Chapter One
Topside
7:10 P.M., November
Sheraton Hotel, Harbor Island Drive, San Diego
He rode up on a Harley.
The distinctive, throaty grumble of that motorcycle’s engine brought Charlize swinging around to watch him, along with her two chef friends, Marissa and Lara. They were in perfect viewing position to watch the biker as he pulled up to the curb, light from the hotel’s portico glinting off chrome fenders and a sleek, dark helmet.
He was dressed in steel-toed combat boots, a black leather jacket, and a pair of faded jeans that hugged corded thighs…thighs that gripped the metal body of the motorcycle in a way Charlize had never seen or sensed before. Like somehow the man was more powerful than the machine. He was completely faceless, his tinted eye shield currently lowered—not the safest choice at night—which stripped him of normal human features. No expression. No eyes. Just polished black fiberglass and Kevlar.
His head turned toward the three of them.
Danger. Menace.
Charlize’s next breath slid out of her on a hot rush, and something rippled through her. A shiver, maybe. Not from the cold. It was early November, but San Diego November, so the weather was no more than brisk. Not from fear, either…not entirely, even though the danger coming off the biker was very real. Maybe—
The engine cut off. The biker dropped the kickstand with a negligent whack of his boot and dismounted with an easy swing of a long leg. He stood for a moment, unbuckling the chin strap on his helmet, his jacket partially unzipped to reveal a navy cotton T-shirt stretched tight over a suggestively muscled chest.
Charlize ran her tongue slowly over her teeth. Mystery solved. Her shiver had been one of sexual awareness. And now…
Here he comes.
Directly toward her.
He moved like a big panther, sure-footed and lithe—surprising for a man who clearly wrestled bears for a living. She dropped her gaze to the bedroom roll of his hips and made an mmm sound. His jeans molded an impressive package in front. Her nipples pushed tautly against her T-shirt.
Beside her, Lara gasped.
Charlize dragged her attention up. She’d missed the initial unveiling, since she’d been focused so intently below his waist, but…
The biker had removed his helmet, and…
Holy yowsa.
Hot.
Hot enough to please Satan, because his looks leaned heavily toward nasty with all the darkness he had going on—shortish black hair, black goatee, and a small black ear gauge in his left lobe. Moreover, he gave off an aggressive sexual energy that from one breath to the next left Charlize’s undies in need of a cycle through a clothes dryer.
She knew this type of man. Got off on this type of man. This kind of hottie snack absolutely dominated in bed. When he was done with a woman, there’d be nothing left of her. She would only be able to lie on the mattress afterward, sore thighs flopped open, vision glazed, thoughts of thanks for the abuse wafting through her mind.
Charlize twitched up one side of her mouth. Sounded about her speed. Her belly was already heating to the idea of getting mounted by this guy. Her last conquest hadn’t been nearly as hot and dangerous as Spank Me, Mister Biker here, so she was overdue for some action of the rougher variety.
The problem was timing. Marissa’s colleagues were due to pick up Charlize, Lara, and Marissa any minute.
She glanced slantways at her two friends. What would they say if Charlize asked them to hang out and wait while she bagged this guy? She stifled a snort. What would they think about her wanting to screw a guy on sight alone? Since the three of them mostly socialized around cooking activities, Marissa and Lara didn’t know that Charlize made pretty bold choices when it came to her sex life. To her, fucking men she didn’t know was a thrill and an adventure, while relationships were obligations and stress and a boyfriend who eventually got all stupid and sappy and wanted, supposedly, a closeness he would just fail to deliver on anyway, so why bother?
Yeah, no thanks. Give her a straight-up, straightforward fuck any day.
But not all women were DTF strangers. Fine. Others could do their thing, she would do hers, and anyone who wanted to slut-shame her for the way she lived, well…they could go party elsewhere.
Charlize took a subtle step forward. Snackilicious was almost up to her, and with no time to check in with her girlfriends, she was just going to have to do her thing and hope Marissa and Lara would be good wingwomen. Her “thing” consisted of a brazen stare accompanied by a move that always hit her a home run and got her around all the bases. She arched her spine and thrust her breasts forward.
Her breasts were her biggest asset—most obviously because they were big. That, coupled with her being a blue-eyed blonde, with naturally curling golden hair falling in fat ringlets nearly to her waist, seemed to have molded her into every man’s wet dream fantasy girl. Seeing as her nipples were still poking against her T-shirt, seducing Snacky was going to be almost absurdly easy to—
He brushed right past her.
Without even a single glance in the remote vicinity of her direction.
In fact, he shoved his helmet into her hands just before sweeping Marissa off her feet. “Riss,” he growled, swinging her around. “Damn, I missed you.”
Marissa laughed, her palms coming to rest on the biker’s wide shoulders. “I’ve only been gone for three days, and what in the world is that thing you rode up on?”
“Just a new man-toy the warriors are testing out.”
Charlize blinked. She peered down at the helmet that’d been carelessly thrust into her arms and blinked some more. Her friend Marissa was beautiful, absolutely, with green eyes, a slender, fit figure, and tarnished blond hair hanging sleekly down her back, strands of her overlong bangs fluttering in her eyes, but… Charlize had never been ignored by a heterosexual male.
