Kiss Me Before I Die

  Kiss Me Before I Die

  Rena Marks

  When an experiment goes wrong, Afton is sent to release the rage built up in her system by a desire-enhancing drug. Once she finds Ethan, head of the vampires, the drug kicks in. Suddenly, instead of wanting to kick his ass, Afton wants to kiss it.

  A love affair between a vampire and an Extinguisher is doomed from the beginning, but Afton can’t resist the lure of the predator. Ethan’s blood calls to her quicker than she can run. What a frustrating predicament, to be trained to extinguish vampires when all she wants to do is bed him.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Kiss Me Before I Die

  ISBN 9781419927157

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Kiss Me Before I Die Copyright © 2010 Rena Marks

  Edited by Helen Woodall

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication February 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Kiss Me Before I Die

  Rena Marks

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the fantastic Devin Michael Yala, whose image not only finished the book, but gave me ideas for many more in the future.

  My deepest gratitude to Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publishing, the wonderful company who made it possible for an author to be on the cover of her own book.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Barbie: Mattel, Inc.

  Haldol: Johnson & Johnson Corporation

  Naloxone: Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare (UK) Ltd.

  Taser: Taser International, Inc.

  Chapter One

  Vampires are not mythological evil creatures. We are the product of evolution. A changing world with less food and global warming.

  Not the enemy to slay.

  We are the enemy you have no choice but to become…for the rest of the world dies.

  The writing on the bathroom stall sent a shiver down my spine. Not just any club. Another posh nightclub.

  This time in a new city. There was no one to know where I was and no one to know what I had left. Yet it followed me. Who would ever expect the musings of a vampire in the stall of the ladies’ room?

  I was showing a lot of leg tonight while dressed in my usual garb of skintight black. I had been fighting the urge to return to the nightlife but it was all I knew. However, I should be safe. As I said, it was a new city.

  A new life. In which I’d left my traitorous lover behind.

  Yet I couldn’t get far. I’d already danced for a bit and felt hot and uptight when I slipped off to a darkened corner for a reprieve. Alone time, a chance to study the dancing bodies writhing around me. A chance to think about the writing on the bathroom stall and decide whether or not it was safe to stay.

  I should have been startled at the rush of cool air behind me. At the very least, surprised, for it had been a year. Somehow I wasn’t. Time melted away, as though it had just been yesterday.

  A whisper of sweet breath curled near my ear. “You cannot get away from me, bella. You’ll always be mine.”

  “I own myself,” I whispered back. “I’ve refused you already.”

  “It’s not that easy. For even now, you can’t deny me.”

  His finger trailed down my shoulder, along my bare skin, danced down my arm. Lightly skimming, reminding me of the touch I craved. I breathed deeply as the blaze kindled deep inside.

  He was right. Denial was impossible, avoidance was easier. Was it his power or was it something indescribable between us? For now it didn’t matter.

  Heat licked against sensitive nerve endings. His palm, open and warm, pressed flat to my abdomen, pulled me back into him. I could feel the fire between us, coiled tightly inside and knew I’d soon beg for his hand to inch its way lower.

  His voice, deeper than ever, taunted me with known pleasure. “I could make you come here and now. No one would ever know.”

  Temptation was sinful and it was what I fought hard against. The lure of the vampire. My best weapons were fight and flight.

  He was right but I wouldn’t acknowledge it. For the burning edge of desire struck me tenfold. It was a drug, an addiction I still fought.

  Sometimes it was one I didn’t want to fight.

  I turned my face slightly, to look into his eyes. Deliberately, I pulled away.

  His smile was sardonic but he let me go. I wouldn’t be able to suppress the urge for long, the awaited anticipation would make my failure sweeter.

  He knew this.

  “You run, Afton. But you unknowingly head for my own jurisdictions. There’s a reason. You are mine.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said clearly. The bastard was way too cocky. And why shouldn’t he be? Dark hair contrasted with lighter brown eyes against creamy skin. The distinction of his lighter eyes stood out even more when he wore carefree stubble darkening the line of his jaw. He was tall, broad-shouldered and exuded sex appeal like nobody’s business.

  But I belonged to no one and never would.

  Instead, I sighed. “How did you find me, Ethan?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered and wrapped strong arms around me. For the briefest moment, I leaned into his strength. Felt it envelop me like a cloud of comfort on a cold day.

  The need struck even harder now. It was so easy to close my eyes and go with it. Stop fighting. Give up my independence, my humanity. Everything that made me…me.

  I stepped away. “Stop it,” I chided. “Keep your tricks to yourself.”

  “Tricks?” he murmured unconvincingly.

  “I mean it.”

