"No. I don't. Just like when you told me your name is Tad or that you're a man. You tell me something and I don't question it. If I didn't want something I'd expect you to do the same for me."
"Thank you."
I nodded and then he released my hands and pulled me back to him. I'd barely gotten his pants down his hips before I had my fingers between his thighs, rubbing his hard nub as he trembled against my palm. He was wet and ready for me. I turned him around, barely keeping him from tripping over his pants as they tangled around his legs. Within seconds I was in him, both of us gasping at that first contact. I kissed him. He pushed back against me. And then we were together, each of us riding our pleasure through waves as I held him against me.
He finished quickly, mumbling desperately for me the whole time. I wanted to stay with him longer, to feel his heat bursting through me for just a few more minutes, but I couldn't. I needed release and I found it within him.
Shaking, panting, and barely able to stand, I kept him there with one arm around him and the other bracing us against the wall.
"I love you," he whispered.
I kissed his sweat dampened neck, and then his cheek.
"It's okay if you don't say it back. I know it's fast."
In my vampire life I'd never needed anyone's permission. Not for anything and certainly not for love. But somehow Tad saying that he loved me, that made what I was feeling for him okay. "I do love you," I mumbled against the back of his neck.
I stepped back, but only enough to help him get his pants back on. Once he was decent again I fixed my own clothes. I didn't want to separate though. I kept my arm around his side as we went out to the living room.
Chapter Fourteen
Tad
It took a few days for Vallen to secure a private tour of Keller College, but once I was there, I knew I was in love. It was set up in the lowest level of an office building, which I thought was a little weird, until I began to read the brochure.
"They offer morning and evening classes?" I asked Vallen as we walked around. The tour had been simple; just a man pointing out the office and the six different classrooms. It wasn't a big campus, and it definitely wasn't like the colleges that I saw on TV or in the movies, but maybe the vampires didn't need the added space of dorms and gyms and things.
Vallen nodded and looked over my shoulder at the brochure. "A lot of vampires work jobs, which are at night. Most vampires work ten at night to four in the morning. It's only six hours compared to a human's typical eight hour work day, but we also work six days a week generally. That's flexible though and definitely varies between employers. Sometimes Ainsley does a ten hour night if I need him to and then he either doesn't have to come in at all the next night or I only ask him to come in for a few hours in the early evening. But Keller tries to accommodate the student's schedules so before or after work there are some classes available. Most classes though seem to be online. When I was here there were very few people in each class. I think my largest class had ten people in it. The average was probably half that."
We found an empty classroom to sit down in and I opened the brochure across the table. "What did you take here?"
"A few general classes. The council encourages everyone to take some classes and to keep learning so that our society doesn't become stagnant. The humans are always learning and we want to stay in the world with them so it's best to stay up to date with what they know. For vampires who can't afford the cost of tuition the council is willing to make arrangements with them, as you've seen." He leaned against me and slipped his arm around my back. It was a simple gesture of him putting his hands on me in public, but it still sent a little thrill through me. He was mine and when I kissed his chin I was claiming him as mine just as much as I would have been by rubbing my scent all over him.
"Do you want to go here?" he asked.
"Yes." I just needed to figure out a way to do what the council had asked me to. "I think I should meet with my dad." I felt the instant Vallen stiffened against me. It was as if he was shouting how much he didn't like that idea, even as his face gave away nothing. "I'll be okay."
Vallen looked at me, then away. "I don't want to tell you what to do, or what not to do."
"Then don't try." I wouldn't have wanted him to either. I needed to be able to live my own life without him telling me what to do. I didn't need another man trying to control me. That was what the whole thing of leaving my pack had been about. I needed my own path and Vallen couldn't control me on mine.
He pulled me close and kissed my temple. I took a breath and reminded myself that this was Vallen. I loved him. "Why don't you like the idea of me seeing my father? At some point, if I manage to do what the council wants me to, I'll have to talk to him again."
"I know, but he's also disrespectful to you and I don't want him to try to upset you. If you want to see him, I won't try to stop you. But I would like it to be at night, and I would like to go with you. If that's not possible, for whatever reason, then at the very least I'd like you to take your phone and enough cash to be able to get a taxi if you need one."
I pulled back enough so that I could kiss him. "Thank you for being worried about me."
"I'm always going to be worried about you." He brought his hand to my stomach, and I knew what he was saying, even without him saying a word. We were having a child. He was worried about both of us.
I slid my hand over his. "I won't do anything to risk them," I promised.
"I know you won't. You're going to be a great father."
My breath caught as he turned away from me. My gender was always so easy, so simple with him. He didn't hesitate at all. Vallen pulled out his phone and checked the time. "There's somewhere that I want to take you, but they're only open for another hour. Will you go with me?"
"Where?" I asked. Not that I wouldn't go with him wherever he wanted to take me.
He took my hand and then he was leading me out of the college and back out to his car. "It's a surprise." He winked at me and I had no idea what was going on but I wasn't about to say no. Not when he had my curiosity piqued and definitely not when he was smiling at me as gently as he was right then.
