Taste Me

by Tamara Hogan

  Jack handed Lukas two bananas, and then sat down on the couch to give Bailey instructions. Suddenly he pointed to the waiting room, to where Gideon Lupinsky had emerged from Andi’s room carrying more evidence bags.

  Adrenaline hit hard. Finally. Mouthing “later” to Jack, Lukas cut through the waiting room, taking a bite off a banana, fueling up on the run. Doing something, anything, would be better than all this sitting around.

  Sitting around gave him too much time to think—to think about Scarlett, the woman he couldn’t let himself have again.

  Chapter 4

  “Scarlett! Wake up, you lazy bitch!”

  Ugh. Scarlett rolled over and buried her head in her pillow. If Annika’s banshee wail hadn’t been enough to wake her up, her sturdy body flopping full-length onto the bed beside her certainly was. She stole a quick look at the mermaid clock on the bedside table before rolling into her sister’s exuberant hug. She’d hoped to sleep until noon, but seven hours was better than nothing.

  “Damn it, Annika.” Sasha scowled from the doorway. “I told you to wait. She needs to sleep.”

  Annika yanked Scarlett’s quilt down to her waist, exposing her bare torso to the chilled air. “Wake up! You’ve been gone for months, and sleeping for hours. I waited as long as I could.” She gestured to the panther-black cat twining itself around Sasha’s ankles. “And Calamity has missed you, haven’t you, you evil beast?”

  Scarlett yanked the quilt back up and scraped a riot of hair out of her face. “Come here, sweetie,” she crooned. “I couldn’t find you last night. Where were you?”

  The “sweetie” in question was twenty pounds of muscular bad attitude who adored the taste of flesh. Scarlett tapped her fingers against the quilt to tempt him. From across the room, Calamity’s bright green eyes met hers, held, and with a hunch of his back and a flick of his tail, the cat about-faced and skulked out of the room.

  “You aren’t hurting my feelings one bit,” Scarlett called after him. The expression on her face belied her words.

  “Oh, he’ll be back to gnaw on you before you know it.” Annika pulled one of the bed pillows off the mound on the floor and propped herself up against the slatted headboard.

  “He doesn’t bite,” Scarlett muttered. “Much.”

  “Yeah, right.” Sasha pointed to her right ankle, which sported a fresh red weal. “He harpooned me this morning when my alarm went off. Damn cat is a fifth of my body weight, hell of a way to wake up.”

  “He nipped Jack last week,” Annika said.

  Sasha smiled innocently. “So I forgot to tell him it might not be a good idea to jiggle his foot like that. Oopsie.” She looped her fingers on her belt. “But thank the aurora you’re home. The cat—and Jack—are all yours again.”

  The guilt trickled through her. “Thanks so much for watching Calamity. I know he’s a pain in the ass.”

  “I think it was the other way around—he watched out for us. Lukas should hire that cat for guard duty.”

  Scarlett yawned and hauled herself up beside her sister, mentally penciling in a nap for later in the afternoon. She’d never get through the show without it. Then she smelled something glorious. Her eyes searched the room. Where was it? “Give it to me now, and no one gets hurt.”

  Sasha ducked out for a moment, picked up the tray she’d left on a hallway table just outside Scarlett’s bedroom door, and breezed back into the room. “Given what time you got to bed last night, I thought a bribe might come in handy.”

  One of the biggest benefits of living in the Sebastiani Building was the convenience of having a twenty-four-hour coffee shop right on the ground floor.

  “A pot of Crackhouse Blend, just for you,” Sasha said as she placed the cheerful orange serving tray holding a Holstein-spotted thermal carafe and three oversized purple mugs on the foot of the bed. “I brewed it myself.”

  It was all Scarlett could do to stop herself from lunging at it. The stuff was addictively good, so much so that Sasha had jokingly named the coffee shop and its signature blend after a place where people scored drugs. Though Scarlett carried a healthy supply of the coffee on the tour bus, it tasted better when Sasha brewed it. Girl had the touch.

  Sasha poured a cup of the coffee, added a dollop of cream, and handed it to Scarlett. It was unstirred, as she preferred.

  Home was the place where people remembered how you took your coffee.

  She paused at the lip of the mug, sipped quietly. The flavor exploded on her tongue, and she finally swallowed. “I think I just came,” she breathed, leaning back against her headboard and smiling at her roommates. “I’m so glad to be home.”

  “It’s been awhile since we were all home at the same time. Gonna stick around for awhile?” Annika asked.

  She sipped again. “Yeah. I need a break. I’m absolutely wiped.”

  “I hear ya,” Sasha said as she rubbed at her temple.

  Scarlett studied Sasha. She looked a little thin, but she was a fine one to talk. Sasha still sported the same black and fuchsia hair she’d had at Annika’s Succession Ceremony almost a year ago. Always darn near aerodynamic, this morning it sprouted up from her pixie face like she’d already been tugging on it for hours. “Headache?” she asked.

