[Nectar 01.0] Nectar Read online

  She tightened every muscle in her body to try to stop herself from trembling. The room went dead quiet and it felt like there were eyes on her. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter and stayed as still as possible, biting down hard on her lower lip. Then she realized that this was probably the problem. Her breathing pattern changing had likely tipped them off to the fact that she was awake. Could he smell her fear? She heard rustling.

  “Kyla Spencer. Looks like green-eyed Kyla is, uh, 24. Ooh, nice pink Taser,” another male voice said. He must be digging through her purse. How’d he gotten it? Her purse had still been in her locked locker at work. What on earth?

  “Kyla,” the vampire said. The way he said it made her feel like he was tasting it. She cringed. She could feel the bed shift as he sat down.

  “Let’s try this again. Go ahead and get me all the details you can. Call ya later.”

  “Got it, Boss,” a different male voice answered, then added, “Have fun.”

  Fear rushed through her. A door clicked shut.

  “Kyla?” the vampire said, almost sang, softly. She felt a hand in her hair and fingertips gently traced the curve of her ear, sending a shiver up her spine.

  She bit down on her tongue and fought to remain still. The scent of baked goods filled her nostrils.

  “I know you’re awake. Look at me,” he ordered softly.

  She didn’t move. This was beyond scary! She dreaded the idea of seeing those fangs again. Fainting might not save her again. Would he drain her dry and toss her rumpled empty shell of a body into a dumpster?

  “I’m not angry. You don’t have to be afraid,” he said this like he was talking to a small child. “You didn’t hurt me, but you were about to hurt yourself, so I had to show you who you were dealing with. Look at me.”

  She remained as still as possible but couldn’t stop trembling. She could feel the bed press down further and pillows were moved out of the way. She opened her eyes to see him hovering over her, caging her in with his arms. The room’s lights were now on.

  This can’t be really happening to me.

  He drank her in for a moment with those insanely bright blue eyes and she felt vulnerable, almost naked under his inspection. His eyes scanned her face and then fixed on her heaving chest. Her face flushed. She closed her eyes tight.

  He took her under her arms and effortlessly hauled her into a sitting position, leaving her no choice but to face him.

  “Kyla,” he said, with way too much familiarity.

  “Please don’t kill me.” Her chin was trembling.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Huh?”

  His eyes searched hers. He was shaking his head.

  “What do you mean? Someone grabbed me. I was just minding my own business. I…” She stopped, perplexed by his question.

  He didn’t look scary right now. His fangs weren’t showing. He was studying her face, looking puzzled. She swallowed hard and for a moment they were both silent. He continued to do what she could only describe as searching her face for something. She was beyond uncomfortable at being scrutinized so closely, like a lab specimen.

  He was beautiful. Kyla would rarely or maybe even never say that about a man. She’d probably only thought it about a handful of famous men in her life and never anyone she’d laid eyes on in person, really, but he was. Handsome, sexy, cute? Alright. But beautiful? He was. He wasn’t pale or sickly looking like you’d expect a vampire to look. Oh no, he was 21st century movie star vampire beautiful. Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, that kind of vampire beautiful.

  Of course he was. She was a voracious reader and had read many vampire books. She had dozens of them on her Kindle and her Goodreads shelf. She’d seen just about every popular vampire movie, too, so knew all about the beauty of a male vamp book boyfriend.

  Louis and Lestat, in the Interview with the Vampire movie adaptation: they were beautiful so that they could seduce women, drink their blood, and then toss them aside. This guy was beautiful like that. She felt a pang of regret at words she and her friends had spoken during a girls’ movie night back before she moved to this city.

  They’d waxed lyrical about being willing to be an all-you-can-drink-and-fuck buffet for either Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise (Pre-Katie Holmes Tom Cruise because everyone knew that he’d turned in his heartthrob card around the time of Oprah’s yellow sofa). Either one. Preferably both. At the same time? Sure! Who knew when she’d said that, that vampires were actually real?

  There was a quick rap on the door, breaking what felt like a spell as they stared one another down. His teeth scraped his lower lip for a beat then he said, “Be right back.” He whispered this, and it sounded threatening but seductive at the same time.

  He walked out via the door she’d hurled the decanter at. The door clicked shut and she heard the thud of a lock. She sat completely still, but her mind raced at warp speed. She knew she was locked in and even if she wasn’t, she wondered if she’d have the nerve to try to run after having seen that he had fangs and the ability to become very scary-looking. And who else was out there, ready to stop her from leaving?

  She gaped and shuddered and was about to get up and look for something to use as a weapon, but then the door opened again and he carried a tall glass of clear liquid to her. She didn’t move, just stayed still with her hands covering her mouth, staring up at him.

  “Drink.” He passed the glass to her. She accepted it, fingers trembling. Suddenly, she was parched. Her mouth was almost like it was filled with cotton balls. She sniffed the liquid. It didn’t smell like anything. She held it for a minute, looking at him cautiously.

  “Just water,” he said.

  She drank it. It seemed to be just plain water. She hoped that’s all it was.

  Please don’t let this be a date rape drug. Heck, he was a vampire; wasn’t he a date rape drug?

