by R. E. Butler
Patting his head, she brushed tears from her cheeks and said, “I’m wonderful. I get to marry my beloved.”
“We should stay in. Celebrate,” Bell said gruffly, his eyes darkening.
“Nuh uh,” she said. “I want to dance with you. Show off my new ring.”
“I can be quick.” He nibbled on her neck, making her pulse pick up.
“No, you can’t!” She laughed and pushed on his shoulder. “Even your quickies aren’t quick.”
“Can’t help it that I can’t get enough of you.”
“I’m absolutely not complaining. Come on, let’s go dance. Plus, Eynd and Leighanna are waiting for us.” Kelly had gotten to know Leighanna a little before she and Bell moved from the apartment building. She’d just moved into the complex before Kelly and Bell met and she worked as a bartender at the club.
“If you insist,” he said.
“I do. Wait, you said you had two surprises.”
“Right, I got distracted by your sexiness.”
“That happens to me all the time.”
He pointed to the couch in the sitting area of their chamber, and she sat. He disappeared into his closet for a moment and returned with a long, black box. “I had this made for you.”
Taking the box, she lifted the lid and gasped in surprise at the bejeweled collar and leash. The stones were various shades of purple, from pale lavender to deep violet. There was another band that matched the leash—a sparkling bracelet.
“I love it, we’ll match!”
She took off Aram’s collar and put on the purple one, attaching the leash, and then she held out her hand for Bell and he put the bracelet on her wrist. He grasped her other wrist, rubbing his thumb over the metallic tattoo, the leaves more visible whenever she was near Aram. Which was pretty much all the time.
“Thank you so much for my gifts,” she said, hugging and kissing him. “I love them.”
“Ready, sweetheart?”
He pulled her to her feet. “I am. Are you sure it’s okay for Aram to be with us? I mean, I know that Mishka said it was fine since he’s my guardian, but I don’t want to freak anyone out in the club.”
“I double checked while you were getting ready. We’ll go in through the side entrance and he can sit under the table. Vampires aren’t as twitchy about weird things as humans are.”
“Good point.”
Aram padded alongside them as they left the chamber, taking the private elevator to the first floor. They walked through the offices and down the long hall. She greeted Avery, the human who worked at the coat-check.
“I love your dress,” Avery said, leaning on the counter and smiling. “You have the best clothes.”
“Thanks. How’s your night?” Kelly asked.
“Quiet so far, but it’s still early.”
“See you later,” Kelly said.
“Enjoy the club,” Avery said.
Bell led Kelly toward the archway leading into the club, when her arm was suddenly jerked to the side, Aram snarling and straining at the leash.
“What the hell? Aram!”
“Your hand,” Bell said.
The metallic tattoos were bright against her skin, practically glowing. She felt something akin to dread wash over her.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
Bell nodded. “Lead the way, Aram.”
She gave Aram slack on the leash and hurried behind him as he rushed out the club’s doors. He paused on the sidewalk and lifted his snout in the air, sniffing loudly. Then he let out a shrill cry and leaped into the air. She let go of the leash, watching as he rose above the line of humans at the front door, then dove downward.
Kelly winced as a man screamed when Aram sank his teeth into his shoulder and twisted in the air, sending the man tumbling to the ground away from the front doors.
“He’s got a bomb!” someone shouted.
“Get Brone!” Bell called to the males at the door. One of them ducked into the club and Bell left Kelly with the other guard, racing to the humans and sending them away to safety. Aram was sitting on the chest of the human man who was bleeding badly from the wound in his shoulder. There appeared to be a bomb strapped to his chest, but Kelly couldn’t tell if it was on a timer or not. “Aram!”
Her dragon cawed at her; his eyes glowing. He let out a blast of fire, and the man yelped, but was too injured to move.
Brone and several other vampires raced from the building, stopping when they saw the bomb.
“We can take it from here,” Brone said to Aram.
He seemed to understand, hopping off the man’s chest and hurrying to Kelly’s side. She knelt next to him and hugged him as Bell joined them.
“Good work, Aram,” Bell said, patting his head.
