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

“Where are you taking me?” I huff.

“Home. You’ve been ordered to stay home for the next seventy-two hours.” His cold palm against my thighs burns right through my jeans and sends a shiver slinking through my body. “We could have done this the easy way. You could have just left and let me follow you for the next three days, but no. You had to be a literal pain in my ass.”

He jumps over a puddle and my forehead bounces off said ass.

The grinding of my teeth is all I can do. I fold my arms and try to keep warm in my thin long-sleeved shirt.

I didn’t dress to be cuddling the dead today. He’s dropping my body heat just from being near me.

“Then just put me down and you can walk me home.”

“Sounds so much sweeter when you say it like that, Pet.”

My fists tighten beneath my arms as I roll my eyes hard.

“Want me to buy you flowers too?”

I keep my eyes closed and just try to endure the torment.

“If you count all of our little meetings, we would be well past the third date, you know? I hear that means something for you prudish human bitches.”

I exhale slowly.

Only two blocks. Two blocks and I’ll be home.

“Tell me, do you prefer cotton… or lace?” His big palm slides up my thigh and he pushes hard over the curve of my ass. “I bet you’re a cotton cunt, huh?”

And that’s the last thing he says to me before I decide I’ve had enough.

My palm bites into the back of his neck, holding his head firmly while my leg rises up as high as I can manage.

Then my knee clocks into his nose so hard I hear the crunch of bone as I’m falling. The sidewalk comes up fast and my palms break my fall with biting pain scraping into the skin. I’m on my feet and running before he lets out his first curse word.

Or even his second.

The sounds of my sneakers scuffing pavement and the slamming of my heartbeat become one and the same. It’s a psychotic symphony of sound filling my ears that just urges me to run faster. To make it back over to Crimson Road. I have to get there. I have to get over the line.

I have to see my sister.

I turn the corner sharply. It’s an alleyway just before Crimson Road. A rusted dumpster gives way to the rotting stench of old Chinese food. It’s just up ahead. All I have to do is make it just around that dumpster.

It’s just a few feet now...

It’s right there!

It’s—

Something solid strikes the back of my skull, but the pain doesn’t sink in as warmth slides down my head and hair. I blink, and then hands lock around my hips as I fall.

But never land. Black spots caress the edges of the sky as I stare up at the white and gray clouds.

And then Prey’s sneering smile gazes down on me.

“It was just a question. Fuck! I have nothing against cotton panties, Vega.” He kneels down between my thighs. I blink slowly at him and try to remember why I came this way to begin with. He shakes his head slowly, his smile faltering as he looks away. “Everything’s a mess. And now you are too.”

His arm slips beneath me and I curl into his chest as the whole world slips away from me.

“Why did you have to be twins?” It’s the last thing I hear him say. It’s a strange statement all on its own but the sadness in his tone is strangest of all.

Two

Kira

There’s a knocking in my skull. It’s the pound of pain that throbs through my head like thoughts trying to claw their way out.

I wince as I open my eyes to the dark, moonlit room. My room.

The floor creaks when I slowly sit up on my beige bedroom rug. A shiver races through me from how damn cold it is down here. The sheer green curtains on the wall to my left hint at a full moon above the sparse night clouds.

“What time is it?” I ask myself in an agonizing groan.

“Almost one o’clock in the a.m,” a rumbling voice answers.

I fling my head up so fast the room spins with violent colors.

“Prey,” I hiss at the man lounging lazily on my bed. His ankles are crossed and all I can dwell on are his dirty boots on my mother’s quilt.

“Whyyyy was I tossed on the floor while you’re making yourself comfy on my goddamn bed?”

His lip curls back as his fingers spread across his chest in feigned insult. “Pet, have some manners. I’m a guest.”

“You’re an assailant. You’re lucky I don’t report you.”

“Mmmm and who might you report me to? The human police?” His laughter cuts through the dark. His perfect white teeth shine in the shadows, so much so that the points on either side are emphasized like the animal that he is. “You’re all weak. Even your protectors.”

That’s the thing about vampires: They think they’re so far above everyone else. They think they can take and use and kill whoever they like. They think the little rules and regulations from their council balance and justify their nasty behavior.

It doesn’t even come fucking close.

Just ask my sister.

“Where—where is my sister?”

I don’t want to fight with him anymore. I just want to know that Kyra’s okay.

His smile slips away, fast.

Are they ever genuine for him? Does he even feel happiness? Amusement? Anything?

He drags his dusty boot up my green blanket and rests his arm on the bend of his knee. He doesn’t look at me. He studies the moon instead.

He can’t look at me.

“Tell me she’s fine. Tell me!” I’m shaking, and it’s no longer from the chill in the room.

“Stop talking,” he says in the rasp of a breath. Barely a whisper.

“Just fucking tell me!”

In the skip of a heartbeat he’s in my face. His inky hair fans into place as he breathes