"Good Enough to Eat"-Installment 1
(A previously unpublished story,
only for SEXY readers)

Blurb:

Samantha is a rookie vampire who's bitten off way more than she can chew.

Sebastian Moreno is a telepathic cop who's not in the mood to be dinner.

But when they get together to stop an ancient vampire on a bloodthirsty quest, neither of them can deny that the chemistry between them is deadly or that their new partner is looking good enough to eat.
                                                  Prologue

Dead Starlings covered the hill, their bodies beginning to rot, turning their once plump little forms into dark mounds of blackish mush.  As I walked carefully around the edge of the impromptu graveyard, the breeze stirred the feathers of the corpses, giving the entire hill a disturbing sense of motion that contrasted sharply with the smell of death lingering in the air.  Every once in a while a stronger breeze would pluck a feather from its former owner and send it sailing down the grassy hill toward the small town of Beauford, Alabama.

It was depressing.  Very depressing.

The smell on the hill wasn’t great either, but not as bad as it would have been if the corpses had been left to rot in their natural state.  The blood had been drained before the heads were taken and the bodies left behind, altering the scent of decomposition that filled the air.  Still it reeked, enough to turn my stomach two or three times over.

Shivering, I turned and walked away from the ridge, ducking under the yellow police tape that encircled the crime scene.  I knew the truth now.  Whatever was happening here, it was unmistakably the work of one man.  His dark energy hung over the hill like thick smoke, making it hard to breathe and clouding my mind with good old fashioned terror.

Suddenly, I was hungry. 

Odd, considering I had seriously thought about losing my lunch on top of a bunch of mutilated birds, but then I always got a little peckish when I was nervous.  And what I wanted wasn’t food per se, but a drink, a nice stiff one…or a not so stiff one. Whatever I could get my hands on the fastest would be fine.  Stiffness becomes secondary when a girl is really, really thirsty.

I opened the door to my Mustang, easily resisting the urge to turn back for a last look at the hill.  I’ve never understood why people feel compelled to look at something horrible even when they can avoid it.  I’m a firm believer in the ostrich method: stick your head under a rock and pray the icky stuff goes away by the time you come out.  This time, however, the icky stuff wasn’t going to go away and had progressed far beyond icky into the realm of the grotesque and horrible.

Besides, ostriches weren’t really hiding.  They were grazing, or digging nests, or doing something productive.  Maybe they were busy contemplating the inner darkness of their soul.  Stranger things had happened.  In any event, I considered taking a lesson from the ostrich and doing a little soul searching of my own, right after I did a little grazing…

“Freeze, Beauford police!”

Shit, in trouble again.

“Um, hello!  Don’t shoot,” I giggled in my most innocent, girlish tone, praying that the boy in blue would scram. I darted a quick look down the alley, searching for a possible avenue of escape.

“What are you doing back here? Is that Charlie?” the man asked, a little less intense now that he knew I was female.

Charlie?  Who the hell was Charlie?  Oh...Charlie. 

I looked down at the old drunk at my feet, now passed out cold.  I’d nicknamed him Stinky, but Charlie would do.

“I have no idea,” I continued in my sweetest voice.

“You have no idea if that’s Charlie or no idea what you’re doing?”

“Um, is that a trick question, sir?” I stalled for time.  Was that fence too high to jump?  Maybe I could just dart past the guy and get out the way I’d come.

 “Sir?” he asked with the hint of a laugh.

“Mr. Police Officer sir?” I tried not to roll my eyes.  What a dork.  Must be one of those ‘I’m not an old guy don’t call me sir’ types.  Bet he had a beer belly and a receding hairline, with probable erectile dysfunction.  Too bad he was hiding out in the dark by the dumpsters and I couldn’t get a clear look.  I was sure I was missing out on a real treat.      

“The name’s Sebastian.”

“Nice to meet you,” I replied with forced perkiness.  In my experience perky people were far less likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the law. 

“Likewise,” Sebastian drawled. “Now why don’t you tell me what you’re up to.”  

“What would I be up to?” I did my best breathy Marilyn Monroe.  No man could resist that kind of child-like innocence.

“Well, it looked like you were sucking on Charlie’s neck,” he replied, obviously amused with my performance.“I’m not sure that’s legal in the state of Alabama.”

Shit.

This was the last thing I needed.  I had enough on my plate without a narrow-minded, small town hero trying to drive a stake through my heart.  It was enough to give a girl an eating disorder, especially since Charlie hadn’t been tasty to begin with.

I turned to walk in the opposite direction from Mr. Bad Timing, realizing too late that the fence definitely wasn’t jumpable and that my new friend believed in using his regulation firearm.  The sound as he drew his weapon was unmistakable, even without the benefit of preternatural hearing.

