Bite Me, Baby Read online
Bite Me, Baby
Christmas Anthology
by Alice Brown/Lady V; Samantha Potter; Rayne O'Gara; Lei Carol; Hazel Gower
© Copyright December 2014 JK Publishing, Inc.
ISBN#
All cover art and logo © Copyright December 2014 by JK Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Artwork by Jess Buffett
Published by JK Publishing, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Santa Vamp
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
A Love of Christmas
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
A Magical Highland Christmas
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Bearly Christmas
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Christmas Escape
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Epilogue
Books by Alice Brown
Books by Lady V
Books by Samantha Potter
Books by Rayne O’Gara
Books by Lei Carol
Books by Hazel Gower
JK Publishing, Inc.
Santa Vamp
By Alice Brown Lady V
Prologue
Garrett sat staring at the cold fireplace. He felt as dead as it looked. He’d been on this earth for over two hundred and fifty years, and he was sick of it. He was sick of watching mankind destroy themselves and everything around them. He was sick of watching the greed and hostility humans had for one another. And they called him a monster. Ha!
Truth be told, he’d given up on mankind several years ago. And while he would be the very first to applaud technology, after all, it had certainly made life easier for all, he despised the fact it had allowed him to let his greed rule him.
No, the only reason why he had anything to do with humans these days was to use them as a food source. And even that had changed over the years. Gone were the days where people ate healthy, ate what they grew and raised. He thought back to his first meal after the food industry introduced that horrid concoction called margarine. People had to actually add artificial coloring to the goopy mess. He remembered thinking, People aren’t going to eat that!
Oh, but they had, and that was just the beginning. Today’s humans drink soda like it’s water, stop at fast food places for greasy burgers and fries entirely too often for lunch, and then go home at night for more frozen junk or easy to cook meals, all of which are full of artificial junk.
Translate all of that junk food and artificial ingredients into a vampire’s one meal a day, and it’s not pretty. He’d gotten to the point the only way he could stomach dinner was to just suck, swallow, and try to turn off his taste buds completely. The sour taste of most humans’ blood nowadays left little to be desired and often turned his stomach.
He stood from his seat as darkness finally descended completely.
“Time to go try to find some dinner,” he murmured to himself with a frown, not even wanting to put forth the energy to go into town.
Chapter One
“Finally, time to lock up and go home.” Bree sighed with relief as she stood and stretched out her back. It had been a long ten-hour day, but she’d be smiling when her next paycheck came. She had been pulling extra hours for the past two weeks, ever since her co-worker, Joy, had been ordered to remain under bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.
She walked over to the front door and put the closed sign up before locking the door. She grabbed her purse from under the counter and walked into the backroom. She looked at the two big green trash bags and sighed. Where was a big, strong, muscular man when you needed one?
Seeing no other options, she dragged both bags over to the backdoor. The bags were heavy and she had to put muscle into just dragging them across the floor. Oh, but those bags were going home with her tonight, one way or another. She had waited long enough.
She pushed open the backdoor and frowned as she glanced out at the now dark parking lot. Her car sat alone. Why was it so dark? Then she realized that one of the two street lights were out.
“Just freaking great,” she muttered to herself. Probably due to some punk kids throwing rocks up at the light bulb until they busted it.
She heaved a sigh and grabbed one of the bags. Trying to partially pick it up, she had taken about three steps across the parking lot when the bottom of the bag gave out, spilling the contents all over the pavement.
Garrett was combing the backstreets and alleys for a meal when he heard a noise. Turning toward the sound, he watched as a lone female came out of the backdoor of the secondhand store with a bag full of loot. Only the dumb lady had obviously been a little too greedy, because she no sooner got out the door before the bottom of the bag gave out, emptying its contents onto the ground before her. Even though he was across the street, with his enhanced vision and hearing, it was easy to pick up on her frustration. She fell to her knees trying to scoop up her treasures. Geez, she must be hard up to be stealing from the secondhand store.
He watched her as she started stacking everything in piles. And then she started to cry. Damn and double damn, because he could not stand to see a woman cry, even one that was stealing from a secondhand store. As much as he knew he should walk away and act as if he had never seen her, something tugged on his cold, dead heart. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had crossed the street and was walking across the parking lot.
He knew she hadn’t realized he was approaching her, because she was still crying as she lovingly caressed…baby clothes? This lady had robbed the secondhand store for baby clothes, toys, and other items that he really wasn’t sure what they were used for. What the hell? Was she really that hard up?
He scuffed his feet across the pavement on purpose as to alert her of his arrival. When she looked up, he was staring at the prettiest set of blue eyes he had ever seen. And then her scent hit him: peaches and cream. It was all he could do to keep his fangs retracted in his gums. Dammit all to hell! His mate was a thief! How had fate allowed this to happen? Wasn’t the fact he'd been forced to live in secrecy all this time, always covering his tracks, bad enough? Now, after two hundred and fifty years, he finally meets his mate, and while at first glance she wasn’t hard on the eyes at all, he didn’t like the fact she was a thief.
“Can I help you with that?” was the question that came out of his mouth while his conscience screamed, Yeah, let’s be an accessory to a robbery.
“You know,” he continued without even giving her a chance to answer, “places like this will assist those in need. You really don’t have to steal.”
