Thirst [All-American Vampires 2] (Siren Publishing Classic)

All-American Vampires 2

Thirst

John "Hawk" Blackhawk, vampire and private detective, is asked by his friend, Quinn Buchanan, to investigate a woman he has caught attempting to hack into his private computer files. They have to find out who this woman is. Could she be a spy sent to betray the brothers?

Claire Landry is desperate. Twelve months ago, she and her younger sister were attacked by monsters. They turned her into one of them. She escaped, but they took her sister Cassidy to sell as a bloodslave. Since that night, she has searched for Cassidy without any luck. Now at last she has a real lead. She has learned that Ty and Quinn Buchanan rescued a group of bloodslaves, and Cassidy could be one of them.

Determined to find her sister, Claire will let nothing, not even her thirst for Hawk, stop her from rescuing the only family she has left.

Genre:
Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length:
75,936 words
 

All-American Vampires 2

Bree Younger

EROTIC ROMANCE

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

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IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

THIRST

Copyright © 2012 by Bree Younger

E-book ISBN:
978-1-61926-670-4

First E-book Publication: June 2012

Cover design by Jinger Heaston

All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

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www.SirenPublishing.com

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Thirst
 
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All-American Vampires 2

BREE YOUNGER

Copyright © 2012

Northern Georgia

1745

It was almost midnight when the black carriage halted at the livery stable. The coal-black horses pulling the carriage were the rival of any of the wild stallions Hawk’s people had ridden. It was accompanied by two outriders who were armed to the teeth, making Hawk wonder just who these people were. Hawk had been sleeping in the loft in the corner that Cliff Hankins, the stable master, had given him when he’d hired him on to help out with the animals. It was nothing much, just a straw-filled mattress for a bed, a small table and lantern, and a trunk for his clothing. He was grateful for whatever he could get. Indians weren’t looked upon too fondly in most of the small towns in the southern colonies, but the Hankins family had been good to him. He had no complaints.

When he’d realized the stable had a paying customer, even this late, he’d pulled on his clothes and descended the ladder just as the outriders swung down from the horses and moved into a protective stance beside the carriage. The door to the carriage swung open, and a finely dressed gentleman got out. He was geared up fancier than Hawk had ever seen, with an expensive, black jacket and pants that hugged his legs so tight Hawk wondered how the man’s circulation wasn’t cut off. The stranger’s boots were polished to a high shine, and he wore a large ring on one finger made of a sparkling, red stone. The man reached out a slim hand, and Hawk stared in amazement when the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen stepped gracefully to the ground. She was an absolute vision of perfection, so completely outside any experience he had ever had that he didn’t have the words to describe her. It was as if she had wandered out of one of Mr. Hankin’s daughter’s fancy picture books. He recalled one picture in particular. A fairy princess, Amanda Rose had told him. That’s how this woman appeared.

Hawk’s main experience with white women was the wives of the settlers who lived on the outlying farms or in town and the cheap whores who worked in the saloons in the towns he’d stumbled through while he’d still been drinking. The lady standing before him had absolutely no relationship whatsoever to any of those women. For one thing, her hair was a fiery red color, as though the sun had set her head aflame. Hawk wondered what would happen if he touched that hair. Would his fingers burn? Her eyes were blue as the lake where he liked to swim when he was a boy. And her skin was pale white and smooth. He wanted badly to touch that skin.

She straightened the skirts of her gown, and then her eyes traveled around the stable. When she saw him, the corners of her lips tilted upward.

Hawk took a couple of steps in her direction, but both of the outriders stepped forward, blocking him from getting any closer. The lady held out her hand to the men. “It’s all right, Edmund, Louis. Let the man approach.” The guard shot him a warning look before stepping to the side. The woman motioned him closer. Keeping a wary eye on the looming guards, he did as she’d indicated. When he was just a couple of feet away from the woman, he stopped, and she looked him over carefully before smiling.

