by L. E. Wilson
"I thought that's why you went to kickboxing class?"
"It is. But beating on a bag can only do so much."
"I hear ya," she agreed, thinking of her own lack of a sex life up until now. "Ok. Let's get back out there. And Heather?"
"Yeah?"
"I swear I wouldn't ask this of you if I didn't honestly know the guy was bad news."
Heather gave her an affectionate smile. "I know. Don't worry. I'll behave."
"Thank you," she told her earnestly.
Brock was standing at the window when they came back out. Turning around, his eyes went directly to Heather, but his smile faded when she averted her eyes and took a seat across the room on the barstool at the kitchen counter.
His eyes skipped over to Grace, but she just returned his stare with a cold one of her own, daring him to say something. With a sigh of resignation and a last longing glance Heather's way, he went back over to the couch to join Grace.
With no further ado, she demanded, "Tell me how you can help me get Aiden away from those thugs." She hoped that her saying "thugs" rather than "demons" would indicate to him that he'd been correct. Heather knew nothing about the supernatural beings they were dealing with.
"Well, I don't know that Aiden is with them anymore," he admitted.
"What do you mean? Did he escape?"
"Not exactly. I think he may have gotten some help from some...acquaintances...of mine," he told her, with an emphasis on acquaintances.
Acquaintances? Ohhh. Did he mean other werewolves?
"Do you know this for sure?" she asked hopefully.
He shook his head. "No. I don't. But I was...with them, when I came across you and your friend and saw what was going on. I followed you, and they stayed there to help."
"Well, can't you just, like, call them or something, and ask?" Heather asked.
"Uh. No. I don't have a phone." He held up his hand before she could suggest that he use hers. "And I don't know any of their numbers off the top of my head."
"How many of your 'friends' were there with you when you found us?"
He returned his attention to Grace. "There were four others besides me."
"Would that have been enough to take them out?"
"I don't know."
"It doesn't sound like enough guys to me," Heather interjected, turning to Grace. "You said there were at least ten of those ugly guys, plus the Suits that you snuck away from. Right?"
Grace nodded.
"What if they went back to help their friends? Four guys wouldn't do much damage." Her face lit up as a thought suddenly occurred to her. "Unless they were packing some serious firepower! Did they have guns?" she asked Brock.
"Uh, no," he told her, smirking a bit when her face fell.
Grace flopped back onto the cushions, thinking furiously. This dude seemed to be on the up and up about everything supernatural that was happening around here. She wondered if he would know why they were all after the box.
Jumping up, she retrieved it from the bedroom where she'd left it and brought it out to Brock. "Do you happen to know anything about this?"
His eyes widened as he reached for it with a tentative hand. "Where did you get that?"
"I kind of accidentally stole it," she told him with no remorse whatsoever.
Opening the lid, he reached in and removed the red felt material to reveal the engraved picture of the dagoba underneath.
"No fucking way," he breathed. His eyes remained riveted to the box as he asked her, "Do you even realize what you have here?"
"Well, obviously not, or I wouldn't be asking you."
Snapping the lid shut, he grabbed Grace by the upper arm and stood up, pulling her along with him.
"Hey! Let go!" she yelled.
Heather hopped down off of her stool to help her friend, but stopped where she was when Brock told them both, "We need to get out of here. NOW. Both of you are coming with me. Get ready." Letting go of Grace's arm, he slapped his hands together. "Come on, ladies! Let's go! Let's GO!"
Jarred from their shock, Grace exchanged an anxious look with Heather, and then they both ran to get their shoes and coats. The alarm in his voice was all the encouragement they needed.
As soon as they had their stuff, he shooed them towards the fire escape.
Dammit. Looks like she may need to enlighten Heather after all, but she was determined to hold off on that as long as possible.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Josiah watched as Leeha paced the floor within their temporary home. Her white, ethereal gown billowed out behind her like a silken cloud with every stride of her long, shapely legs. Her deep red hair was piled high on her head in careless disarray, exposing the graceful curve of her neck. The skin revealed on the back of her neck flushed and damp from her fretfulness.
He longed to sink his fangs into that sweet skin there while he sank his dick into her tight cunt from behind, but knew he would not be welcomed right now. She had much on her mind, and so he bided his time.
Nonetheless, he couldn't stop his hungry eyes from following her near-nude form as she swept across the room. They darted back and forth from the back of her neck to the perfect curve of her ass, unable to decide which view was his favorite.
When she turned and headed his way again, he had to resist the urge to moan aloud. The white gown did nothing to hide the dusky pink of her areolas, or her nipples, hardened from scraping against the fabric. In contrast to the bodice, the skirt of the dress slithered in and out of her legs as she walked, only teasing him with brief glimpses of the soft red curls between her thighs.
The ache to have her naked and breathless beneath him was so strong that it was nearly painful, but this feeling was nothing new. He wanted her, always. Ever since she'd made him a vampire, and had made him hers. His desire for her body and her blood was a constant longing that never went away.
