Amaury’s Hellion (reading sample), Tina Folsom [life changing books txt] 📗

coating of moisture build on his face and neck. Tiny rivulets of sweat formed and ran along the ridges of his muscled upper body, catching in the light dusting of chest hair.
Amaury’s heart beat faster. His lungs pumped more oxygen through his system as his blood charged through his veins, thundering in his ears in a violent crescendo akin to Beethoven’s Fifth.
And then he felt the rush of his semen shoot through his shaft and into the woman’s mouth in quick, pulsating strokes.
His orgasm was short, but powerful. It cleared his head, and for a few minutes he would be at peace. He wouldn’t be able to sense the feelings of people he came in contact with and could feel his own heart and the sense of stillness that spread within it.
Only for a few moments. Then he would be invaded again by everybody’s pain, hunger, anger, and other emotions people carried with them. And he would perceive their love for someone and be reminded of the things he couldn’t feel. But for now, he was at peace.
Reluctantly, he pulled himself out of the woman’s mouth and put his still half-erect cock back into his pants.
“You were spectacular,” he praised and drew her up into an embrace.
Her lips glistened with his semen, and she looked beautiful to him. Amaury brushed her hair aside and exposed her lovely neck, her pale skin calling to him like a beacon of light guiding a sailor home. His lips touched the tender skin, before his tongue darted out to lick her.
She moaned: a sound so soft and sweet, only a satisfied woman could release it. “Come home with me.”
Amaury appreciated her whispered invitation, but had no intention of accepting it. He wanted something else entirely. Her vein beat against his lips, the movement so subtle a human would barely notice it, but his senses were sharper than those of a mortal.
His fangs lengthened, pushing past his lips.
“Baby, let me take from you.”
The sharp tips of his fangs sank into her neck and broke through the delicate skin. For a split-second she struggled against him, but his arms imprisoned her. He hauled her body into his, crushing her breasts against his chest.
As her blood coated his dry throat, his cock sprang back to life, but he didn’t have time to indulge a second time, as much as he wanted to bury his shaft in her slick heat.
Amaury didn’t take much of her blood, only enough to sustain himself. When he felt his hunger subside, he released her neck and licked the puncture wounds. His saliva closed the two little holes instantly. In the morning she would have no visible marks of his feeding, no side effects.
Then he looked into her eyes and sent his thoughts into her mind.
You never met me. You never saw me. Nothing happened. Go home now and sleep. And be careful. Don’t ever let a man take advantage of you. You’re beautiful. You deserve better.
Her eyes glazed over, and he knew it had worked. He’d wiped her memory of him. If she met him on the street tomorrow, she wouldn’t recognize him. Not even the ghost of déjà vu would remain.

