadn’t asked. Part of her wished she had never even come to Boston in the first place. But even as she thought it she felt guilty for it. Sarah needed her, whether she knew it or not.

  The rest of the ride back to Christian’s house was made in silence. He continued to hold onto her until in parking, he was absolutely forced to take control of the gearshift. In the blink of an eye, he was around the car and opening her door, and even pulled her bag out of her hands. Lacing his fingers through hers again, he towed her inside, then immediately rounded on her, backed her against the door, and kissed her again.

  In the relative safety of his home, he showed no restraint, lifting her from the floor by the waist as he pushed his tongue between her lips, using it to draw her into that intimate dance. Lana responded in kind, twining her arms around his neck and subsequently letting her head empty of everything but the taste of his mouth and the feel of his hands on her body.

  He broke away from her mouth, trailing his lips over her jaw and down her throat. Lana tensed as he pressed his nose to the artery there and inhaled. A purr of satisfaction rumbled up his throat as he traced his tongue along the same spot.

  “You smell divine,” he whispered against her neck, kissing the spot before sniffing again. “I’m so hungry, Lana…” His next movement startled her. The needle-thin scrape of sharpened teeth dragged over her neck, immediately sobering her.

  “Christian, stop…” she whimpered, pushing against his shoulders. He immediately returned her to her feet and took a step back. His lips were pressed tightly closed, but behind them she could still see the outline of his descended fangs. “I…I’m scared.”

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said, but made no move to close the distance he had put between them. “I would never hurt you.”

  “If you bite me, it will hurt.” His eyes closed and he nodded once. “I’m scared of the pain.”

  When he reopened his eyes and focused on her, Christian smiled. The sparkling white of his fangs showed through his lips, making her heart skip in her chest. He chuckled.

  “Of all things to frighten you, Lana,” he said with a laugh, “I would hardly expect my teeth to do it.”

  “They’re sharp.”

  “I can do much more damage with my hands than I can with my teeth, sweetheart.”

  Lana wrapped her arms around her body and sank to the floor, drawing her knees up under her chin. There was no doubt from the throb racing through every sensitive part of her body that she wanted him. She’d known how this was going to end as soon as she agreed to come back to this house. By morning, she wouldn’t be human anymore. But now that it was here…the whole concept terrified her.

  Christian took two steps forward and knelt in front of her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him until he placed two fingers under her chin and lifted it. He leaned forward and softly pressed his lips to hers. There was no pressure there, no expectation, nothing but a gentle and chaste and heartfelt kiss that rattled her all the way to her toes.

  “I can make it easier on you,” he said, holding her gaze with those strange eyes. While she watched, he lifted his other wrist to his mouth and drew his teeth across the skin. Blood pooled there, and with the tiniest of smiles, brought his arm up to his tongue, where he gathered the liquid. The fingers under Lana’s chin moved to her throat, then the back of her head as he towed her close. With his own blood on his lips, he brought her mouth to his. The bitter, metallic taste filled her mouth and her eyes drifted closed. For a moment Lana thought she would be sick, but then the world around her seemed to slow down. Her limbs grew heavy, yet at the same time she felt completely weightless. His arms encased her, and she felt like she was flying. Christian continued to kiss her, the steady back-and-forth swipe of his tongue over hers, teasing at her lips, his teeth nipping at her tongue as it ventured forward to tangle around his.

  Her back hit something soft that she vaguely registered as the mattress. Christian broke the connection between their mouths only long enough to pull her sweater over her head and remove his T-shirt. She opened her eyes and reached out to touch the smooth hardness of his chest, drawing her index finger along the cold ripples of muscle. Beneath her touch he shivered, but he allowed her to explore as he removed his belt and reached behind him to tug at her shoes.

  L
eaning toward her, Christian drew one hand down the side of her face. The wound on his arm was nearly healed already, but drops of blood still lingered on his mouth. He leaned down to kiss her again, but she stopped him with a hand to his chest.

  “Christian, I…I don’t want to be a scab.” She released a stuttering breath as the hand moving down her face traveled over her throat and down into the valley between her breasts. He paused there, as if feeling her heartbeat.

  “I had no intention of letting that happen,” he answered, and kissed her again. Those words were all it took for Lana to come alive beneath him. Her hands were everywhere, fingernails scoring the skin of his back before swinging around to tug at the button on his jeans. She writhed beneath him as he pulled loose the clasp of her bra and pushed his hand underneath. She moaned as his fingertip grazed the taut flesh of her nipple and she arched into him. The small sliver of rationality left in her brain told her to slow down, to back off and enjoy the last few moments of her life.

  But her hormones quickly silenced her last rational thought. If she was supposed to enjoy the rest of her life, what better way to do so than in Christian’s arms?

  Chapter Six

  He was so hungry and so needy… the way she moved beneath him told him that she was too. If she continued to do what she was doing, to look up at him through those smoky, green eyes, Christian feared he might not be able to keep the promise he had made. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he was so far gone that he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t.

  Having worked the zipper down, Lana snaked her hand inside his jeans and with a gasp of surprise, closed her fingers around his cock. Her touch was like a bolt of electricity to his body, and the pulsing member leaped in her hand. Returning the favor, Christian grazed his thumb across her breast, centering on her nipple and stroking it with growing pressure. She mewled and twisted, pressing her body up against his and twining her legs around his hips.