Eternal - V.K. Forrest Clare Point Vampire Novel

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she muttered. “It was a Ralph Lauren.”

      He grasped one of her legs, above her knee, and lifted it to wrap around his waist. She pressed her groin to his, grinding against the hard bulge in his jeans. All Kahill males were well-endowed.

      He grasped the lacy edge of her bra and pulled back the cup to expose her breast to the humid night air. Her pale nipple hardened at once and she guided his head downward, encouraging him to take it in his mouth.

      Arlan had been her lover on and off for hundreds of years. He knew her as well as she knew herself, and knew her body better, perhaps. He’d always had a thing for her, even before Ian; she had never been able to reciprocate those feelings. For that reason, the guilt occasionally got to her and she’d stay away from him for awhile. Sometimes as long as a life cycle. But she always came back to Arlan and he was always waiting for her.

      He pushed her bra strap down, covering her breast with his warm hand, massaging her nipple with his thumb. “Inside or here?” he panted in her ear.

      She nipped his neck a little deeper this time, feeling his pulse against her lips. He would offer her his blood. He didn’t always, but tonight, he would. “Inside,” she whispered.

      The following morning, Fia met Glen at the breakfast buffet inside the lobby of the Lighthouse Motel. He was already at a table, drinking coffee, eating scrambled eggs and sausage links, when she walked in. She made herself a cup of hot herbal tea, grabbed a plain bagel and sat in the chair across from him.

      An elderly couple stood at the breakfast bar arguing over the fat content of a blueberry muffin; the other tables were empty.

      “Morning,” she said.

      He didn’t look up over the edge of the newspaper he was reading. “Morning,” he said cheerfully.

      Cheerful enough that she wondered why she was feeling so awkward and he wasn’t. Had he really tried to kiss her last night or had that been a figment of Fia’s overactive imagination, spurred by the fact that she couldn’t get over how much he looked like Ian?

      Or had it happened and he didn’t remember? Maybe he didn’t hold his liquor well and he really was drunk last night. Or maybe he was just embarrassed and good at covering for himself.

      For whatever reason, it didn’t appear they were going to have one of those clumsy morning-after conversations, for which she would be eternally grateful. She dunked her teabag in the hot water in the Styrofoam cup in front of her and nibbled on the uncut, untoasted bagel.

      Glen finished reading whatever had been holding his attention and folded the newspaper and set it aside. “Sleep okay, Agent Kahill?”

      There was something in the tone of his voice now that made her think he had tried to kiss her last night, and he remembered it all too well.

      “Fine. You, Agent Duncan?”

      “Like a baby.” He scooped up one last forkful of scrambled eggs and pushed it into his mouth. He wasn’t exactly avoiding eye contact, but he wasn’t looking at her, either. “You have a plan for this morning?”

      “Of course, but you go first.” She pulled the teabag out of the water, wrapping it around a spoon.

      “No, no. Your hometown, Agent Kahill. Your connections with the senator’s office. Go ahead.”

      She dropped the bagel onto her napkin, instantly annoyed. Fine. They’d do it her way. Her way was usually better in most situations, anyway. “While we’re waiting on the autopsy report—”

      “Which should be interesting,” he interjected.

      “We take another look at the crime scene, get some additional photos, clear it so the federal building can be reopened, and then we start interviewing anyone who saw the victim the evening of his death and work backwards from there.”

      He took a drink of coffee from the white mug. “We order a background check on the vic. Have a look at his bank accounts, credit cards, nose around in his personal life.”

      She worked her jaw, raising her cup to her lips. He’d have to know about Mary…Mary his girlfriend, not his wife. Of course, his wife had a steady thing with Joey Hill. Tuesday nights. Had for twenty-five years, at least.

      Men and women of the sept remained with their own spouses or partners life cycle after life cycle, but were free to have sex with whomever they pleased…so long as he or she was not human. It was the way they had been doing it for centuries and it made everyone’s lives less problematic.

      This investigation in Clare Point was going to get complicated. It wasn’t going to fit into any neat FBI investigative-techniques box. She really needed to get Glen Duncan out of here before he got hurt.

      She took another sip of tea, the taste of Arlan’s blood still cool and metallic in her mouth.

      She had to resist the urge to pat her lips with the napkin.

      Arlan had come through when she needed him. No questions asked. Multiple orgasms included. His arms had felt good around her. He was good for her. He thought so. Everyone in the town thought so. So why had it been Ian’s face she had seen last night when she closed her eyes?

      Or had it been Glen’s?

      She suppressed a groan. “My plan work for you, Agent Duncan?” She rose from her chair, balling the uneaten bagel up in the napkin. She’d take the tea with her.

      They stopped at the waste can at the end of the buffet bar to leave their trash. He was watching her. No…staring.

      “You okay?” He touched his luscious neck with his fingertip. “Looks like you’ve got a spot of blood there.”

      She turned away, headed for the door, resisting the temptation to rub at the mark. She had told Arlan to be careful. “Cut myself shaving.”

      By three o’clock, Fia knew this wasn’t going to be an open-and-shut case. By three the following day, the prospects for solving Bobby McCathal’s murder within the week were looking dismal. No one had seen or heard anything at the post office that night, and there was still no sign of the decapitated head or severed feet.

      Fia and Duncan completed their photographs, and Paddy’s Cleaning Service of Clare Point was called in to remove the bloodstains from the floor at the crime scene. Sixty-one-year-old Catherine Kahill, one of two mail carriers in town, agreed to run the post office as soon as it was cleared by the FBI and reopened by the postal service. The two agents then began their interviews.

      For the most part, Glen and Fia just stayed out of each other’s way, which was fine with her. She did, however, manage to convince him to hold the interviews inside the post office lobby, rather than going door-to-door. She suggested that the police station was too small, too crowded, and they wanted to keep their investigation as separate from local law enforcement as possible. Fia didn’t tell Glen that part of her reasoning involved keeping her Uncle Sean out of the fray. He didn’t know that the police chief was too loose a cannon for her to trust entirely. The bonus that came with not operating out of the police station was that she didn’t have to deal with any of Uncle Sean’s armchair COPS advice.

      The tricky thing was that she didn’t want Glen in Kahill family members’ houses, either. Everyone was used to behaving in a certain manner in public places; it was the way they had been coexisting with humans since their arrival in the colonies. But inside their homes…Fia wasn’t so certain they would keep their guards up as well. Besides, with her and Glen both interviewing in the post office lobby, she could keep an eye on him.

      Fia’s gaze strayed from Anna Ross, whom she was interviewing, to her notepad, where she had made no notes in the last twenty minutes. Anna was going on about how Bobby’s dog had barked in the yard. She had not seen Bobby the day of the murder and knew nothing about it, but Fia couldn’t get her to budge out of the chair no matter how many times she thanked her for taking time out of her busy day of watching game shows and soaps on her new big-screen TV.

      “Some

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