  He knew what I was talking about. He had been imposing his will upon me, mockery to make me believe I was willing to surrender. I would have fallen for it, if I had not given myself the conscious reminder of fight or flight.

  “Play nice or I’ll run again,” I warned. But was his need as great as mine? I allowed him to step close to me, close enough that I smelled the aftershave wafting from his skin. He leaned his lips toward mine, silently begging, yet also daring me to take the chance. It was the tiniest opportunity and I couldn’t resist, for it had been way too long.

  I tilted my head back and parted my moistened lips. He touched.

  And all hell broke loose.

  Wants, needs, feelings. Emotions ran rampant throughout my soul, yearnings and cravings of a body that had been too long without. I gasped for sweetened air and his tongue touched mine. It stroked lovingly and yet demanded my full
surrender. Only one person could be this loving and challenging all at once.

  Ethan.

  I felt his hunger, always carefully monitored but now ready to break uncontrollably through. It bubbled to the surface before it was tamped back down when he broke the kiss.

  He strung heated kisses along my jaw before returning to my lips. I was too eager to kiss him back. I’d missed this desperately. My reservations were flung to the back burner.

  The music blared and the bodies around us quickened, movements becoming jerky, like mindless zombies with limbs partially stuck in the frozen throes of rigor mortis. But only their brains were dead.

  Lights flickered off and on.

  Our tongues entwined, smoothly touching and dancing, sensuously sliding together, making promises that neither of us could keep.

  Tables crashed, noises growing louder as chairs overturned.

  Our lips meshed thoroughly, hands roaming each other’s bodies. He gripped my hips, pulling me into him. A shiver of need shot through me.

  Yelling ensued all around us, angrily raised voices screaming with frustrated rage.

  We broke apart, breathing heavily. Hearts racing. He lowered his forehead to press against mine as he kissed the tip of my nose.

  Chaos encircled us. Shattering glass, liquid spilling.

  “You’ve upset the balance,” he murmured. “Come with me.”

  “Never,” I said gently.

  Glass tinkled as a bottle crashed over a person’s skull in the scuffle just a few feet away. The victim collapsed like a tree, leaving the scent of blood behind.

  “Foolish,” he murmured and was gone. As usual, he left me to clean up the mess we’d made.

  Cleanup wasn’t easy. Normally easygoing patrons of the club were stunned as to what might have happened to cause such unheard of behavior. An uproar they were involved in. How did one explain they felt the bloodlust of my lover?

  The vampire who couldn’t have me.

  * * * * *

  It was dusk when I saw him again. The sun was no longer bright but had cast a brilliant reddish pink glow over the horizon. The grass was green and the weather still warm, sweet-smelling and clean with recent rain. I sat on a park bench, ironically waiting for the dark in the midst of all this beauty from nature.

  The air was still, frozen and locked in place. That alone triggered my senses.

  And then he was there, standing before me. He’d materialized as a darkened shadow to block the faint pink glow of the sun.

  My heart jumped. I’d missed him this past year, though I’d never let him know. For all in all, he was still an evil bastard that who cared nothing for humanity. And human, I was.

  “I left you for a reason,” I drolly reminded him.

  There was smug satisfaction in his voice. “But you missed me. As much as I missed you. Last night proved it.”

  “Thank you for leaving me the mess,” I said.

  “You did not need to stay with the humans. Your place is beside me.”

  “You decided my place was there. I decide otherwise, Ethan. I make my own choices.”

  Suddenly he was down on his knees before me, pushing my legs apart to kneel between them. An intimate act, one I viewed as a sign of possession. In spite of that, it made my adrenaline race and my thighs quiver.

  “You take way too many liberties,” I snapped.

  He clasped my waist and pulled me to him. I tightened my legs around him but while the movement served to keep the core of my body from touching him intimately, it also caused me to grip him with my thighs forcefully, as if I’d never let him go.

  A small movement that pleasured him.

  “Why can’t you just let me be?” I sighed.

  His smile was cunning. “You can’t be. Not without me.”

  I had been going about this the wrong way. I couldn’t run from the man, he’d proven that much. It was time to turn the tables.

  I relaxed my legs, allowing him closer access. His eyes gleamed with the intimacy and he dropped them to my parted lips when I wet them with the tip of my tongue. “You’re right. I did miss you, Ethan,” I said softly. I ran a fingertip over his jaw, over his smooth lips. I barely touched the bottom lip with the pad of my finger.

  His nostrils flared ever so slightly.

  “I hunger,” I whispered. “For you.” I slid my finger into his mouth and he sucked it, pulling yearnings from deep within me. Leaning forward, I tasted his lips again. I could feel my heart pulsating as the blood pounded in my veins. His touch was exquisite and tender, loving even on days when I didn’t want the love.