 Shit, shit, and shit.

“That’s a dead end, ma’m,” he said in a southern accent edged with more than a hint of danger. “I think you should stop.” 

And stop I did, the sharp metallic click of the gun being armed making me re-think the urge to ignore him. There was no way I'd be able to scramble over the fence at the end of the alley before he got a shot off.  Contrary to popular belief, not all vampires can levitate, turn into mist, sprout wings, or jump tall buildings in a single bound.  Being a fairly young vamp, I would still need to get over the obstacle the old-fashioned way, a stunt more than a little difficult to perform while dodging bullets in a mini-skirt and three inch heels.

A gunshot wound probably wouldn’t kill me, but taking a bullet wasn’t on my top-ten list of things I like to do on a regular basis.  In fact, it basically feels like you’ve been run over by a truck.  (Having had the misfortune to have actually been run over by a truck, I can verify that it’s incredibly painful.)

More importantly, I couldn’t afford to waste the kind of time and energy it would take to heal from a gunshot wound.  If anyone was going to keep this town from becoming the center of a certain evil vampire’s latest gruesome plot, it was going to be me.  It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it and this time--like it or not--it seemed I was that somebody. 

“Why don’t you turn around and walk slowly towards me.” His casual tone did nothing to mask the obvious order.  I felt a little jump of fear in my stomach as he advanced down the alley, gun in hand and eyes trained on my face. 

Considering I was wearing a black sweater with a V cut nearly to my navel, that was quite a feat.  I’m not saying I’m the most gorgeous vampire to ever crawl out of her coffin, but I am fairly cute and have absolutely spectacular breasts if I do say so myself.

If this guy could keep his eyes off the likes of Fred and Ginger, he was a more than formidable opponent.  It was time to pull out the big guns. 

 “I was just checking to make sure the man was breathing,” I said softly, sending out a rush of comforting energy, imagining my soothing thoughts breaking over his consciousness like an ocean wave.  Fortunately, human minds are fairly easy to manipulate.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it out of vampire adolescence.  I’m probably one of the unluckiest members of the undead on the planet.  I’ve been staked, burned, scalded, exposed to direct sunlight, shot with silver bullets, half drowned in holy water, impaled on a radio antennae, buried at the bottom of a stone quarry, and run over by a truck.  I’ll spare you all the gory details, but apparently I’m more difficult to kill than a cockroach.

 “Checking to make sure he was breathing with your mouth on his neck?” Damned skeptic.

“I was feeling for a pulse?” I suggested, hoping the man would buy my lousy excuse with a little more mental encouragement.  With a frown of concentration I redoubled my telepathic barrage only to jump half a foot in the air when his mental doors snapped closed against me. 

How had he known I was poking around in there?  Who was this guy?

“Exactly how stupid do I look?” Was he referring to what I’d said or my disastrous attempt at telepathic control?  I had no idea.  Of course I would have the good fortune to run into one of the few humans capable of resisting my powers of mental seduction.

 “You look plenty smart to me,” I said with a flirtatious smile, throwing out one hip and allowing my skirt to ride up one thigh.  If I couldn’t distract him with my mind, I’d just have to use the other tools at my disposal.

“Well now, aren’t you sweet?” He sounded about as interested in my show as my big brother. Was he actually mocking me?  I was a sexy and dangerous creature of the night and not used to being mocked…at least not very often.  Well, not by humans.  In any event, I was fighting the urge to flip him the bird when he took a few steps closer.

“You’re not wearing a uniform,” I observed dumbly as the light from the streetlight illuminated him completely, and I suddenly found myself fighting other urges.

“Plain clothes.  You want to see my badge?” he asked, already pulling said badge from the official looking police belt encompassing his trim hips as I gazed on in appreciation.

He was breathtaking; tall and lean with broad shoulders and the evidence of a more than decently sculpted chest beneath his plain gray t-shirt.  His narrow waist tapered down to long, jean encased legs that looked strong and equally sculpted.  Personally, this raised his attractiveness level several notches, having never been a fan of scrawny chicken legs.

Nothing on this guy looked scrawny, however, and I felt a sudden tightening under my scandalously short skirt as I wondered what he would look like without his ‘Plain clothes’ or cop belt, spread out on my bed like a big manly buffet.  I knew instinctively that he wouldn’t fail to impress and I literally had to shake myself to stop the images of hot, mindless thrusting from my mind. 

Mindless thrusting…sigh.  It had been a long time. 