Ten minutes later I found out what the surprise was as he pulled into a giant store dedicated just to baby stuff. I stared at it, my stomach getting tight as my heart started to race.
"What's wrong?"
I shook my head. There wasn't anything wrong.
"Then why is your heart beating so much faster?"
I rubbed at my chest. "You can hear that?"
Vallen gave my hand a squeeze. "I'm a vampire. I can always hear your heartbeat. It's just something I generally try to ignore."
"I never thought of going to a store like this. I mean, I knew they existed. I've watched a lot of TV so I'm learning from that. But this is a store for moms. I'm worried that we won't fit in here. Or I won't at least."
His expression softened and his eyebrows drew together as he turned to consider the store too. "I hadn't thought of that. To me, this is a baby store where parents go to get stuff for their kids, or people go to get presents for those other people who have babies. For me, this isn't a mother only kind of thing, but I also don't think about things like you do. I don't see the world like you do. And that's okay. So if you don't want to go in now, we won't. But if you want to, I won't leave your side. I'd like to go buy things for our baby at some point, and I like touching things before I buy them, but if you don't want to do it today that's okay. If you don't want to go into one of these stores at all that's fine too. We can buy a lot of it online and I'll shop here by myself. You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do. Not this or anything else."
I'm pretty sure that it was the idea of Vallen shopping for our baby without me that had me getting off my butt and practically dragging him into the store with me. "We'll shop for our kid together," I said, a little more fiercely than I'd meant to.
He just smiled at me though. Then he kissed me, right there
by the shopping carts. We only had half an hour to get our shopping done before the store closed, but that was plenty of time to get a few things like a crib. We both liked dark wood and the classic style.
I stumbled when we got to the clothes though. I wanted to pick our baby out something, but deciding on the colors just made me feel squeamish. And then there were the sayings like 'Mommy's Little Man' and I was pretty much done with the whole thing and willing to let our kid run around naked until they decided how to dress themselves and could pick out their own clothes.
"Do you see anything more plain than these? And maybe not bright pink too?" I asked him. I really hoped there was something.
It took a few minutes, but then Vallen came back with a few sets of jeans and plain tshirts. They didn't have cute sayings, or even cute animals, but they didn't make my stomach twist either. He'd brought me a bunch of sizes too. From newborn all the way up to a year old. It was a lot of clothes, and I didn't even want to think about the price tags, but they all went into the cart.
"Okay. That's better." I was relieved. I'd been upset, and worried, and he'd helped make it all better. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
We grabbed some onesies too, and some swaddle blankets, and a lot of sets of bottles and lotions and things. Humans apparently needed a lot of stuff for their babies. We hadn't had most of this stuff in the pack. I didn't even know what most of the stuff in the store was for, but when we left my arms were full of bags and then, when we got home, my bedroom had a large pile of bags stashed into the corner. The crib was in a box, leaning against the wall. I didn't want to put it together right away. Maybe tomorrow, but not tonight.
"How long until you have to go to work?" I asked him as we settled onto the couch. I had a delivery menu open on my phone. He had a bottle of blood in his hand. Italian sounded really good. Stuffed shells, garlic bread, and cheesecake. I licked my lips.
"About two hours. Are you going to order some dinner for yourself?"
"Yeah. Definitely." I was suddenly starving.
He pulled out his phone while I started my order. After I was done I checked on what he was doing, to see him frowning at a bunch of photos on a home builder site. "Are we moving?" I didn't want to move at all. I loved his house, and I loved the water. I'd thought about raising our child here on this cove.
He put his phone down and met my gaze. "I thought you might be more comfortable in a house beside mine, something where our kid could walk between our houses and be safe doing so, but so that you could still have your own privacy without worrying about me being around."
I glared at him for a long few moments. "A few hours ago you said that you loved me."
"Yes, and I do. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to assume that you want to stay here with me, as much as I'd love that."
I crawled across the couch and kissed him. "Don't be stupid. I'm staying here with you."
He smirked, and then he kissed me. We lay together on the couch, watching TV with our arms wrapped around each other until my food came. Not long after that he had to go to work and I was left in his house with nothing to do but watch TV.
It didn't take me long to get bored. I'd only been out in the world for a little over a week and I was already catching re-runs.
I abandoned the TV to get something productive done. There wasn't much to do. Vallen already kept things neat and I'd grown up in the pack where cleaning up after myself had been the expectation. But there was something I could do before I went to bed.
I started moving my things into Vallen's bedroom. I hung my clothes up in the closet. I still needed to get Ainsley's clothes dry cleaned and back to him, so I scheduled a pick up with the dry cleaner and bagged up his clothes. They said I could leave them on the porch for pick up so I did and then I was back to hanging up my new clothes from Patrick. I only took up about a fourth of Vallen's mostly empty closet.
The more I thought about it, the more I knew that I had to talk to my dad again. It was more than just me wishing things had been better between us. Or that we'd had any kind of a real relationship at all. It was that he was one of the alphas in Washington, one of four, and I needed to make peace with him if I was going to have the life that the council had promised me. I couldn't move forward with him how we were, so I needed to figure out a way to work with him.