The biker set Marissa on her feet, a pair of exceptionally glittery silver eyes nearly devouring her as he bent forward for a kiss.
“Oh, no. No way.” Marissa angled away from his mouth, although she was still laughing. “I know how you kiss when you have that look in your eyes, and we’re in public.” She pushed gently out of his hold. “Besides, I want to introduce you to my friends. Meet Lara Klein and Charlize Renault.”
The biker finally gave them his attention. “Hey,” he said, his eyes slightly narrowing as he tracked his gaze over both their bodies.
Another shiver passed over Charlize. Not from sexual awareness this time. No, this man wasn’t admiring her. He was conducting a surveillance, rapidly evaluating any possible threat she might pose, assessing ways to eliminate said threat. Needles prickled the back of Charlize’s neck.
Marissa gestured at Snackilicious. “This is my husband, Dev Nichita.”
Husband…
Shiver number three. So…
He was one of them.
Even without Marissa’s elaborate explanation of what her husband truly was, would Charlize have known? She was guessing she would’ve picked up on something being different about this guy…the danger radiating off him, his visible super-strength, those strange, intense eyes, the definite animal vibe pulsing off him. She just wouldn’t have known what it all meant without Marissa’s “tell-all” with Charlize and Lara on night two of the three-day chef seminar they’d just attended here at the Sheraton Hotel.
The seminar was given once a year, every November, and the last time Charlize saw Marissa at one was four years ago. They’d waved at each other across the banquet room during check-in, but nothing else. Charlize later heard that Marissa had left the conference right after French chef Pomeroy Lefèbvre canceled his teaching gig. So when Marissa asked Charlize and Lara to come to her hotel room two nights ago, Charlize figured it was to catch up. Even though the three of them weren’t party friends, Charlize had always felt a close connection with these two, and…it turned out there was a specific reason for that.
A really bizarre reason, and no wonder Marissa made a batch of margaritas before launching into it.
Taking a casual sip of her drink, Marissa told them she’d noticed Lara’s and Charlize’s birthmarks on night one of the seminar, when the three of them went to the hotel pool together in bikinis. This prompted Marissa to obtain permission from someone named Toni for a tell-all session.
Tell-all what?
Well… Those birthmarks meant that Charlize and Lara possessed a special gene, similar to one Marissa had, inherited from an extinct race known as “Dragons”—called this because these ancient people were born with a colorful, scaly dragon tattoo on their backs. Their human ancestors also had the dragon tattoo, but only a small, brown piece of it: a wing or a nose or a foot.
And see? Marissa lifted the back of her shirt, showing them her dragon’s foot. It was just like the one Charlize and Lara had. Not sort of like. It was an exact replica.
Lara gawked.
Charlize tried to pretend like she wasn’t gawking, but pretty much did too.
They stood, raised their shirts, and compared all around, and sure enough. Each of the brown blotches sitting low on their backs, just to the left of the spine, were identical.
Identical.
Charlize dropped back down in her seat and reclaimed her drink, taking a deep gulp.
How was such a thing possible? And how had she missed this at the hotel swimming pool? Probably because she was too busy eyeing the guy with the board shorts riding low on his hips, ripped abs on full display.
Marissa topped off their drinks, smiling benignly at their stunned expressions. Were they ready for the really strange part?
Charlize shotgunned her second margarita. You know what? Sure. Why the hell not? Not much in life ever made sense to her. Plans never worked out the way they were supposed to; people never did what they said they would do; relationships always seemed to tank for no discernible reason. She had an open mind about whack shit.
Turned out she’d needed it.
Because a lot of weird-beyond-weird was laid out in the tell-all. It took Marissa several hours to explain it all, but the main points were these:
Marissa lived in a secret underground community that was a hiding place for a subset of the human race—a species called Vârcolac. These people had a lot of special abilities and some interesting genetic differences from “regular” humans, but for now, the important thing to know was that these Vârcolac needed to get much of their red blood supply from an outside source. They accomplished this through neck-biting with fangs.
From the corner of her eye, Charlize saw Lara chug her drink.
So…
Waitaminute.
Did that mean these people were, like, vampires?
Yes, but not undead monsters or TV-hyped fiends. They’re good guys.
All right.
Er… Sounded “out there,” but…
So anyway, according to more of Marissa’s story, the survival of these Vârcolac was in jeopardy. A long-ago betrayal by one of their own ended up killing a majority of their species. Over the years their gene pool weakened, until now they couldn’t have kids together—not living ones, at least. The only way to continue the race was to hook up with the unique species of human they could successfully mate with: people with the special birthmark and the rare Dragon gene.
Seeing as Charlize and Lara were a couple of these snazzy Dragons, the crowning point of the tell-all was that the two of them were being invited to join the community. And, by the way, lucky them, they were coming in with eyes wide open. Four and a half years ago, when Marissa joined the community, she’d been told it was a top-secret research institute. It wasn’t until she’d dated Dev for three months that she discovered he was a vampire.