“Hello. Are you in charge here?” Her voice was musical and husky, her accent unfamiliar. At first, he was so distracted he almost forgot to answer. Finally, he recalled where he was and muttered, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. We’ve got a problem with one of the horses.” She gestured to the guard standing closer to her. “Edmund, you and Louis please see to it that the carriage and horses are taken care of. Lawrence, let’s see if we can find a decent hotel in this godforsaken little town.” One of the two outriders nodded his head and moved to the horses’ heads. Hawk was about to move to help them when another woman stepped down from the carriage. She was also lovely, though not as stunning as the redhead. Her hair was almost as dark as Hawk’s own, but her eyes were an interesting blue gray.

Hawk nodded to her when he saw she was looking at him. Then he turned his attention back to the fairy princess. “Ma’am, if you’ll pardon me, there’s only one hotel. It’s the Golden Horn. It’s just a couple buildings down on your left. You can’t miss it. But they’ll be locked up tight by now.” He knew Otis Binkman would have already taken to his bed. If a person didn’t get to the hotel by ten o’clock, he was just plumb out of luck.

The lady looked at him with raised eyebrows that to Hawk’s amazement were the same shade as the hair on her head. “Oh, I assure you, Mr…”

He bobbed his head in a show of respect. “Hawk, ma’am. Just Hawk.”

“Well,
Just Hawk
, I can assure you that the hotel will open its doors for me. Isn’t that right, Lawrence?”

The dandified gentleman smiled. “Absolutely correct, Lady Carleton.”

“So I don’t believe we need to worry about that, Hawk.” The lady moved toward him, circling slowly around him as though he were a slave on an auction block. Hawk didn’t like the feeling, and his bemusement with the woman and her entourage began to dissipate. “You’re an Indian, aren’t you, Hawk?”

Gritting his jaw against the rudeness, as he’d had to do on more than one occasion, he nodded abruptly.

“I thought so. Look, Lawrence. Belinda. A real live Indian. Isn’t he amazing?” She gestured to her friends as if she’d discovered a new species of animal. “I think he is just beautiful. Maybe we could keep him?”

Hawk said nothing as he felt their gazes slide over him. For a moment he was conscious of a feeling of revulsion, as if something about them wasn’t quite natural. He just shook it off. He had to remember that they were paying customers. He’d dealt with their kind before, and he knew that it was best to just keep his mouth shut and his head down, though it went against every self-preservation instinct that he had.

“I don’t think he cares for the idea, lovey.” The man she’d called Lawrence sneered in his direction. “Come now. Let’s leave the man to his business. We’re keeping him from his bed. Or pallet. Or whatever.”

Hawk watched as the gentleman escorted the two women from the building before turning to deal with getting the wagon unhitched. But one of the guards standing nearby stopped him.

“We’re not going to be staying long. We just have a horse that’s gone lame on us. We’ll need to replace him. I hope you’ve got some decent horseflesh for sale.” He said that as if he didn’t hold out much hope that they could find a horse here that met their standards, and Hawk had to admit that their matched blacks were prime specimens. But they were in for a surprise. Hawk was an excellent judge of horseflesh, and even though they were a small stable, they had several excellent prospects for the men to look at.

Hawk spent the next hour showing the men the available horses, trading for the lame horse, and getting the one they chose settled into the harness. Not long after the business was concluded, the two men left, apparently going to join their companions at the hotel.

He was straightening up a bit before returning to his bed when Hawk heard the stable door open again, and the one they’d called Lady Carleton stepped inside. She looked at him with a glimmer in her eyes that Hawk was not completely unaccustomed to seeing from the white women of the town. Though he was an Indian and most treated him as beneath their notice, at least in public, that didn’t stop some of the women from making more risqué advances in private. He was tall and strong, with muscles that seemed to fascinate the female inhabitants of the small town. His hair was thick and dark and fell to his waist. Though he usually kept it neatly braided or tied back from his face, more than one matron had whispered to him that she longed to see it loose around his shoulders. However, he was always careful to stick to the whores, who offered themselves to him free of charge, glad to have a handsome young buck plowing them instead of the usual dirty farmers or wandering trappers and hunters that occasionally visited the small saloon.