Bad to the Bone (Night Fall Book 10) Read online

  “Just—just get on with it!”

  With every reunion, he savored this dance. “It’s sweet how you let me have my way. So giving.”

  “Lord, I’ll kill him myself,” she muttered.

  “No need to risk your soul on my account,” he murmured. Then he cupped her warm buttocks and slid a thumb between them.

  Her bottom squirmed. “That’s bigger!”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, pushing it inside. He didn’t give her time to complain again, thrusting his cock inside her pussy. He gritted his teeth as her slick walls rippled along his shaft.

  She came up on her arms and shoved backward, forcing him deeper.

  And he was lost. With his thumb swirling inside her, he powered into her hot cunt, groaning every bit as loudly as she did.

  Her orgasm was swift. She gave a keening cry and arched her back like a cat, holding as still as she could manage while he hammered faster and faster, until he too found sweet release, come jetting in swift, scalding spurts.

  When the explosion waned, he removed his thumb and gathered her hips against him to keep their bodies locked, and brought them both to their sides on the mattress. He kissed her damp shoulder and the back of her neck.

  She murmured sleepily and cuddled closer, resting her head on his arm, while he stared into a dark corner and started the countdown until this wonderful, terrifyingly bitter night ended.

  *

  Just before dawn, Viper woke her, coming over her, quieting her sleepy murmurs with a forceful kiss. He took his time, at last, entering her so slowly she complained, lifting her hips to force him deeper.

  Their loving was slow, savored, poignant—because this time, they both remembered the many times they’d been here, holding each other tightly at the end. Their kisses were all the sweeter because they knew they’d have to make each one matter.

  He held back, but still thrusting faster, harder. Sliding a hand between their bodies, he caressed the tiny knot of nerves that shot her ahead of his pace, so that he could watch her come.

  As her mouth opened around a quiet scream, he let go, joining her, groaning deeply as his body and heart emptied into hers.

  Viper waited until her soft brown eyes fluttered open, and her gaze met his for the last time. Her smile said she forgave him, and she touched his cheek—a touch that went right to his soul.

  The kiss wasn’t needed, but he wanted her to close her eyes. He closed his as he stole one memory after another, letting them flicker through his mind…

  Their first meeting at the station house where she tried to pry information from the precinct’s PR officer about a drug arrest. She’d spotted Viper and became distracted enough that the exasperated PR guy slipped away.

  The first time they’d made love—that same night. A frenzied, delirious coupling in the front seat of his car when he’d tried to play the gentleman and drop her at her door after their first date.

  Fishing in the Sound on a borrowed boat. Only they hadn’t caught a single thing, except a raging sunburn in intimate places.

  Their wedding. Mariah dressed in white and beaming as she’d stood in front of a Justice of the Peace and repeated her vows in an excited rush, eager for the pronouncement that would make her his forever.

  When at last he’d finished, he let out a ragged sob, kissed her closed eyes, and slipped from the bed.

  *

  Lieutenant Moses Brown waited outside, his large frame leaning against his unmarked car. When he saw him, he straightened and flicked away his cigarette. “Thought I might find you here. Need a ride back?”

  Viper slid into the passenger seat, keeping his face turned straight ahead, not allowing himself to look back as Moses pulled away from the curb.

  “Did you let her go this time, buddy?”

  Throat raw and burning, Viper only nodded.

  “It’s for the best. Now, the girl can get on with her life.”

  “I know.”

  “We have work to do. With Navarro gone, the natives are gettin’ restless.” His dark fingers tightened on the steering wheel. They think the territory’s up for grabs.”

  “Guess I’ll just have to make a play for it, won’t I?” Viper said, letting his bitter rage bleed through.

  “Damn shame about the missus,” Moses said softly.

  His jaw clenched tight before he spoke. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I understand.” Moses flicked the indicator to turn onto another street. “You sure you didn’t leave any clues? Nothing she might use to connect the dots this time?”

  “I wiped her mind of everything. I’m sure.” Feeling drained, he leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eyes.

