Tropical Moon Chapter One

Chapter One





    Damien Stark skimmed the text displayed on the computer screen and grimaced. “This is erotic? Reads like porn.” The laptop rested on his thighs as he stretched his legs the length of the black leather sofa. He shot a derisive glance at Nickolai Santos across the room, seated behind the heavy antique mahogany desk. Polished to a high gleam, the desk fit the sophistication of his partner. “Have you read any of this garbage?”

    Nickolai snorted. “Drivel. I haven’t seen anything yet that makes my blood run hot.”

    Damien closed that file and opened one containing the company’s standard rejection letter. He copy/pasted it into an email, added his name at the bottom, and sent it to the hopeless author. With a sigh, he pulled up the website for Edgewood Publishing’s newest acquisition, the epublishing division. Searching the catalogue, he found the hottest sellers and pulled them up, hoping to find something salvageable, or at least worth taking the time to read.

    “I found the company’s best sellers. If it’s more trash, we’ll have to do some major overhauling before we market anything from the ebook division.” Let there be something here to indicate the place did have some standards. Even one semi talented author is better than nothing.

    “Give me a minute, I’ll read a couple as well.”

    Damien found two authors consistent in sales, at the top of the list. Amy Fletcher. The name sent a tingle through him and he clicked on it. A new screen opened, listing several stories by the author, many co-written by another best selling author, Charli Quade. “Hey, Nick. We have two here that collaborated on several of the company’s hot sellers.”

    “I can see that. I’ll take one and you take the other,” Nick suggested, his tone preoccupied as though already reading something interesting.

    Damien looked across the room. “Find something?”

    “This Charli Quade has an interesting style.”

    Arching an eyebrow, Damien clicked on the first title under Amy’s name. It opened to the book’s web page and he spent several seconds perusing the blurb and studying the cover art. The artist is talented, but is the writer? He found the pdf version of the story and opened it.

    Silence settled in the room as the sensual story absorbed him. Amy Fletcher had a unique talent for drawing readers into her characters’ sensual worlds, pulling him out of reality into blazing passion. His jeans tightened across his cock as blood rushed to his crotch. He shifted the laptop and squirmed, but kept his eyes glued to the screen. It should have been standard erotic horror fare, but the story yanked him in and wouldn’t let go until he reached the end.

    Blinking, he emerged from the trance with a rock hard cock and a new appreciation for erotica. In Amy’s talented hands, it wasn’t just thinly disguised pornography. “Well,” he commented, breathless as his dick strained against denim. “I think we’ve got one house author we can keep.”

    “Two,” Nick replied in a strained voice.

    Damien slid the computer off his lap and sat up straight, feet on the floor. A smoky image swirled in his mind, a woman with long dark hair, naked on the beach. He blinked, glanced at Nick, and smirked. The man looked pole-axed. “What are you reading over there?”



    Nickolai Santos, Nick to his friends, stared at the screen unable to look at Damien. "This is great stuff, you know, what she has written here is..." He would have blushed if he could. Shifting in the big leather desk chair, he adjusted his hard-on. “Exquisite. Sensual. Sexy. The way erotica should be written.”

    “So, you like her… I mean her work?” Damien seemed distracted.

    “Yes, quite talented.” He stood from the desk and stretched. The story still held him captive, and aroused him like no other. “And you want to know something odd? There is a scene in there that I’d swear if I didn’t know better she was in the room with me. Remember that petite little redhead? She has a scene that is reality become fantasy. She wrote exactly what happened the other night, right down to my letting her go.” An image of Charli, wandering along the beach in the moonlight, her short hair blowing in the breeze, wandered through his head. He lost himself in the vision.

    “Nick?” Damien’s voice broke through his thoughts.

    “Hmm?” He gazed across the room at his friend. Damien smirked at him. 

    “What’re you thinking?”

    “I’m not thinking anything, except I’ve got to meet this woman. I’ve never felt what I did while reading that story. This Charli Quade has my interest in more than her writing. I feel connected to her in a way I never have with anyone.” He paced around the desk to the matching mahogany liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. “I need to meet her.”

    Damien’s silver eyes met his and a frown creased his brow. “Nick, did you… umm.” He paused with an audible swallow. “When you read her work, did it… arouse you?”

    He allowed a sly smile to cross his features. “Yes, as a matter of fact. You?”

    Damien nodded. “Yeah, it did.” He shot a glance out the window, toward the edge of the jungle. “Dawn is coming. That idiot is still out there.” 

    Nick let out a single derisive grunt. “If the jerk wants to sit out there all night, let him.” He shrugged. “Let the insects gnaw on him. I’m headed to bed. See you tonight.” He headed toward the back of the bungalow where both he and Damien had windowless rooms.

    After closing and locking the door, he stripped out of his clothes, that short vision racing through his mind once more. The woman wrote about vampires almost as though she knew them, and that scene, where’d she come up with that?

    He crawled between silk sheets and let sleep draw him into its dark embrace.

   

    Though night had long since fallen, heat still poured over him. Harlan Boyd grimaced, slapping at yet another mosquito biting into the back of his neck. Sweat rolled over his skin and dozens of insect bites itched. The humid tropical air dampened his clothes, plastering fabric to flesh. The infernal itching seeped through every nerve and he gritted his teeth. Scratching only worsened the effect and he fought the urge.

    The still air smothered him as he trained the high-powered binoculars on the window of the bungalow buried deep in the island jungle. Vampires. His upper lip curled in disgust. Evil. Sucking the blood of humans. They should all die! He sat on a thick branch of a huge tree, several feet above the ground, leaves tickling him despite the lack of any cooling breeze.

    “Why can’t they be someplace cooler, dryer, like back in Europe?” he grumbled under his breath. The two creatures hadn’t moved much, studying computer screens and only occasionally talking. Would it be worth bugging the place?

    Tall and well-muscled, with jet black hair, the vampires actually bore little resemblance to one another. Damien Stark, the one on the sofa, kept his hair shorter, a tousled style that waved around ears and neck, falling over his forehead as though some woman had threaded her fingers through the strands during sex. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt, fabric molded around hard muscle on a physique Harlan knew enticed many women.

    He scowled. Including my sister. That bastard killed Chloe as surely as the pills she swallowed. Picturing the vampire’s flashing silver eyes, he imagined the pain reflected as those eyes dulled under the blazing tropical sun, on the beach, away from any possibility of assistance. He tensed at the thought of pounding a thick wooden stake through the creature’s heart.

    First him and then his partner, Harlan decided, shifting his gaze to the green-eyed vampire with long dark hair tied back as he peered at the desktop computer screen. You will not live much longer, he vowed in silence. They couldn’t pick up his thoughts from such a distance, especially from inside their protected structure. Those protections had nearly killed him the last time he tried to break into the place. Only now, several weeks later, was he able to resume the hunt. Settling back against the tree trunk, he watched them. Maybe this time I’ll get a clue where the lair is, where they sleep.