Hot Summer Bites: A Castle of Dark Dreams Novella (A Penguin Special from Berkley Sensation) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the
concept
of kinky sex. And yeah, she’d covered a few sex stories, but she’d always had someone else on the inside doing the grunt work. Had she phrased that wrong? Anyway, all she’d had to do was write the article. This was different. She didn’t have a buffer zone this time.
    So? The shocking truth washed over her and nearly took her under. She was a product of her repressed background. When in doubt, blame your parents.
    She’d made love before, but she’d never been comfortable with it, had never been able to lose herself in the event. It was always like she was standing off to the side critiquing herself and her partner—she’d be doing the penguin waddle if she didn’t hit the gym soon; he was making really funny noises; and had she paid her cable bill? All in all, making love had been just okay. If she couldn’t turn off all her inner dialogue, she doubted she’d ever experience the ultimate
wow!
moment.
    But hope sprang eternal and all that crap. She still held out hope for the man who could make her forget her cable bill while giving her an orgasm that would reduce her to tears of gratitude.
    It wouldn’t happen this week. She had to stay focused on her job. If the park was all about sex, and if she took her investigation to its logical conclusion, she wouldn’t be making love. She’d be having sex with a stranger, one of women’s top ten fantasies, according to research. It tempted at the same time it scared the hell out of her.
    This was the start of a whole week of searching for sex around every corner while she wondered with heart-pounding uncertainty what she’d do if she found it.
    Okay, now that she understood where she was coming from, she could concentrate on where she was going. Right now it was down these stairs.
    Kristin crept downward, step by agonizing step, and she’d swear the
kaboom
,
kaboom
of her heartbeat echoed off the stone walls like a demented kettledrum. The
clank, clank
of her sword as it hit each step added to the general din. She sure wasn’t doing a good job of creeping up on Eric the Evil. Even as she crept, he was probably polishing his fangs.
    Kristin took a deep breath. More oxygen would calm her heart into a false sense of security. She
could
walk to the bottom of this staircase. She
could
meet and defeat Eric the Evil. She
could
find out if he had sex on his mind. She could . . . She
could
run like hell back up the steps and face the patronizing sneer of the castle’s wicked wizard.
    Never. Besides, it was too late to run. She’d reached the bottom of the steps. She paused to take stock. There were several doors revealed by the one wall sconce’s yellow glow. She supposed the dungeon’s door was the big ugly one with a few tastefully arranged blood splatters. Ugh.
    Personally, she had questions about the other doors. Storerooms? Labs where mad scientists carried out unspeakable experiments on armadillos? Kristin couldn’t help it. She was drawn to the outrageous.
    Dragging her attention back to the dungeon door, she sighed. No way could she put this off any longer. Kristen opened the door and stepped into the dungeon’s dim interior.
    He moved from the shadows, just a large dark shape until he stepped into the dim circle of light cast by one of the dungeon’s four flickering candles. He used one hand to hold closed the folds of his long black cape while with his other he held a flap of the cape over most of his face.
    Someone needed to give this guy a vampire fashion makeover. Her mole inside the San Antonio group had told her vampire wannabes dressed pretty much like everyone else. She would’ve checked it out herself, but the pics he’d sent her showed nothing but empty rooms. She’d meant to ask him about the pics, but he disappeared right after sending them. Weird.
    Eric the Evil needed to trade in his cape for jeans and a T-shirt. She opened her mouth to tell him that, but swallowed hard instead.
    Okay, so he had the whole dark, dank dungeon