  Then he remembered. The ring. He hadn’t removed it from her finger. With his chest tightening as though held in a vise’s grip, he jerked upright.

  Moses’s head swung his way, his brows lowered. “You okay? You forget something?”

  The words to tell his friend to turn around were on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he relaxed. Maybe she’d wake up, find the ring, and wonder. Without the memories to accompany the golden band, could she really find him?

  The tantalizing thought was just enough to ease him past the devastating sadness he thought he couldn’t bear. Maybe, this time, she’d find him.

  The possibility was enough. A wisp of hope to hold onto. Feeling lighter, he rolled down the window and let the soft, salt breeze whisk away his dour mood. “So, about these natives, Moses. We talking fangs?”

  Chapter Four

  ‡

  Now…

  A girl remembered things. Her first kiss. Her first time doing the nasty with a boy. Her wedding. Mariah remembered with clarity the first two. Kyle Bennett in the back of the bus on the way home from a cross-town football game. The backseat of Kyle’s Dodge Charger on homecoming night.

  The last…she didn’t remember a thing.

  Not. One. Thing.

  And yet, she had a ring inscribed with, “You’re my forever girl, Danny.” And now, she had a snippet in the Seattle Times that she’d had to find in brittle, printed copy in the paper’s basement because the notice didn’t exist in the computerized archive.

  Mariah stared at the short article in the weddings section and felt as though the floor was melting from beneath her. She swayed in her seat, clammy sweat breaking out on her face.

  What the hell? Her glance skated over the words, her mind plucking phrases in the short notice: Seattle police detective Daniel Vacarro…and Mariah Cohen…in a ceremony conducted at City Hall… She rechecked the newspaper’s date. Her wedding had occurred five years before the morning last week that she’d awoken with the ring on her finger.

  Five years. What had she been doing back then? Who had she been hanging out with? She’d been new to Seattle. Hadn’t had any close friends—still didn’t, for that matter. She’d just started at the Times and was working hard to make a name for herself. That much she remembered.

  She took the page from the paper to the copier. While the old machine chugged and vibrated, she ran a finger over the ring she’d strung on a chain and now wore around her neck.

  Danny Vacarro. Had she been Mariah Vacarro? She rather liked the sound of the name, but still, it struck no chord of familiarity. She strained her memory for anything about that time, but scenes flitted by too quickly to grasp. At one time, she’d wanted to be an investigative reporter… What had happened to the ambition that had kept her so driven throughout college?

  She must have suffered some sort of trauma. She had amnesia. Rather selective amnesia. But trauma didn’t explain why the digitized version of the paper contained no mention of the wedding but the print copy did. Was she involved in some sort of conspiracy?

  Who the hell was Danny Vacarro, and why wasn’t there a trace of him anywhere in her life? Mariah felt as though she was living in a nightmare. Everything she thought she knew about herself, her life, felt like a lie.

  The morning she’d awoken, feeling
pleasantly relaxed and aching in intimate places, she reached out instinctively, touching the empty side of the bed. Instantly, her eyes shot open, and she pushed upward to sit, staring down at her sore, peaked nipples and catching the tangy scent of sex in the room. Not just her own scent, she knew. A faint masculine aroma lingered in the air. Then she saw a glint of gold and stared down at her finger.

  After twisting it off and rushing to the bathroom to examine it under the bright light above her sink, she found herself quivering. Her mind went blank. Her breath hitched. A wedding ring on her finger… The evidence of having sex clinging to her inner thighs… She had the foresight to use tissues to capture the fluid and put it into a baggie, but had yet to work up the courage to send it to a lab for DNA testing.

  The huge gap in her memory of her actions since she’d arrived home from work the night before everything had changed made her fear she’d somehow been roofied. But when and where? Had she gone out? She didn’t remember anything beyond kicking off her pumps as soon as she’d closed her front door and sinking into the armchair in front of her TV, ready to catch up on recorded episodes of The Vampire Diaries.

