Biting the Bride
Authors: Clare Willis
BITTEN
“Do you want to bite me? “ Sunni asked.
Jacob nodded, his face contorted with suppressed desire. “But I don’t want to frighten you, or have you think ill of me.”
“Who do you bite, men or women?”
“Mostly women.”
“How do they respond when you bite them?”
His cheeks flushed and he glanced away. “It’s an enjoyable experience, if we desire to make it so. It is part of our predatory adaptation that we can make humans desire to be taken by us.”
“So go ahead. Do it. I want you to do it.”
She pulled him down to her. His lips grazed her neck. She felt her blood rise up to meet him. When his fangs entered her, a tremor of pleasure rolled through her body …
Books by Clare Willis
ONCE BITTEN
BITING THE BRIDE
NOCTURNAL
(with Jacquelyn Frank,
Kate Douglas, and Jess Haines)
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
BITING
THE
BRIDE
CLARE WILLIS
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2010 by Clare Willis
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ISBN-13: 978-1-420-10872-9
ISBN-10: 1-4201-0872-7
First Printing: December 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Heartfelt thanks once again to Joanna MacKenzie and John Scognamiglio, my wonderful agent and editor; to Bill, Joe, and Amy for their keen eyes and fast turn-around times; and to Bob and Liz Huss for sharing their knowledge about boats and sailing.
The wedding would have been the envy of any woman with a romantic heart. The outdoor setting, on a deck overlooking San Francisco Bay, was beautiful and natural but devoid of humidity, extremes of temperature, or insects. The flowers were extravagant but tasteful. The music was poignant but professional. The husband was young (relatively), handsome (ditto), employed, and in possession of all of his natural teeth. But to Sunni Marquette, who was standing at the end of a line of bridesmaids arrayed like the tail of a comet, it was a waste of time, energy, and expense. As was romantic love in general.
But she had learned long ago that her worldview was often at odds with that of the general public, and her comments on marriage were usually as well received as a diagnosis of athlete’s foot. So in the interest of friendship, which she did value, she had donned a polyester satin dress in the hue of orange Jell-O and a pair of cheap pumps that were a size too big and taken her place at the comet’s tail end. The nucleus was Sunni’s college friend Lydia, who looked indeed like a big ball of gas in her fluffy round gown, constructed of thousands of short layers of tulle dotted with bugle beads.
As the priest droned on about the married couple’s duty to bear children, Sunni turned slightly and allowed her eyes to drift over the crowd. She recognized a few faces, mostly people from college with whom Lydia had kept in contact but Sunni hadn’t. Seeing them made Sunni feel that thirty-two was a lot older than she had realized. The men had bald pates, shrunken shoulders, and expanded bellies. The women’s chins had gone soft. Their breasts sagged like socks filled with sand, defying the darts in their expensive dresses. Mothers clung grimly to bored young children, who squiggled like eels in their perfectly natural desire to escape. Were those liver spots on the women’s hands? Not for the first time, Sunni regretted having 20/10 vision.
She squared her shoulders and stood up straight, which still left her a head shorter than the next shortest bridesmaid. She looked young for her age, which had annoyed her to no end when she was in her twenties, but now she welcomed it. Her chin-length bob was as black as ever, with not a strand of gray, and she had yet to find a wrinkle on her pale, heart-shaped face. It was rather weird, actually, considering what was happening to her friends. It made her wonder about what kind of genes she had inherited. Sunni’s DNA was a mystery, coming as it had from a mother who died when Sunni was eight and left no living relatives, and a father who was no more than a blank spot on the birth certificate. So far she hadn’t tried to unravel these mysteries, but maybe someday, when she wasn’t so busy … Busy?
Be honest,
Sunni thought,
at least in your own head:
maybe someday, when she wasn’t so chicken.
The priest asked everyone to stand for the wedding prayer. She was about to return her attention to the bride and groom when she noticed, in the back row on the bride’s side, a face that seemed familiar. But not just any face. It was one she’d been seeing and losing for years: a face whose elusiveness only made it more enticing. It always disappeared whenever she got close, like a mirage. A wave of fear mixed with excitement washed through her. Sunni forgot where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. She corkscrewed her body toward the back of the church and turned the full power of her superior eyesight on the man.
