Kiss Me, Kill Me Read online

  KISS ME, KILL ME

  By

  Sayara St. Clair

  Copyright

  Copyright  2020 Sayara St. Clair

  ISBN: 978-1-925600-06-3

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic methods, without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical reviews.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks, service marks and word marks mentioned in this book.

  Editor: Kelli Collins

  Cover photograph: shutterstock.com (license purchased).

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Note From The Author

  About The Author

  ‘Life is like a box of chocolates.’ –Forrest Gump

  ‘My life? It’s like one of those swirly dog turds. There have been a few twists and turns, but basically it’s pretty much shit all the way through.’ –Kayana Castello Branco (B.G., Before Greg)

  ‘My life? La, la, la. Sunshine and rainbows. Plus, maybe a unicorn.’ –Kayana Castello Branco (the Greg Morgan era)

  ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die.’ –Somebody who knew what they were talking about

  ‘Life’s a right old slapper and then you die. And then it’s fecking awesome. As long as you’re a vampire.’ –Melanie (Kayana’s best friend)

  ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ –Theodore Roosevelt

  (Wait. What the heck is that doing there? It has no bearing on this story. Although…it would have been handy to have a big stick, considering what happened.)

  ‘There’s no place like home.’ –The little chick who was obsessed with the red shoes

  (This also has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Except there was that bit about shoes…)

  ‘Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.’ –Groucho Marx. Maybe. Could be this other guy called Brewer. Nobody’s absolutely sure.

  (OMG! Stop. What is this? Autoquote? That’s not even a thing. Is it? Actually, the dog one is quite a good paraprosdokian. Let’s keep it. The others have to go, though.)

  ‘I’ll be back.’ –That really big guy

  (Oh, for the love of God. Shut. Up!!!)

  Chapter One

  ‘Die, you bloodsucking mofo!’ I screeched.

  I slapped said mofo so hard against the wall, I jarred my wrist.

  My boyfriend came racing out of the study. Skidding to a halt next to me, he frantically scanned the room. ‘What are you screaming about? Bloodsuckers?’

  I carefully peeled my hand off the wall to see the obliterated creature and a smear of blood (my blood) on both the plaster and my palm. ‘I’ve been trying to concentrate on writing my paper, and this son-of-a-bitch mosquito has been buzzing about, biting me relentlessly for the past fifteen minutes.’

  Greg narrowed his eyes at the blood-smeared wall while I projected nah-man-don’t-do-it thoughts at him. There was an uncomfortable silence, then, ‘Lucky bastard,’ Greg muttered under his breath before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

  I should mention, at this point, that my boyfriend is a vampire. A real-live, honest-to-God vampire.

  No one was more surprised than me when, after a long disappearance on Greg’s part and a messy emotional breakdown on mine, Greg reappeared with extra-pointy canines, a raging haemoglobin fetish and a permanent case of immortality.

  The fact that my blood is exceptionally delicious to him, combined with my reluctance to let him bite me, is apparently making the man testy. And jealous of mosquitoes.

  He’s only fairly new at being a vampire, and I’m not fully convinced he’s in total control of his urges. The ones that, once he gets a taste of me, make him want to keep sucking away until he drains me dry.

  Then we have testiness-inducing issue number two: Greg wanting to turn me. He brings it up occasionally, and as time passes, with increasing regularity. Since he’s viewing the world through immortal goggles, he’s convinced I’m terribly fragile and in danger of expiring any minute now. Because I’m not sure I actually want to be a vampire, I haven’t given him a definite answer yet.

  ‘Hello, my name is Kayana Castello Branco. I’m a blood bank scientist (which I must say, has turned out to be quite fortuitous, my boyf being so into the red stuff), and I’m rather good at ignoring all the difficult things.’

  I wiped up my blood with a tissue. Yes, I had entertained the notion that Greg might lick it off the wall—my bad! I was washing my hands in the kitchen when a knock on the front door interrupted my washing…and ignoring. Thank goodness. Ignoring is more taxing than one would expect.

  ‘Mellie!’ I yelled at my best friend, who was standing at the threshold when I swung the door open.

  ‘Ana!’ she yelled back.

  Why the yelling? Melanie and I are simply so happy to see each other every time we meet, we always do it.

  Melanie came in for a hug. She’s five feet neat, but strong for such a short-ass. Grabbing my five-eight frame around the middle, she squeezed.

  I returned her hug, then stepped back and inspected her.

  Melanie is always doing something different with her hair. Last time I’d beheld her—three days prior—her waist-length curls had been dark red. Since then, she’d had her hair trimmed to shoulder length, straightened, coloured dark blonde and highlighted with ash blonde, platinum blonde, and a strange silvery grey. And hot damn, she looked fabulous. She was rocking a goth vibe today: an almost-black plum velvet sheath dress with a mandarin collar, deep-wine lipstick, a truckload of smudged eyeliner and her black Doc Martens.

  ‘Man, you look stunning,’ I declared, my tone slightly reverent.