  But that following morning, after finding clothing scattered on the floor, including a flowered skirt she hadn’t worn since the previous summer, she’d sat on the edge of her bed and hyperventilated. Apparently, she had gone out. But then she’d been drugged, married, and fucked. So, where the hell was the man responsible?

  After she’d showered, she’d torn apart her apartment, looking for clues of his existence but finding nothing. For the rest of the weekend, she remained inside, washing her bedding and her clothing, but she was so restless she took her housecleaning farther, emptying and reorganizing closets, shelves, and her desk.

  In the bottom drawer of her desk, she found her stack of wall calendars, the previous year’s on top. She was a bit of a hoarder of anything that had to do with dates and appointments, and she kept the calendars because she often scribbled addresses and notes in the margins. Deciding the time was right to toss them, she flipped through the pages of the previous year’s calendar for any notes she might need to transfer. She halted on the exact date, a year prior to her “lost night” and noted a fat Sharpied circle surrounding the date, and the note she’d written to herself. Don’t forget!!!

  She traced the letters with a fingertip. Her handwriting was larger than she usually wrote. The number of exclamation marks displayed another clue to her distress when she’d annotated the calendar. She set it aside and reached for the next one, flipped to the exact month, and saw another note, this one written in pencil—just one word. Danny!

  Pulse racing, she went through the rest and found one other note from four years past. Anniversary! Danny! Feeling shell-shocked, because, again, she hadn’t recalled any of this, she took a deep breath and glanced around. Her gaze fell on her large accordion file where she kept bills and receipts. Maybe something would be there. Some proof of injury—a doctor’s bill, a hospital record, something, anything. Her mind was a great big fuzzy jumble of nothing around certain dates. Where were the memories?

  After looking at every single piece of paper stuffed inside the file, she knew she hadn’t been injured in an accident and hadn’t been in the hospital at all. She checked her folders for items as far back as when she’d first arrived in Seattle. Nothing stood out—except for one receipt for a dress from a shop known for its wedding finery…

  Well, she wasn’t a reporter for nothing. That one receipt had led her on Monday to the shop where she’d learned she and her fiancé had both selected the gown. He’d wanted to pay for it, but she’d insisted. Both had wrestled for the bill. And he was so handsome the shop’s owner hadn’t forgotten him or her, or the fact he’d won the argument when he’d cupped her face and kissed her silly.

  Tall, well-muscled, long, dark hair, which he wore in a ponytail. Dark eyes. The shop owner had shivered. “And you say you don’t remember?” Her gaze had been filled with pity.

  Mariah could only imagine the woman’s thoughts. She probably thinks I lost my mind. How could she have forgotten her own husband? But she gritted her teeth and persevered through the interview, learning they’d been eager to marry, quickly, in a civil ceremony. And after the woman had thought hard, she snapped her fingers and said, “Danny! That was his name! He was such a handsome man…”

  Something tightened inside Mariah’s chest at the mention of the name and the sigh the other woman gave.

  But that approximate date, and that first name, had been all she needed. Hitting the digital archive back at work, she’d searched every single list of wedding announcements for that timeframe. She’d found nothing, but had noted one missing page—which had led her to the basement and the print copies stored there.

  Now, she had a name. His profession. Folding her copy of the notice, she stuffed it into her purse. Someone in the Seattle PD had to know him. She wasn’t stopping until she had some answers.

  An hour later, Mariah found herself sitting inside an interview room with a large mirror filling the opposite wall. Again, the situation felt surreal. All she’d done was ask the desk sergeant for Detective Danny Vacarro. Before she’d spoken, the sergeant’s expression had been lax, and he’d issued a sigh like she was just another pain-in-the-ass thing he had to take care of that day. She wished she’d worn something more professional than a Seahawks tee and jeggings. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss her. However, when she’d said the name of the officer she was seeking, his beady eyes sharpened, and his ruddy complexion paled. He’d asked her to take a seat in the line of chairs against the wall, and then he’d disappeared.

