The Single Undead Moms Club (Half Moon Hollow series Book 4) (27 page)

Despite the cold and the wet and the adjacent serial-killer training ground, I could stay sprawled across that table forever. His weight on top of me only added to my contentment as I came down from my high. Maybe this was some sort of side effect of drinking real blood? Was this why “live-feeding” vampires seemed to be less angsty?

“Did I take too much?” I asked. “Do you feel OK?”

“I can’t feel my face, but I don’t think that has to do with the blood drinkin’,” he muttered against my cleavage. He slowly withdrew from me but kept me propped against the table, comfortably bearing my weight.

I lifted his head so I could inspect his wound. I was rather proud that I had only made two small punctures over his vein, leaving barely a swipe of blood on his skin.

“I feel fine,” he assured me. “Better than fine.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Barely felt it. Are you sure you got enough?”

“Yeah, I didn’t have to drink as much as I normally do.”

“That’s what you get when you go organic,” Wade said.

I snickered, batting weakly at his back. “That’s so wrong. And unless you’re a vegan who uses one of those salt-rock things as deodorant, I don’t think you count as organic.”

“So was that your first time?” he asked.

“Having sex in a death barn? Yes.”

“Drinkin’ blood from a human,” he said.

“Yes, you took my fang-ginity,” I told him. “Sorry about that. I didn’t feed properly before I left the house.”

“You’ve gotta take better care of yourself, Libby,” he said. “You run around takin’ care of everybody else but you. I know you’re immortal and all, but I think that only counts if you’re a fully functionin’ vampire.”

“I know, I know.” I sighed, tracing the path of the koi that swam along his arm.

“You can ask,” he said.

“Didn’t this hurt? I mean, clearly, you kept going back, so it couldn’t have been that bad, but . . .”

“Oh, no, it hurt like a bitch,” he said. “But it was a good hurt. And I love all of ’em. I’m assuming you don’t have any.”

“No. Rob didn’t like them, thought they looked trashy. And I don’t think I could get one now, since I basically heal up within seconds of getting a wound.”

“That’s a shame,” he said. “Because I think you would look insanely hot with ink.”

“I’m insanely hot without ink,” I countered.

“Of course you are,” he said. Leering a little, Wade bent, rummaging through his pants pocket, and pulled out a black Sharpie. He balanced my ass on the edge of the table as he methodically wrote something along the curve of my rib cage.

“If you’re writing ‘Property of Wade,’ I will punch you in the throat,” I told him, craning my neck as I tried to make out what he was writing.

“Nope.” He bit the tip of his tongue while he finished his work with a flourish.

He hitched up his pants, crossed back to the bike, and grabbed my purse. “Use your mirror thingy to look.”

“Thank you for not going through my purse,” I told him, plucking my compact from a side pocket. “Also, thank you for knowing that I have a reflection.”

“I may be a redneck, but I ain’t fool enough to go through a woman’s purse uninvited. And everybody knows that vampires have reflections.”

It took me a second to figure out how to read Wade’s neat handwriting backward, but I eventually read, “I had sex in a death barn, and all I got was this temporary tattoo.”

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head.

“Hey, a girl’s first tattoo, that’s a milestone. That, your fang-ginity, and your first barn sex all in one night. I’m just glad I was here for it.”

“Well, it’s been so long since I’ve had sex, you might get credit for taking my actual virginity,” I muttered into his neck.

“How long?” Wade asked, smirking down at me.

“About two years . . . two and a half . . . three. It’s been three years since I’ve had sex,” I told him. “Oh, my God, this is pathetic.”

“Nah, it’s not pathetic—three
years
?” he marveled. “How is that possible? Your husband’s only been dead for
two
years.”

“Well, the last year with Rob was . . . distant.”

“Were y’all living in the same state?”

“My marriage was far from perfect!”

“You know, every time I think I like ya just enough, you go and say something like that, and I like ya even more.”

“There is something very wrong with you,” I told him as he helped me right my clothes.

“And you love it,” he said, kissing me.

“Yeah, I kind of do. Which means there’s something wrong with me, too.”

I was proud of myself, knowing that I’d said I loved
it
and not him. I hadn’t melted into a postorgasmic puddle of overenthusiastic-to-the-point-of-being-sad confessions of affection. I’d come out of my first sexual experience (involving another person) in three years with about seventy percent of my dignity intact. Even if I had, technically, had sex with him before our first actual date.