  ‘I know, right?’ she said, flicking her hair like a shampoo-ad girl on crack. She twinkled at me with her blue, blue eyes and then breezed into my apartment.

  I chuckled as I closed the door. Which I happen to do a lot when Melanie’s around. The chuckling, I mean, not the door closing. And when I’m not doing that, I’m generally busting a gut, laughing.

  ‘Because we were so busy talkin’ about me,’ said Melanie as she flounced onto my sofa, ‘I didn’t have a chance to say how bloody spectacular you’re lookin’. I love you in all white. If I wore that, I’d look like someone killed me five days ago. But it looks amazin’ against your skin with your dark hair and eyes.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’ I wore a tailored white, sleeveles
s dress with an above-the-knee hemline. There was a silver chain belt slung low on my hips. When I walked, the extra length of chain swung beside my thigh. Greg had liked the effect so much, he’d removed the entire outfit, reattached the chain around my hips and done things that had made it swing. Wildly.

  I should also point out that vampires have large libidos. Well, to be honest, I don’t know about other vamps. But my vampire, Dr Greg Morgan? His libido is a ravening beast these days. Actually, ravening beast doesn’t even cover it. It is the T. rex of the world of lust. Eating up all the other puny libidos and picking its teeth with their bones.

  Not that I’m complaining or anything.

  Melanie and I were all dolled up because we were going to my father’s birthday party. It wasn’t a big event, just a dinner with my dad, my stepmother, Lydia, my stepsiblings, the twins Michael and Geneva, and Melanie, Greg, and I.

  I was dreading the dinner as one would if the menu consisted of an entrée of Ebola, a main of hurricane and haloumi with tsunami tapenade, plus, bushfire banana fritters for dessert. And if I survived all that, the apocalypse would be served with coffee and After Eight mints.

  I love After Eight mints. I’d rather take a pass on the rest. Be that as it may, it would be a set menu, and I’d have to choke it down even if it killed me.

  It would probably kill me.

  Three years after the death of my mother in a freak skiing accident, my father married Lydia. Dad works on the oil rigs out at sea, so he left me with Lydia and her spawn. The three of them made my life between the ages of eight and seventeen an absolute misery. These days, I avoid them like the plague. However, my dad, on leave for only a few days, had begged me to come to their house to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. ‘As a family,’ he’d said.

  Family, my ass.

  I hadn’t set foot in their home for over a year. Today, I would be setting my feet back there once again. My feet were as wild about the idea as the rest of me.

  ‘So how are you feeling, luv?’ asked Melanie, being privy to some of my past with my stepmother.

  She wasn’t aware of all the details. Nevertheless, based on what I had told her, as well as her own impressions when she’d met Lydia, she’d dubbed the woman Stepfucker.

  Because Lydia is my dad’s second wife, we sometimes call her Number Two. Not meaning it in the numerical sense but rather the bodily function one.

  ‘I think I’ll be okay,’ I finally answered. ‘Having said that, if any of them attempt to give me grief, I will totally lose my shit.’

  ‘Woo-hoo!’ Melanie hopped off the sofa and did some air boxing. Luckily for her, she was only punching air. Because if she was punching someone for real, she’d have broken her fingers. The silly bugger had her thumbs trapped inside her fists.

  ‘I’ll lose my shit, too,’ she sang out. ‘I will totally bring the SMACKDOWN.’

  I bit my lips, doing my best not to laugh at the tiny person with the large attitude and bad boxing form. Then she asked, ‘Oooh, can I set Stepfucker’s hair on fire?’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘That bitch has the stoopidest do in the history of hair.’

  The best way I can describe the travesty that is Lydia’s hair: a straw-headed scarecrow had a perm, then stuck its finger in an electrical socket, before someone tried to kill it with an H-bomb. Hair spray bomb, that is.

  I had a vivid image of Lydia running about with her hair-sprayed bird’s nest all aflame. ‘Shit, yeah,’ I managed to get out somewhere in the midst of a bout of laughter.

  Greg was walking over, presumably to say hello to Melanie. He frowned when he saw her fighting stance. It must have offended his martial-artist sensibilities. He opened her fists and then reclosed them, pushing her thumbs down where they should be. ‘Thumbs on the outside, Melanie,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Master.’

  ‘No worries, Grasshopper.’ He gave her a closed-mouthed half-smile. I got a wink-with-residual-half-smile combo before he sauntered off towards the kitchen.

  I got tingles in places in response to that. His wink does things to me. His half-smile—just curved up on the left side—does things to me. His stare does things to me. Ah hell, all of his things do…things to me.

  I should also mention that my boyfriend—apart from being of the fanged persuasion—is six feet and five inches of finely honed muscle and panty-melting gorgeousness. Which comes with golden-tanned skin, brilliant green eyes, dark messy hair, a jawline that could cut diamonds, a smile that knocks me on my backside, a huge, big, throbbing IQ. Plus, dimples. He also exudes a particular combination of pheromones that’s a catalyst for reactions of my own girl chemicals, producing heart palpitations, heat, electricity, and some excess H2O down below. All of these goings-on generally make me feel the need to lie down.

