Page 115 of Scream For Me

I’ve never even had a boyfriend before. My closest friend is a loyal, little dog named Chipper. And my closest companion is my ambition to become a singer. What the heck do I have to offer him?

But one autumn night Torsten catches my scent in the air. He comes to find me, this billionaire CEO—and he doesn’t tell me who or what he is at first. I just think he’s a ripped, possessive alpha brimming with primal carnal energy. But it turns out he’s on a quest, a quest only I can help him with.

But helping him means opening up doors inside myself I’ve never even tried to open. It means trying to accept that a curvy, inexperienced twenty year old has anything to offer a man who was a Viking before he was changed into a vampire. A forty year old Viking, to boot. Even in human years, he’s way more experienced than me.

But even if I’m a virgin, there’s an irrepressible desire between me and this creature of the night. When he unleashes his savage fury one night and saves me from a bunch of hooligans who take Halloween just one step too far, I just know I’ve found the man of my dreams.

Or, perhaps, the man of my most sinful nightmares.

Can a human and a vampire really share lust, let alone love? Can Torsten fight his urge to sprout his fangs and bleed me dry? Can I help him to complete his quest and maybe, just maybe, let him see his first sunrise in one thousand years?

*Her Vampire is an insta-everything standalone instalove romance with a HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.

Chapter One

Torsten

I stand atop the highest point of the tallest building in the city, my chest bare as the icy cold wind whips at me. I let it blast against my chest as clouds drift by me, coating me in their biting cold.

I need to feel something.

Alive, if that’s possible for a man like me.

A man.

I laugh grimly and spread my arms to my sides, letting another gust blast right into my middle. The half-moon watches impassively and my mind returns to the past, as it has been doing a lot lately. As the city glitters below and the stars peep through the clouds above, my memories rear up like shadowy phantoms.

I remember the sloshing of the war-ships, crashing against the waves as the jagged rocky shores of yet another land to be claimed appeared on the skyline before us. I remember holding a shield so tightly the grip biting into my hand, and the sword at my hip, the old rusty sword because I was just a child, a child sent off to war.

I remember standing in the shield wall and roaring until the tendons in my throat felt like they were going to burst. That was my first battle and nearly my bloodiest.

In my human life, at least.

Those were more savage times when the inky showers of blood marking the air were a normal thing when men didn’t flinch at the thought of violence.

I remember more battles, more and more until my whole life had been a long series of war and bloodshed and rage, the blood-hot rage that moved through me like a force of nature, unstoppable.

And then my final battle as a mortal man, standing in a muddy clearing with countless dead littering the ground around me.

Back then, I’d devoutly believed in the gods, in Odin’s Valkyries slashing through the sky, waiting to claim the worthy dead. As I’d stood there, waiting for the enemy to charge me down and finish me off, I’d had a broad smile on my face.

That was it. That was the end. And I was glad to be going to those heavenly halls.

But the sorcerer came instead, with his cloak of shadow and his rune-covered face. “I’ve been watching for you a long time, Torsten, son of Harald,” he told me. “You are the fiercest warrior of your generation. Not the most celebrated, not the most famed, but the fiercest, and you have been selected to never die.”

“Never die?” I growled, laughing, thinking it was some trick. “I’m not scared of death.”

“No.” The man smiled with thin blue lips. “That’s why you’ve been chosen.”

And so it was that I became a vampyr, one of the old kind, my fangs as sharp as razors and hidden if I so needed, my body drained of life except that which I could find in the pumping veins of the mortal race. My charms came to me easily enough, those simple spells that could calm or enrage or enslave.

I grit my teeth now as the rain starts, lashing down at me like ice-cold whips, cutting into my bare chest, the skin opening and then closing instantly as I heal, as I’ll always heal until I drive a blessed stake through my heart.

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