Normalcy. That’s all either of us want right now: ten seconds of absolutely nothing weird. And despite being able to make any porny fantasy come true with a few text messages, normal might be the one thing beyond my realm of influence.
Ass parked bedside next to Lore at the medcenter, I had a lot of time to think about what Cas said. He’s a smart man, the sort who doesn’t make a move until he’s worked through every possible outcome. He told me to call up Sebastian, to take the Legacy up on their ‘offer,’ and for the first twenty-four hours or so I couldn’t begin to fathom why. It wasn’t until I started thinking like me that I saw the bigger picture. Given his extensive acquaintance with my thought patterns, Cas knew that I’d take Lore and run, go somewhere safe, somewhere we couldn’t be found. That I’d start selling off real estate, piece by piece. That I’d liquidate everything I owned.
And he knew that I could take a few billion in Legacy dollars right along with it.
Matty inadvertently paved the way for the biggest setup of all time, because what man in his right mind would give up all this for—
A do-over.
Smart man, Cas. Too bad I still want to punch him in the face.
Rosa’s in the hall when we arrive, hands clasped in front of her, feet shifting on the marble. Lore doesn’t even lift her head, but the housekeeper looks disconcerted enough that it draws my eye, putting a wrinkle in my brow when her gaze keeps shifting pointedly toward the library.
“You have a visitor,” she says, with a pointed look that tells me, in no uncertain terms, that I should go in alone.
Placing an affectionate kiss on Lore’s temple, I slide her arms from around my waist. “Let Rosa take you up to bed.”
Her kind eyes look worried. “Who is it?”
“Probably just Roman.” When she flushes three shades of red, I tack on, “He loves to drop in unannounced, remember?”
The housekeeper takes Lore’s arm and leads her upstairs. Lore keeps an eye on me until she turns the corner and disappears into the bedroom. Worried that she might have Benicio-induced PTSD the moment she sets foot over the threshold, I listen for a second. When I don’t hear any panicked screaming, I gather my resolve and head for the library. Ten steps down the hall, and I’m breathing in the trademark eau de douche that I’ve come to know so well. I’d almost think it was lingering, except that the house has been mostly devoid of life for the last two weeks.
“Jesus Christ, Trace,” I start in, “you’re really—”
…not who I was expecting.
“Good afternoon, Xaine.”
The satin-smooth cadence of that voice, that accent, stops me in my tracks. Then I’m staring at a ramrod straight back, the tailored tails of an expensive suit, the heels of perfectly shined shoes, and a crown of sandy hair that’s still the wrong length to be fashionable. When I don’t immediately answer, his head turns until I’m looking at him in profile, caught in the downturn of a sharply aristocratic nose, snared by the question in one golden iris.
“My presence can’t be that shocking,” Cas says. “Don’t I at least warrant the usual pleasantries?”
I snort and iron out the wrinkle in my brow, an exercise that doesn’t quite iron the wrinkle out of my brain. “Hello. Also, you need to spend far less time around Jax Trace. You’re wearing his stink.”
Cas’s nostrils flare and the corners of his lips turn slightly downward. He seems to dismiss it altogether, however, in favor of staring out the closed French doors leading to the pool. For a long moment he doesn’t speak, leaving me to look around, wondering what sort of ambush I’ve wandered into. When the silence extends beyond my comfort zone, I start searching for a distraction and find one in the stocked sideboard of vintage liquor. I only make it as far as the uncorking before my own PTSD kicks in, sending my stomach into a lurch that has me replacing the crystal stopper without taking so much as a single swig. When I turn around, I find Cas watching, his eyes fixed on the crystal decanter before they make the inevitable leap to my face.
“Take a picture,” I suggest. “It’ll last longer.”
A vague smile touches the corner of his lips. “The years and decades and centuries move along, and you, well, you move right along with them.”
“Is there a reason you’re here?” I ask. “Or did you come by to yank my chain?”
“I came to check on your little venture.”
“My venture?” I scoff. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Well, it is your most ambitious play to date.”
