by Donya Lynne
Sam stepped aside and waved her in, but those green eyes never faltered and held Cordray with an air of wary contempt. “Why are you here?” she said after shutting the door and relocking it.
Cordray glanced around the entryway that led into an impressive open floorplan. Dining room, kitchen, and living room all shared one massive, elegantly appointed space, separated only by changes in flooring and furniture. The windows were covered by blinds, as well as cream and gold opaque curtains.
“Nice home.” Cordray took off her dripping leather coat and held it out to Sam.
“Hang it up yourself.” Sam huffed with exasperation and walked away from her into the kitchen, then stopped and looked back at her. “Well? Are you coming? The mud room’s back here.”
With a catty smile, Cordray followed her into a wide room with an eight-foot rack dotted with heavy-duty hooks on one wall. A low shelf held two pairs of boots and a pair of gym shoes. Sam gestured impatiently toward one of the hooks, spun on her bare foot, and walked out.
“I can see why Micah likes you,” she said after hanging her coat and joining Sam in the kitchen.
Sam regarded her with a perturbed expression. “Why’s that?”
Cordray plopped down on one of the barstools. Water sloshed under her ass. Her hair and pants were soaked, but if she could make a quick in and out with her bounty, she could handle it. “Because you’ve got moxie.”
“Moxie?” Sam crossed her arms and leaned against the opposite counter, next to the fridge.
Cordray nodded and spun herself around on the rotating seat of the stool as if it were a merry-go-round. “Uh-huh. Moxie. Woman balls.” She grabbed the edge of the counter to stop spinning, her gaze trained on Sam.
“Something you seem to know a lot about.” Sam sucked her teeth, flashed her green peepers with a bob of her deceptively delicate eyebrows, and turned for the stove. “I’ll ask again. Why are you here, Cordray?” She grabbed the teapot and carried it to the sink.
“Micah didn’t tell you?”
“Should he have?” Sam switched on the faucet and began filling the pot.
Cordray drummed her fingers on the granite counter. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose the fact he took Trace without my permission and could get arrested for that might have slipped his mind.” She had no intention of turning Micah over to her brother for what he’d done, but Sam didn’t need to know that.
Sam slammed the metal teapot back on the stove and spun around, hands on her hips so that her robe parted to show off a patch of perfect, unblemished skin below her neck. “If you’re here to arrest Micah, you’ll have to go through me. I won’t let you touch him or Trace.” Sam wagged her finger at her. “Trace needs Micah right now. He was in bad shape when Micah brought him home, and—”
“Ooooooo, you are feisty, aren’t you? I like that in a woman.” Cordray let her gaze rake Sam up and down as she smiled and tilted her head suggestively to the side.
Cordray had been known to take females to bed as much as males, and Sam was exactly her type. Tall, blonde, and all spitfire. Might as well show Sam a little appreciation while she was here.
Sam sucked in a quick breath, swayed backward, and frowned as she secured her robe more tightly around her.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Cordray said with a coy grin. “I don’t bite.” She winked as her gaze took a little vacay down Sam’s toned calves. “Although . . . for you, I might make an exception.”
“Excuse me?”
She winked then spun herself around again as she flashed a catty smile. “Just get Trace for me, and I’ll be out of your way.”
“He’s unavailable.” Sam switched on the burner.
The tension in the kitchen was thick enough to bitch-slap.
“What do you mean, he’s unavailable?”
Scowling at her, Sam nabbed a cup and saucer from the cabinet.
Just one cup. Either she wasn’t going to have tea herself or she was about to be a bad hostess.
Sam set the cup and saucer on the counter. “Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because I said please.”
“No you didn’t.”
Cordray slid off the bar stool, strolled around the counter, and drew near Micah’s lovely mate. “Please,” she said seductively, slinking up beside her.
* * *
Sam pulled back.
What was Cordray’s story? The woman—female, whatever—had a barrier of barbed wire around her so thick it cut Sam’s thoughts just to think about trying to get through it. It was as if Cordray wanted to keep the entire planet at arm’s length, if you could consider the length of a football field arm’s length.
