Page 3 of Happily Undead in Dark River

I dropped my towel and grinned at Brody’s groan. “Do you really need to date Mr. Straight and Narrow? Stay home and I’ll give you my version of a tongue bath?”

I laughed but knew he didn’t mean it. He liked Walker; they’d been friends for a long time. I still wasn’t sure why Brody wasn’t more jealous of the little lovenest I’d created here, but he wasn’t. He was the one that referred to Judge and Walker as my undead life partners. Not in front of Judge though. Judge had commitment-phobia so bad, he basically broke out in a ball rash at the word marriage. I slid on my underwear, which was a glorified strip of mosquito netting, and then my garter belt. This time Brody sounded pained. “Seriously? Where did they come from? Why do you never wear stockings and suspenders with me?”

I slid my bra over my arms and walked over to Brody. “Do me up?” He grumbled something about putting on women’s bras going against the bro-code, but his fingers were deft. When I was all strapped into my torture device, I paused.

“Brody. Do you think that because I will never change, my boobs won’t sag when I get old?”

Yeah, that was the kinda shit I thought about now. Don’t judge me.

“I guess so? You’d have to ask the Do-” he snapped his mouth shut. We were so used to asking Alice, aka the town’s doctor, questions, it was weird that she wasn’t here. “Ask Walker or Judge. Pretty sure they’ve seen their fair share of vampire boobs in their lives.” His hands snaked around to squeeze my breasts, scraping his fingers across my lace-covered nipples. “Though I am happy to do a scientific study for the next hundred or so years, personally.”

I shivered as pleasure ran down my spine but stepped away. “Nope. Not right now. You guys always end up destroying my lingerie and this is my last set,” I mock scolded because I loved that shit. “But from now on, I’m never wearing a bra. Like ever. I’m free!” I unclipped my bra and threw it on the bed. “Burn them. I feel liberated!” I spun in circles so quickly, my boobs flew out like wings, making Brody fall back on the bed laughing.

I pulled out my stockings from the drawer and handed them to Brody. His eyes got heavy and he slid bonelessly off the bed, coming to kneel at my feet. He put one hand on my stomach and pushed me back until I was sitting in my bedroom armchair. Pushing himself between my knees, he pulled the stocking over my toes, rolling it up to my ankles, then lifted my leg and put it on his shoulder.

I sucked in a breath as he ran his tongue up the inside of my calf, unrolling the stocking behind the warm slide of his tongue. Up past my knee, to the inside of my thighs. He stopped mere inches from the heat of my pussy, and I groaned in frustration. “I heard saliva stops static electricity,” he murmured as he blew a hot breath at my wet panties, and then moved back down to my other foot.

“Really?” I whispered.

He shrugged. “Who am I to argue with science I found on the internet?” Then he repeated the process with the other stocking. Holy Jesus. By the time he reached the top of the other side, I was willing to forgo my lingerie. But he just looked up at me through hooded eyes, his grin decidedly devilish. He gave me a quick kiss at the junction of my thighs and then slid out from between my knees. I gave a pitiful mewl, which only seemed to make him laugh more.

He held up my dress. “Here we go. Don’t want you to be late.” He looked at his watch. “Walker should be here in ten minutes.”

I stepped into the dress and allowed Brody to pull it up over my hips. He zipped up the back and there was a hot look in his eyes that had nothing to do with the fact he was just between my thighs. “We are so fucking lucky.” He leaned forward and kissed me. “I’ll go wait in the living room and grill him about his intentions towards our Mate.”

That was the second time he’d referred to me as ‘our Mate’ and I wondered if it was more than a turn of phrase. But now was not the time to ask. I slid on the high heels Ella had given me for my night out in Calgary and went to do my makeup. I looked in the mirror and was once again glad I didn’t get turned when I went through my acne stage a couple of years ago. On the plus side, when Cresta waxed my legs, it meant they wouldn’t grow back for a decade. Hashtag Vampire Win. Apart from the homicidal maker, the fact I could never see my family again or go out in the sun, and that I was now under the purview of a race of being that believed in death sentence the way I believed in chocolate for breakfast, then the whole vampire thing was super peachy.

I brushed out my ombre red hair and put on the red lipstick that matched the darkest of the reds. I ran some mascara over my lashes, and that was it. I couldn’t do Cresta’s make-up sorcery, but considering Walker had seen me when I was puffy from crying and hadn’t showered in a week, this was a definite step up.

I walked out into the living room to see both Walker and Brody there. I sucked in a gasp when I saw Walker. He was dressed in grey tailored pants, brown leather suspenders, and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his muscular forearms. He looked good enough to eat.

“Wow,” he whispered, echoing my thoughts. “You look amazing.”

I blushed. “Right back at you.”

Brody laughed, hustling us toward the door. “You guys are both so cute I swear I’m about to die,” he said in a valley-girl falsetto. “Go and have fun. Have her back by sunrise, otherwise, I have it on good authority she’ll turn into a pumpkin.

Walker patted him on the back extra heartily. I thought I heard something crack. “Don’t wait up, Old Man.”

He held out his elbow,the most glorious smile on his face. I felt like my heart was racing. We walked down the short front path to the Harley parked on the street.

“Oh boy,” I whispered. I’d wanted to hop on the back of Walker’s bike since I heard that he owned one. I wished I’d worn a slightly longer dress though. He threw his leg over the sleek, black machine, and I swear I had an orgasm just at the sight. The Harley Davidson was so unlike Walker’s personality, it made me wonder what else he kept on the down-low. But right now he looked like a wet dream.

“Are you just going to stand there drooling on the pavement, or are you going to hop on?” he teased.

He didn’t need to ask me twice. I was glad for the little extra height the heels gave me as I swung my leg over the bike and molded my body to his back. Then he started it up.

“Oh shit!”

He squealed out of my little cul-de-sac and my hair flew behind me like blood on the wind. Always wear a helmet, Kids, unless you are now an immortal freakin’ vampire. It was amazing. Although we were driving slower than we could run, there was something about the rumble of the bike between my thighs as I had my arms around the waist of a sexy-as-sin man who I knew owned handcuffs. Life was kind of good right now.

He drove us to the diner, which was not unusual. There were very few places to eat in a town filled with vampires. Bert and Beatrice’s Diner. The Immortal Cupcake which was now closed. The Blood Bank during shark week.

But what was weird about the diner was that it was completely empty, and there was very little light coming through the front glass windows. I slid off the bike and onto the sidewalk in front of the diner. Walker was there in an instant, holding the door to the diner open for me. The tinkle of the bell didn’t fill me with dread today. As I stepped through the door, Bert was there. In a tuxedo.

My mouth unhinged. Bert was older, with a girth almost as round as he was tall. But there he was, looking completely like a penguin in a bowtie and grinning like crazy.

“Your table is this way,” he grumbled despite the grin. That was just his natural pitch. He had curmudgeonly as a default. He led us to the back of the empty diner to a table set with a white linen cloth and dripping in candlelight. A bottle of wine sat chilling in an ice bucket.

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