Aram snuggled against her with a purring trill. She looked at the magical tattoo and saw it had faded. “I don’t understand what happened, but I think he sensed the danger. Maybe his emotions are connected to the tattoo.”
“It’s like an early warning detector,” Bell said with a chuckle. “I’m so thankful he stopped the male.”
Ven, who’d come out with Brone, walked over to them. “Brone dismantled the bomb and he called Cyrus to come figure out who the male is working for.”
“The church?” Kelly asked, thinking about the vampire-hating group.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“He wouldn’t have made it into the club with the bomb, though,” Bell said. “The bouncers would have smelled the C-4.”
“Yeah, he must have wanted to set it off out here and harm the humans in line.”
“That’s dumb. He was going to kill himself and take out other humans who just want to dance? I don’t get it,” Kelly said.
“If he’s working for the church, sometimes they like to hurt humans to point out how harmful associating with vampires can be. Plus, depending on how big the bomb is, it might have forced us to shut down for a while. For sure, it would be bad press, making the club seem dangerous to humans.”
“I can’t believe anyone would want to follow someone who thinks it’s okay to harm innocent people to advance their own agenda,” Kelly said.
“Jason Finnegan is a straight-up monster,” Ven said. “Anyone who follows him has a few screws loose, to say the least.”
Cyrus and Cella walked outside, and Kelly waved at the stunning blonde.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Kelly asked.
Bell looked at the group crowded around the human. The bomb had been taken away by trolls at Brone’s request, and the human male was still laying prone on the sidewalk. “Cyrus can read people’s minds, it’s part of his power as a tribrid. Once they figure out who the male was working for or if he was on his own, they’ll turn him over to the human police.”
“Good. He deserves to be punished.”
“Indeed,” Ven said. He smiled down at Aram. “This good boy deserves a big treat.”
“He likes smoked bones,” she said. “The coven chef has been smoking them for me since we brought him home.”
“I’ll send a big one over,” Ven said. “I’m so fucking glad you two were on a date tonight.”
“Me too,” Kelly said.
When they were alone, Bell said, “Do you still want to go to the club?”
“You bet,” she said. “We definitely deserve a fun time out after what just happened.”
“I hate to say it,” he said as they headed inside the club, “but I think not having sex before we left was a good idea.”
She laughed. “We’d have come up and found the front of the club exploded. Not that I want to make a habit of it, of course.”
“You’re utterly tempting, trust me. It’s all I can do not to take you back to our chamber and spend the night in bed.”
“First we should dance. Then we can play.”
“Whatever my sweetheart wants.”
Inside the club, they found Eynd and Leighanna at a table. As promised, Ven had a big bone sent to Aram, who
happily gnawed on it while she and Bell danced a few feet away. The people inside the club didn’t know how close those waiting to get in had come to getting harmed, and she was thankful they’d arrived when they did.
An hour later, Cyrus and Cella appeared and invited them to the family room, a glass-enclosed room at the top of a set of guarded stairs, suggesting Eynd and Leighanna join them too.
“Wow, I’ve never been up here,” Leighanna said once they were in the furnished room. A private bar and bartender provided SyBl for the vampires and made martinis for Kelly and Eynd.
“I wondered what this place was when I came here,” Kelly said as she stepped away from the bar, sitting down next to Bell and across from Cella and Cyrus.
“Mishka used to sit up here all the time. A lot of us did,” Cella said as she sipped on a wine glass of SyBl. “But once we found our beloveds, we got too busy to do this sort of thing frequently. Cyrus and I come up here to have a private drink or a dance, and the females in the family and I hang out here once a week for a girls’ night. It’s fun.”
“And it’s a nice way to have a private conversation without having to go back to the offices,” Cyrus said. “Speaking of, the reason we wanted you to come up here is because I wanted to share what I found out about the human with the bomb.”
Kelly patted Aram’s head, grateful once more for how he’d saved the lives of the people in line. She didn’t know how he’d known the human was going to harm someone—maybe he smelled the bomb, or he could feel the evil intentions—but whatever it was, she was thankful.
