When Laurent noticed the way that Joe was smiling at Eden, the jealousy that jolted through him was as strong as it was unexpected.
“I did no such thing.”
Eden was furious, and totally oblivious to the werewolf’s attempt at charm. Good.
“I think explanations—and introductions—are in order,” Laurent said, trying to grab control of the situation.
“Does your mother know you’re here?” Joe asked him.
Laurent’s world shattered at that question. The only thing he was able to grab hold of was the front of Joe’s shirt, just before he slammed the werewolf up against the wall.
Joe managed to grab the thumb and little finger of the hand that was choking him and twisted hard.
The vampire could have crushed Joe’s throat if he wanted, but he stepped back instead. Joe was left panting and in pain, but at least he could breathe. From the way the Prime had reacted, Joe’s guess was that mentioning the prodigal son’s mother was a touchy subject.
“Sorry,” he ventured.
The woman had moved farther into the room. She was confused, concerned, but mostly she was sending off sparks of anger.
She stepped up to Wolf, and after a second’s hesitation, she touched him on the arm. “Wh—”
He turned a glare on her that was pure animal.
Joe tensed, prepared to go to her defense if necessary. But Wolf brushed her hand off and left the room. Vampires could move lightning-fast when they wanted to. Only a moment after Wolf left the bedroom, the apartment door slammed shut. Hard.
Leaving Joe in the awkward position of being alone with a vampire hunter suffering from a not completely unjustified sense of betrayal.
She turned her outrage on him. “What’s this about? And who are you?”
He wished she hadn’t gotten back to that. Though she was between him and the exit, he edged closer to the door. “I take it you don’t know where Sidonie Wolf is?” he inquired. After all, he was here looking for his partner, not to get involved in the case the vampire and hunter were working. “She’s about five-foot-nine, blond, blue-gray eyes. Looks very much like her brother, come to think of it.”
She was staring at him so hard, he didn’t think she actually heard him.
She took in his bare feet. He saw her recognize the clothes he was wearing. Then her gaze settled on his name pendant.
“Yeah,” he said, as she finally came to an unwilling conclusion about what he was.
She took a step back. He didn’t sense revulsion, or killing hostility. But she wasn’t happy or friendly, either. There were also a lot of weapons in the place, and she was a trained killer. Her kind didn’t like his kind any more than they did vampires. Even though she was working with vampires and had mated with Laurent Wolf—which made her almost family—the revelations of the last few minutes might tempt her to revert to her hunter roots.
“You’re extinct!” she said, stunned.
“That’s what we want you to think.”
She stayed stunned. And he used the edge it gave him to make his own quick exit before she came out of it.
Once out of the apartment, he considered following Laurent. But since he believed the Prime really didn’t know where Sid was, he let trailing the lost Wolf go. Laurent might be intriguing, but Sid was priority number one.
Eden didn’t know what to do. Other than sit down on the bed, because she couldn’t make her legs work. She loved lava, but she didn’t like earthquakes. And the last few minutes had shaken her world somewhere around a ten on the Richter scale.
Wolf had lied to her. He’d been lying to her for days, even as they fought together and laughed together and made love.
It shouldn’t hurt, but it did. She was being clawed apart from the inside.
Wolf wasn’t Wolf. Or not the Wolf she thought he was. Why was this knowledge crushing her?
“Why didn’t he tell me?” She spoke into the silence of the room, and almost expected a ghost to step out of the shadows and answer.
What she heard instead was the memory of her aunt’s voice.
“They’re insidious. And subtle. They don’t even notice their own arrogance, because, after all, they are Prime. Prime users. Prime takers.”
He’d been mocking her, silently laughing at her because he wasn’t who she thought he was. It would have been such a simple thing to correct her mistake when he showed up at the meeting place and she assumed he was the Prime she’d been told would meet her.
“Big joke. Ha. Ha. Bastard.”
Then she remembered the werewolf saying, “When dealing with humans, disinformation is not a bad thing. Especially when associating with hunters.”
And now she knew that the supernatural world was even bigger than she’d thought. She’d come face-to-face with a shapeshifter, and what was she supposed to do about it? This revelation—complication—was Wolf’s fault as well. She should immediately report the existence of Joe’s kind to the other hunters.
But she didn’t want to.
That was wrong. Being around Wolf had changed her, tainted her. She was starting to see things from his point of view, and—
And from his point of view, she was the one that needed to be watched out for. The one never to completely trust.
Her ancestors had hunted his ancestors. His had hunted hers. Everybody had long memories.
And that was the way it was always supposed to be.
But here it was, the twenty-first century. Apparently werewolves still walked the earth. Vampires took drugs that helped them blend into the world. They had day jobs. Apparently Clan women had equal rights.
The rules had clearly changed. Why hadn’t anybody told the hunters?
It wasn’t fair.
She was an anachronism. A joke.
“Oh, woe is me,” she muttered.
And why the devil had Wolf stormed out of here before she had the chance to yell at him about his deception? She needed to yell at him. Every fiber of her being needed to confront him, and—
She needed to see him, to talk to him. He had been so upset. The look in his eyes had been so—devastated.