“And aren’t you a proud papa?”
“I am,” Cas says rather seriously, stealing the wind from my sails and putting another crease in my brain. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to be ambitious.”
“As I recall,” I tell him, “you didn’t much care for the last time I was ‘ambitious.’”
That vague smile turns dark. “Only because she didn’t survive.”
The words hang in the space between us, laid out there like the two hundred years between then and now. For a long time, we stand like that, in silent observation of the single moment in which friends turned to bitter enemies. I once told Matty you can hate a man and still respect him. Well, I don’t hate Caspian Declan, but he hates me, and for good reason.
“Look, Cas,” I rake a hand through my hair, gathering it away from my face as if it’ll somehow make me seem more honest, more trustworthy. “Lore’s not a do-over. We don’t get to write over the past with the present. There’s only today. And tomorrow, if we’re lucky.”
His expression doesn’t change. “Is that an apology?”
Silence, because I can’t say the words. Silence, because I can’t give him the satisfaction. Except…
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I guess it is.”
Because I am sorry. I always have been.
He nods in acceptance, if not forgiveness. “Very well.”
There’s a thud from upstairs, drawing our mutual attention upward. It’s probably those stupid pink suitcases hitting the floor in the bedroom. Cas stares longer than I do, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as if he can discern all the answers in the universe from the designs in the plaster.
“Do you want to talk to Lore?” I ask out of some odd sense of obligation. “You didn’t come to see her back at the medcenter.”
“I didn’t want to dredge everything up again by storming into her hospital room.” It’s the same impassive expression, and yet I can see his regret. “All of her pain and suffering has been because of me, and she didn’t even know why.”
“She knows now.”
Cas shakes his head. “No, it’s quite all right. I have much of Lourdes Chase on my conscience. I don’t wish to compound it by venturing where I’d best not tread.”
“Okay,” I say. “Mind if I ask some questions then?”
The corner of his lip twitches, but he utters a soft, “As you will.”
“How is this possible?” I ask. “Which branch of the Declan line did she sprout from?”
“Mine,” Cas tells me. “I had a mistress before.”
Before the illness that nearly killed him. Before the turn that saved him.
“How did you find her?”
“I didn’t,” Cas says. “It was a complete accident and an utter misstep. In a ploy to curry public favor, I granted some historians permission to dig into my lineage, to borrow old family heirlooms and photographs and lithographs and portraits.”
Enlightenment dawns. “The museum exhibit.”
“‘Famous Faces: Past, Present, and Future,’” Cas says with a nod. “Exactly that. The curators told me about her. They were delighted, acting as if they’d dug up a chest full of buried treasure.” Cas huffs out a mirthless chuckle. “I tried to put a cap on it, but they had legally binding documentation that I signed long before I realized I might actually have something to hide.”
“Once you knew, why didn’t you protect her?”
“I hoped that if I ignored her, the Legacy wou
ldn’t believe her to be of value.”
“Well, you hoped wrong, huh?”
“I did, indeed.”
A few weeks ago, I would have gloated, rubbed it in his face that the Great and Powerful Caspian Declan was wrong. That he made not one, but two errors in judgment. Then I think of Lore, and Jess, and Reille, and the steady stream of thousand-year-old Legacy money flowing like an underground current through my revenue stream. It’s then that I start to realize that this snowball has barely begun to roll.
And there’s one more question I need to ask.
Speaking of Reille…
“Why that night, Cas?” When he only cocks an eyebrow at me, I clarify, “Why’d you tell me about you and Reille that night, at the gala?”
He gives me another thoughtful look. “How much of that evening do you even remember, Xaine?”
Asshole has me there. “Not much, honestly, between the blood and the tequila shots.”
“More the blood than the tequila shots, I should think.” He pauses before adding, “We both know Reille isn’t like other women when it comes to blood… and to sex. The two of you together would have eventually killed each other.”