Like…a real vampire…? I mean…
Community living, according to Marissa, was awesome. Charlize and Lara would be expected to contribute in some way, but Marissa was making it easy. She wanted them to be part owners of her restaurant. She had two kids now and couldn’t keep the place open as much as the community needed. So basically Charlize and Lara could set their own schedule, own their own business, and not suffer a single financial concern while they were there.
Hard to find a downside.
At the core of it, they were only being asked to date any Vârcolac man who struck their fancy, go out with him long enough to see if they might fall in love, and then let nature take its course. They could leave any time they wanted, but the community preferred if they committed to at least a six-month stay. This would give them time to adjust to small-town life—and to living inside a cave—before they made a lasting decision about their futures. If they wanted to hold onto their homes topside during this time, the community would pay their rent or mortgage. They would have to quit their current jobs, of course, but weren’t they both in dead-end positions right now, anyway?
Marissa followed that question with a final, So? What do you two think?
Charlize tried to exchange a glance with Lara, but Lara was too busy staring off into space with a dreamy look, a hand resting on her chest. Whether or not Lara believed all this vampire and Dragon stuff, Charlize got the sense it didn’t really matter. Lara had just turned the maternal-clock-clanging age of thirty, and Charlize was guessing Lara was sold on the idea of joining the community the moment it was described as a place full of mega-hot men who desperately wanted to find a wife and have children. How many times had Lara been caught with her nose pressed to the window of Babies“R”Us? Lara probably would’ve been willing to move someplace with little green Martian men, as long as one of them wanted to marry her.
Charlize wasn’t sure what she believed about vampires and the unheard-of Dragon genetics, either, although as far as convincing her of the truthfulness of some of it, the matching birthmarks went a long way. Marissa’s description about how their Dragon genes set them apart from regular human beings also fit.
Hadn’t Charlize always felt out of place? Didn’t she have trouble making friends? Didn’t she find it strange that she was a successful, beautiful woman, who a dozen men should’ve snapped up by now, yet she’d never been in a serious relationship? A “yes” to all of the above. Charlize had always felt wrong in life. Apparently this was because she didn’t belong around regulars, but among her own people—Vârcolac and Dragons—although she wasn’t going to discount her mother’s contribution to her being a “wrong” end-product, either.
But, like Lara, what ultimately sold her on the idea of joining the community was the mega-hot men part—albeit for different reasons. Charlize was ripe for some new guys to play with. She’d already fucked all the cute, single guys in San Diego. Ha ha, not really. But really, there was nothing keeping her in San Diego, not an exciting job, not close friends, and as far as family went, living in a hideaway community would leave her readily unavailable to clean up the messes her mother and brother consistently made—an added bonus. Or maybe a main reason to go, take a bit of a vacay away from her old life.
So she and Lara agreed to give Marissa’s community a try.
And if Biker Snack was a sample of the scrumptious offerings being put forth by this community, then Charlize had definitely made the right decision.
A giggling threesome of teenage girls wearing cheap boho fashion and trailing even cheaper perfume—like a lilac had mated with a wet dog—frisked toward the hotel.
Charlize and Lara moved farther off to the side to make room for them. The three passed by, followed by resigned-looking parents.
“Anyway,” Marissa said to her husband. “Now that you’re here, I’ll check out.”
He raised his brows. “You haven’t checked out yet?”
“No. I received a text message from the warriors saying the van has a flat tire. I wasn’t sure when anyone would be here to pick us up. But don’t worry, we’re all packed.”
Her husband started toward the hotel door.
“You’d better let me talk to the front desk, though, since I signed up for the seminar under an assumed name.”
When Charlize had asked Marissa what the deal was with that, Marissa told her about a crazed San Diego detective named John Waterson who was after her husband. The last time Marissa used her married surname, Nichita, the detective picked her up and took her to a police station for questioning.
“It will just take me a—Dev! What are you doing?”
He was using his large body to block Marissa toward the front entrance, that’s what, a glittery hunger back in his eyes. “The room is still available for use.” The statement was made in unmistakable tones of velvet and innuendo.
Marissa scampered backward. “Stop!” she protested, but her smile was purely female. And, by the way, her breasts were heaving. “My friends—”
“Don’t mind hanging out while we enjoy a little reunion time.” He swiveled his head around to eyeball them. “Do you?”
Lara pressed a hand to her chest, a gesture she seemed to make whenever she was thinking, oh, my.
Dev’s eyes were shining with such feral lust, it confirmed Charlize’s initial assessment of him. He did absolutely dominate in bed. Daaaamn, gurl, Marissa.
Charlize tossed the two a large grin. “Of course we don’t mind.” She, personally, considered herself to be a great wingwoman. “Have at it, you two.”
Dev smirked, then lifted Marissa off her feet with a brawny arm around her waist and stalked off.
Charlize watched them go, watched every step Dev took toward the elevators. His rear view was as spectacular as his front.
“Oh, my,” did slip out of Lara now.
Charlize drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She tilted her chin down and narrowed her eyes. “I want one.”