Eden’s heart hammered hard in her chest, reacting to—Laurent’s—pain.
She didn’t know how Joe had hurt him, or why, but Laurent Wolf had not been sane when he’d walked out the door.
She fought off an impulse to find him and comfort him, because that was just crazy. But … he was in a dangerous state. And she was a hunter. So it was her duty to find him. Not to protect him from himself, but to protect the world from him.
Of course, she had to find him first.
“What did you do, plant a bug on me when I wasn’t looking?” Laurent asked the mortal woman who’d silently come up behind him. Not that he’d been unaware of her approach.
“Something like that,” Eden answered. “After your last brush with the Manticores, I thought it might be a good idea to keep track of you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Just doing my job.”
He wasn’t surprised to see that she was carrying a crossbow. She was here to make sure he didn’t go blood berserk or ravish maidens, or do whatever vampires did when they had a bad night.
Come to think of it, a little ravishing might be fun. He eyed Eden up and down as a prospective ravishee. Snatching the weapon from her before she could aim it would be easy, but he let it go.
“We have to use technology,” she said as the silence became charged. “It’s the only way we can compete with all your super senses.”
“Wimp. Your ancestors did okay.”
“Times change.”
Bitterness permeated her words, her feelings, even the way she stood, conveying both alert tension and total defeat.
Somehow—after his blinding red rage and sorrow cleared—he’d expected her to show up, despite all the twists and turns he’d taken. And sure enough, here she was, back in the alley where they’d met. He didn’t know how he’d gotten here. Didn’t know why. He didn’t k
now why he’d climbed up to the warehouse roof and sat looking at the eastern sky. At first he counted off every second until the sun would rise. But since that was hours away, thoughts eventually began to ramble around his bruised mind.
He’d allowed himself to think about Eden, because those thoughts weren’t as painful as the memories clamoring for his attention. After a while, thinking about Eden became a shield against everything else.
He knew she would come to him. He wanted her to come to him.
He knew she was going to be pissed, but that was all right.
“I’m not going to apologize,” he told her.
She sat down cross-legged beside him, but not too close. “Who’s asking you to?”
“Come on. You’re thinking, He should have told me.”
“That’s just ego getting in the way of professionalism. But I’ve been letting you get past my professionalism from the night we met.”
“I haven’t been doing it on purpose.”
“Ha.”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Maybe a little. I haven’t told you a lot of lies,” he added.
Though there were also a lot of things he hadn’t told her, big things—like how he wasn’t bound by the Clan rules to protect and serve mortals. Like how he planned to use her to get what he wanted. Like how this op of hers was not his concern.
But that wasn’t the same as lying—much—and for some reason, he took comfort in that. Why he should need to take comfort, he didn’t know.
“So, Mr. Wolf, you’re having trouble with your family, I take it?”
As a way of angling for explanations—and apology—Laurent thought this was a pretty good opening. The delicate, almost surgical, precision of her tone amused him. And the amusement was almost like a balm.
“Mr. Wolf? Nobody’s ever called me that before.”
“Everybody has trouble with their family,” she went on. “Mine, for example, are dead set against my being friendly with a vampire. Dead’s a very operative word when dealing with my family.”
“Mine, too.”
“Not that we are friends, of course.”
He could tell she was remembering the sex; the memory warmed her flesh. And he was drawn to that warmth.
“Not friends,” he agreed, and reached over to brush his hand across her cheek and down her throat. “And the word lover is—inappropriate.”
“Impolitic,” she added.
He wanted her. He wanted to throw her on her back and plunge inside her. He wanted to lose himself in the release. He wanted her blood. He wanted her submission. He wanted her cries and pain and pleasure filling his ears and drowning out every other sound and vision drumming inside his head.
“Impolitic, but never impolite.” He tried to sound cool and calm, faintly amused, but his voice was rough with hunger.
Did she hear it? Did she know how close to the edge he was?
He closed his eyes, fighting for control. Though why keep control when he could simply take what he wanted?
But darkness only brought a vision of standing in an elaborately decorated bedroom while Justinian took his pleasure with a moaning, panting blood slave. It had been a show of dominance over the Primes he controlled, nothing to do with pleasure at all. Laurent had been embarrassed and tried to hide it with cynical thoughts.
He wanted to be like Justinian. But he couldn’t even figure out how to start.
“Family can really mess you up, you know that?”
“Tell me about it,” she commiserated.
“You want to be like them. You don’t. You want their approval. You want to escape from them.” He sighed. “Humans and monsters alike, we’re all the same when it comes to being fucked over by our families.”
“Yeah. But we all have to grow up sometime, and make and live with our own choices. Can’t blame the folks forever.”
“You think so?”
“What are we talking about?” she asked at last. “Are we going to get into specifics here?”
“No.”
“Fine. Be that way.” She rose to her feet. “The sun will be up soon. Want to get back to the safe house before you get a really bad sunburn?”
“I was rather counting on that.” He sighed and got up.
“What?”
