Newly Undead In Dark River (Dark River Days, #1)

by Grace McGinty

“What exactly is happening here? Are you guys in a bromance?” For the last four days, they’d cohabitated in my apartment. First, it was one, and then the other, and then their visits would somehow overlap. Now, they didn’t even bother leaving when the other arrived.

“What are you talkin’ about, Rainy Day?” Judge said, swigging from his beer. I came and stood in front of them. Honestly, they were almost snuggled up on the couch, not even six inches between them. Brody’s nose twitched, and I knew what he was smelling. I was hungry, horny, and angry as hell.

While they were playing switcheroo, I was too nervous about doing anything in case one of them waltzed in while I was doing the naked mambo with the other. Which meant I was drinking bagged blood and sleeping alone. And now I was feeling meaner than a rattlesnake. “Oh,” Brody said in a growly voice. “Yeah, oh.” I tapped my foot. “You need to leave before I do something that will haunt my seemingly endless nights.” I wasn’t exaggerating. The predator felt out of contr...

I hadn’t drank from him since that night. His blood was too potent, too addictive. I wasn’t sure I could go from lobster back to mac and cheese. And today, I wasn’t sure I could stop, no matter what he said.

I backed away as he got closer, my fangs punching out. I felt wild. “I mean it, Brody.” I breathed through my mouth, because if I caught scent of his blood right now, I’d be on him, consequences be damned. “I trust you, Raine.” My lip curled. “That makes you dumb as well as crazy.”

A slight breeze let me know Judge was now at my back. He pressed into my back, his hard torso molded against me. His fingers dug into my hips. “How’d you let it get this bad, Rainy Day...

I scowled at him over my shoulder, even as I pressed myself tighter against his dick and wiggled my ass. He groaned. “Of course I am, asshole. It’s not my...

Brody cocked his head to the side. “You smell weird. I mean, under the scent of your need.” He groaned. “Jesus, Raine. Come back over here.”

Judge stepped forward, placing himself in between Brody and me. My inner predator growled. I growled. The fucker just grinned at me. Judge didn’t seem even the least bit perturbed that my inner vamp wanted to tear his throat out for getting between Brody and me.

Brody stepped closer. “No way. I got you too, Raine,” he said as he peeled me from Judge, and I moaned. I latched onto his neck and groaned, coming hard from the magic in his blood. “Jesus fuckin’ hell,” Judge groaned. “Take it to the bed, Brodes. It’s gonna be a long night. Better to be comfortable.”

The taste of the coppery warmth coating my tongue was ambrosia. I dug deeper into his neck, but something suddenly intruded between us. I realized it was Judge’s hand.

“Fuck, I love it when you look at me like that,” Brody growled in a low voice that went straight to my ladybits. Judge just laughed. “Like you’re dinner?”

I let out another long, pained sound. “I’m going to come,” I whimpered. “But don’t you dare fucking stop.” The last words were more of a growl, and I could feel Brody’s chuckle even though his own small grunts of pleasure were echoing off my bedroom wall.

The magic of Brody’s blood, mixed with the pleasure of his body and the pure bliss of Judge’s bite, was freaking apocalyptic.

“Thank you,” I whispered. He grinned back. “You really, really don’t need to thank me for that, babe. Any fucking time.”

My predator struck, but Judge’s restraining strength was there again, holding me back. “Not in the neck, Darlin’. You’ll draw too quick, and Brodes will end up as nothing but a husk. Take it from his chest, just above his heart.” He moved me where he meant, and I struck, not overly gently, which was something I’d feel horrible about later. I took a long, deep suck, and a part of my brain realized what Judge was saying. It didn’t fill my mouth like it did when I’d taken it straight from his jugular. It was a slower release, safer for the man who’d given me so much already.

Sometime around my eighth orgasm of the night, I felt eyes on my face. Looking up, I appreciated the long lines of Brody’s face as his head was thrown back in pleasure, his eyes closed. And just past his head was Sheriff Walker Walton, watching us with true hunger contorting his face. Brody was so far gone, his movements ragged as he thrust in time with my sucking motions, that he didn’t even sense Walker in the room.

But Judge knew. He started fucking me harder, no longer happy with slow and methodical. He was making me his and driving me wild, taunting the good Sheriff with what he could have if he just pulled the stick out of his ass.