I liked my relationship with Wade. It was comfortable and fun and seemed to meet both of our needs for now. Would I like to see it grow into more? Absolutely. But with things being so unsettled with my custody case and my attachment to Finn, I didn’t know if I could handle “more” right now. Barn sex and sassy banter were my current limit.

Wade smirked, offering me his hand as if he were a knight aiding a lady stepping down from a carriage and not the girl he had just ridden hard and put up damp. He helped me slide into my jacket and carefully folded the collar under my chin. “I think the rain’s let up a little bit. Do you want to make a break for Murphy?”

I grinned at him, toying with the buttons of his own jacket. “Would it be weird if I said no?”

“Well, as much as I am sure I would enjoy round two, I’m gonna have to get some juice and a cookie in me, or my whole standin’-upright situation is gonna get ugly.”

“Yeah, I should probably start carrying an emergency blood-donor pack in my purse for next time,” I said.

“You sure you don’t already have one in that giant-ass bag?” he asked wryly. “And it’s kind of nervy of you to assume there’ll be a next time.”

I gasped. “First of all, that’s a fair statement about my bag. But who said that the donor packet would be for
you
?”

“Oh, so you’re going to just bite me and drop me?”

“Well, if you didn’t like it, I’m sure I could find someone who—”

Wade caught my wrist and yanked me close for a hot, demanding kiss. “I liked it,” he told me, his voice stern. “Trust me, I liked it.”

“Good. Let’s go get you that cookie.”

I had officially taken the
evening off. Between work, Les and Marge, the Pumpkin Patch madness, and whatever I was doing with Wade, I felt like I’d been missing too much time with Danny. So I’d sent Kerrianne home at sundown, made Danny’s favorite chicken nuggets with a bandanna tied around my nose, and spent the evening watching him run around our front yard, searching for Bigfoot tracks. Eventually, he got tired of chasing his own tail like a Jack Russell terrier and joined me on the front-porch swing, where we read
Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses
(six or seven times).

I was proud of my progress—having Danny sit on my lap, letting my chin rest on his sandy hair without a twinge of worry about whether I would be tempted by his blood. Now that I’d experienced live feeding and connected it to sexy Wade-based feelings, there was no way I could consider it in any way related to Danny. Ever.

“Mom, who would win in a fight, a werewolf or a vampire?” Danny asked, flipping through his copy of
Bigfoot Cinderrrrrrrella
.

“Well, sweetheart, there are a lot of Web sites devoted to this debate, but I’m not really sure.”

“But werewolves have fangs and claws, and they’re super-fast,” Danny reasoned.

“And vampires have fangs, and they’re super-fast. And they’re super-strong,” Finn noted, stepping onto our porch.

My sire had just walked onto my front porch mid-conversation, as if it were totally normal for him to drop by in the middle of the night. I smiled, because I couldn’t think of any other expression that wouldn’t convey,
Oops, I slept with some other guy since the last time I saw you.

While I was the master of multitasking, I was not good at this semi-sort-of-juggling-two-men thing. Surely this was going to come back and bite me in the ass. I knew that on the scale of potential evil I could do as a vampire, it was pretty minor. Still, I knew I was going to have to make it clear to one of them at some point that he was relegated to the friend zone.

I just had to figure out which one it would be.

Finn returned my smile, looking at me like I was something precious, which was not helping me in terms of friend-zone designation. It was the sort of expression you’d hope to see on the face of a husband and father returning home at the end of the day to find his wife and child waiting for him—except that he wasn’t Danny’s dad . . . or my husband . . . or even my significant other . . . and he was a dead guy.

“Yeah, but vampires can’t go out during the day. All a werewolf would have to do is rip the lid off your coffin, and you’d be dead,” Danny scoffed, but there was mischief in his eyes. He was teasing Finn, testing how far he could push the big bad vampire and not get busted for being rude to a guest.

And Finn was playing along, blithely ignoring my son’s sass. He sat next to us on the porch swing, careful to put a respectable distance between himself and Danny. “You make a valid point.”

“Does that mean I win?” Danny asked me.

“I think it means you and Mr. Finn are at a tie,” I told him.

“Miss Steele says there’s no such thing as a tie, that’s something new-age parents made up to keep from hurting their kids’ feelings when they lose.”

I snorted. “That sounds like something Miss Steele would say.”

“But that’s OK,” Danny said. “Because I don’t want Mr. Finn’s feelings to be hurt because he lost.”