  “Thanks. So, this is obviously some sort of misunderstanding so if I could just go…” There was another quick rap on the door. She tensed.

  The vampire had been regarding her with his head slightly tilted, like she was a rare specimen on display at a zoo. He took the glass from her and then opened the door an inch and spoke through it. Kyla didn’t see who he spoke to and couldn’t hear what they were saying. Her ears felt like they were echoing in a long noisy hallway and she was a little lightheaded. She wrapped her arms around herself and started to shiver. She was freaking right out.

  She could see by his back and shoulders that he wasn’t just tall, but strong, too. She hadn’t taken that into consideration when she’d tried to fight her way out of the room. Looking now, she knew it’d likely be impossible to get away from him if she had to battle him physically. She’d have to escape when he wasn’t looking. If there was that opportunity. She silently prayed there would be.

  He was wearing a black long-sleeved Henley and distressed-looking button fly dark jeans with black boots. The shirt was skin tight; his muscles were defined but not bulky. His jeans fit just right, too. He was a tall drink of water, as they say.

  Yeah, a tall drink of water with fangs. Did he drug me? Why is my mind even thinking about the way he looks?

  He clicked the door shut and walked, slowly, toward her, predator-like. “This is a very interesting quandary we have here, little firecracker. I don’t know why you’re so lucid. You see, because of what I am…” He paused and gave her a slow and sexy smile, “And you now know what I am…” he was at the edge of the bed when he flashed his fangs and then they quickly receded. Kyla’s eyes widened and she wanted to gulp but couldn’t. He was making a point of letting her know that what she’d seen before wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her.

  “This isn’t how this usually goes but it’s sort of… refreshing.” He smiled a big smile at her. It struck her as oozing with arrogance.

  “I think…” he continued and stroked his chin thoughtfully, “I think that the wise thing here would be for me to stick to plan A. Then, after that, let’s see what ha
ppens, shall we?” He put a knee to the bed and climbed up the bottom and sat down beside her.

  “Plan A? What’s that?” she asked, thinking he was sitting too close, way too close.

  “The reason you were brought to me.”

  “And that is?”

  “So I can fuck you,” he said, stone serious, “and drink some of your blood.”

  And with that statement, it was as if bottom dropped out from under her.

  The way he said those words to her dripped with sex. On a normal day, at the very least, someone with that much gumption would’ve gotten some flirting before she knocked him back, knowing that he was only after one thing. It had been a long time since anyone warranted getting her number let alone into her pants. And this guy was way out of her league; shit, out of most women’s leagues.

  But, he clearly knew that. And that’s why she’d probably have flirted back and then a snarky retort would’ve ended it before anything ever began. Nope, Mr. Sexy Arrogant Vampire would not, even if he weren’t a vamp, be the one to chase away Kyla’s cobwebs.

  She hated games and had no time for players. She loved putting players in their place, actually. As a bartender with a rough upbringing and plenty of street smarts, Kyla was often underestimated. She looked totally feminine, but when she opened her mouth she could, as her roommate’s mom had said, make a sailor blush. She was usually the queen of comebacks.

  Getting knocked over the head (or whatever had happened), dragged off to a vampire’s lair, or whatever this was, and then being told that she was going to get fucked and have her blood drank? Not on her agenda for this evening. She had to find a way to get the heck outta here.

  Her brain felt so discombobulated. What a turn this night had taken --- proof that things could change in a New York minute. The evening had started out and ended like any normal work night. She had just finished her shift bartending and would’ve gone back to her dumpy little shared apartment where she’d have made a Nutella and banana sandwich or maybe some Ramen noodle soup or a grilled cheese and then fast forwarded through commercials to watch her DVR’d soap opera --- a soap opera that drove her nuts, but that she couldn’t seem to stop watching because she was ‘invested’.

  Eventually she’d have passed out for 4, maybe 5 hours, woken up, gone for a run and then started her 11-5 shift at the diner. After the diner, she’d try to grab a cat nap and then head back to the bar to work from 10 to 3:30. Working two jobs in an effort to save up enough to go back to school was challenging, and most days Kyla ran around between her jobs with very little time for a social life, or more than a few hours of sleep.

  Kyla Spencer’s life hadn’t been easy so far. She had been orphaned at almost 4 years old, had very few memories of her parents, and was put in foster care where she stayed until the ripe old age of 18 when she’d been turfed out like a baby bird to fly on her own, but without many tools for success.

  No one she’d encountered in the world of social services seemed to even care if she sank or swam. It’d been touch and go there for a while. Now in her mid-20’s, she was on the verge of beating the odds and not ending up a statistic, a product of “the system”. Until today --- today, when she’d been snatched from the alley behind her work and met her first vampire. Wow.

  She’d been dragged off and put in a room bigger than her whole apartment where a movie-star looking vampire was in a decorating store showroom bed beside her and telling her very matter-of-factly that he was going to fuck her and drink her blood. This was either a nightmare, she was being Punk’d, or she had actually stumbled (or, rather, been dragged) onto proof that vampires actually existed. Actual vampires.

  How the heck did I get here? Why me?