And the whole time, with the taste of one man on my tongue and another buried deep inside of me, I didn’t take my eyes off Walker. Not until the orgasm crashed over me like a tsunami, forcibly closing my eyes against the sensations, Judge’s groans sliding against my skin ...

“It’s the effects of the bad blood. Alice said the comedown is rough,” Walker said from behind me, and I stood and turned. Then remembered I was naked. Refusing to be embarrassed, I strolled to the hook on my bathroom wall and grabbed my robe, lazily tying it around my waist, but I was insanely aware of Walker’s heated gaze on my body. I worked hard at playing it cool. The guy had literally seen me being pounded by one guy and eating another. The time for modesty was probably gone.

“You carryin’ me across the threshold, Sheriff? In some cultures, that’d make us hitched,” he poked half-heartedly. A ghost of a smile curved one side of Walker’s mouth. “You aren’t my type.”

The smile slipped from Walker’s face as he dropped Judge none-too-gently on the bed beside Brody.

Brody didn’t even stir. He must be really exhausted. If his heartbeat wasn’t creating an enticing background noise to the drama, I’d think he was dead. Still, I reached out and stroked his hair from his forehead, reassured by the almost searing heat that emanated from his skin. “I should get him a steak or an iron supplement or something. I took too much.” The guilt in my statement hung heavily in the room. “I don’t think he’ll be complaining, Darlin’. Hell, I haven’t puked this much since I was a human, and if I had the chance, I’d redo last night all over again.”

“You would have torn Brody to pieces. There would have been nothing left of him but gore on the carpet. You’d probably be dead too, since you’re a baby vamp and he’s a shifter who has been training for decades to defend himself and his Pack against our kind. You’d have had the element of surprise though because he has feelings for you, so he would have let his guard down. I would have come here this morning, and instead of you getting...” He swallowed hard. “Dicked to the nth degree?” I supplied, a little unhelpfully. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Instead of that, I would have been cleaning up your crime scene and mourning the short life of Raine Baxter.”

“So they’re trying to have me put down like a puppy they don’t want anymore? Baby vamps are for eternity, not just for Christmas,”

I raised an eyebrow. I didn’t think anyone could make the sexy, self-assured Sheriff feel jittery. I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet such a creature. But I didn’t want to accidentally cause a mass murder either. I’d talk to Brody when he woke up, and if Brody trusted her, then that was good enough for me.

While your white knights are out of action, maybe you should try riding him like a noble steed?”

“That is a fucking awful idea,” Judge said, scowling at Walker. Brodie seemed content enough, holding me in his lap, and snuggling my hair like I was the unholy union between venison and chocolate.

You’re just sitting here in this town, spinning on the nightstick shoved up your ass, waitin’ for the killer to what? Hand themselves in?” I wanted to defend one of them—at this point I wasn’t sure which—but my brain had stuttered to a halt when Judge called me his girlfriend.

Girlfriend. Maybe he meant girl friend. You know, with a pause in the middle. After the big discussion we’d had the other day about Judge having an allergy to commitment like I had an allergy to the midday sun, it had to be with a space. I was his friend, who happened to be a girl. That’s what he meant, I was sure of it.

I could feel more than hear Brody’s silent chuckling, and Walker whipped his furious gaze to Brody. Apparently, it wasn’t so silent. “What do you think about this, shifter? As you sit there with Judge’s girlfriend on your lap and your dick pressed between her ass cheeks?” I stood this time, and got all up in Walker’s space. “What are you implying right now, Walker? I know you’re worried, and when you’re worried it seems to make you a little bit of an asshole, but if you are insinuating I’m some kind of…”—my brain scrambled around for a word that di...

I shifted off Brody’s lap, giving an imperceptible wiggle, but it was enough to make the shifter give a groan. A mature person may have let it rest. A mature person would have let Judge get away with his little slip and not pushed him about it. But I never said I was mature. “Am I your girlfriend, Judge?” I purred, sashaying toward him. Well, what I assumed was a sashay; hopefully it didn’t look like I’d fallen in the shower and dislocated my hip. Apparently, Judge wasn’t one to let things go either, because he stared back at me defiantly. I wanted to know it was just a Freudian slip, a way to verbally mark his territory, or if he actually meant it.