She stood and placed her little hands on her hips. She wasn’t but about five-two, five-three at most, and compared to his six-one, she was a tiny thing. Even though she was face-to-face with a stranger who had nearly a foot on her, those hands were on her hips and he could see her getting fired up. He knew the minute she opened her mouth, he was not going to like it. He didn’t have long to wait.
“For your information, asshole, I’m not stealing any of this! I work here and have spent a lot of my hard earned money on this stuff. If you’re going to just stand there and be all reprimanding, when you clearly have no idea what’s going on, I will kindly ask you to just go crawl back in the hole you came out of.” She leaned down and started picking up some of the piles of clothing she had been stacking neatly.
“Damn arrogant men!” He heard her mutter as she began walking over to her car.
For the first time in too many years to count, emotions started coursing through his body. He felt bad he had wrongly accused her of stealing. At the same time, all he wanted to do was snatch her up and kiss her until she was completely under his spell, and then take her back to his home and make love to her for the remainder of the night. And just when did that part of his anatomy come back to life? He glanced down at his now fully erect dick. The outline could be seen through his dress slacks. Several different emotions ran through him all at once and it took him a moment to analyze each one. The devil that seemed to sit on one shoulder was currently whispering to him, ‘Just grab your dinner and be done with her. Who cares what she is doing or why? It’s none of our concern. She’s just another human.’
But then there was another voice, much weaker, but gentle. ‘You can’t just walk away from a woman in need of help. Especially after you’ve hurt her feelings. And it is your concern as to what she is doing! She is your mate! And if she is in trouble, it is your job to straighten things out!’
“Oh hell,” he muttered to himself as he reached down and scooped up an armful of items and carried them over to her car.
“Look, I’m sorry. I obviously made a very erroneous judgment call, and that was incredibly insensitive of me. My name is Garrett. Please, let me make it up to you by helping you with this.”
Her head came out from under the hood of the trunk to glare at him. “Okay, Mr. Garrett. If you are truly sorry, you can make it up to me by carrying the other bag that is sitting right inside the door.”
Garrett smiled, actually smiled! His jaw immediately felt weird, because he had not used those muscles in very long time. But he would examine that later. For now, she seemed to be giving him a second chance, and why he even cared about that he couldn’t say at the moment, but he was unexplainably happy that she had.
As they both walked away from her trunk, he inquired, “So, you work here? Why would your boss leave a woman to close up by herself at night? Doesn’t your husband care you are out after dark by yourself?” He really didn’t want to hear about her husband if she had one, but then again, there was no wedding ring on her finger.
What was it with humans these days? Men seemed to not care one way or another if a woman was left unescorted. Hell, from what he could tell, most men didn’t even seem to care their wife had to work in order to pay the bills. Yes, technology had made life so much easier in many ways, but there had been things lost along the way. Morales, principles, values, things that as far as Garrett was concerned, technology could never replace, and the world was in far worse shape without them.
She turned and gave him a glare. “Look, if you have come to rob me, you’re out of luck. We only had two customers and five drunks come in today, and the paying customers paid by check. I have no cash on me. Now, why don’t you just run along before I call the police?”
She thinks I am here to rob her? Garrett almost wanted to burst into laughter. The very idea of him, Garrett Mason, robbing a poor female who worked at a secondhand store was preposterous.
Holding out his hands in front of him, he quickly replied, “No, little lady. Believe me, I have no reason to rob you. It’s just…” How could he explain to her that he came from a different place and time? A time where at least some men truly cared about a woman’s welfare and where they would never leave a woman out after dark by herself.
She sighed as she reached down to pick up more items. “My boss is an ass. When you first arrived, you said that I didn’t have to steal, that places like this would help the poor. No, they won’t. My boss would steal a penny from a baby if he had half a chance. Yes, the merchandise is used and therefore at a reduced price. But that is as far as it goes. He does nothing to help his community out. And he could care less if I make it home safe or not. Hell, I have a co-worker who was ordered to remain completely on bed rest for the next eight weeks of her pregnancy, and he won’t pay her a penny while she is laid up. After she caught her rat bastard of a husband cheating on her with his secretary, she became a single mom with two other kids, and…” She stopped and shook her head. “I have no idea why I am standing here spilling my guts to a total stranger.”
He chuckled, and damn if that didn’t sound weird to his own ears.
“I have been told in the past that I make a good listener. Let me go grab that other bag for you.” He had to find a way to keep her with him a bit longer so he could learn what all she was about.
*****
Bree watched the tall, dark, and mysterious man walk over to the backdoor for the other bag. A part of her felt very comfortable around him as if he posed no threat whatsoever, while another part of her was urging her to just leave everything, jump in her car, and haul ass out of there. Oh, but she couldn’t. She had worked too damn hard for all of her treasures, and with Christmas only a week away, she didn’t have the time nor the funds to start over. She had to have what was in those two large garb
age bags. She waited until he had grabbed the other large bag with one hand and watched as he started toward her car before she reached down to scoop up the final items on the ground. One of the items was a red fire engine that was going to Joy’s oldest son, Tommy, who was four. The baby doll that she had already put in the trunk was for his little sister, Tonya. There were newborn clothes for the new baby and also clothes for the other two children.