  She briefly thought about a sexy scene in a Dracula movie she’d seen a few years back where a vampire seduced a young woman in her bedroom late at night. She pushed the sexy scene out of her head. So many stories and books about vampires existed under the guise of fiction. The fact that she had now seen proof that they were real was utterly insane to her.

  He leaned toward her, a smile on his lips, clearly intrigued by the fact that she was quite obviously pondering her fate.

  “Wait.” She flexed the palm of her hand at him, halting him.

  “Yes?” he asked expectantly, a wry gleam in his eyes.

  “I do not consent.”

  She couldn’t think of what else to say. She knew after what had transpired so far that she couldn’t likely physically fight him off without a weapon but maybe she could reason with him. She had to at least try.

  “Consent?” He raised his brows.

  “I don’t consent to this. Don’t you need my permission?”

  “That’s permission to enter your house, not enter your…you.” He tilted his head and gave her a cocky smile. “And that’s one of the many vampire legends that are myths. I don’t need permission … for anything.”

  “You gonna kill me?”

  “Haven’t decided yet,” he said without pausing for thought.

  The air seemed to almost visibly thicken between them. She had to stall to try to figure out how to get out of this situation.

  “How reassuring,” she mumbled, then continued, “But why me? And why did you say something is,” she held her fingers up in mock quotes, “off” with me?”

  “I might.”

  “Might what?” She tilted her head at him.

  “I might have to kill you. And you’re stalling,” he said, tilting his head the opposite way.

  She started to tremble harder. She folded her arms across her chest and let out a deep breath to try to steady herself.

  “Wouldn’t you try to stall if you were about to be killed?”

  “Hmmm, I suppose.” He smirked. “You see, I’d only planned to fuck you, and bite you, of course, but now I have a dilemma.”

  He leaned forward, stone serious, and spoke slowly and expressively, “There’s something off here because I’m typically able to put women into a very compliant state … effortlessly. They look into my eyes, become mesmerized, and let me have my…wicked,” his icy blue eyes twinkled, “wicked way with them. Then afterwards… they just forget.” He shrugged, licked his lips, and then continued, “But you... little cherry bomb with the feline eyes; you’re not being very compliant. I haven’t been able to mesmerize you. And I’m usually very good at that. What does that mean?”

  Kyla shook her head, “Don’t know.”

  “Hmm. As refreshing as it might be to wrestle with you some more and have some real fun…” He moistened his lips and eyed her hungrily, “You might not forget. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to be out there with the memory of me. It could complicate things.” He tucked a stray lock of dark curls that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. She winced at his touch but felt like there was static still connecting his fingers to her skin. She stared at his fingertips for a second, processing the sensation.

  “I’m not sure I have time for complications right now,” he said, then added, “So, are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?” He looked at his fingers as if he’d felt something, too.

  Her scalp prickled. The handsome guy leaning way too close to her was not what he seemed, probably by design. Her armour was up and she was determined to not let it drop just because he was good-looking (vast understatement!).

  “What’s the easy way? How do I stay alive?”

  “If you want easy, just lay back and enjoy. If you want hard, fight some more.” His voice was soft, barely above a whisper, “Gotta be honest, cherry bomb, I think I’d prefer hard.” He lifted the tip of her long ponytail and wrapped it around his fist and gave a gentle tug. He raised one brow at her, “But easy or hard, I can’t make any promises about the ‘stay alive’ bit.”

  “You do this often, do you?” She glared at him, “Have sex with and then kill women?”

  He shrugged and took a whiff of the hair in his hand. “I don’t usually kill them.”

  Usually? How many had
he killed?

  She tried to process what he was telling her. She wasn’t in a trance and that was a perceived complication. This lack of a trance could mean the memory of him after his drinking her blood and, err… sex he was worried that, what, that she’d reveal it? As if anyone would even believe her.

  She shook her head, “Listen; here’s a plan B to consider. Why don’t you just blindfold me and take me outside, down the road, and then let me go. I won’t know where you had me.”

  She swallowed and then continued, talking very quickly, “And I won’t tell anyone that I was abducted and held by a vampire. I don’t have to die. You don’t have to kill me.”

  He stared at her thoughtfully.

  “But,” she added, “Even if I did say anything, which I wouldn’t, but even if I did, people would just think I’m crazy.” She laughed nervously, “Vampires? Cra-aazy!” She threw her arms up in the air animatedly and then drew air circles around her ears, “No complications.”

  He snickered, leaned back, giving her more space but not letting go of her hair, and then said, “No complications.” He pursed his lips and fingered the cleft on his chin with his index finger.

  He really did have a very chiseled, rugged, sexy face.

  Forget the face, Kyla! She exhaled, feeling hopeful.

  “Nice sales technique,” he said.

  “Survivor,” she replied, with conviction.

  “Noted. But there’s a problem.” He leaned forward and started to pull that fist that held her hair toward him slowly so that she had no choice but to rise up until her back arched and she had to support herself on her elbows. He stopped when their mouths were just centimetres apart.

  Kyla wished her heart would slow down. It was beating so wildly it was actually painful, bruising her chest, echoing in her ears.

  She shook her head as if to ask, “What?”