  With him on top of me.

  Have I mentioned that Greg has slight dominant tendencies? No?

  Well, he does.

  Rubbing my wrists, around which he had recently tied my bathrobe belt and attached me to the headboard, my eyes darted to the kitchen. ‘Cheese balls,’ I blurted out. One—to distract myself from joining Greg in the kitchen and doing stuff that would lead to me being de-frocked for the second time today; and two—because I needed to go next door and pick up an actual cheese ball from my next-door neighbour, Pam.

  Because Lydia was having an extra three whole people over for dinner, she considered it imperative that those people bring food. ‘Nibblies,’ she’d said. (Read: shouted in the background while I was on the phone with my dad.) Apparently, bunging some tasty cheese cubes and Jatz on a plate was beyond her.

  Since I would never turn up with a plate of crackers and cheese, instead feeling the need to come up with some elaborate tasty business, combined with the fact that I didn’t have the time or inclination to hang about in the kitchen for hours on end, I’d ordered a big-ass antipasto platter from my local deli. Plus, one of Pam’s specialties. The woman makes phenomenal cheese balls.

  A few minutes later, Melanie and I were seated at Pam’s kitchen table, sipping tea and observing the magic happen. Pam had apologised for not having a cheese ball ready to pick up, saying that the last one hadn’t ‘worked out’. I wasn’t sure what could go wrong with a ball of cheese but didn’t ask, instead telling her not to worry and informing her that we had plenty of time before the party.

  I watched as Pam tipped a pile of chopped dried apricots into the cheese mix, which confused me because she usually rolled the ball in the apricots. I’d had exactly seven versions of Pam’s cheesy balls of goodness, and the apricot one was my favourite.

  ‘Ah, Pam. You put the apricots into the mix.’

  She frowned at me before her face smoothed out. ‘Oh, yes. I’m trying something new. Apricots go in now, and then I’ll roll the ball in chopped walnuts.’ She gesticulated with a cheese-covered hand twirling in the air.

  ‘That sounds good.’

  Pam looked as proud as the chef who’d created the first pavlova would have been when he’d invented the world’s best dessert. When Pam began shaping the cheese mix into a ball shape—a process that involved a lot of hand-to-cheese contact—I averted my gaze. It was probably best not to see things that could ruin my enjoyment of this particular food genre forever.

  The phone rang. I made a move to get out of my chair, but Pam waved me back. ‘I’ll get it, dear. You stay there and drink your tea.’ She washed her hands, grabbed a tea towel and hurried off. After she answered the phone, she went out onto the balcony and closed the door to continue her conversation.

  Melanie began scrolling through photos on her phone. There was a hint of smugness in her smile when she turned the phone towards me, showing me a photo of her sandy-blond-haired, blue-eyed boyfriend, Scott. Who also happens to be Greg’s best friend.

  The photo had obviously been taken while he was unaware. All the photos of Scott that I’d seen showed him goofing around and pulling funny faces for the camera. In this one, he was striding out of the surf, holding his board
under one arm, the top half of his wetsuit unzipped and folded down over his hips. He looked buff, exhausted and plenty serious. It struck me then, that I usually thought of Scott as boyish because of his constant joking and mischievousness. Contrary to my perception, here was the manly side of him. Which was undoubtedly the cause of Melanie currently resembling that cat who went around swallowing canaries.

  Speaking of cats… There was a mewing sound. Melanie and I both turned to see Sheba, the monstrously sized furball that is Pam’s cat, had somehow gotten onto the kitchen bench and was giving the misshapen, nutless cheese ball a tongue bath.

  I hadn’t thrown up since I was about eight years old. And if I didn’t have a steel trap in place of a functioning gag reflex, I would have barfed in a monumental way all over Pam’s kitchen.

  Don’t think about the cheese balls you’ve consumed in the past. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

  Crap. My brain cogitated. In fast-forward mode. About all the cheese.

  Melanie swore under her breath and then did what any well-balanced person would do in such a situation. She picked up her teacup and tossed the remaining contents at the heinous cheese licker. The tea bag slapped Sheba straight in the eye with what I thought was a satisfying “slop” sound.

  The cat yowled and leapt to the floor, sending the cheese ball sliding across the bench and into the sink, where it landed with a not-so-satisfying “slop” sound.

  Sheba then took off for parts unknown, dripping with tea and what was probably a pure hatred for tea-slinging goth-looking chicks.

  Pam returned to find me holding a limp tea bag and staring forlornly at the imploded cheese ball. She gaped at me.

  ‘Um, your cat was licking the cheese ball.’

  ‘Goodness! I’ve told the naughty girl not to do that, but she just won’t listen.’ Pam clucked her tongue and shook her head before bustling off to the laundry, presumably to collect cleaning implements.