Protect and Serve

Shamira absolutely did not want to open her eyes. She was still surrounded by silk so she figured that she was still in that coffin. Except that her eyelids seemed warm. She remembered seeing someone or someone. . . a beautiful Native American homeless girl and a lip-bitingly gorgeous blond-haired guy. 'Wait. The silk, it's against my skin!' She opened her eyes and saw a lovely crystal chandelier-looking thing. She was in a bedroom the size of her parents' whole house, and it seemed decorated in the same black and gold scheme that the club had been. She was in some super freak's bedroom. And she was naked. That fact just caught up with her. She was naked between black silk sheets in a strange room. She yipped and pulled the sheets up around her artificially large bosom. One of the problems when becoming a bodybuilder was the loss of breast mass, so she had compensated with fake tits when she turned twenty-one. That left her with a set of measurements that one would think would gar

"That's . . . unfortunate," Clara said, running her gaze up and down that magnificent body. Oh, the things she could do with a woman like this. "I realize this is a lot to take in, and Shane will want to talk to you before morning. Yes, vampires sleep during the day. Daylight doesn't kill older vamps, but it definitely weakens them. Fledglings can actually move about during the day or night, depending on their preference." She folded her hands in front of her. She was actually surprised that Shamira was handling it so well. "Do you have any questions?" Shamira scratched the wolf behind the ears. The wolf seemed to like it. "I don't even know where to begin," she muttered. "Well as I said, I'm going to be your guide, but you can ask questions of anyone in the house. I'll introduce you in a little while. Monique, change!" She waited until the wolf was once again a gorgeous naked black woman, who still sat at Clara's feet. Clara grabbed her hair and yanked her head backward, plantin

Shamira could see the cogs turning in Shane's head, figuring out how she could be useful to him. "Listen, I guess I owe you thanks for . . . doing what you did. I guess I'm just not sure why you did it or what you expect of me?" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a couple of the other residents arrive and be seated. She guessed it was close to dinner. "Hey . . . Uhm . . . dinner --" Clara placed a hand on her young charge's arm. "Fledglings can eat normal food or consume blood. Feeding is an art, so Shane thought it would be wise to present you with a normal meal this evening. Personally, I prefer to drink blood, but I'll be dining on solid food today. Make you feel more at home." "As for what I want from you and why I changed you --" Shane paused. "First, I owed you something for helping us out that night. I had agents in place that you couldn't have known about, but we had still found ourselves in an awkward predicament where innocents might have gotten hurt. You showed great

  "It's a magical drug. It's a mixture of vamp blood, were blood, and some faerie blood to bind it. Makes the user pretty much God-like for about thirty minutes before the crash. Unless they're in good shape, it might collapse their heart and make their brains leak out their ears. It's the most illegal drug in the underworld of course, but that doesn't stop people from dealing with it. It's death to be caught carrying or distributing." "Death?!" "Considering the blood has to be harvested from a dying host, yeah. Our world is dangerous," Renata said, looking a bit impatient. "Keep that in mind."  Shamira realized that not everyone in Shane's brood was necessarily happy about her being brought over. She wondered if she'd done something to offend this woman. She had seemed nice earlier, and Clara had said she was normally perky. "How many doses per vial?" "One."

'Screw him,' she thought. 'This is his fault, so he doesn't get a break.' She threw a punch as his too-damn-pretty-anyway face, but she missed by a country mile. He had moved so quickly that it was as if she had swung at him in deep water. Her next swing missed as well, as did her attempt to kick him in the knee.  "Fight me damn it," Shamira growled when she realized that Shane wouldn't fight back. She stood there for a moment, wanting badly for him to swing. She wanted him to hit her so hard that she didn't wake up again. She wanted anything but to feel the way that she did at that moment. "You should have just let me die. Why couldn't you just let me die?" He sighed. "Because I saw someone I thought would be worth saving. I don't regret it. You saved an innocent life tonight. Doesn't that count in your mind?"  "I killed someone!" she hissed violently. "I don't even know what the hell I am. I d