“I’m not sure that’s the case,” Finn said.

“So Mr. Finn, do you drink blood from people or bottles?”

“A bit of both.”

“How old are you?”

“Most vampires don’t like to answer that question.”

Danny nodded. “Neither does my mom.”

“Easy,” I warned him.

Finn chuckled. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you, Danny?”

“Mom says that’s my job. How am I supposed to learn anything about the world if I don’t ask questions?”

“I seem to recall mentioning something about being polite when learning about the world,” I muttered.

“I could be worse,” Danny noted. “Hayden McTieg shoves people off their chairs when he says hello.”

“That’s true. I should lower my standards to McTieg levels.” I snorted. “Danny, how about you go brush your teeth and get ready for bed?”

“Actually, before you go up, Danny, I have something for you,” Finn said, digging a small blue-wrapped package out of his jacket pocket. “I noticed that you really like LEGOs.”

Without hesitation, Danny popped the small blue box open and gasped. “Mom! Clutch Powers!”

Danny showed me the dark-haired mini-figure inside the box, dressed in painted-on blue jeans and a leather jacket. Clutch Powers was the main character in a LEGO adventure movie that Danny watched over and over until we could both quote the DVD from memory. But despite his numerous notes to Santa and birthday requests, I had never been able to track down a mini-figure Clutch, not even on eBay.

“This is the best present ever!” Danny exclaimed. He threw his arms around Finn’s waist. “Thank you, Mr. Finn!”

And so Danny explained to Finn why this was such an awesome present and why Clutch Powers was the greatest character created since the invention of literature. And they debated the merits of LEGOs versus the Lincoln Logs that Finn had played with when he was growing up. Finn was a little stiff at first, but he managed to approach Danny from the level my son appreciated most. He didn’t want to be talked down to or patronized or treated like an adorable brainless moppet. He just wanted you to talk and listen.

“All right, sir, it is bedtime for you,” I interrupted at last.

Danny huffed in protest. “But I wanna talk to Mr. Finn some more!”

“You’ll see him some other time.”

“OK.” He sighed. “Good night, Mr. Finn. Thank you for my present.” He held up his hand for Finn to give him a high five.

The corner of Finn’s mouth lifted as he slapped it. “Good night, Danny.”

Danny scrambled off the couch and up the stairs like a monkey.

“He likes me!” Finn exclaimed, sounding downright giddy.

“You brought him a rare LEGO. You could burn down our house, and he would still look at you all googly-eyed.”

“Don’t ruin this moment for me,” he said, shushing me.

“Just wait until you step on one of them with bare feet,” I muttered. “I don’t do that very often, by the way. Let him talk to men that I’m . . . I don’t even know what to call what we’re doing. I don’t know you. I don’t know what your intentions are. Just don’t—don’t hurt him. Don’t be nice to him because you’re trying to show me what a good guy you are. For that matter, don’t hurt me. Because if you do, I’ll have to—”

He kissed my cheek, running his hands along my hair. His nose twitched, and for a second, I worried that he smelled Wade on me. But his tone remained smooth and even as he purred, “I would expect nothing less than the no doubt very creative and terrifying threat that is about to fall from those lovely lips of yours, but it’s not necessary. I don’t want to hurt either of you. That’s the last thing on my mind. And as far as using him? I like Danny. I mean, I don’t have a lot of experience with kids, but he’s not an unpleasant little person. I can adjust. And he’s part of you, an important part of your life. How could I not want to get to know him better?”

“Let’s just . . . we need to take things slow in the ‘getting to know you’ area, OK?”

His lips quirked. “Does that cover occasional kissing?”

“It might,” I said. “But not in front of Danny, because he’s six, and kissing in all forms grosses him out.”

Finn nodded. “Cootie-phobia.”

“Exactly.” I giggled as he leaned in, brushing his mouth against mine. That same feeling from my dreams, the emotions I’d experienced when I was turned—acceptance, excitement, a thrill of fear—all came rushing back to me. It was a shockingly gentle kiss, questing, searching for some bit of softness in a world that had been just a bit too hard on him. I worried that he might be able to smell Wade on my skin, taste him in my kiss. But Finn simply pulled me into his lap, nibbling on my bottom lip as his hands traced the lines of my back. And then I recalled the feeling of Wade’s lips against mine, and I clutched at Finn’s shirt, prepared to shove him back.