Sam was more than familiar with such behavior. Hadn’t she done the same thing after what she’d endured with Steve? He’d beaten her. He’d mentally and emotionally abused her. After leaving him and fleeing as far away as she could, hadn’t she erected a similar barrier around herself? Until she met Micah, she’d left as small a footprint as possible, never allowing anyone to get close, always keeping a layer of pushback between her and everyone around her.
Cordray reminded Sam of herself. A lot. Except Cordray seemed ten times worse. Not only did she push people off with her flippant attitude and mouthy jabs, but even her black, extreme attire and the tattoos that coated her neck and arms seemed to scream “Keep away!”
And what was up with her face? She looked like she’d recently been on the losing end of a fistfight with Sasquatch. Scuffs marred her cheek, and she had a gash on her swollen bottom lip that looked like it had been a profuse bleeder not too long ago.
In every way, Cordray was a walking billboard for the socially dysfunctional. And, the way Sam had done after leaving Steve, she would bet Cordray was using her abrasive behavior to protect herself from some pretty nasty demons.
Sam regarded her out of the corner of her eye.
“Please?” Cordray said again, slinking closer, no doubt in an effort to intimidate her.
Sam sighed and gestured to Cordray’s drenched hair and wet pants. “You’re dripping water all over my floor.” She shook her head and sidestepped in the direction of the laundry room. “Let me get you a towel and a change of clothes. I have a feeling you’re going to be here a while.”
Before she could turn away, she noticed Cordray’s perfectly curved, black eyebrows twist into a subtle frown as if she hadn’t expected Sam’s hospitality.
All the more evidence that Cordray was not what she tried to portray herself as. She wasn’t used to kindness, and it was becoming more and more obvious she had a lot of skeletons in her closet. Skeletons that only a heaping serving of unconditional love could exorcise.
In the laundry room, she found a folded pair of pale-pink sweats, a white baby-doll tee with faded-red, Greek lettering across the chest, and a towel. When she returned to the kitchen, Cordray was still standing where she’d left her, looking a little dumbfounded . . . and maybe a tad wary.
“Here.” Sam held the folded clothes toward her. “You can change in the bathroom.” She pointed toward the hall. “It’s the first door on the left.”
Cordray cautiously took the stack of clothes, flipped through them, and then curled her upper lip. “Pink? You want me to wear pink?”
Sam cleared her throat to prevent herself from laughing, and then crossed her arms as she leaned her hip against the counter. “It’s all I’ve got, honey. Take it or leave it.”
“Honey?” Cordray arched one eyebrow. “You do have moxie.”
Sam uncrossed her arms and held them out as if presenting the obvious. “I live with Micah. Moxie comes with the territory, babe.”
Cordray eyed her suspiciously. With a resigned frown, she carried the dry clothes out of the kitchen toward the hall bathroom. “This doesn’t make us friends, Sammy.”
Grinning, Sam turned toward the cabinet and grabbed a second teacup. “I didn’t think it did.”
“Just so that’s clear.”
“Crystal clear.”
&
nbsp; “Okay then.”
“Fine.”
Cordray disappeared into the hall, and a moment later, Sam heard the bathroom door click shut.
Micah would probably throw a fit, because he had ranted ad nauseam about Cordray for over two weeks. How she was a bitch. How she had been the one to put Trace in prison. How she was so far up King Bain’s ass there was nothing Micah and Trace could do to retaliate against her without fear of repercussions. And sure, Sam had bought into his animosity. When she had opened the door less than ten minutes ago to find a regal, beautiful woman—female—with sapphire eyes, long, crazy braids, a swatch of two-toned blue hair framing the left side of her face, and tattoos from here to Sunday standing on her porch, she had known in an instant who she was and had reacted defensively.
But now that she’d met Cordray, the phrase there are always two sides to every story came to mind. She felt Micah—and even Trace—had gotten her all wrong. After all, they were big, stupid men—males, whatever. They were warriors who thought first with their fists, second with their penises, and only when their first two thinking mechanisms were depleted did they turn to their brains for help.
