Chapter 3 3 Butter-Cream Frosting

I blink once. I blink twice. Sharp silver eyes as clear and vivid as I have ever seen are staring down at me, molten silver. Intelligent. Somber. Grave. And yet they make me think of naked bodies writhing together, slick with sweat, on silken sheets. I see my salvation. I see my death. I see myself falling from the edge of a cliff and plunging into a deep, dark, endless crevasse. I see myself embraced with strong, powerful arms and a love I have never known. I see a knife embedded deep into my chest.

I gasp and the eyes pull away, revealing a handsome face with straight, sharp nose and full, sensuous lips twisted in a frown of disapproval. It is a face too pretty to belong to any man.

"Yo, chick, welcome back to life," Nikki says, putting her arm around my shoulders and helping me sit up. "Goddamn, you scared me. I thought you were dead for real."

"Seriously, you dropped like someone flipped your off switch," Olive adds, wide-eyed. "She's been through a lot today," she tells the stranger. "She barely survived a hexing by a were-fox."

My two friends pull me up to my feet. My knees wobble and I almost fall back down, but I grab Nikki and lean heavily against her. She wraps her arms around me to secure me to her. Say what you will about the hot-tempered lioness, but girlfriend is a rock.

"I believe she'll be all right," says a deep, masculine voice that feels like an ice-cube melting and dripping down my spine. He lifts his hand to my forehead, makes contact with my skin, and instantly yanks his hand back as though he had been stung.

When I was about six years old, I stuck one of my mother's hair pins into an electrical outlet and flew across the room. According to my parents, I was dead for a few minutes, but fortunately, my aunt who was babysitting me knew CPR and some healing magic, so I was brought back to life. Pretty Boy's touch? Exactly like that. He and I look at each other in surprise, though he recovers much more quickly than I do and any trace of emotion is gone from his eyes before I can even blink. He rises in one fluid move and steps back to put some distance between us.

I must have been still gawking at him and possibly drooling because I practically jump when Olive pokes me in the side and says, "He is the new Viceroy of the Southern California vampires. His name is Marcus Hollister. He is my new stalker."

A Viceroy is the master of all master vampires in a specific region and answers only to the Vampire Queen. Hollister carries himself like someone who was born into power and his posture is that of a man with military bearing embedded deep into his bones. He is tall, towering about a half foot over Nikki who is six feet tall, and lean. He is wearing dark gray trousers which appear to be tailored and a black long-sleeved shirt which cling to his muscled arms and shoulders. His hair is... dark red, looking like living fire in the sunlight and long enough to touch the neckline of his shirt. He has his arms folded over his chest and around his wrist is some serious quality bling. It appears to be platinum with a black alligator strap and five tiny faces within the main face. I don't know anything about watches, but damn, that sucker looks expensive.

"It's a Blancpain," Olive supplies helpfully. She pronounces it blahnk-paayh. "It's Swiss and retails over eight hundred thousand dollars. Hand-made and takes about eight to ten months of intricate work to put together. Being a murdering, marauding vampire pays really well."

I cringe at my friend's characteristic bluntness, but Hollister only looks amused.

"What is he doing here?" Nikki asks. She is trying to avoid looking directly at him. She knows the drill. It doesn't matter if you're a human, a were-animal, or fae: if you stare into a master vampire's eyes, you will be ensnared. And possibly used for deviant sexual purposes. At least that's what I've heard.

"Oh, he seems to pop up everywhere I am these days. I should have a nerd check out my phone. He probably had one of his minions plant a tracking device in it while I wasn't looking," Olive replies casually as if the very idea of it isn't the creepiest thing in the world. "He's after me because I'm a purebred female and my father is a member of the Ruling Council. If you're a megalomaniacal bastard looking to secure your power-base with a worthy wife, I'm really the best choice there is."

Hollister is staring at Olive as though she's a very interesting species of bug munching on a piece of wilted leaf inside a Mason jar. I am trying very hard not to look at him like he's a big slice of red velvet cake with buttercream frosting, my most favorite cake in the world.