  Five minutes later, a very large, bald black man strode toward her.

  She’d been fiddling with her purse zipper, opening and closing it, but dumped the purse on the floor as he approached when she shot up from her seat. She wasn’t sure why, but his dark frown made her feel guilty, like she’d committed some sort of crime.

  “Moses Brown,” the man said, holding out his hand.

  Inhaling, she took it and found hers completely engulfed inside his grip. “Mariah Cohen.”

  “Why don’t you come with me, miss?”

  While the words did form a question, his delivery made it a command. She didn’t think of balking, not once, as she scooped up her purse and followed him to an elevator. Once the doors opened, he’d led her straight to this room.

  Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t looked at her once during the whole journey. Mariah blew out a heavy breath that billowed her cheeks and closed her eyes. Get it together. Don’t expect too much. It’s probably just another rabbit hole.

  Only her gut told her that wasn’t true. Her eyes popped open. When was the last time she’d felt this tingle of certainty about a hot lead?

  She didn’t really have to think back to come up with an answer. Five years. Stuffing her fear and nervousness where it belonged, deep where no one else could see, she straightened her shoulders and stared hard at the two-way mirror.

  “I’m not shitting you, man. She’s here and asking for you!”

  Viper’s fingers tightened around his cell phone. A flush of happiness swept through him, followed very quickly by a thud of dread that sucked away his breath. Now was not a good time. Staring across the table at the asshole holding a full house, while he held a royal flush, he knew he had to keep his shit together. The stack of bills and odd pieces of jewelry that were strewn on the table between them was a rich-enough haul, he’d have to fight his way out of this vampire den.

  Up until a minute ago, he’d relished the challenge. The pock-marked, teenage bastard in the chair across from him was a remnant of Nicky Powell’s old gang, and since he was sitting pretty money-wise, he must have been recruited by Nicky’s older brother, Zachary. And Zachary was the vampire currently being hunted by the Masters’ Council. After recently turning a group of scientists skilled in gene-splicing, Zachary had them figuring out a way to enhance his powers—splici
ng his DNA with that of an older vamp’s, someone closer to the original monsters who’d begun the vampire scourge millennia ago.

  Viper tamped down his frustration and lay his cards face down on the table.

  The kid with the scraggly goatee sitting across from him grinned. “You folding?”

  Narrowing his gaze, Viper gave a crisp nod. “Guess it’s your lucky night,” he muttered and pushed up from his seat.

  The vampires surrounding the table, the kid’s friends, all stiffened, preparing for a battle over the cache in the center of the table.

  Instead, Viper smirked and pushed through their ranks, heading straight to the door. He’d return another night to get closer to Zachary’s crew. Outside, he noted dusk had fallen. He’d been in this den, a suburban house with the rattiest yard in the cul-de-sac, for twenty-four hours. A breeze blew, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. He smelled like cigarettes, booze, and sex.

  No time for a shower. He headed to his motorcycle. Moses would keep Mariah nailed to her chair until he got there. Moses would expect him to again wipe her memory before sending her on her way.

  Viper wasn’t sure he wanted to. Five years was a long time to pine for the same woman—and he’d tried goddamn hard to get rid of his obsession. He’d fucked hundreds of women, slaking his thirst for blood and sex. He’d dirtied himself with the crimes and the lowlifes he’d surrounded himself with since he’d been turned, hoping he’d adopt even a tinge of the soulless, hedonistic existence most vamps wallowed in.

  For a time, he’d even kept well away from old friends. He’d buried himself in the dens, feeding and lusting.

  Then he’d met Dylan and Navarro, and they’d asked him whether he wanted to die or join them. They needed someone with his police skills and sordid connections, and with his ability to work deep undercover.

  The anguished part of him had felt a deep relief that, at last, he’d find a way to redeem himself for his sins. He’d reached out to Moses, who secretly reported directly to the chief of police concerning all his “blue moon” investigations, and they’d reformed a clandestine partnership.