Seducing Gracie--The Lost Chapter

To readers who bought my latest novella, Seducing Gracie: You're wonderful and I really appreciate your buying my book! I'm posting a bit of a Halloween treat. Here's the first chapter that was cut in the final edit. It's more horror than erotica, which is why it was revised out, but I thought some readers might like it. Enjoy!

Chapter 1

He watched her breasts rise and fall, pressing against the clingy peach cloth of her filthy tank top, their motion smooth even though her breathing increased to steady, shallow gasps as he approached. She pressed her face between her white-knuckled grip on the iron bars and peered into the hallway, squinting. The woman sensed him, felt his presence. Too bad for her.

His imagination revved up when he caught her scent. Fresh and human, laced with a hint of fear or excitement. Maybe a blend of both. Her kind thrived on either. He pictured torturing her nipples with his sharp teeth until she moaned, and nipping his way up the tan skin of her calves to her soft thighs and further on.

He longed to slide his tongue into the swollen folds hidden beneath her tight denim skirt and feast on her delicious wetness, then plunge his cock deep into her tight pussy. Or perhaps bending her over the cot in the jail cell and taking her from behind?

She shivered, shaking his essence and dragging him back to reality. Occasionally, a prisoner’s intuition keyed into him before he materialized from his dark corner. No matter. He had a job to attend to, and his victim’s feelings were of no consequence in any case.

He stepped from the shadows as if he’d been there watching over her, a tactic he’d learned long ago that had served him well when dealing with people just like Miss Vedra Duncan, people whose narcissism made them easy targets for a beast like him. Hark, barely containing his one-headed Chihuahua form, trotted in behind him and sat down at his feet, whimpering.

“Evenin’, ma’am,” he said, adjusting his voice out of habit.

His throat ached from the effort, but his real voice would tip her off, connect to that primitive part of her human brain that would recognize his kind and the danger she was in. It’d been centuries since that happened, but he had no desire to repeat the incident with this one.

He hated it when they screamed and begged for their lives, saying anything to get out of their death sentence, not that it affected him one way or the other. No, the commotion might attract the townspeople, and he didn’t like an audience, especially not one so eager and enthusiastic as the citizens of Wayland, the legend be damned.

“Well, hey there, handsome,” Vedra responded, her honeyed tone suggesting she’d gotten out of scrapes like this before with a swish of her hips and her tight, curvy ass. Not this time. “That’s a cute little puppy you got there.”

Visions of moist, pink pussy lips filled his mind, and the need to wet his tongue with her juices aroused him. His cock twitched, igniting his baser instincts.

Sex… mating… fucking… primal. Animal arousal heightened his senses, her sweaty, delicate fragrance inflaming his heated thoughts.

Unfortunately, the Urge awoke as well.

“You been watchin’ me from back there, Mr. --”

“Name’s Mayor Sam, and this here is Hark. And, yes, ma’am, I have.” He struggled to hold his vocal emanations within human levels, the Urge’s flickering to life inside him straining his mental and physical resources. Hark trembled and whined.

It’d been too long since Sam had taken a woman, but much longer since he’d fed the beast, since he’d taken human blood. The Urge burst to life, demanding satisfaction. He trembled, thick ichor gushing through his veins, and with it, the mutation began.

Vedra licked her bright red lips, offering her hand through the bars. “Well, my, my, my. Being called upon by the mayor and his sweet little puppy,” she crooned, her demeanor too friendly to be anything but manipulative. “Name’s Vedra, sugar. To what do I owe such an important visit?”

Her obvious insincerity opened the door on his rage, turning the key and unleashing the Urge in its full awful glory. His control, stretched way beyond its normal limits, snapped.

His roar reverberated off the stone walls and stunned her, if her saucer-wide eyes were any indication. Or perhaps his appearance caused the terror in her eyes and her clumsy stumble backward, as if any chance of escape remained. Did she think really she’d fade through the wall if she pressed herself into it?

Maybe Hark’s transformation terrified her the most, as it was wont to do. His other two heads popped out, one panting and terrified and one foaming and snapping and snarling. Immediately the two rabid heads bit at the third head, which howled in pain and tried in vain to get away. As soon as the fresh meat became available, they’d chomp on it instead of their weaker third. Until then, he would do as their victim.

Rich, crimson blood spurted from Vedra’s arm where his claws punctured her creamy skin, drawing Vedra’s wide-eyed, horrified interest long enough for him to seize the iron bars in his fists and bend an opening large enough to squeeze his hulking frame through. Splinters of iron scraped his bulging muscles, tearing at his hot skin.

Spikes of pain registered, and, furious, he spun on his metal tormentors, howling and incinerating the unlucky things with one acidic breath. When nothing but a pile of embers glowed, he snarled at it, and his attention returned to Vedra.

She cowered in the corner, holding her arm to her chest and whimpering as the blood soaked through her tank top, turning the worn peach material into a fashionably pinkish death shroud. The Urge screamed inside his mind, setting his brain on fire.

“She’s going to bleed to death before you can feed, you fool,” it warned in a ferocious whisper. It took no more than the hissed caution to spur him into action. He hated the taste of the dead’s blood -- so putrid as their sins decayed in the body’s own liquid purifier.

In seconds, he fell upon Vedra’s trembling form, ignoring his lust in favor of the urge to feed. A scream barely escaped her lips before his claws dug into her larynx and his massive hand popped the bones in her neck, stunning her and exposing her throat for his dining pleasure.

Hark’s dominant heads barked in solidarity, their impatient growls insistent as his wings expanded and surrounded him and his meal in a cloak of shadows.

Sam barely noticed the glossy texture of her chocolate-colored hair splaying across his fist as his fangs sunk into her now pallid flesh, death creeping through her petite body as he drank of her bitter blood.

The slurping sounds of his feeding, mixed with the final gentle gurgles of the life force ebbing from the young woman he held to his lips, echoed through the desolate jailhouse and filtered back into his muddled thoughts, inviting him back from his darkness.

His hunger abated, he sucked hard one last time, and Vedra jerked before going completely limp in his grip. He swallowed, savoring the silky texture of her life’s essence passing over his tongue, before retracting his wings and tossing her lifeless body aside. He stumbled forward into a damp stone wall. His head lolled back, exhaustion setting in. He slid down the wall while Hark dove into the remains to feast.

The ancient boards screeched in protest beneath his weight. The chilly air offered minimal relief to the fire consuming him, but with the Urge satisfied, it wouldn’t be long before the cold fog descended to pull him back into the gray nothingness over which he reigned. Hark’s two heads fed with gusto, stopping only long enough to nip at each other over the tastiest morsels.

Sam snorted to clear his nasal passages of the smell of her sins, and the droplets of Vedra’s blood that hadn’t dried on his fangs splashed against the slabs of gray rock.

Had the circumstances been different, he’d have worried about the stains; however, procedure dictated that only certain humans would see the jail cell, and they rarely, if ever, noticed the brownish discolorations. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter, he thought, as Hark’s third head cowered at his feet and the fog descended.

By then, it would be too late.