Sam’s gut told her Cordray was simply misunderstood. Very misunderstood.
Not that Sam needed to be Cordray’s savior, but being that Cordray reminded her so much of herself, her heartstrings tugged a little for the woman—female.
She really needed to stop thinking in human terminology. Vampires were male and female. Humans were men and women. Maybe by the end of the decade she’d get with the lingo.
As she grabbed a box of herbal tea from the cabinet, she pondered what kind of trauma could make a tough-assed vampire like Cordray become so abrasive. Or maybe she’d donned the tough-as-nails persona because of some traumatic emotional wound, and she was really a sweetheart deep down.
Sweetheart. There was a word she couldn’t see anyone associating with that fireball changing into pink sweatpants in the hall bathroom. But if the past had shaped Cordray into living barbed wire, that meant whatever had happened had been harsh, cruel, and likely the equivalent of an emotional tsunami.
Sam thought back at her own life. She’d made a major misstep marrying Steve before she really knew him, and she still bore a scar on her abdomen to remind her of the abuse she’d suffered at his hand. But thanks to her upbringing, she’d been strong enough to break free. True, before she met Micah she’d lived every day in fear of Steve catching up to her and dragging her back home, where he would have made her a prisoner, but she’d had the strength to get away. That alone was a step most abused women were too frightened to take.
Fear made for a treacherous ally. It kept you in bad situations when what you really needed was to find the courage to strike out and make a new reality for yourself. She had let fear rule her decisions far too long, even though she’d broken from Steve within a couple of years. But those two years had affected her terribly. Even now, within the safety of Micah’s protection and knowing he had wiped Steve’s memory clean of her, she still looked over her shoulder when she went out in public. She still feared giving her real name anywhere she went. Using the credit cards Micah had given her still gave her anxiety. Paying with cash had become such a way of life to protect herself from being found that using a credit card even now made her nerves quake. Part of her was still terrified Steve would remember her and use the credit cards to track her down. Yes, the name on the accounts was Micah’s, but the name on the cards was hers.
If just a couple of years with Steve could fill her with that much insecurity and dread, what would it be like for an immortal vampire to endure abuse or at least some devastating emotional blow for decades or even centuries?
What would it be like for Cordray, for example?
She’d had a lot more time to suffer. Longer for the pain to seep into her soul and alter not just her outlook, but her behavior, as well.
She was making a huge assumption about Cordray’s past, but Sam would bet a million dollars that Cordray had been severely hurt at some point. The question was when, how, and why? And how had that damage manifested into the woman—female—Cordray was today?
She poured hot water into the teacups and dropped a bag of herbal tea into each. Maybe what Cordray needed was a friend. Not that Sam necessarily wanted to volunteer for the job, but a friend might be able to help Cordray sift through the shit.
One thing was certain, though. She couldn’t let Cordray think she felt sorry for her. If Cordray thought that, the thorny atmosphere around her would just get thicker and draw more blood. Cordray was one female who clearly didn’t take well to compassion or sympathy, so Sam wouldn’t give it to her. But she didn’t have to show compassion and sympathy to feel it, and feel it she did.
She took a careful sip of her tea and gazed down the hall toward the bathroom. Hopefully, Micah would understand.
* * *
Cordray stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror. Pink? Really? Pink sweatpants? And pale pink at that? As if white had bitch-slapped red into submission then ejaculated a bucketful of semen on it.
And then there was the shirt.
Young.
Cutesy.
Feminine.
And one hundred percent not her. It didn’t even fit. Not really. It fit everywhere but around her boobs, which pressed against the fabric and stretched the red, Greek lettering into distorted, geometric shapes.
In the movie Nightmare on Elm Street, there was a scene where Freddie Krueger pushed his face against what was supposed to be a sheet but looked like a layer of latex. It stretched over his face, smashing his features until he used his knife-fingers to slice himself free.
That’s what her boobs reminded her of in this shirt.
She was so not taking a selfie with this getup on. And no one else would, either, if they valued their ability to pass waste without a colostomy bag.