Two

Amaury rushed through the streets of downtown San Francisco before he reached a Cable Car stop and jumped onto the antique streetcar, which took him up the steep hill toward Samson’s house.
He liked the city’s collection of neighborhoods which masqueraded as a metropolis and where it wasn’t difficult to hide being a vampire. With a population as eclectic as the inside of a pawn shop, San Francisco was the perfect playground for modern-day vampires. Being eccentric or weird was nothing unusual in this city, where even the mayor was one of them.
The vampire population of San Francisco grew steadily, attracted by many of the same attributes humans liked about the foggy city: beautiful architecture, stunning views, and tolerant inhabitants.
Many vampire-run businesses had sprung up. There were several hip nightclubs, a newspaper—the SF Vampire Chronicle which was discreetly distributed to vampire households—investment companies, and of course Samson’s nationwide security company, Scanguards. It provided bodyguards and security guards to individuals and corporations, foreign dignitaries, politicians, and celebrities.
By the time Amaury reached Samson’s Victorian home in the exclusive and rather expensive neighborhood of Nob Hill and let himself in with his key, everybody was assembled. Before he even heard their voices, he sensed the tumult of emotions in the house: anger, disbelief, confusion.
His relief hadn’t lasted long. The next wave of pain was already building like a tsunami approaching the Pacific coast. He braced himself as he stalked along the wood-paneled corridor toward Samson’s private office in the back of the house.
Plastering his usual smile onto his face, he walked into the room, keeping his torment to himself like always. While his friends knew about his so-called gift, they had no idea about the pain it caused him daily and the things he had to do to keep his head from exploding. He didn’t want their pity.
They all thought he was a sex maniac out to screw every female he could get his hands on, just for the fun of it. In reality, without sex he would have gone on a crazed rampage long ago, killing everyone and everything in his path. Sex equaled survival—for him and those around him.
“Amaury, finally,” Samson greeted him, a pinch of displeasure in his voice. Being well over six feet tall, but with a much slimmer build than Amaury’s broad frame, the same black hair, but piercing hazel eyes, his boss looked every inch the powerful man he was.
“Samson, guys,” he replied and looked into the round. Everybody was there: Ricky, Thomas, Carl, all vampires like himself.
Even Oliver, Samson’s human assistant, a fresh-faced twenty-four year old, was present. And of course, Delilah, Samson’s human wife, his blood-bonded mate.
Amaury gave her a warm smile, which she returned as she swept her long dark hair over her shoulder, her petite body looking even tinier standing next to her man.
He noticed Samson putting his hand on hers, a gesture so instinctive Amaury doubted his friend had even noticed. The love radiating off the couple almost brought him to his knees. He straightened himself.
“What’s the crisis?” he asked instead.
“Thomas, patch in Gabriel,” Samson ordered.
Thomas typed something on the keyboard and stepped back from the screen. As always, Scanguards’ resident IT genius was dressed in his favorite biker outfit: leather, leather, and more leather. “Gabriel, you’re on.”
A second later, Gabriel Giles, head of operations in Scanguards’ New York headquarters, appeared on the computer monitor which was turned for all to see.
His commanding presence filled the screen. His long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, and the scar which stretched from his chin to his right ear seemed to pulsate. Nobody had ever dared ask him how he’d obtained it. And Gabriel wasn’t one to volunteer information which was nobody’s business. Amaury only knew that it stemmed from when Gabriel was human, since a vampire’s skin didn’t scar.
“Evening everybody,” Gabriel’s booming voice came through loud and clear. “We’ve just been alerted to a problem. There’s no easy way to say it, so here it goes. A second bodyguard has killed a client and then himself.”
The collective murmurs and gasps of disbelief were quickly subdued, while the emotions continued to simmer under the surface.
“As you all remember, over a month ago, one of Scanguards’ San Francisco bodyguards killed the millionaire he was protecting and then committed suicide. We thought it was an isolated incident. Unfortunately, with this second murder, which concerns another San Francisco employee, we don’t have the luxury of chalking this off as just an individual gone berserk. Somebody’s messing with us.”
Samson nodded. “Gabriel and I spoke earlier tonight. The late evening news will break the story. We have to be ready to do damage control. Tomorrow the papers will be shredding us to bits. Nobody will shrug this off as a coincidence. And we’re pretty sure it isn’t.”
“Some vampires gone into bloodlust?” Thomas asked.
Amaury listened up. Bloodlust—they all feared it, the uncontrollable urge to take more blood than they needed which ultimately led to murder and madness.
Gabriel shook his head. “No. Both bodyguards were humans.”
“Any connection between the two?” Amaury interjected.
“Negative,” Samson answered quickly, “at least nothing we could determine this quickly. Apart from the fact that they were both hired here in San Francisco, they have nothing obvious in common.”
“I knew Edmund Martens. I hired him,” Ricky said. While he fancied himself a California Beach Boy and had adopted many habits of his new country, he couldn’t really be mistaken for anything else but the lad he was: his red hair, freckled face, and decidedly Irish last name, O’Leary, gave him away. “God, Eddie showed such promise. But when he killed that client last month, I thought he’d gone off the deep end and reverted back to his old ways.”
“What ways?” Amaury asked.
“Bad childhood, ran away from his foster family, turned to crime—the usual. Never thought he’d go so far and kill someone. He didn’t seem the violent kind. But then, sometimes it doesn’t take much for somebody to slide deeper. I just thought he’d finally pulled himself out of all this.”
“Maybe he did.” Samson’s concerned look spoke volumes and told them he didn’t believe that the two human bodyguards were at fault.
“Who’s the second guy?” Ricky wanted to know.
“Kent Larkin.”
Ricky’s jaw slackened. “He was just a kid. He can’t have been working for us for longer than six months.”
“A little over five months,” Gabriel confirmed.
“What evidence do we have that Edmund and Kent actually killed their clients?” Amaury needed facts. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions.
“An eyewitness in Edmund’s case and the smoking gun in Kent’s.”
“Do we have anybody on the inside with the police?” Delilah suddenly asked. Everybody’s gaze settled on her. “Well, we’d better make sure we know what they know before it becomes public knowledge.”
Ever since Delilah had blood-bonded with Samson, she had started taking an active interest in the company. As a blood-bonded mate, she was entitled to everything Samson owned, and the fact that she’d started sharing in important decisions didn’t seem to disturb her man in the slightest. After all, she was his equal.
Amaury was surprised at the change he’d seen in his old friend. After two hundred years of solitude, Samson had had no problems adjusting to marriage to a strong woman. Amaury doubted that he himself would adjust as easily as Samson had, not that this question was anything else but academic. Amaury knew he would never bond, because he could never truly love anybody.
“I’ll talk to G,” Samson said, referring to the mayor. “I’ll make sure he’ll keep us in the loop.” He looked back at the screen. “What time are you landing?”
“Everybody’s on their