Craig Dede - Heart of Glass [Heart] (Siren Publishing Classic)
Heart
Heart of Glass
Lia Swain didn’t intend to be the Glass House’s newest exotic dancer with her very own glass booth. Left with millions in debt by her late father and her mother’s mounting chemotherapy bills, Lia is forced to strip seductively for the vampire elite, even though she’s still a virgin. Buried in problems, she has no room for a man, sex, or love.
Alex Crawford is a sexy Original vampire from one of the wealthiest Strigoi families. He joins the prestigious Glass House and finds himself entranced by the beautiful and mysterious mortal, Lia. His brother was burned by a human mate, and he vowed to never let the same fate befall him. Yet he can’t deny the bloodlust he feels for Lia that rouses his inner beast. Her virgin blood compels him, and her sexy essence enslaves him. He vows to make her his.
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 59,450 words
HEART OF GLASS
Heart
Dede Craig
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
HEART OF GLASS
Copyright © 2012 by Dede Craig
E-book ISBN: 1-61926-318-1
First E-book Publication: February 2012
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
Kings of Leon. Lyrics. “Sex on Fire.” Only by the Night. RCA. © 2008.
Shakur, Tupac. The Rose that Grew from Concrete. New York: MTV Books, 1999.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
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DEDICATION
To the wonderful readers. Thank you.
HEART OF GLASS
Heart
DEDE CRAIG
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
“Is there a particular blood type you prefer, sir?”
Alex Crawford was only vaguely aware of the buxom hostess’s question. He was instead distracted by a rather alluring girl inside the glass-walled booth to his right. His gaze narrowed, studying her.
Staring straight ahead, as if posing for a portrait, the dark-haired girl was fully dressed in, he was certain, the most stereotypical stripper outfit he’d ever seen. A black-and-white French maid dress replete with frills and a black feather duster. But she wasn’t dusting. She was simply sitting on a Perspex chair with her one toned and tanned leg crossed over the other. Her small hands were folded at her knees, and the duster dangled from her slender fingers. Her pitch-black hair reached her collarbone, and straight bangs cut across her heavily made-up emerald eyes, making them look greener than they were. God, she was exquisite.
“Mr. Crawford?”
Blinking, he turned back to the blue-eyed Strigoi hostess whose platinum hair was cut in the same style as the girl in the booth.
Alex quickly gleaned the hostess’s name from the silver badge on her black evening dress. “Thank you, Amber. What types do you have?”
Amber smiled. “May I suggest the AB negative? The Sanguine bank had it drawn and delivered this morning. I can guarantee it is our freshest selection. Well, apart from your server, Crystal. She will take good care of you.”
Alex nodded slowly. AB negative was rare, which meant the club had to have pulled their elite strings to obtain it. “The AB will do.” He tilted his head toward the row of glass booths. “Tell me, do the girls remain in there?”
Amber drew her brows together, then masked it with a languid smile. With one crimson nail rubbing across the top of a leather-bound menu, she licked her glossy pink lips. “Apologies, sir. I assumed,” she cleared her throat before continuing, “that your father had briefed you on our procedures?”
Alex ignored the hesitation in her voice. It was probably on account of the fact that Alexander Crawford Senior was no longer alive, a fact Alex wasn’t inclined to think about. Not now. Instead, he focused on the fact that there were procedures. Incredible.
He had to admit, when he’d received the silver engraved invitation to The Glass House, he’d been skeptical about joining. It was an open secret amongst the Strigoi, the vampire elite, that the exclusive gentlemen’s club was nothing but a glorified strip club. He still wasn’t sure why he’d accepted the coveted invitation to join the club. But he had to admit he’d wanted to see the club ever since learning of it at some point during his earlier years.
Alex cleared his throat. “So, what are these procedures?”
Amber lowered her spidery lashes and leaned her chin over the top of the menu. “Well, if you wish to purchase a private dance from any of the girls,” she waved her slim hand to the ten identical booths on the side of the room, “you can only choose one girl, for one dance, per day. No exceptions.” She stressed the last word with a subtle glare of implicit warning. “Just swipe your membership card at the panel alongside your selected booth. That would be the glass card you received with your invitation. Your account will be debited accordingly. You may also pay up front for any number of future dances. There are rules, however.”
