Emotion whelms in me when Chipper relaxes in my arms, and then, unbelievably, starts to lap at the man’s hand. I can’t help it. I let out a giggle and shake my head in disbelief.
“He’s not normally friendly with strangers,” I mutter. “Especially strangers in the freaking dark.”
The man nods shortly. “I’ve had many dogs in my time,” he says. “They are good judges of people. I’m Torsten.”
“Wow, cool name,” I say, and then immediately feel like the biggest doofus in the world.
Cool name, strange man who just emerged from an alleyway.
“I’m Tammy,” I mutter, and then bring some sassiness back into my voice. “But honestly I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation. I mean, you’d agree it’s a bit weird, right, Torsten?”
“Perhaps,” he says. “But I’ve never been overly concerned with what people perceive to be normal. Are you lost, Tammy?”
“Not lost,” I say. “Just … taking my time to get to my destination.”
He laughs, low, husky. “That sounds like you’re lost.”
“Well, you might want to fix your ears then.”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with my ears, believe me.”
“What, you’ve got super hearing, do you?” I fire.
“Something like that,” he says quietly. His whole body seems to strain against his suit as he stares at me, the azure fire of his eyes blazing. “You’re right to be scared, though. Even in this part of the city, it isn’t safe for a lady to be alone at night.”
“Wow, isn’t that just very old fashioned?” I say.
His smirk widens. For a second, I think I see two extremely sharp teeth in his mouth, wolf’s teeth. But then he closes his lips a little and I’m left wondering if it’s just Halloween making me crazy.
“Old fashioned, yes,” he says. “I suppose I am a little. But it’s also the truth. Let me give you a ride home.”
“Um, what?” I say, laughing. “So let me get this straight. You swagger out of an alleyway, give Chipper a little massage, and now I’m supposed to jump in your car and trust that you’re not some serial killer psychopath.”
He nods and reaches into his jacket pocket, handing me a business card. When I take it, our fingers brush and I gasp. I drop the card and it flutters like a leaf to the ground.
His hand is cold.
His hand is the coldest I’ve ever felt.
He leans down and picks it up, handing it to me again.
“You need to invest in some gloves,” I joke.
“Yes,” he says, “I’ve been told that before.”
I glance at the sleek, modern card and see that he’s Torsten Haroldsson, CEO of Fenrir Industries.
“I’ve never heard of them,” I mutter.
“No,” he says, “you wouldn’t have. They’re a parent company and own many other smaller – but still large – companies. I’m not showing you this to show off, Tammy. But as a sign that you can trust me. If a CEO was going around murdering women, surely somebody would’ve heard about it by now.”
“Or they would’ve paid off the police and gotten away with it.”
“Do you really have such little faith in this city?”
I shoot him a look. “Do you even have to ask that question?”
He shrugs. “Then let me put it this way. There’s no damn way I’m letting a lady like you trudge through this city alone at this time of night. If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”
A lady like me.
What the heck does that mean?
For an absurd moment, I let myself dare believe that Torsten is attracted to me, but of course, the very notion of that is just ridiculous. Maybe he has a hero complex and wants to play the good guy tonight, take a young woman home and maybe leak it to the press later.
Or is that just woefully pessimistic of me?
“Here’s the thing,” I say. “I’ve learned that trusting people, generally speaking, is a freaking idiot’s game. And that goes double for trusting strangers.”
I feel my womb going tight and tense inside of me, screaming at me, What the hell are you doing? Are you stupid? Go with him. Now. Now. Now.
Desire like I’ve never felt before flames in me, my mind filling with images of me tearing off that suit jacket, running my fingernails down his bulging chest muscles and his rock hard abs.
“Look at me,” he says firmly.
I stare into his eyes.
“I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”
I want to shoot him another feisty reply, but as I stare at him I feel like I know him. Like I’ve known him for a long time. Or like I’ve been waiting for him my whole life. It’s a stupid feeling, really, one I should ignore. My life has taught me better than this. And yet it rises within me like a deafening conflagration of fireworks.
“If I’m going to catch a ride with you,” I say, “you need to let me do something first.”
“Okay …”
“I’m going to need to record a video of us together, stating the time and the place, and then upload it to my social media. When I get home, I’ll delete the video.”
“Sure,” he says. “Whatever makes you feel safe, Tammy. As I said, I’d never hurt you.”
“This is so weird,” I mutter, giggling despite myself as I take out my phone.
Chipper grins the whole time I’m talking into the camera and, when I’m done, he licks my face and then Torsten’s. Torsten smells of cologne and something deeper, muskier, up close.
I can’t quite place it.
All I know is it swirls all through me, right down to my center, so loud I can barely hear the doubts whispering in my mind.
Chapter Three
Torsten
I guide the sleek black Jaguar through the night, Chipper curled up contentedly in the back seat and my woman sitting at my side, her scent filling the car that I have to use every tool of self-control I have not to pounce on her right here.
Somehow, I’ve managed to keep the blood-lust at bay, but only by pulling a sheet of coldness over me, that is uncomfortable even to me. Even with that shield of cold, every sinew inside of me is straining to get closer to her, to tear down her coat and free those alluring breasts, burying my face in them and sucking and biting, fuck, biting and drawing the blood from them and …
Stop, stop.
I beat down the vampire instinct and focus on the road instead, crossing the bridge in the late-night traffic, a slow swell of it even at this hour. Every time Tammy twitches beside me, I can’t stop imagining her naked and fresh, her body a canvas ready for me to paint.
I feel my seed, that impossible thing, flaring inside of me in its primal desire to fire inside of her and create a life, an impossible fucking life.
I think of those long-ago battles and how the warriors would claim women afterward, the savage way they’d take them, a practice I never partook in. But I feel the savage emerging in me now, the years falling away so that I’m a Viking warrior again, and here is my prize, my well-earned prize, with her voluptuous curves and her lips made for sucking, for wrapping around my engorged manhood and taking right me right down to the root.