Gabriel's Mate by Folsom, Tina (fun books to read for adults .TXT) 📗

“I’m fine,” she claimed. He knew she wasn’t.

“Why are you crying?” he probed.

“I’m not crying.” She sniffed. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

He tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Just a cold or something.”

Gabriel shook his head. Maya was avoiding him, and he didn’t like it. “Vampires don’t come down with anything. We don’t get sick.”

Before he could get Maya to tell him what was really wrong, he heard a sound.

His head snapped to the small window over the bathtub. He hadn’t noticed until now that it was open.

“Somebody’s watching,” he whispered to Maya and took her arm.

He quickly led her back into the living room where Yvette sulked in an armchair.

“He’s out there,” he told Yvette, who instantly jumped up. “I’m going after him. You take Maya home.”

“We have a better chance if we both go after him,” Yvette protested.

Gabriel cut her off with a movement of his hand. “That’s an order.”

Without waiting for an acknowledgment, he stormed out of the apartment and out the front door.

The rogue had been watching them. That meant he now knew Maya had survived, but also that she was under Gabriel’s protection. He might figure out where she was hiding. It was paramount that Gabriel found him before he could mount another attack.

The fact that he’d been watching her apartment – clearly in the hope that she would come back – made it clear to Gabriel that the rogue was obsessed with her. A stalker, just like he’d suspected. A jilted lover.

He hadn’t seen the man who’d stood outside in the alley and had watched them, but he’d noticed that the alley was a dead end. This meant the man had to have come back to the main street to escape.

Therefore Gabriel didn’t bother running down the alley and instead followed the faint scent of vampire the rogue left on his trail.

He zig-zagged through Noe Valley. It was obvious to Gabriel that he was trying to get out of the quiet residential area and into a busier area so it would be harder for Gabriel to stay on his tail. Gabriel sped up, trying to gain ground on the rogue, but his relative unfamiliarity with the San Francisco neighborhood didn’t help him. If this was New York, Gabriel would have cut the rogue off long ago, but chasing a man down in his own territory was much harder.

When he heard the sounds of music and partying, Gabriel knew he’d lost. A couple of blocks further and he was in the center of the Castro.

There seemed to be two or three dozen bars and clubs just on two blocks. And the sidewalks teamed with clubbers. Gabriel looked through the crowd and suddenly noticed the absence of women.

Mostly men walked along the streets, some hugging, some holding hands, others kissing openly. Gabriel had been here before, many years ago. This was the gay center of the city, where the gay population had their special hangouts, where the police rarely interfered, where public exposure was the norm.

Gabriel stopped on a corner of a bar and pulled out his phone. A handsome young biker smiled at him and lifted his beer bottle toward him from the bar. Gabriel shook his head and turned away. Great, men were coming onto him – they obviously didn’t mind his scar. Why couldn’t a woman give him the come hither look? Not any woman –

Maya specifically.

He dialed. His call was answered after the third ring. “What’s up, Gabriel?” Zane breathed hard into the phone.

“Where are you?”

“Why?”

“Because I need you to do some work,” Gabriel barked.

“I’m in the Mission, hot nightspot.” Zane gave the address.

“I’ll meet you there.” Gabriel punched the address into the GPS on his phone. Zane’s current location was only about six blocks away.

Well, that was convenient.

What Zane called a hot nightspot was a little more than just a nightclub. The bouncer at the door said nothing and let him pass inside the dingy establishment as soon as he was finished staring at Gabriel’s scar. He figured the darn thing did have its purposes. People seemed to be afraid of him and didn’t give him any resistance.

It was dark, darker than in other clubs he’d been to and the reason why became evident instantly. Along the outside walls were small booths, the entrances covered with transparent fabric, enough to distort the faces of the people behind them, but not sufficient to disguise what they were doing.

Gabriel wasn’t surprised. His second in command’s choice of entertainment always included sex, and if it was peppered with violence, even better. He followed his nose and found Zane in one of the booths.

He stopped outside of it and looked through the gauzy fabric.

It was easy to make out Zane’s distinct form. His bald head glistened. He was stretched out on a bench, his stiff cock sticking out of his leather pants. A woman was giving him a blow job while he had his fingers up the ass of a second one who was straddling his face.

The women were dressed, but on closer inspection Gabriel would see that the woman who was straddling Zane wasn’t wearing any panties under her ultra-short skirt.

Gabriel kept himself rigid as he watched how Zane sucked on the woman’s pussy and worked a third finger into her ass, ignoring the woman’s attempt to pull away. With his free hand he slapped her ass cheek and the woman squealed.

“Do as you’re told,” he heard Zane order her.

Gabriel contemplated interrupting him, but two things stopped him.

Interrupting a vampire while he was having sex could turn ugly – Zane would turn his sexual energy into violence and Gabriel didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it.

The second reason was his own arousal. Gabriel liked watching – it was all he often got. And this time, it was more than just watching some people in a porn movie. This time, he could pretend that he was the man, and the woman above him was Maya.

The situation