It was him, she was sure of it. Her guardian angel.
Sunni’s frustration grew until it felt like she had swallowed a live ferret. The man she’d been wondering about for years was in the same enclosed space with her, and not a public place either, but a private ceremony, where you could only be if you knew the bride or groom. Or if you’d crashed the party. He towered over most of the other wedding guests, which was how he’d become so obvious when everyone stood up. In his tuxedo he cut an arresting figure. Everything about him was striking, from his height to his eyes, whose color she couldn’t quite identify. He had jutting Nordic cheekbones and dark hair that was a bit too long and tousled to suit a professional man, although she sometimes saw him in restaurants or professional buildings wearing a suit and tie, always alone. He was extremely pale, as if he had tuberculosis or worked as an engineer for Google. If he was a spy he was terrible at his job, because his looks made it impossible for him to be incognito.
But now here he was at the same wedding with her and she couldn’t get to him, because propriety demanded that she stay put until the ceremony was over. Their eyes met and locked. As the man stared at her his eyes narrowed to slits. His lips pressed together and he grimaced as if he was angry or in great pain.
What was he thinking?
Sunni gasped as the man slipped out of the crowd and headed for the exit, moving so fast his black-clad body was a blur.
“‘A six-foot tall man in a tuxedo.’ There are five hundred guests here. Can you be a little more specific?” Lydia lifted her champagne glass to her lipstick-smudged mouth. It was halfway through the reception and Lydia was more than halfway drunk, but this was the first moment Sunni had found to ask her the question. Lydia’s new husband, Kyle, had his back to her while he said goodbye to a very elderly couple who were leaving early.
Sunni chewed the inside of her lip. “Um, he’s very handsome.”
Lydia waggled her eyebrows. “Ooh, so that’s why you want to find him. And I thought you wanted to put a restraining order on the guy. “ She linked her free arm with Kyle’s, swaying on her high heels. “They say weddings are the best places to meet eligible men.”
Sunni suppressed her annoyance. “He’s very tall, broad-shouldered but thin, light-colored eyes, prominent cheekbones, messy black hair.”
“How old?” Kyle asked, having rejoined the conversation.
Sunni shrugged. “Hard to tell. Between thirty and forty, maybe. ”
Lydia draped her arms drunkenly across Kyle’s shoulders. “Lucky for you I didn’t meet that guy first,” she said, tickling his ear.
“And he was here alone?” Kyle asked, beginning what would probably be a lifelong practice of ignoring his wife.
Was
he alone? Sunni felt an embarrassing stab of jealousy at the idea of her angel/stalker leaving with someone else. “I didn’t see anyone with him,” she muttered.
The bride and groom looked at each other for a long moment, then they turned back to Sunni, both shrugging their shoulders. “Nope,” Lydia said, “doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Sure doesn’t,” Kyle agreed.
Sunni sighed with exasperation. “Okay, thanks.”
She had needed to pee for the past two hours, so she found a restroom. While she was sitting on the toilet she peeled off her stockings and threw them in the garbage. She hated nylons, especially the egregious Band-Aid–colored ones, but Lydia had insisted. The too-big pumps felt more comfortable now that her feet were bare.
When she came out of the stall, there was a man in the bathroom, propping himself up against one of the sinks. For a moment her heart stopped, because he was very tall and had dark hair, but when she saw his face reflected in the mirror she recognized him: a cousin of Kyle’s from somewhere on the East Coast. She’d met him at the rehearsal dinner the night before.
“Hi, um, Peter, that’s your name, right? You’re in the wrong restroom.”
He turned, his big head swinging like it was too heavy for his neck. He was handsome in a forgettable sort of way, with coarse features that were probably at their best in high school.
“Hey, Sunni, nice to see you,” he slurred, smiling. His mouth was wide, with cartoonish red lips. “You’re looking very beautiful tonight. Did I tell you that already?”