His eyes crawled back up to her neck and along her striking jaw to worship the flawlessness of her face, then narrowed at what he saw there. Her timeless features lined with worry and fatigue. Seeing his mistress like this infuriated him. Her blood red eyes, so unique and chilling in their wickedness, fluttered around the room without landing on anything in particular. She'd barely fed or slept for weeks.
All over that fucking vampire - Aiden.
He thought they'd be done with that douchebag Brit once he'd been used for a possession, but noooo. She was even more obsessed with him now than she had been before, if that was even possible.
Between her affection for Aiden and her fixation with being Luukas' queen, Josiah was beginning to wonder why she even bothered to keep him around. Other than to have someone to slake her lust on, he was nothing but her whipping boy.
He lifted his chin. He needed to be patient. The roles were going to change, and he just needed to chill until the time came.
She didn't realize what an asset he was to her right now, but someday she would. Someday she would pay more attention to him and understand all the things he did for her, see all the ways in which he protected her. Someday she would realize how much he meant to her.
Someday.
"I have to get him back, Josiah," she said.
His anger flashed instant and hot at her words. Gritting his teeth, he tried to mask his temper from her. He needn't have bothered. She was too preoccupied to notice.
She shot an agitated look his way as she continued to pace, her movements jerky and unstable, like her psyche.
"I have to," she repeated. "I must try to talk to him again."
"Why? He nearly killed you before," he reminded her, but she only smiled.
"Aiden would never harm me."
Losing the tentative grip he had on his emotions, Josiah jumped out of his seat and moved to stand directly in her path, halting her endless pacing. He'd been listening to this shit for weeks. He'd had enough.
"He's not Aiden anymore, dammit! He's that fucking demon! The demon that did NOT want to come here, but that you brought out anyway. T
he demon that explicitly told you not to bring him here. The demon that could put an end to our world as we know it with nothing more than a wave of his hand. What the HELL were you thinking?"
His blood ran cold the moment the words were out of his mouth.
Ah, fuck.
He really needed to learn to keep his goddamned mouth shut. But then again...
Cocking her head jerkily to the side like a bird, those disturbing eyes of hers swept over him like he was no more than a bug about to be squashed under the stiletto heel of her shoe.
Which was exactly what he was to her, he knew. For now.
"You would do well to remember your place, Josiah," she said, her voice deceptively quiet.
He bowed his head and dropped his eyes. "I didn't mean any disrespect. I just worry about you is all."
His heart pounded while he waited to see what she would do. It was always a gamble with her. You never knew how she was going to react. Which was just one of the things that made her so dangerous, and so exciting.
It turned him on.
Though he was a few inches taller and many pounds heavier than she, he was completely at her mercy, and he liked it.
For his mistress was no normal vampire.
His fangs shot down and his engorged dick strained against his pants, the zipper cutting painfully into his flesh as he waited to see what punishment she would dole out for his insolence.
Something soft touched his cheek, and he raised his head to find her gazing at him with a tender expression. "You always look out for me, my love. How can I be angry at you for that?"
The breath he hadn't realized he was holding rushed out of his lungs as his dick withered in disappointment. But he dared not voice such things. If she knew how much he enjoyed her punishments, she would stop doling them out, just to be spiteful.
Instead, he took her pale hand in both of his darker ones, and kissed the back of it reverently. Falling to his knees in front of her, he bunched her gown in his hands and stuck his face in the folds, breathing deep to draw in her scent. "Forgive me, mistress. I had no right to speak to you like that. I do worry for you though."
Her fingers slid through the tight curls on the top of his head, rubbing against his scalp with affection, at first.
A gasp of surprise escaped his throat when she suddenly tightened her fingers in the strands in an unyielding grip. He smiled at the sudden pain.
Ah, fuck yes.
Yanking his face out of her dress, she sneered down at him, "I forgive you, Josiah...this time...but speak to me like that again and I will have you whipped to within an inch of your immortal life."
"Yes, mistress," he breathed. His blood rushed to his groin at the threat, and he closed his eyes so she wouldn't see how desperately he desired her to do just that.
"Now get up," she snapped.
There was the evil bitch he knew and loved.
She resumed her erratic pacing as he took up his stance by the door again. It was all he could to resist the urge to palm himself to relieve the ache there, but he kept his hands at his sides. If she sensed his discomfort, she gave no sign.
She picked up the conversation where it had left off as if his little outburst had never occurred. "I need to speak to Waano again. He will see my side of things. He will help me, Josiah. You'll see. I just need to make him an offer he can't refuse."
"What would a demon want that he couldn’t just take for himself?"
The red oceans of Leeha's eyes swirled and sparked, a self-satisfied smile curling up the corners of her lips. "Why, souls. Of course."
Josiah felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
"Souls?"
She nodded.
He wanted to ask her how the hell she thought she'd be able to harness a soul, and then be able to give it to a demon. But honestly, he was afraid to know. For as much as he scoffed at the idea, he had no doubt that she had discovered a way to do just that.