And that required talking to him. My hands were shaking as I pulled out my phone and typed in his number. He would probably still be up. I hoped he was anyway.
"Hello?" he gruffly snapped at me.
I swallowed thickly. "Hi Dad."
"Caroline, you've got some nerve calling me now after you decided to run away with a vampire. What do you want?"
For starters, I wanted to throw my phone across the room, but I needed that phone. So I took a breath and started again. "Okay, then, Novak. I would like to bridge the gap between the vampires and the werewolves. I've been asked to be the vampire liaison to the packs. Would you like to meet for dinner sometime this week?" And, one more thing. "And my name is Tad."
He had the nerve to laugh at me. "Sure, Caroline, we'll get a meal. Maybe talking to you face to face will get you to realize what a mistake you made. But it'll be lunch. And you'll come alone. I don't need those blood suckers around me. I assume you remember the diner near the pack?"
I chose to hold off on arguing about my name for later. "I know it."
"Tuesday at noon?"
"Sure."
He hung up on me, and I was actually a bit relieved to be done talking to him. He had given me three days to come up with a reasonable argument of why the werewolves and vampires should put away years of animosity toward each other and suddenly decide to work together. It felt like a lost cause even before I began, but I really wanted this to work. Not because I cared about what the packs did. I was done with that life, and with them. But I wanted the life that the council was offering me. I wanted my college paid for. I wanted a job after I was done. I wasn't worried about being indebted to the council. That was fine with me really.
I should have probably let Vallen know what was going on before it got too much later. I was tired, and probably going to go to bed soon and I wanted to talk to him before I did that. But he was at work, so I considered just texting him.
I missed him though. I wanted to talk to him again, even if he was busy. I called him and laid back on the couch with my free hand over my stomach.
"Hey," he said, picking up almost instantly.
I smiled up at the ceiling. "Hi. How's work?"
He chuckled and I heard something squeak, like maybe he was getting out of his chair. "Pretty slow tonight. Just lots of emails really. How's life back home?"
I wished that he was there with me, that we could fall asleep together. "It's okay. I missed you."
"I miss you too. I can answer these emails back home at the office if you want me there. I had a meeting scheduled, but he rescheduled for tomorrow."
I definitely wanted him back, but not if it was going to be a hassle. "That's up to you. Why I was calling though is that I'm going to have lunch with my dad. On Tuesday."
He was silent for a few seconds and I knew he wasn't happy about that one bit.
"Vallen, you can't be mad," I told him.
He dragged out his sigh. "I'm not mad. Well, not at you anyway. You, I'm worried about. Him, yeah I'm mad at him. But that's not on you. I assume he chose lunch because then I wouldn't be there?"
"Yeah, and he said that I had to come alone. No vampires." That sounded really bad, and I rushed my words to cover my nervousness. "I'm sure it'll be fine. He just doesn't like vampires. And you probably didn't really like werewolves before me. Right? So it's going to be okay. Nothing to worry about."
I heard tapping, like he was playing with a pen. "Sure. Did he use your name?"
"No," I mumbled.
"Tad..." He sounded so frustrated.
"It'll be okay. I promise." At that point I wasn't sure who I was trying to convince more.
"I'll come home. Can I get you anything on the way? There's a pastry shop on the way. They're human but they're open late. I think they have cheesecake if you want one."
That sounded really good. "Yes, please. You don't have to come home right now though, Vallen. It's not like anything's wrong. I'm okay here."
"I know I don't, but now I'm worried about you and if I'm going to be distracted while I work I'd rather be distracted at home with you rather than here and thinking about you. Ainsley will come with me and work in the office for a bit too. I think he would like the change of scenery too. He likes the lake."
"I like it too." I got up and started to straighten things up. The house wasn't dirty at all, but I fluffed the pillows. It was habit and I wanted the house to look nice and not like someone who had never been let out in public before was crashing there. "So I'll see you too soon?"
"Definitely. Even though I'm upset, I'm glad you called."
"Me too."
On Tuesday I laid in bed as long as I could with Vallen beside me. It was raining but I didn't mind. I liked the chill that had settled into the house. I liked seeing the rain splash over the lake. It was nearly ten before I dragged myself out of bed and even then I was slow to get going. I laid in the bath for half an hour before I realized that I couldn't spend that much time just laying around, as much as I wanted to.
I put on a sweater and some of the nice pants Patrick had made me. I loved his work. I'd need to get the pants extended a bit soon, but I wasn't showing yet, even though I was gaining a bit of weight with all the junk food and delivery that I wanted. When I was dressed I kissed Vallen, waking him up.
"Hey, it's almost time for me to go," I told him as I knelt down on the floor in front of him.
He scrunched up his face and I knew what he was thinking, but everything was going to be just fine. "If he gives you any trouble, don't take it. Okay?"
"Deal. I won't take his crap." I smiled at him, and kissed him again. Then I was leaving, and he went back to sleep. I had my phone with me, and I'd scheduled with the vampire car service the night before. He was right on time at eleven-thirty and I slid into the back of his silver sedan.
Defying His Fate Page 12