“I used compulsion and got into his memories. It turns out that he was working on behalf of the church, but he’s a new recruit. He’s only been with the church a few weeks. He was told that he could drop the bomb and run away, but Brone said that the way it was set up, if he tried to remove it, it would have blown up anyway. I don’t think he was meant to survive.”
“Damn,” Bell said. “The church is turning on its own people.”
“This guy was really low in the church’s ranks. He hates vampires because one of them took a job from him as a long-distance hauler.” Cyrus scoffed. “Humans can be such assholes.”
Cella patted his arm. “So true. I wish the church would leave us alone. It’s scary to think people could have died tonight just wanting to go out to get a drink.”
Kelly shivered at the thought and Bell put his arm around her.
“Anyway,” Cyrus said, “I did discover that the human had been eavesdropping on a meeting and learned that Jason’s brother, Sean, is in Northern Ohio, heading up the state’s regional office. I couldn’t discern the location, but him being in our neck of the woods means we might be able to find him at some point.”
Kelly blinked in surprise. “Wow. Jason must be panicked about Northern Ohio if he sent his brother here.”
“For sure,” Cyrus said. “We’ve managed to stop a few of their attempts to destroy us, but I believe, and Brone and Mishka agree, that him being here means Jason is gearing up for something big.”
“What does that mean for us?” Bell asked.
“That we’ll need to be extra careful about security and ensure that all our members are safe. We’re working with some experts to go over the security measures for the club. Thankfully, no one was hurt tonight except that asshole. And your little dragon protector is badass.”
Kelly chuckled. “He sure is.”
“You’re welcome to stay up here in the family room,” Cella said as she stood up and turned toward the bar. “Mishka said to make yourselves at home and enjoy the evening.”
“Wow, that’s pretty awesome,” Eynd said.
“Tell him we said thank you,” Leighanna said.
After a while, Kelly and Bell went back down to the dance floor for a few dances, and then they said goodnight to Eynd and Leighanna. Bell held her hand tightly as they left the crowded club and headed to their chamber.
“Can’t wait to get you home,” he said as he pushed the elevator button, entered the security code, and heard the whir of gears.
“We had a good night, though,” she said. “I like spending time with the coven members. It was nice getting to know Cella and Cyrus a little better.”
“You didn’t mind being back in the club this time,” he said as he held open the elevator to let her in the cab, then joined her. Aram, half-chewed bone in his mouth, trotted in and sat down.
“This time I had you by my side. I wasn’t scared at all.”
“Good. I never want you to be frightened of anything ever again.”
He unlocked their chamber door, and she smiled as he coaxed Aram to the fancy pet couch he’d bought and ensured he was occupied with the bone. Then Bell stalked to her and lifted her into his arms with a low growl
She cupped his face. “With you by my side, I’m not afraid of anything. I love you and I love our life together. It’s only just begun, but I feel like we’ve been together for a hundred years already.”
Her heart swelled with love. She could feel the strength of his love for her through their connection. Nothing was better than the way they loved each other. Fully. Completely. Eternally.
“I love our life together too, sweetness. My life was dark before, but you’re my light.”
Coming in 2020 from R. E. Butler
Desire (Vampire Beloved Book Four)
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Coming Next in the Vampire Beloved Series: Desire (Book Four)
Three-hundred-year-old vampire Traz has seen a lot of things in his centuries, but he’s never seen anyone as enchanting as the human who works at the coat check at the club. He feels in his heart that she’s meant to be his, but he has no idea how to approach her.
Avery Banner has been working at Fang since February and loves getting to know the people around the club. Particularly the sexy Traz with the piercing jade green eyes. But he never talks to her, so she feels she’s alone in the intense desires that flow through her whenever he’s around. Her older sister, however, is furious that Avery is working for the vampires. As a staunch supporter of the anti-vampire group The First Church of Humanity, Daria wants Avery out of the club and dating a member of the Cleveland branch of the church ASAP. Avery’s got bigger problems then her fussy sister’s dating advice – an ex-boyfriend is intent on getting back into her life, no matter how many times she says no.