And it terrified the hell out of him.
"But how will you get him here?" Josiah asked. "If he doesn't want to come?"
She halted her pacing, her lips turning up into a devilish smile. "He'll have no choice. My blood brought Aiden's body back to life. It runs through his veins. He is a part of me now, and I of him." She looked up at him, her eyes bright. "I'll just call him, and tell him to come to me."
Josiah shook his head. "It won't work. It never worked with the others."
Slithering across the floor to him, she placed her palms flat against his chest. "It will work."
He stiffened at her touch, jealousy eating away at his insides. "How do you know?"
"Because unlike the others, I can feel him. The blood I gave him calls to me. Aiden is still in there, and he is still vampire. The demon has not taken over his body, and therefore will not resist the blood call. He will come."
This was not playing out the way Josiah had imagined. Not at all. But he was having a hard time remembering that with her soft, full breasts pushing against his chest.
Her hand wandered down to the bulge in his pants and squeezed, hard.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brock grabbed Heather's hand in his much larger one and pulled her along behind him, forcing her to pick up her pace as the three of them ran down the alley outside her apartment.
Grace reached the end of it first and hesitated. She looked left, then right, and then back over her shoulder at Brock with a panicked expression.
"Go right," he ordered as he caught up to her. Placing his free hand on the small of her back, he urged her to go ahead of him. Once Grace took off, he let go of Heather and sent her out behind her friend. A quick glance behind him confirmed what he'd been afraid would happen as soon as he saw that box.
They were being followed by demons. A LOT of demons. And the fuckers were currently bottlenecking at the opposite end of the alley.
Their only hope was to outrun them until the sun came up. Luckily for them the bodies the demons possessed were still vampire bodies, and would burst into flames within minutes of being exposed to the sunlight.
If he could keep the girls alive until sunrise, they would have a good chance of getting away without being tracked.
Jogging behind the girls as they weaved in and out of the people on the street, he racked his brain for a plan that would put some distance between them and those things on their tails. Failing to protect the witch...yes, he knew she was a witch...and her clueless but incredibly sexy friend certainly wouldn't earn him any brownie points with the new wolf pack, or the vampire they'd obviously come here to help.
The same vampire he could smell all over Grace.
Earlier that night, Brock had been hot on the trail of a group of demons. He'd hunted them to the park with the silly ball sculpture, but had stayed hidden, curious as to what they were up to.
Staying just inside the tree line, he'd seen the entire thing go down: The demons chasing off the people at the park, then digging underneath the sculpture. He'd seen the humans in the fancy suits arriving, and Grace and the vamp appear from a secret hatch when they'd gotten rousted out of what had to be an underground hideaway. They'd had a fight, and then she'd left with the humans while the demons physically detained the vampire.
Then the other wolves had arrived. He'd scented them just a few seconds before they'd shown themselves, and knew right away that they were foreign to the city that had become his home. Staying to the trees, he'd watched as they'd quickly shifted and attacked the demons.
Unwilling to reveal himself to a strange pack in the middle of a fight, he'd decided to follow the female that had gotten into the car with the humans.
Shifting into his own wolf form, he'd kept to the shadows and loped along behind the cars, moving fast and keeping out of sight of the few humans who were still out and about.
The entire time he was chasing the cars, he'd been wondering what the hell he was thinking, getting involved with something that was obviously none of his business. He was risking a lot by
doing this, and he had no pack to protect him if anything went wrong.
Brock was a lone wolf, exiled from his pack three years before. Something that was practically unheard of. He'd wandered aimlessly for a while until he came upon this city and its unusual population of possessed vampires. It had taken him a while to figure out what they were, but once he had, he began to do what he did best.
He started to hunt them.
That was what he'd been doing when he'd followed that group to the park and saw what was going down. Instinct alone had made him follow the witch.
He had no reason to help this girl, but something was telling him it was what he needed to do.
When they'd arrived downtown and she'd given the humans the slip, he was glad he'd listened. Her actions showed him beyond a doubt that she was just as much a victim as the vampire she'd left behind.
And now that he knew that she had possession of that box, and the clue inside of it, he really had no choice but to get her somewhere safe, and to keep that box out of the hands of the things that were following them. Hopefully not getting himself killed by demons or an unfamiliar wolf pack in the process.
On the other hand, if he'd known he was going to get the added bonus of meeting her exquisite friend, he wouldn't have thought twice about it.
Heather.
Just her name alone brought to mind the rolling pink and purple hills that were native to his Scottish homeland, and the sweet childhood kisses that were stolen there from the neighbor's daughter. In contrast to his innocent memories of his first love, the reality of Heather's voluptuous curves and honey-musk scent was all woman, and made him think dirty, dirty thoughts.
He wanted to sink his teeth into her soft flesh, and then kiss her wounds until she was whimpering like a bitch in heat underneath him. And that was just for starters.
But he'd never be able to do that or anything else if he didn't get her and Grace somewhere far, far away.