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. His parents had been fun-loving and adventurous back then. And Dillon? He’d been outgoing. A risk taker with a zest for life.
He’d buckled under the guilt, suppressed that lust and obeyed his folks from then on. To everyone else, he’d seemed like a quiet, shy, timid kid, but deep inside he’d been just the opposite.
An act. That’s all it had been, or so he’d always thought up until he’d graduated high school without even making it to second base with a girl. The doubts had set in then—the notion that maybe he wasn’t really pretending. Maybe he really had morphed into a bona fide geek.
Even now that he was a vampire there were still moments—quick bursts of thought whenever he found himself in the most unreal situations—when he knew, he just knew, he had to be dreaming and it was just a matter of time before reality intruded and he morphed back to his old, boring self.
But he was going to change all of that and silence the doubts for good. He’d fantasized about breaking Bobby’s record—what hormone-driven teenage boy hadn’t?—but he’d never had the opportunity.
Until now.
Two months, an uncontrollable hunger and a nearly impossible number of women—he was now only two shy of his goal.
Training his gaze on the tall, voluptuous blonde, he sent a rush of mental images, leaving no doubt in her mind what he wanted to do to her.
She didn’twalk away this time. She couldn’t. Shewanted him with a greedy desperation that she’d never felt for any other man.
He read that truth in her eyes—another vampire perk—along with the fact that, despite her beauty and the prestige of being number one on Tilly’s Hottest Chicks list, she was the loneliest and most miserable of all her friends. Contrary to rumor, she hadn’t left her second husband because he’d filed bankruptcy after some bad business investments. He’d been cheating on her with a giggling twenty-one-year-old barmaid and had spent their entire savings on hair plugs, liposuction and a penis enlargement.
“Touch me,” she begged. “Please.”
And because Dillon needed her as much as she needed him, he did.
“CAN ANYONE TELL ME THE key ingredient to a successful relationship?”
Meg wiggled in her seat, craned her neck and peered between two gigantic teased and sprayed hairdos. Her gaze went to the woman who stood center stage in the small lobby of the Skull Creek Inn.
Winona Atkins was well into her seventies. She wore a flowerprint smock, white orthopedic shoes and a penis-shaped name tag that read Carnal Coach. Rolls of snow white curls covered her head and a pair of gold-rimmed cat’s eye glasses hung from a chain around her neck.
The old woman arched a white eyebrow as she eyed her roomful of eager students. “Well, come on now.” She waved a bony hand. “I ain’t got all night. Somebody bite the bullet and take a stab at it.”
“Honesty?” someone called out.
“Mutual respect?” asked another.
“Separate bank accounts?”
Winona smiled, her face breaking into a mass of wrinkles. “Those are some fine answers, ladies. Mighty fine.” She shook her head. “But I’m afraid they ain’t even close. See—” she retrieved the hat rack standing in the far corner and hauled it front and center “—every man, no matter how upstanding or uptight he might be, likes a little hooch ever once in a while.”
“Hooch?” one woman asked. “Is that like a floozy?”
“Exactly. It’s a woman who can cut loose and shed her inhibitions.
A woman who’s got confidence and isn’t afraid to show it. A woman who’ll strip buck naked and wrap herself around the nearest pole.” Winona gripped the hat rack and did a little shake and shimmy. “I call this move “Circling the wagons”, ladies.” She went around the cedar rack once, twice. “I know it looks complicated now, but after tonight’s lesson, you’ll all be able to do it with your eyes closed. Which is a plus if you’re like Sally, there, who’s got cataracts.” She indicated a seventy-something woman straining to see with her bifocals. “Not that you’re s’posed to close your eyes. Eye contact is a powerful thing between a woman and a man.”
Winona’s words stirred a sudden vision of Dillon standing in the hotel doorway, his gaze hooked on Susie Wilcox, his eyes bright. Gleaming. Powerful.
A pang of envy shot through her. A crazy reaction because no way—repeat, no way—was she even remotely attracted to Dillon Cash.
Sure, she’d felt a few tummy tingles when they’d tried the kissing thing way back when, but what red-blooded, curious, hormonal teen girl wouldn’t after watching Mickey Rourke seduce Kim Bassinger? It hadn’t been Dillon. It had been the heat of the moment.
Luckily, the temperature had quickly fizzled after the first disappointing attempt at a kiss. She hadn’t felt even an inkling of attraction to him since.
Not then and certainly not now.
Forget jealous. She was envious. He had a hot woman falling all over him, and she wanted the same. Not a hot woman, mind you, but a hot man.
Yep, she was envious. If it was really and truly him, that is.
She latched onto the doubts and turned her attention back to the front of the room.
“…start with Mary.” Winona pointed to a woman seated on the front row. “I want you to get up and try circling the wagons. We’ll keep going seat by seat until everyone gets a turn. While everyone’s trying out the technique, I’ll have a look at the homework assignment from the last class.”
Pages fluttered as everyone pulled out their notebooks.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Mary said as she pushed to her feet. “I’m not used to working with an audience.”
“That’s what these are for, dear.” Winona retrieved a platter of petit fours from a nearby table. “I call ‘em pleasure bites. These little buggers will have you stripping off your clothes and shedding your inhibitions quicker than Arlen Wilson can chow through an apple with those new titanium dentures of his.”
“Are