He is really oh so magnificent-looking. I don't think I have ever seen a more beautiful male specimen and I live in a world where supernatural beings with superior genetic make-up walk around among poor, homely humans who could never compare to their freakish beauty and strength. Every elegant inch of him seemed to boast power and topnotch design by Mother Nature. I envy Olive for many things, never mind her breath-taking beauty and wealthy parents, but I never resented her for any of it. Some of us have it, some of us don't. And then there is this man. I have never been attracted to vampire males--too cold, too arrogant, too... sociopathic--but this one does something to me that no male ever has. He has made me... covet someone who, by all rights, belonged to a friend of mine.

"Why didn't you ever tell us about him?" I mutter.

Olive answers me with an appraising glance and a knowing smirk. "Why should I have? He's not important to me." She waves dismissively toward him with a flick of her wrist. His gaze narrows, but he says nothing.

I wait for her to introduce us. She doesn't.

Nikki has her arms wrapped around me, but she is still watching the vampire from the corner of her eye. Her heart is pounding rapidly beneath my palm and she is chewing on her lower lip. She might be suspicious of him, but is hardly unaffected by his good looks. She is torn between wanting to knock his head off and pouncing on him to kiss him. I have known my best friend for far too long not to recognize the signs when she is attracted to a dude. The redness staining her cheeks and neck are obvious even with her toffee-colored skin.

"He thinks he will wear me down if he follows me around long enough," says Olive. "I think he is in phase two of his plan: get in good with my friends. That's why he's finally decided to make an appearance for you guys."

Does that mean we're going to be seeing him more often? At the thought of this gorgeous man being nearby, skulking in the shadows and watching us makes my mouth go dry. I can write poems all day about his eyebrows alone. Sure, he's after Olive and if Olive is your goal, there's really no way you'd even take the homely Asian chick as a consolation prize.

Why is it always my supernatural friends who get the ridiculously good-looking males following them around? My one stalker was a math nerd named Charles Wonkley. He always smelled like mayonnaise and collected manga comics with those creepy big-eyed, blue-haired fourteen-year-old girls in sailor outfits on the cover. He wrote sonnets about me and posted them on my Facebook wall and my Tumblr account. He managed to find out my number even though I changed it three times and left me voicemail singing dumb songs he made up about my toes. He uploaded Youtube videos reading aloud the sonnets and poems he wrote for me and posted the links where all my friends could see them. He finally left me alone when he fell in love with a pink-haired Japanese girl who's still in high school. I fervently hope that one day he gets arrested for statutory rape.

So just once, I wish a really hot guy would take one look at me and fall over-the-moon in love. And then it happens. I'm staring at Hollister, admiring his cheekbones and jawline, when he turns his head and looks directly at me. Our eyes meet and hold. I've never been ensnared by a vampire's gaze--Nikki and I seem to be immune to Olive's, though we've witnessed her put someone under before--and yet here I am staring into a vampire's eyes and all I can think about is how beautiful his silver eyes are. They're like pools of light beckoning me to dive in and submerge myself. But maybe I am mesmerized and I don't even know it. Maybe that's why I can't stop thinking about how it would feel to run my fingers through his hair or why I have this urge to wrap my arms and legs around him like a koala bear and never let go again. I step out of Nikki's protective embrace and take a step toward him. And then another. He frowns, but his gaze doesn't slide away from mine.

A sharp pain shoots up my spine and I flinch, but put another foot forward. When I am only an arm's-length away from him, I gasp and double over as the pain seizes my middle. It wraps around my abdomen like a boa constrictor determined to break my bones. I close my eyes and little blue lights dance on my eyelids as another contraction forces air out of my lungs and I begin to fall forward. One of my friends, I don't know which, grabs my arm and instantly lets go. I stumble.

"Oh my god, she's hot to the touch." Nikki's voice. Panicked. "She's burning up."

"Let's get her out of here," says Olive. "We're attracting too much attention. Hollister, help us."

Something cool and soft is wrapped around me before I'm swept off my feet and hoisted against a hard and solid chest. Hollister. I curl my fingers into his shirt. He smells like a vampire does, metallic and a little bit like spearmint, but there's something else there too. Like the air just before it rains. And lemons. His arms close around me. I pass out.

When I wake up, I am in the backseat of a car that