There was no denying that the man was delicious, in the normal ‘I’m a girl, you’re a guy’ kind of way, not the ‘I’m gonna sink my teeth in your neck’ kind of way.  Not only was he gorgeous, but there was an aura pouring off of him that not many humans could manage.  His energy was hot, thick, intense, and a little bit dangerous, completely at odds with his casual southern boy persona. 

The combination was irresistible and I took a step closer, wondering what it would feel like to run my hands up under his t-shirt, to feel that warm, human skin pulsing beneath my fingertips.  Unfortunately, as I raised my eyes to his, already a little breathless with anticipation, the look there stopped me cold.

He was smirking.  I was being smirked at!  Beneath the dark brown tousled hair that curled over his forehead, two eyes as smooth as melted chocolate were considering me as if I were just one more in a string of hopeless females.  I held my breath and fought to keep my face from showing the anger that surged through me, hot and thick and more violent than I would have expected.  Cocky little turd or not, he was the only one here with a gun and I couldn’t afford to lose control.

 “You have a great smile.” I giggled as if I didn’t know a smirk when I saw one, valiantly resisting the urge to slap him senseless or drain his blood within an inch of his life.  I might still be able to flirt my way out of this if he was half as full of himself as he seemed.

 “I’m not interested.” The smirk fading as he moved past me toward the old man I had lured into the alley for a midnight snack.

 “Who asked you to be?” I sputtered lamely, feminine pride more than a little wounded as I added under my breath, “Asshole.”

 “Well, I guess you’re entitled to your opinion,” he returned, somehow catching my whispered insult.  My throat tightened and my cheeks started to burn as I watched him gently lift Charlie’s head and feel for a pulse.

“Give me a break.  He’s not dead.” I wouldn’t kill someone for god’s sakes. I didn’t usually even choose such easy prey, but I had pressing business and the evening feeding had needed to be as time efficient as possible.  The old drunk was kind of like a happy meal with cheese, however--fast food that left you feeling sick to your stomach and guilty for the indulgence.

“He has a pulse, no thanks to you I’m sure.” Just the sound of his voice banished my guilt, replacing it with white-hot anger.  It must have been the whiskey affecting my temper.  The old man had had enough bourbon in his bloodstream to kill a human woman my size, and even as a member of the undead I wasn’t completely immune to the effects of liquor racing through my system.

“What exactly are you implying?” I brought my hands to my hips and glared down at where he still squatted, trying my best not to notice that his skin was the most beautiful shade of dark tan.  He had to have some Spanish blood in him and my whole body ached for a taste.  Silently I cursed my weakness for Latin men.

“I’m not implying anything, I’m telling you that you’re under arrest.” He rose to his feet and pulled a set of handcuffs from the back of his belt.  He closed the distance between us in two long strides, another smug smirk firmly in place on his full lips.

“Under arrest for what?” I asked, unable to fathom how this mortal thought he would be able to arrest a vampire or why he was trying in the first place.  I’d been discreet, left no teeth marks, and had allowed the blood donor to live.  There was no evidence, no crime, only a little friendly contribution of fluids.

I struggled to hang on to my righteous indignation despite the almost unbelievable wave of lust that swept over me as he stopped only a few inches away.  My body hummed as his dense, sensual aura swirled around me, stealing my breath and capturing me in a web of need that I’d never felt before, not even in the presence of another supernatural creature.

No wonder he’s cocky, the guy is literally a babe magnet.

I found myself leaning toward him against my will. I held my indrawn breath, worried that I would lose all control and launch myself at him simply from breathing in the intoxicating, spicy scent wafting from his chest.  He smelled like heaven: a mixture of fresh laundry, home cooking, aftershave, and a slightly overripe banana.  I don’t know why it did it for me, the banana part an especially odd thing to find hot as hell, but it was without a doubt the sexiest smell in the world and suddenly I couldn’t stop smiling.

“You’re-” he broke off with a strangled little laugh, his breath as labored as my own. 

I watched Sebastian transform before my eyes, the cocky bastard fading away as his mouth spread into a decidedly goofy--yet incredibly sexy--grin. 

“Hi.” I giggled, drunk on his energy, unable to think of anything more brilliant to say except maybe 'you’re swell' which would have been an even more inane choice of words than the one I’d just made.

“Hi,” he repeated, his voice slightly mocking, but holding no real sting because the look in his eyes said it all. 

He was suddenly vulnerable, unguarded, and even more beautiful than before.  He was a man caught in the throes of something supernatural and overwhelming, swept up in the clutches of what could only be described as epic lust. I felt like an instrumental swell of  Gone with the Windish music should be blasting out into the air of the alley as I gave in to what I knew had to happen next.