Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

immediately. The shaking faded and my heart went still again. I kept drinking. I could hear her making shushing sounds and feel her rubbing my back. It felt so good. She slid her other hand between us and pressed against my erection through my jeans. Instinct was what made me push back. Trying to get at that heat. Grinding against her hand. When I came, I turned loose of her neck. I rested my face on her shoulder.

“Better, huh?”

Shit, shit, shit. Now I could tell who she was.

“Probably just a reaction to drinking that punk Desty’s blood.” Scout kept on talking, even though I got my arms to work enough to shove myself off of her. “Harper’s so retarded. I can’t believe she wants you to keep drinking that crap even though it does this to you.”

My head spun like I’d just chugged a fifth of Wild Turkey. I fell back on the concrete and pulled down on the bill of my hat with both hands.

Scout. I just got off on Scout.

“I bet Harper didn’t even show her that trick. Everybody knows vamps stop sucking when they come.”

The first time I’d had sex with Mitzi after she put me down—and I mean really stomped my heart into the ground—I felt hollow. Brittle, like any little thing could break me. Afterwards, I don’t know how I got myself home, but I went to bed and didn’t get up the rest of the day. Laying there on the sidewalk beside Scout, I knew I should’ve been tougher. I shouldn’t feel like this. Something had happened. My body had freaked out. It could’ve been anybody who saw me and let me drink.

Which meant it could’ve been anybody I got off on.

Dammit, I wished it had been Desty. Her blood would’ve lit me up like a Taser, but at least I wouldn’t feel like there wasn’t anything inside of me. What the hell did I run out on her for, anyway? Telling me not to fight with Colt? She was just trying to keep me from messing him up worse.

Scout was still talking. She tried to touch my arm, but I jerked away from her.

“Well, excuse me,” she snapped. “You’re freaking welcome for the blood, by the way.”

Even if I could talk, I don’t know what I would’ve said to her. I stood up. After a second, the dizziness went away and I headed for the truck.

“She’s not like us, Tough,” Scout yelled after me, sounding all pissy and teenage. “She’ll never understand you like I do. She can’t give you what you need!”

Climbing up into the truck popped my broken rib like an M-80. The pain helped clear my head some more. I fired up the truck and headed for the house. I needed to stop fucking up just long enough to get something done right.

Tiffani

 

Tough jumped when I slammed his truck’s passenger side door. Vamp speed and reflexes plus moving vehicles can make for some impressive entrances.

I lit up a cigarette and he glared at me. The connection opened.

Don’t smoke in my truck, he said.

“It covers up the cum smell,” I said.

He’d just eaten, so a faint blush spread out over his cheekbones.

You’d be okay with the smell, though, if I was a chick, he said.

“Anybody ever tell you it’s illegal to feed off of a minor?” I let the cooled smoke roll out as I talked. “Even a seventeen-and-three-quarters-year-old.”

He huffed through his nose, a combination of a sneer and a laugh. My ex used to do that when he wanted me to know he thought I was being petty. But it was hard not to be petty with Aaron. More and more toward the end of our marriage.

Thanks for stopping me, Tough said. I forgot how much you like to watch.

“I’m not your damn mom,” I said. “And even if I was, I think it’s better for kids to learn from their own mistakes.”

Tough snorted again.

He drove and I watched the embers shifting in the cigarette’s cherry. If vamps get too hungry, our ultimate predator senses take over and it’s as if we can see the blood under everything else. I’ve heard that it’s not really seeing, but that’s how the semi-human brain understands it.

Tough caught the drift of my thoughts.

I wasn’t hungry, he said.

I nodded. Rubbed my forehead with the heel of my cigarette-hand. This was what happened when you made someone without thinking about the consequences.

“Damn it. Should’ve had you dry out before I made you.”

He looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. Dumb kid like him probably didn’t, either.

“Delirium tremens?” I said. “Alcoholic goes on a binge, then stops cold. His body panics.”

I’m not an alcoholic.

“Sure you’re not,” I said, rolling down the window to tap some of the ash off of my cigarette. “No one in Halo is.”

I’m not!

“It layers into your skin, kid. If I wanted to, the super-smeller could take me all the way back to the first drink you ever had. Which—since you were probably sneaking it from Ryder and Colt—I’d guess was Southern Comfort.”

Tough looked at me for a second as if I’d hit the nail on the head. It wouldn’t have been as impressive if he’d known the whole story.

He pulled into the drive of the crappy little house he shared with Harper Ives and Jax Carpenter. Shut off the truck. Pulled off his John Deere cap, scratched his hand through his hair, and tugged the hat back on.

I thought I was dying, Tough said. He was trying to figure out a way to tell his girlfriend.

“If she really wants to stay with you, she’ll have to get used to it,” I said. “There’s always somebody waiting for a vamp to lose control.