  For some days a girl just wanted wild, wanton sex. Sex without commitments, sex to walk away from.

  Without pain.

  I would have had Ethan that day, that summer. A year of running meant nothing, it melted. Faded away, along with the August sunlight. What stopped me was the sudden interruption by an Extinguisher.

  Ethan sensed him as soon as I did. Whether it was the look on my face or a sharpening of his senses, I’ll never know. He was whirling around even as I dematerialized.

  When I reappeared behind the Extinguisher, the armored man exploded to nothing, replaced by blasting dust. Leaving me standing behind him with a nine-inch silver blade that had been plunged into the center of his heart.

  It was too late for Ethan to stop his charge at the Extinguisher. It wasn’t too late for him to stop the deadly strike of his fist to my own heart.

  We tumbled onto the green grass behind us, him landing directly on top of me with a whoosh. Pressed groin to groin and staring into each other’s eyes.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d saved Ethan’s life. It was the first time he’d nearly staked me.

  “I almost got you,” he muttered, his face paper white.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “It was close.”

  I smoothed the worried crease in his forehead with the light touch of a finger. “You never used to charge Extinguishers. It’s risky. You should have run,” I chided.

  “I don’t need to run,” he said arrogantly. “I was trained by the best.”

  That had been me. I was the Queen of the Extinguishers one year previous.

  I had been the best of the best when I met the vampire of my dreams. The one I was created to exterminate. Ethan was my biggest challenge. The strongest vampire I’d ever been up against.

  Extinguishers are humans deliberately infected with the vampire virus. Children from all social levels were regularly screened for exceptional athletic abilities, speed and strength. Bravery.

  Females are especially rare for Extinguishers, since the female body is not prone to muscle mass. Not like a man’s.

  Humans thought it appalling that children were fed the blood of a captured vampire in order to improve their performance. But they looked the other way for the greater good of destroying the growing race of evil creatures. After all, someone had to police the stronger, more beautiful race of peoples. It was beginning to look like plain old vanilla humans were low man on the food chain and that inspired fear. Like all prejudices, after the fear followed hatred.

  In any case, I, along with all cadets of that year, were taken from our homes to be fostered in a government training camp and stricken, the term for infection. Not all children survived the virus infestation. just as not all children lived to even fight their first vampire. Some succumbed to accidents within the training camp, pushed too far for our human endurance.

  Too often, it was forgotten that we were human.

  The lucky ones lived. Survived. Fought. I was the best—one of the Originals. I’d served my time and now I was free.

  Extinguishers are promised their freedom after they reached the age of twenty-five. Problem is, none of them ever lived to see the quarter of a century mark. Except for me.

  That’s right. I am twenty-six years old. But through experience, add a hundred years to that.

  “Get off me,” I hissed. “Or next time I’ll let them stake you.�
�

  He made no move to shift except for the tiniest movement of a well formed brow. “Stake me? I am the best of the vampires. And I have battled the best of the Extinguishers. Where are we now, bella?”

  I knew the point he made. Yes, I was under him, stretched out the way a woman should lie beneath a man. And my hackles rose when I realized it. But not for long. My leg reached out, easily flipping the dead weight on his back as I rose, straddling him instead.

  My face was in his when I countered with, “I said get off.”

  He smiled. I was a fool as I realized this was his primary purpose all along. Me, straddling him, as though I intended to ride him through the night.

  And dammit, the adrenaline from the danger of the Extinguisher still ran rampant through my veins. My body strummed with the anticipation of a release through sex.

  He reached out with a fingertip to stroke my exposed throat, trailing down to the bared skin between my breasts and moving farther to where my shortened top exposed the unnaturally tight abs from a lifetime of hard work. The skin where he touched tingled, catching my breath. My nipples hardened and I arched my back, wanting nothing more than to expose them to the crisp air.

  He skimmed the top of my waistband and his smile died as he stared at my lips, which felt like they’d suddenly swelled.

  His voice was a whisper. “This is my favorite position.”

  For once I was honest. I looked deeply into his beautiful eyes, the light brown framed with thick, dark lashes. “Mine too,” I admitted and lifted myself gracefully from his firmly muscled body. Still, I fought the allure of the predator. I may not be able to kill him yet…but give me time.

  “And it should be yours,” I said sweetly. “After all, that’s how you once lay. Six feet under.”

  As I was an original Extinguisher, Ethan was an original vampire. He was older than dirt and had originated from the dead. Dug his way from his coffin, like the old vampire fairytales. It was unheard of nowadays, of course. Now they just infected each other. A virus.