Sleepless Beauties: A Rejected Mates Paranormal Romance (The Vampires Vendetta Series Book 1) by A.K. Koonce (best books under 200 pages txt) 📕

help him get to where I want him to go faster, but he simply maintains that leisurely pace of his touch. The heat of his fingers stop just above my clit, so I’m forced to grind myself against his palm.

This time, the low rumble of pleasure is definitely his. It’s a delicious sound that sends a whimper from my own lips as I thrust my hips once more against the frustrating space between his hand and my wetness.

At the sound of my want, he kisses me harder, so hard it hurts, but fuck it also feels so good.

And then…

Cold sweeps in as air flurries my hair and before I can even open my eyes, the crack of wood is sounding through the room as his hand collides with the nearly open door. It jars shut with a harsh slam against his palm.

Vuitton’s eyes are a wild timber color. His blonde hair is a mess across his bronze features and there’s even aggression in his posture.

As for me, I’m still panting like a mad woman who just fucked the memory of a ghost. And that ghost is long gone now. I’m alone and spread wide on the tangle of my blankets. The span of the bedroom separates me from him as we stare wide eyed at one another.

I can’t believe we just did that.

I just fucked this stranger’s hand, and now he’s all but running for the door.

“I—” An apology of some bizzare sort is on the tip of my tongue, but it gets cut off.

“Knock, Prey!” Vuitton growls, his hand curling into a violent fist as he continues to hold the door shut.

“It’d be my pleasure.” A taunting tone says from the other room. “But it sounded like… trouble in there.”

The word trouble spins through my head. I sit up slowly and Vuitton still watches me like I’m the most dangerous creature he’s never come across in all his life.

His free hand that was against my sex just seconds ago lifts, and he holds my gaze for a second longer. His fingertips slide over his lips and he tastes me with hooded eyes lowering down my body, his dark gaze now tinged with remorse and something more.

My thighs shift involuntarily.

A long drawn out exhale falls from his lips. So much is unsaid in the way he looks at me one more time. And then he turns his back on me, slipping out the door without another word.

He leaves me there with nothing but the pounding of my heart to keep me company.

That… and an incredible sense of frustration.

Nine

Prey

He slinks out of the room quietly, like a beaten dog who was never given a bone in his mangy life.

Good.

The fucking horny barking mutt.

“You were going to fuck her!” I accuse on a furious whisper.

“I was not going to fuck her,” he growls back while he folds his arms across his chest.

He’s doing it to make himself look bigger. It’s a typical defense pose that every animal in nature does when they’re threatened.

Newsflash asshole: you’re already as big as a goddamn dumpster fire. With the brains to match.

No matter how much you puff your chest out, you’ll still outweigh me by a hundred pounds. And I’ll still kill you regardless.

I tilt my head at the dog. I shame him with just a stare. I’m this close to rubbing his nose in her pussy and reminding him that we don’t shit where we eat.

My thoughts get sidetracked by that visual for only a moment.

“Don’t fuck up again,” I say as I poke my index finger into his puffed-out chest. “Wouldn’t want to get her killed the way you did with Kyra.”

My lips tilt up into a cutting smile that twists up the emotions that are already eating my heart alive.

His jaw grinds. The warm brown at the center of his eyes chases out the ring of green in his iris. His beast wants to come out so fucking bad to test me.

Test me, motherfucker! You’d be one less memory of my mistress I’d have to live with.

Ten

Kira

I stand at the window of my bedroom. My pale hair is pulled tightly back, my brow feeling entirely too alert because of it. The crushed red velvet dress is perfectly form fitting, it stops just above my knees. I don’t sway in the four-inch red bottom heels as I watch the deep orange of the sunset bleed over the buildings along the horizon.

I only have minutes left in this reality I’ve known all my life.

The moment darkness falls, my whole life will bleed away into it. I’ll be her. I’ll be a High Council vampire, and all I’ll have to protect me is the surface appearance of what that power looks like.

Honestly, the surface appearance is all I really knew of Kyra in her afterlife. She gave me glimpses here and there of what happened to her, but never anything about who she really was.

Prey is right, my relationship with my sister was stale and fake. It was a bond we both wanted to keep, but we didn’t know how.

She wanted familiarity.

I wanted closure.

Neither of us got what we wanted.

My head leans into the cold glass window. It feels good to let it soak into my pounding head that’s reeling with the mix of too much and too little information. My palm settles there too, with the comfort of the cool glass against my sweaty palm.

A cracking noise snaps across the glass. The cold stings against my skin and I pull away with a pained gasp.

Only to look up at the man directly outside.

Outside my second storey apartment.

His short dark hair blows in the breeze. The suit jacket slashes back and forth against the single button holding it together against his black dress shirt. The silk ebony tie flurries sideways violently, but he just stares at me with the same stern look he left me with in the hall after the strangest kiss of my entire life.

“Kyra,” he mouths, but I can’t hear his