“I was contemplating having a suicidal impulse.”
“Really?”
“No,” he responded to her concern. “I was joking.” He moved closer to her. Well aware that she was armed and dangerous, he asked, “If I kiss you, will you use that thing on me?”
She finally smiled. “If you don’t kiss me, I’ll use it on you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Eden had very little memory of how they’d gotten back to the apartment. She remembered kisses. Long, hard, hot, completely shattering kisses. And his hands on her. All over her, repeatedly bringing her to shaking, screaming orgasms.
And she’d been driving!
Now Wolf kicked the apartment door shut and took her in his arms again. As before, not just his hands and lips and tongue touched her, but sharp teeth grazed across her skin. Pricks of pain sent pleasure rocketing through her and left constantly renewed, aching need in their wake.
He held her tightly, and she clung to his shoulders, too weak from desire to stand on her own. His mouth came down on hers, and she was swept into fire again.
Her hands moved over him, sweeping aside clothes because flesh had to touch flesh. The heat blended them, fused them.
She didn’t know when he carried her into his bedroom; she was only vaguely aware of lying on the bed, of his weight as he stretched out on top of her, of pulling him closer.
When she expected a kiss, his wrist covered her mouth. A few drops of warm, sweet liquid touched her tongue, and spread through her. It brought soaring release and an even deeper need for Wolf’s touch. Only his touch.
He thrust inside her, deep into where he was meant to be. She arched against him, wanting even more. He thrust into her in a hard, fast rhythm while she clutched at his back and his buttocks and ground her hips against his.
When he came, she went with him, drowning in the long, drawn-out moment of pure ecstasy.
When Eden came back to herself, he was lying flat on top of her, heavy and sweaty and boneless.
“You’re wrecked,” she told him, tugging on his thick braid to move his head so that his chin wasn’t poking into her chest.
His answer was a barely audible grunt.
After a long while he slowly lifted his head and looked her in the eyes. “You’re the one who wrecked me.”
She smiled smugly.
He responded by running his tongue over her nipples. Little aftershocks of pleasure still undulated through her body, yet she wondered—was making love a temporary fix to make him feel better, or an expression of genuine need for her? Or would anybody do? Any body?
Pain fisted in her stomach at that thought, and the kaleidoscope of emotions made her dizzy.
“You,” he answered. “At this moment, all I wanted was you.”
She realized that he’d read her thoughts. And that the answer had been sweet, but not crystal-clear specific.
She tried not to let it matter. After all, sharing blood didn’t make them a couple. They were still practically strangers—she hadn’t even known his real name until a few hours ago.
“The sex was great, though.”
“Fantastic.” He yawned, and mumbled sleepily, “We’ll always have Paris, and all that.”
She didn’t immediately get the reference, and stared at the ceiling while she thought it through.
“Casablanca,” she finally said. “Rick and Ilsa, and secrets and lies.”
“And Nazis. Mustn’t forget the Nazis.”
“Ilsa was the one who lied to Rick.”
“She didn’t tell him everything. That’s not the same as lying.”
“Lies of omission. And I didn’t like her. What’s with that ‘you do the thinking for me’ scene? Why
couldn’t she make up her own mind?”
“She was a woman of her time.”
“Bette Davis wouldn’t have pulled that ‘I won’t take responsibility for my own actions’ crap.”
Laurent lifted his head, and she saw faint outrage in his eyes. She waited for him to defend Ingrid Bergman’s honor, but after a moment a smile spread across his face. She couldn’t help but grin back.
“How did we get into this conversation?” he asked.
“You said something in the non sequitur line.”
He shifted his weight, leaning up on one elbow. “That’s not unusual.”
She took this opportunity to lever him off her, and sat up. “Breakfast or sleep?” she asked him.
He grasped her wrist and stroked the inside of her elbow. “I’ve already had breakfast.”
Eden looked down and noticed the fading mark of teeth. Vampire bites healed quickly. Soon the mark would be gone, but she knew she’d still feel every place where he’d laid claim to her. Her family would consider them marks of shame.
She wondered if the memories would ever fade. Or if she’d want them to.
Eden slid out of the bed. “Rest, then.”
He made a faint sound of protest when she left the room, and Eden got some gratification in knowing that he was reluctant to let her go. But, she assured herself, in the long run, it was better for both of them to be able to let each other go.
“You realize, of course,” Daniel said, “that none of this Laurent stuff makes sense.”
“No,” Joe answered. “I don’t.”
He’d spent the night trying to pick up Sid’s trail with no more luck than he’d had the day before. The whole time he’d been searching, Laurent Wolf’s presence in the puzzle had been put on the back burner.
“The important thing is finding Sid,” he reminded Daniel.
He almost wished that Daniel Corbett hadn’t been pacing the floor in the office when Joe dragged himself in the door. The first thing Joe had done at the sight of Daniel’s concerned face was blurt out that he’d come face-to-face with the legendary Laurent. He had not expected a skeptical response from Sid’s cousin.
“Shouldn’t you be killing a fatted calf or something?” Joe asked.
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