“I almost did kill her, Cas.” I flinch away from the memory. “I know you’re the king of cool…” Fuck me, that’s probably where Lore gets it from… “but how can you feed off her and not completely lose your mind?”
“I have… help.”
“Meaning you have drugs. That’s technically cheating, isn’t it?”
All I get is the ghost of a smile before he says, “I didn’t come here to speak about Reille. I came to discuss your recent business arrangement with our friend Mr. Winters.”
“Oh, my ambitious venture, you mean? It’s doing fine, thanks,” I tell him. “Matty laid the groundwork and everything was out of commission for less than three weeks. All it took was me using Lore’s life as a bargaining chip. I launder their money, nobody touches a hair on her head.”
“Then you’d best be ready to go the very moment you drop the axe.”
“Yeah, well, you do your part, and we’ll be long gone before the news goes public.”
“I’ll do my part,” Cas says, “but kindly remember I’m not doing any of this for you. This is for Lourdes. I owe her reparations that I can never repay.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Then I tamp down on my almost overwhelming need to goad him and manage an honest, “I’m going to take care of her, Cas. And not to make things right between you and I, because nothing will ever change what happened with Elizabeth. I can’t erase that. It’s my cross to bear.”
Trapped between the memory of one woman and his concerns for another, it takes a moment for Cas to pull his thoughts together. “No more fits of pique, Xaine. Lourdes isn’t strong enough to fight the Legacy if you’re off sulking somewhere. You’ll be her only line of defense.”
“I need real estate, not reality checks. I’ve had enough of those recently.” We might have buried the world’s oldest hatchet, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost the urge to punch him in his pearly whites.
He just nods. “I’ll do as you ask. Frankly, if you manage to smuggle Lourdes out of the country, it will be a significant weight off my shoulders. Call me when you’re prepared to leave.”
Without further ado, he takes his suit and his tie and his shiny shoes out the door without so much as a goodbye. I hear the upstairs television click on, so instead of placing the first call on a list of thousands, I head out of the library and up the stairs three at a time.
Lore glances up as I crack open the door, her smile crooked and faint, but real. “Were your vampy senses tingling?”
“Something’s tingling.” I cross the room, running down her color, heart rate, the fact that the circles under her eyes have faded but the space under her cheekbones is hollowed out too much for my taste. She’ll be on a liquid diet for a while, a steady stream of clear soup and vitamin water and whatever else they give someone who’s been through hell and major surgery. The second she can swallow solids, every swanky Beverly Hills restaurant with a Michelin-starred chef is getting a call.
“Who was downstairs?” she asks.
“Nobody important.”
Lore’s chin tilts up, her eyes narrow, and she gives me a suspiciously appraising look. “You’re plotting something.”
I hold up my hands. “You caught me. I was trying to figure out how soon is too soon to stuff you full of pizza.”
She makes a funny moaning sound then, one that gets me hard and puts the crease back in my forehead, so that I don’t know if I’m horny or concerned.
Probably both.
“Now I really want pizza,” Lore mutters, resting back on the pillows and dropping the iPad with the remote app still running. “And as nice as this room is—”
“You’re sick of being horizontal without doing the mambo.” I reach the bed, and my dick is winning out over the wrinkles on my brain. Lore’s safe and here and mine, with that diamond glinting on her finger. I know it irks the crap out of her—the weight, if not the symbolism—but she hasn’t taken it off since the hospital. I’m amazed she hasn’t put a dent in the damn thing for all the times I’ve heard the sound of rock hitting glass or metal or wood. I make a mental note to call Harry Winston and get her something just as pink but slightly smaller, then lower myself onto the edge of the bed. “You give me the green light, I’ll book a ski weekend in Aspen. Or glassblowing lessons at a nudist colony in Idaho.”
“Har.” The single wry syllable is accompanied by a nose wrinkle that does the Fuzzy Bunny proud. Like she can’t help herself, her hand slides up my leg and under my T-shirt, seeking out the feel of skin-against-skin. “The American Gladiator batons turn up yet?”
