BEER GOGGLES AND RED COATS
By Angel Sentier and Lady Parsley
Chapter Three
She dreamed of her grandmother, or rather her grandmother's house; a warm, three-bedroom house in upstate New York that always seemed to smell of pumpkin pie and fresh baked bread. No neighbors for about a mile in any direction, and no distractions to confuse the mind; a place where you could just be. There was a path that led from the trees on the outskirts of her grandmother's property to the house itself. Tessa dreamed herself just inside those woods, heading to her Grandmother's. Three beautiful, but evil trees pulled at her clothes and threw her off the path and into a bar. Or was it a barn? Everyone in the barn was half human and half animal. There was Jeff, fangs dripping with saliva or blood; she couldn't see too clearly from fifteen feet away in the darkness. She recognized his eyes, however; or rather, the way he stared at her.
"Where are you going, little girl?" His gruff voice seemed to echo in the room. She wanted to answer, "I'm going to grandma's house," but her voice froze in her throat.
She wasn't sure what woke her. She was laying beside him on her stomach in his king sized bed, under a blue and black bedspread. The room was large, white, and sparse. A huge black television, currently playing an episode of South Park on mute dominated the wall at the foot of the bed. To the right was one of those personal gym things that looked like it saw more use as clothes dryer than a fitness machine. It sat next to a set of French doors with black curtains, partially drawn. With the rain outside, she couldn't see out of the window panels, just black glass set in white frames, going nowhere, revealing nothing.
He was already awake and watching her. From his relaxed posture, she had no idea exactly how long he had been doing so. He was looking at her with the same half-lidded gaze, but without the alcohol to cloud his eyes now. The intensity sent a shiver tripping along her spine.
"Hello, beautiful," he said. The growl was in his voice. He brushed her back with his large hand. It felt soft, warm... possessive.
She chose to ignore his statement for the moment and closed her eyes, hoping she would just fall back asleep, that reality wouldn't have to intrude for just five more minutes. Her eyes snapped open as she felt his raspy tongue stroke a path from the nape of her sensitive neck to her ear and she gasped audibly.
He laughed softly. "Are you going to sleep forever?" he whispered against her skin.
She sat up, pulling the bedspread around her protectively, eyes searching for her wayward clothing. "No... I should get going, anyway."
He moved too fast for her to react. In a moment, he had her pinned on her back, his hands held her wrists captive on either side of her head, and then slid upward to twine their fingers together.
"Oh, no, you don't," he said, his mouth at her neck.
She involuntarily closed her eyes at the sensation. Her senses seemed somehow magnified. "Jeff," she managed to say. "I really should leave..."
"You can't leave. Not now."
"Jeff, don't do this. You don't have to."
He pulled away from her just enough so she could look him in the eyes. They looked more gold than brown now. "No, Tessa. I had to."
Somehow, it didn't sound as though they were talking about the same thing, but she went on, trying to maintain her thought process under his continued physical assault.
"You need to get up early for work, don't you?"
"No." There was barely a pause in his action.
"Or you have company coming for breakfast. You'll call me some time; we could have lunch and get to know each other better."
"We'll get to know each other now." He loomed over her, lips dragging across her face as he spoke. "Because you aren't leaving. Not now, not ever. You are mine."
He reached down and, with his teeth, pulled away the bed spread covering her body just a bit. He ran his tongue along the swell of her breast and there was a slight stinging sensation as he did so. Tessa tilted her head and saw what at first looked like a teenager's hickey, but at a second glance looked more like an actual bite, like Jeff had bitten her.
He smiled wolfishly when she looked back up at him. "Mine," he said again.
To be continued...
