she wasn’t privy as to why she wanted him so badly. And Dillon wasn’t about to tell her.
It had started two months ago when a stranger had ridden into town. Jake McCann had turned out to be more than the average drifter. He’d been a vampire determined to lay his past to rest, to slay his demons. Literally. And Dillon had gotten caught in the middle of the struggle.
One minute Dillon had been trying to protect an old friend and the next, he’d had a pair of bloodthirsty fangs—courtesy of Jake’s nemesis—gnawing at his neck. He’d come this close to dying, his life spilling away on the pavement of the town’s main square, but then Jake had stepped forward, shared his own blood, and changed Dillon forever.
Thankfully.
Sure, it wasn’t the most practical lifestyle—no more lounging on the beach or scarfing chicken fried steak. But being bitten and turned into a vampire who thrived on blood and sex—especially sex—wasn’t such a bad thing.
Not to a man whose parents had been a pair of obsessive-compulsives who’d worried about everything, particularly the health and well-being of their only two children. Dillon and his younger sister, Cheryl Anne, had been smothered and coddled to the point that they’d been isolated from their peers. Harold and Dora Cash had never taken their children on a trip to the beach—and risk the possibility of sun damage? Nor had they allowed them to eat chicken fried steak or anything with an overabundance of trans fat.
Dillon had grown up playing solitaire and chess while other kids went camping and joined Boy Scouts. He’d also been a computer whiz who’d spent his summers reading and taking online courses instead of catching fireflies and going on picnics or swimming down at Skull Creek river.
At thirty-one, he’d become his own boss—he owned the only computer store within a fifty mile radius that handled both new sales and repairs. He was independent, financially solvent, and still a major geek.
Up until two months ago, that is.
“Once a geek, always a geek.”
Susie’s words echoed in his head. That’s what she’d told him back in high school when he’d worked up the nerve to ask her out. He’d gotten a new haircut and ordered a cool pair of jeans and an AC/DC T-shirt online. He’d even invested the money he’d made typing English papers on a pair of contact lenses. But it hadn’t been enough. By then, the damage had already been done, his reputation established. His new look had failed. Even more, one of his contacts had popped out and Susie had ground it into the concrete as she’d spun on her heel, told him to get lost and walked away.
Her rejection had set the stage for many more to come. He’d gone on to have a measly three sexual encounters in his lifetime (not counting the experimental petting he’d done with his buddy Meg back in the ninth grade), and not one woman had ever come back for seconds.
In fact, he’d had a pretty hard time talking them into firsts.
All that had changed the night he’d been turned.
He’d changed.
A gleam of yellow pushed through the part in the drapes and sliced across the carpet at his feet, but it did little to illuminate the rest of the room. He blinked, his gaze piercing the darkness, drinking in every detail of the small hotel room—from the faint scars on the worn dresser to the tiny thread that unraveled at the corner of the bedspread, to the shimmering spiderweb that dangled in the far corner. His vision had improved and sharpened to the point that he had no need of the black coke-bottle glasses he’d worn since the age of five.
His dark blond hair was shinier and thicker, too, his body more muscular and defined. His acne had completely cleared up and his tongue no longer tied itself into knots when a pretty female looked his way.
Now he knew exactly how to talk to a woman.
How to look at her. To touch. To seduce.
He was now a vampire who craved sexual energy as much as he craved the sustenance of blood. More, in fact. And after thirtyone years of near celibacy, Dillon Cash had no qualms feeding the hunger that now lived and breathed inside of him.
His nostrils flared and the scent of warm, ripe woman filled his head. His body responded instantly. His hands itched to reach out. His muscles tightened in anticipation. The blood pounded through his veins. His dick stirred, growing hard, hot, ready.
Still. As great as he knew the sex would be, this encounter would just make him that much more anxious for the next.
Another woman.
Another rush of succulent, sweet, drenching energy.
He needed it. He thrived on it. He fed off of it.
Gladly.
Unlike the vampire who’d turned him, Dillon wasn’t the least bit anxious to escape the hunger. Not when it came with so many perks. He knew he would inevitably miss his humanity. He would then get as serious as Jake about finding and destroying theAncient One, and putting an end to the vampire curse once and for all.
After he’d broken Bobby McGuire’s record for having slept with the most women in town.
Bobby was a legend in Skull Creek. He’d held the number one spot on the town’s Randiest Rooster list for a record twenty-eight years, right up until he’d turned forty-eight and had had his first heart attack. The doc had put him on a strict No Excitement diet, and he’d been booted off the list. Before however, he’d been a major gigolo rumored to have done the deed with over three hundred women, a count he’d recorded by carving notches into his pine headboard. That proof had sold for over two thousand dollars last year at a local charity auction when Bobby, now an old man, had donated a houseful of furniture and moved to a retirement community in Port Aransas.
Over the years, some had called Bobby a sex maniac. Others had called him a liar. A few had even said he was delusional.
But no one—not a single soul—had ever called him a geek.
Not that Dillon cared what other people thought. Nor did he have any desire to land himself on the notorious list.
This wasn’t about proving something to the folks of Skull Creek. It was about proving something to himself. After so many years of having zero luck with the opposite sex, he’d started to think that maybe, just maybe, Susie had been right about him.
He’d never really thought so. He’d always walked the straight and narrow because of his parents. He didn’t want to cause them any more grief. He’d caused enough as a child when he’d nearly gotten himself killed.
It had been his seventh birthday and he’d been determined to camp out down by the creek. His parents had said no, but he’d snuck out anyway. He’d been walking around without shoes near the water and had stepped on something sharp. In a matter of days, a small puncture wound had morphed into a full-blown staph infection.
A near fatal infection that had turned his parents from normal and easygoing people to smothering and obsessive caretakers in less than six months.
Cheryl Anne was too young to remember—she’d been four at the time—and too young to blame him for the stifled life she’d been forced to lead. But he remembered how things had been before the incident.
