1

Eddie tumbled into the studio apartment, the girl who’d introduced herself as Jessica in his arms. She’d come on to him in the nightclub he’d patrolled earlier. Behind him, the door slammed shut, helped by Jessica’s hand. Her mouth was hot on his lips, kissing him passionately while her hands roamed his body, sliding under his T-shirt to caress his naked chest.

All the while, she pressed her curvy body against his, squeezing her generous breasts against him. The scent of her arousal filled the small room, which was furnished with a bed, a dresser, and a small table with two chairs. An open doorway led to a postage-stamp-sized kitchen and another door indicated that there was a bathroom, probably equally small as the kitchen. His sister, Nina, had lived in a similar place before she’d met her mate.

Jessica was pretty: long blond curls, plump lips, innocent-looking blue eyes. Anything a guy could wish for. On top of it, she was willing to put out. Major. No coercion was needed, no seduction necessary. In fact, she was more than eager and the one leading the charge, just as she now pulled her own T-shirt over her head and tossed it onto the nearby chair. For all he knew this was common practice for her: picking up a guy at a club and taking him home for no-holds-barred sex. Hey, he wasn’t complaining!

Jessica took his hands, which had lain on her back, and made him cup her bra-covered breasts. Maybe covered was too strong a word—what she wore could barely be called a bra. It was a mere collection of specs of fabric, strings and an underwire to hold them together. Her nipples weren’t even covered. Instead, her breasts were pushed up as if on a silver platter. Like a feast for him to indulge in.

He glanced down to where his hands squeezed the ample flesh in an almost mechanical fashion, as if he wasn’t the one touching her. It felt as if he were watching a mediocre porn movie—explicit for sure, but barely tantalizing.

She threw her head back, closing her eyes. “Oh, yeah, baby!” she called out, placing her hands over his to make him squeeze harder.

He complied, if only because he thought it was what he should do, not because he felt like it.

Maybe if he kissed her again, he’d get into it more. After all, he was out of practice. In fact, ever since he’d been turned into a vampire over a year ago, he’d not been with a woman. Funny that he noticed this only now. Well it didn’t mean that he hadn’t found sexual gratification; after all, what guy didn’t masturbate in the shower after waking? Or before going to sleep? He was just like any guy, finding relief at his own hand whenever he needed it.

Eddie slipped his hand onto her nape and pulled her to him, pressing his lips onto her waiting mouth, and kissed her. His tongue swept in to explore her, yet the excitement that he expected to shoot through his veins didn’t materialize. His heart beat as evenly as before—though at almost double the speed of a human heart. But that was normal for a vampire.

In an effort to get things going, he pulled on her bra and yanked it off her, allowing her boobs to spill from the inadequate cage. They looked almost rigid, which made him wonder whether they were real or not. Would a girl her age—and she couldn’t be more than twenty-two—have silicone implants? Why would anybody put something so foreign into their body? He stared at them, still contemplating the question.

Jessica’s hand on his crotch, running her fingers along the zipper of his cargo pants, jolted him from his thoughts and brought him back to the task at hand.

“Oh!” The disappointed sigh she let out when she squeezed him told him that something wasn’t working the way it should.

Again she rubbed her hand over him, but Eddie snatched it, stopping her from touching him further.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, her lips pouting.

Everything was wrong. He wasn’t hard. He should have a raging erection by now. Any twenty-five-year-old would under the same circumstances. When he’d been human, a passionate kiss had pumped enough blood into his cock so he could get down to business. And now, with a half-naked girl eager to please him, his dick hung there like an old ragdoll, limp and uninvolved.

As if it were somebody else’s appendage.

Why the fuck wasn’t he getting hard? Why was his cock asleep? What the fuck was wrong with him?

He closed his eyes, trying to conjure up images that would make any man horny: naked women bent over furniture, women stripping, even women doing it with other women. Yet, his cock remained in its deathlike state, not a single blood cell rousing it.

Out of nowhere, memories from a few weeks earlier intruded again, memories he’d tried to push away each time they reared their ugly head. Only this time he couldn’t push them away any longer. He had to face them head-on.