Alex was still stuck on the information that he could only choose one dance
from one girl. Not exactly generous with their glorified strippers, were they? He glanced again at the dark-haired girl, but she was gone. Or rather, her booth was now blacked out. Interesting. Frowning, he glanced toward the other booths and almost choked.
There were approximately fifteen Strigoi men scattered all around the vast, burgundy-carpeted space of the converted penthouse. Among the men were politicians, captains of industry, and A-list celebrities. He knew most of them personally, but none of them bothered to spare him, or each other, a glance.
Instead, the men were indulging in a myriad of sexual positions with their female servers while their faces were transfixed on the girls in the booths. It was as if they were imagining the strippers beneath them while fucking or sucking their servers. Servers who seemed nothing more than beta bodies.
He looked from the men to the glass booths. Four of them were equally darkened. The lit ones had men swiping their cards for entry. As soon as a man walked in, the see-through walls tinted automatically. “All right.” He turned back to Amber. “What exactly are the rules?”
Amber’s blue gaze raked slowly over his face, his body, and up again. “Well, there is no talking to any of the members. You may talk to me, your chosen girl, or your server. No touching any of the girls in the booths.” She grinned with a flick of her bangs. “And by touching, that includes drinking.” Feeding directly from the vein of a mortal was strictly forbidden by the Council, a fact he knew all too well.
“You are, however,” Amber continued, “welcome to do whatever your heart desires with your private server.”
Alex arched his brow with a grin. So that explained why half of Manhattan’s elect were having a cock party. The human girls turned them on, and the Strigoi servers got them off. “Why would there be no talking amongst the members?”
Amber turned and waved her hand for him to follow her into the dim-lit interior of the club as she spoke. “It is an age-old tradition. Our members come here to unwind, not to be disturbed with unnecessary conversation. You will understand soon enough. Talking will be the last thing on your mind.”
Now he understood his father’s frequent visits to the Fifth Avenue hideaway. Talk had been the elder Crawford’s least favorite pastime.
Amber walked around her lamp-lit podium, then led him to a semicircular, red-velvet stall right in front of the French maid girl’s darkened booth. “Please have a seat and enjoy your evening, Mr. Crawford. Crystal will be your server. She is here to fulfill your every desire.”
Every desire, Alex thought with a smirk. But he knew, with his thoughts drawn to the maid girl, it wasn’t Crystal he wanted fulfilling any of his desires. Sliding into the curved, gold-trimmed stall, Alex tore his eyes from the darkened glass then looked up to find a petite and very nude waitress at the hostess’s side.
“Good evening, and welcome, Mr. Crawford.” The server bowed her head as Amber walked away. “I’m Crystal.”
He was directly in line with her small and naturally tanned breasts, but he quickly looked up to her face.
She was of Latin American descent from what he could tell, and from her tiny fangs that peaked from her beneath her upper lip, more obviously a Strigoi. A vampire, just like him and all the other members in the club.
He preferred dark-haired beauties, typically exotic, and Crystal fitted the bill. But there was something about the other raven-haired girl in the glass room. Something that was a sizzling throb against his skin. Something he couldn’t quite name, but he intended to find out. He tilted his head to the booth.
It was still dark, and he found that fact oddly irritating.
Crystal leaned forward and placed a stein filled with, as promised, the freshest serving of blood.
He could smell the corpuscles and licked his lips. He grabbed the glass and downed the thick starter in one gulp, then looked at the other girls on display whose booths were lit.
Each one was dressed in a different fantasy getup. Schoolgirl, possibly a librarian, and a variety of other equally clichéd personas. Of course they were all beautiful, but he had to wonder why an elite club would choose to be this unoriginal in their choice of outfits. What made the club different if all you could do was watch a human girl and fuck a vampiric one? And, if he couldn’t do anything more than watch and make small talk with the girls, human or not, what the hell was so enticing?
Crystal leaned forward, brushing her lush breasts close to his face. “Would you like another, sir?”
He veered his head to the side, just missing her dark, peaked nipple. “No, thank you,” he said without looking at her. One was enough. As adequate as the blood was, he preferred his thirst quenched from the source, fresh from a throbbing pulse.