His gaze burned into my own, a test of wills, a battle to see who would look away first. I decided I now had a distinct competitive streak in my second life, because instead of shifting my eyes from his piercing dark ones, I leaned forward and kissed his full lips. One point to Raine. He leaned into the kiss, his tongue a searing brand against my mouth, and he got my bottom lip between his teeth and bit down hard enough to break the skin. The taste of my blood flooded my mouth, and I moaned as he sucked at it gently. He pulled back, looking completely smug. Okay, maybe one point all.

Brody gave him a jaunty little salute and pulled his phone from his too-tight jeans. They cupped his ass in a way that made my hands ache to do the same.

Why wouldn’t he want us to hear? Was I jealous of some old witch? I shook my head and looked at the other two occupants in my living room.

“I’ve met her once or twice.” My brows lowered. “Oh, when?” “A few decades ago.” I gritted my teeth. “Are you purposefully making this as painful as possible?” He just stared back at me, his jaw tight and his face expressionless, and I turned away before I gave in to the urge to strangle him.

All three of them laughed, but it was Brody who wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. He was even more affectionate now that we’d been through the craziness of last night together. I wasn’t going to lie, I lapped up his affection the same way I lapped up his blood. It was wonderful.

But she was goddamn gorgeous. I mean, I wanted to strip naked and beg her to take me, and I was as hetero as they came. I was straight up strictly dickly. She was just that hot. On the heels of that realization was Brody’s joke about someone sucking like a hoover. My eyes whipped toward Judge, but his face was completely impassive like he was carved from stone. The Fort Knox of expressions.

In the face of such beauty, that told me everything I needed to know. There was no hint of male appreciation, no spark of recognition. No nostalgic smile of meeting someone you’d long ago worked with. It was just stone-cold neutrality. They’d been lovers. I knew this deep down in my gut, somewhere in the same vicinity as the acid of jealousy that was currently burning.

But when her eyes landed on Judge, there was nothing platonic in them. Her eyes burned, and I couldn’t tell whether it was with anger, with lust, or with the fires of Hell.

“I’m here for Raine,” he replied, in a low voice that was nearly a growl. Miranda raised a single eyebrow and looked at me appraisingly. I should feel offended, but there was nothing scathing in her gaze. More like professional interest.

“She can read your soul if you let her touch you,” he growled, and I frowned at the beautiful woman. That was a damn sneaky trick. Miranda let out a tinkling laugh, the kind that just made your heart happy. “A bit dramatic, Judge. Only your thoughts, not your soul. And sometimes, your desires.” But still, Miranda let her hand drop.

Walker moved closer, subtly putting himself between me and Miranda, which was actually quite impressive considering we were standing face to face. There was nothing offensive in the gesture, and I now knew why the Council let him go on diplomatic visits to Brody’s Pack. He was effortlessly diplomatic, while still getting the outcome he wanted. Miranda’s lips quirked, and I had the impression she was a hell of a lot older than her early-thirty-something appearance.

The pull of his mouth went straight to my core, which made Brody groan and Walker look somewhere between angry and horny. Horngry. It was a thing. I knew the feeling—I was horngry too.

When she was done, she looked challengingly at Judge. “Are you going to suck on his boo-boo too?” Judge narrowed his eyes and as quick as a ninja, his hand whipped out, grabbing Walker’s finger and sucking it into his mouth. Walker’s eyes opened comically wide, and he seemed frozen as Judge sucked the blood from his finger, his saliva closing the wound.

Angeline leaned closer to Alice. “I love you baby, and I’m pretty sure I’m 1000% gay but watching the Drifter suck on the Sheriff’s finger like that…” She fanned herself. Alice laughed, and I just shook my head. Girl, same.

I wanted to be tasting his blood, to push him down into the puddle of blood on the floor and fuck him senseless in front of the witch until she knew who he belonged to. Luckily, Brody still had his arm around my waist, and Walker—who was a perceptive asshole—moved to the left to block my path a little more.

As soon as he stepped over the threshold, he dropped to his knees. “Fuckin’ bitch,” he growled under his breath, but he was over the threshold and in the apartment. “She warded it so it zapped me in the balls.”

“You okay?” At his nod, I stood on my toes and kissed him gently. “Don’t worry. Every time you get zapped, I’ll rub them better.” I dropped my voice low. “With my tongue.” Brody abruptly stopped laughing,

“I care about you so much, Raine.” I rested my forehead against his and sighed. “Yeah, I know.” Then, because I was weak, I let him take me to bed and make love to me all night. But I wasn’t surprised when I woke the following evening, and he was gone.