With a perturbed sigh, she hung her wet clothes over the shower curtain rod, set her combat boots to the side, and grabbed the towel, draped it over her shoulders, and began unraveling her braids. Her hair would dry faster if unbraided, but damn, she hated undoing Aiden’s impressive work. That two-year-old mixed-blood had mad skills when it came to hair.
Five minutes later, a small pile of elastic bands sat on the bathroom counter, and her wavy, black-and-blue hair spilled over her shoulders and hid her breasts. That was better.
She dabbed the tip of her index finger against the scuff marks on her cheek then poked at the laceration just to the inside of her lip ring, which constricted her swollen bottom lip like a belt that was two sizes too small. Her injuries appeared better than they had an hour ago, though, and seemed to be healing nicely. Her vision was even back to normal. By nightfall, her face would look good as new, thanks to her vampire heritage.
Granted, she was only half vampire. She was also half human. Her human half allowed her to go out in the sun. Full-bloods couldn’t do that. But vampire genes trumped all others, so while she was granted certain gifts from her mortal side, her immortal side ensured she was more vampire than human. So much so, she was classified as a vampire. A mixed-blood, but a vampire nonetheless. She still had fangs and still had to feed off blood. Furthermore, those high-octane vampire genes she’d inherited from her royal father, along with regular feedings, kept her healing powers in tip-top shape.
When she returned to the kitchen, Sam was leaning against the counter, sipping her tea. Cordray noticed a second cup awaiting her where she had been sitting earlier.
Well, lookie there. Sam had decided to play nice hostess after all.
Without saying a word, she sat down and lifted her cup. Chamomile. Not her usual poison, but it would do. She took a sip, her gaze meeting Sam’s.
Neither spoke for a long time. It wasn’t in Cordray’s nature to accept charity, nor was it in her nature to say thank you when such charity was given. If Sam couldn’t deal with that, tough shit.
After a few more tense moments, Sam set her cup a
nd saucer on the counter. “How does everything fit?”
She smirked, set her own cup down, and stood, pulling back her hair. “Like my boobs are pregnant.”
Laughter burst from Sam’s mouth. She quickly bit it back. “I’m sorry. Um . . .” She turned away and tried to wipe the smile off her face.
“You’re punishing me for being such a bitch earlier, aren’t you?” Cordray let her hair fall over her chest again and sat back down.
“No, I . . . uh . . .” Sam poured herself another cup of tea and offered the teapot in Cordray’s direction.
She waved it off. “It’s okay, you can admit it. I was a bitch. I deserve it.” She lifted her cup and blew over the tea’s surface.
Sam set the teapot back on the stove. “Well, maybe I’m punishing you just a little.”
“I thought so.” Cordray grinned and caressed the rim of her teacup with her fingertips as she set it back in the saucer.
The two eyed each other for a moment, and then Sam burst out laughing again, almost spilling her tea as she haphazardly set the cup on the counter. “‘Like my boobs are pregnant’?”
Cordray glanced down and chuckled, unable to hold back any longer. “Well, yeah. I mean, look at this.” She lifted her hair and glanced down at her chest. “Don’t you have any cleavage, Sam? I mean, my God! I’m like two basketballs trying to fit inside a Pringles can.” She flipped her hair over her shoulders and patted her palms over her breasts, which made Sam laugh harder.
And just like that, she and Sam went from being mortal enemies to tentative friends, laughing and bridging the gap between them. Sam wasn’t the bad guy here. She was just mated to one. Cordray couldn’t hold Micah’s and Trace’s misgivings against her.
And, honestly, she liked Sam. That woman had big lady balls, but in a good way. Don’t mess with her, because she wouldn’t just sit back and be walked on. Sam was a fighter. She’d taken on drecks to save Micah’s life, and she’d almost died from Apostle’s venom before Micah gave her his and made her his davala. The transformation had to have been painful as hell, maybe even excruciating, and now Sam was taking her new body and the strange new world of vampires, drecks, and the supernatural in stride. The woman was a fortress of mental strength and fortitude.