Free HeatintheNight by Margaret L. Carter

Chapter One
     
    With a sigh of sensual pleasure, the unshaven man in
olive-green fatigues sagged against the front passenger door of the car, his
eyes drooping shut. Ingrid licked the last traces of blood from her lips and
pressed her fingertips against the tiny incision in his neck to stop the
trickle of red.
    His vital elixir and the heat of his desire warmed her to
the core. Why didn’t she feel as satisfied as she normally would? With her
thirst quenched, she still suffered a gnawing need. A donor’s lust should spice
the feeding with the psychic energy that made human blood an essential part of
her diet. It shouldn’t make her skin prickle as if infested by fire ants, her
nipples harden and the flesh between her thighs tighten.
    She shook her head with impatience at herself. Why evade the
obvious? She craved more than blood, something she couldn’t get from an
ephemeral. Her time was creeping closer by the hour.
    With one long fingernail, she tilted the man’s chin and
turned his head toward her. “You won’t remember anything that happened after I
picked you up. I gave you a ride and money for food. That’s all.”
    He responded with a drowsy nod.
    “You’ll walk to that fast food place in the next block and
buy a meal. Then you will go to this shelter and ask for help.” She took a
business card from a stack in the glove compartment and tucked it in his shirt
pocket. “Understand?”
    He nodded again.
    “Then go.” Putting his Will Work for Food sign into his
hands, she reached across him to open the car door. Even though he smelled
cleaner than most of the homeless population and wasn’t tainted by alcohol or
drugs, she didn’t want him around any longer than necessary. Not when his
masculine body only taunted her craving with a promise it couldn’t keep. No
human male had the stamina to satisfy a female of her kind.
    After her prey had ambled down the street out of sight, she
pulled the car away from the tiny park where she’d stopped to feed and headed
home in the gathering twilight. Maybe her mentor Morella would have answered
her message by now. Ingrid couldn’t wait much longer to choose a mate for her
first estrus.
    Back at her oceanfront townhouse in La Jolla, she paused on
her balcony to savor the cool evening air, the crash of waves on rocks and the
trail of moonlight on the water. Even the beauty of the night couldn’t distract
her for long, though. Her normally cool skin burned so that she felt half
tempted to strip naked and plunge into the surf.
    Instead, she poured a glass of brandy to take the edge
off—for what little effect alcohol had on her metabolism—and switched on the
computer in the dining nook she used as an office. To her relief, she found an
email from Morella waiting. Surely by now her mentor would have found a willing
stud. Female vampires chose their own mates but Ingrid had so few acquaintances
among her own species that she’d asked for her adviser’s guidance.
    “You realize this has not been easy,” the message began.
“It’s no fault of yours, but as I mentioned before, many potential mates are
put off by what they regard as your excessively human tendencies. They think
you’ve been weakened by your unconventional upbringing and are reluctant to
have their offspring corrupted by such attitudes.”
    Ingrid snarled under her breath. As if any of them should care,
the hypocrites. Vampire fathers served only as sperm donors and had no say in
the rearing of their offspring. Those reluctant males probably didn’t want to
look desperate by agreeing to mate with a female who’d been “corrupted” the way
she had. Not that she considered the influence of Grandma Doris and Granddad
Allen either corrupting or weakening.
    Of course, she knew perfectly well they weren’t her
grandparents, even though she’d lived with them from the age of five. As her
mother’s loyal servants, they’d hidden her in their cottage while a pair of
vampire hunters had vandalized