She tickles my ribs, tracing her way up my chest and hiking the cotton up with it. “Love, if you want me naked, you only have to ask.”
“Well, the shiny must have worn clean off if I have to ask you to ditch your shirt,” she fires back, hitting me with that lopsided grin of hers.
“Just for that, I’m losing the pants, too.” It takes all of three seconds to shuck every stitch I have on, a few seconds more to backtrack to the end of the bed.
“Where are you going?” When she sits up, she winces.
Still, she’s a lot better than she was a week ago, and a lot less near-death than she was two weeks ago. The doctors at CasDec gave me credit for saving her, but it really was another one of our collaborations. Yet again, she managed to absorb the vampire blood and use it to heal faster than she would have without it.
Like a vamp can.
Or something.
Nobody really understands it scientifically, and I’m not the guy who’s going to question it. Lore’s here and mostly whole; aside from a long abdominal scar, a couple dissolvable stitches, and those disconcerting purple eye-circles, she’s as alive as someone can be. Sassy, and smart-mouthed, and obviously extremely, extremely horny.
And with me around, why not?
“I’m going Fuzzy Bunny hunting.” When she smothers a giggle, I press my finger to my lips and issue a stern, “Be vewy… vewy… quiet.”
Then I grasp two handfuls of the bedding and yank hard enough to untuck everything from the end of the mattress. I duck under them, inching my way up until my face hits her feet. She almost kicks me a good one, but I get a firm grip on her ankles and pull them inexorably apart.
“Who are you and what have you done with Dark Prince Super Serious?” She’s laughing uncontrollably now, peeking beneath the blankets and trying like hell to clamp her knees together. When my hands slide up the underside of her calves though, she sucks in a sharp breath. “Xaine…”
It’s muffled by the blankets, by how weak she still is, a reminder that I need to take it easy, even if it means throttling the dirtiest thoughts firing off in my brain right now. Even so, that doesn’t stop me from biting her very gently—no fangs necessary—on the inside of her ankle. She says my name a second time, only this time her
voice catches, and I can practically hear her capillaries dilate as her pulse kicks up. And it wouldn’t be gentlemanly at all to mention that I can scent her arousal, trapped under the blankets with nothing between me and the rabbit hole, so to speak.
Another slide, and I can lick the inner curve of Lore’s leg, just behind her knee. I keep waiting for her to pull the blankets off, grab me by the hair, and read me the riot act about how I don’t have any self-control at all. Instead, her legs splay open wider, an invitation if ever there was one, and more than I really needed because I was headed that direction anyway. My mouth skims over the place where I signed her skin with ink and needles; the tattoo is healed now, so I press my lips to it. It might not be possible to inject my claim into her blood like I wanted to, but I’ve stamped it across her flesh and put a ring on it, and that’s got to be enough to carry us both through. Nothing left to do but breathe her in, close my eyes, and let every single nuance of Lore soak into me.
I thought we wouldn’t make it back to this place.
For all my stupid-crazy hedonistic optimism, I was almost sure that Cas would get to put a bullet in my skull. Makes it something of a benediction to bow my head and kiss that holy place, to feel her shudder under and around me when I run my tongue along her slit and then delve deeper. Her clit is already hard, her lips flushed with arousal, and the scent of her is enough to get me drunk. Fuck booze and bars and Vegas; this is the only mind-altering substance I ever want.
Careful not to nick her with the fangs, I close my mouth around the spot that sets her off every time. It’s the kind of button you press to launch the fireworks, and I nudge at it with my tongue, advancing and retreating until her thighs clamp down around my ears and a needy cry bursts past her lips. I keep my arms hooked around her legs so she can’t wriggle because I know—I know—she’ll get overwhelmed. She’ll writhe. She’ll thrash.
If I let her.
But I’m not going to. This is going to be slow, and steady, and just short of everything she wants even if it’s more than what I should be giving her. When her back arches, I pause, exhaling softly against her swollen flesh, waiting to hear that sudden inhalation of breath that tells me she’s paying very close attention to what I’m going to do next.
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