He hadn’t had a fresh feeding, or fucking for that matter, in God knew how long. He needed it. But Crystal held no appeal. His thoughts went, again, to the still-darkened booth, and more so its occupants––
The girl’s door slid open and he jolted. Every muscle stiffened in place at the whiff of her delicious scent. It was a scent lesser men had killed for. He took a deep breath and allowed it to simmer in his flared nostrils.
Drunk with the smell, he watched the tint slowly lift and Jake Milton, the son of the district attorney, walk out.
Jake averted his glazed eyes, walked straight past him, and headed to his own stall two booths to his right.
Alex watched him race forward. The bulge in Jake’s pants told him he would be serving his server right there on the red-velvet seat. The Ivanka Trump look-alike was already waiting for him, her neck exposed, her legs and shaved pussy sprawled wide. When Jake reached her, he didn’t waste time, shoving his pants to his knees, lurching forward, and stabbing his cock into her cunt.
With the stunning maid girl’s scent still swirling in the air, and the sight of Jake’s hips bucking into his server’s pussy at a blinding speed––at least to human eyes––Alex’s own cock hardened.
Taking a deep breath, he turned, glanced slowly back to the glass booth, and froze at the sight of her.
The girl was back in her chair, and God help him, she was more beautiful at this closer distance than he could have imagined. And from the smell of her essence, she was a virgin.
He frowned, and understood exactly why the men kept coming back. A beautiful mortal, more so a virgin, was like a crack ATM to a broke addict. To Strigoi, there was nothing like the adrenaline which came with the resistance it took to avoid drinking from a human woman.
You could fuck them but not drink from them unless it was a matter of life or the eternal death. Alex snorted. So the elite were here to fight temptation, build their willpower, and drive themselves fucking insane.
Despite his derision, his cock still throbbed, pressing against the zipper of his black Armani pants. Hell, he was already salivating over this particular virgin. Fuck. He sighed.
The girl was staring at him, or rather through him, with eyes as green as wet spring grass. She smoothed her short hair down, licked her glassy, full lips, and straightened in the chair.
Alex suppressed a moan, and his dick pulsed harder. Whether it was from the curves of her toned body or the rabid hunger her scent induced, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that she was drawing him in like a lamb to the slaughter.
He slowly rose and walked toward her glass-walled booth. The gilded digital access panel taunted his senses, as if it was asking him to choose between walking away or committing himself to sexual sadism.
He rubbed the membership card between his fingers while he weighed his options.
Fuck, she was beautiful. Achingly so. Just looking at her, he knew that both options would be like suicide missions.
Raising his hand, he swiped the card, and the door slid open.
He took a slow step forward and heard a swish behind him. The glass walls darkened as before, and the ceiling of the cubicle lit up with hundreds of tiny lights, rendering it an electronic night sky. Glancing quickly behind him, he saw from inside the glass booth you couldn’t s
ee out, either. Bracing himself, he slowly looked down at the girl.
Her long-lashed eyes widened as she stood up slowly and stared at him, waiting.
The top of her head reached his chest, and she had to tilt her chin to meet his gaze. The lights played off the soft, smooth planes of her oval face. Even with all the unnecessary makeup she wore, he didn’t think she was much older than twenty. His glance couldn’t settle as it darted all over her stunning face and down to her beckoning body. Shit.
She licked her pink lips. Around her neck hung a thin gold chain with a fleur-de-lis pendant nestled in between her swollen breasts. A single ruby-colored gem was at its center, the sides of it wedged in between her enticing cleavage.
Alex followed the gold-linked trail to the curve of her neck. Her vein pulsated, and with each beat, her scent fought and won space for air in the room.
Alex fisted his hands at his sides and gritted his teeth. Fuck, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to rush over and drown himself inside of her. The razor points of his fangs tingled in their sheaths, primed for a feast they couldn’t have, but he silently willed them back.
The girl stepped to the side of the chair and motioned with one slender hand for him to sit down. The lights glistened across her smooth arm, most likely covered in some slick oil, as was the rest of her body.
The picture of her naked body, writhing with his in the very same oil, flashed mercilessly in his mind. He wanted to take more than her seat. With her scent thickening around him, he could already taste her. It wasn’t just her blood, it was her body, her juices, her very life force.