  Sasha dropped her hand from her head. “No. I don’t have time for a headache today.”

  How much stress had this damned show put on her friend?

  Annika elbowed her to get her attention. “First things first,” she said, waving a month-old tabloid in her face.

  That damn picture. “Where did you get that trash?” Scarlett made a grab for it.

  Annika held it aloft. “Please tell me he rocked in the sack.”

  Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Sorry, he rocked at the sound board and nowhere else,” she said. “He’s producing a couple of songs for the next record. And if you look at that picture closely, you can see Duncan’s practically holding me up, my knees were knocking together so hard. The paparazzi hijacked us coming out of a restaurant, and…” She shrugged.

  When Sasha touched her hand in commiseration, Scarlett consciously ratchetted her reaction down. Sasha already had a headache, and she didn’t need to absorb her crap too.

  “You okay?” Annika asked.

  “They gave me a few rough moments,” she admitted. Political kidnappings weren’t unheard of in their world, and given her profession, she drew plenty of whack jobs all by herself.

  “If Lukas had been there, he’d have pounded them into the pavement,” Annika said with relish.

  Scarlett raised a brow. “I can take care of myself. And Jack drills me every time I’m home. If I need a bodyguard, he’s it.”

  Annika nudged her with her elbow. “Jack can guard my body. As closely as he wants to.”

  Scarlett eyebrows climbed higher. Her sister and Jack? “Are you two…?”

  “No, but not for the lack of trying. He’s not biting.” Annika squirmed on the bed, a beatific expression on her face. “Mmm, there’s a thought.”

  Sasha wrinkled her nose. “Eww.”

  “Eww? Eww?” Annika sat up. “I call bullshit. The man is smokin’ hot.”

  “He’s impossible to work with, doesn’t know the meaning of the word compromise, and he’s way too bossy.”

  Annika looked at Scarlett, and they both burst out laughing. “Pot, meet kettle. And c’mon, a little bit of bossy can be absolutely delicious.” Annika collapsed back against the pillows again. “He’s always so… buttoned up. Wouldn’t you just love to see what he looks like rolling out of bed first thing in the morning? All mussed up?”

  Scarlett mentally shrugged. Intellectually she knew that Jack was very attractive, but for some reason he just didn’t melt her panties. Not like—she shut down the thought with an emphatic slam. “Would you stop talking about Jack like he’s a Happy Meal?”

  “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” Sasha muttered.

  Annika laughed at her. “You’re just pissed that he’s right more often than
not.”

  “Gawd, the last thing I need to deal with is another oversized know-it-all. The moment I get Lukas out of my hair, Jack steps in to fill the void. Both of them are major pains in my ass. Though Lukas has been less of a problem lately,” Sasha mused. “It seems like every time I swing by Sebastiani Security to deliver coffee, he’s closeted in a conference room with Bailey.”

  Every cell in Scarlett’s body stuttered. “Who’s Bailey?” she asked mildly.

  “Bailey Brown, SebSec’s newest employee,” Sasha answered. “Little blonde, computer savant, great hair, drinks like a sailor. Human. She’s been with them for—what?” She looked to Annika for verification. “Three months now?”

  Annika nodded and lowered her voice. “Last night, the Council granted her unlimited access to the archives. Some hush-hush computer project with Valerian and Wyland.”

  “Wow.” Scarlett pulled the quilt up over her shoulders. This was huge. This woman must be very special. Would Lukas date an employee? A human employee? She didn’t care. Not one whit.

  “Are she and Lukas…?” Scarlett waved her hand toward the bed vaguely. Hey, not caring didn’t mean not asking.

  Sasha pursed her lips. “I don’t think so. Not that she’s not adorable, but I get zero vibe. I heard she hacked NSA or the CIA or something when she was a teenager, just to prove she could. The only reason she got caught was because her bargain-basement equipment couldn’t keep up with her.” Her voice turned admiring. “That takes some gonads.”

  Scarlett’s jaw dropped. Though she stayed well away from Council activities, even she knew that keeping their people’s very existence a secret was critically important. What was Lukas thinking, hiring someone who’d likely be under Homeland Security surveillance for the rest of her natural life? Her shoulders dropped. Lukas had to be thinking with the little head, not the big one.

  Though, if she could trust her memory, the little head was pretty damn big.

  “Well, luckily she did this before 9/11,” Sasha continued, “or she’d still be festering in some forgotten prison cell. And to her credit, it was a white hat hack. No damage done, except to some old guys’ egos.” Sasha paused to sip at her coffee. “I’ve gotten to know her a little, talked to her when I deliver coffee to SebSec, and she’s come to the club a few times. Grabs a drink, dances, but doesn’t go home with anyone. Sometimes the bouncers get a workout when some dude doesn’t want to take no for an answer.”

  Hmm. Scarlett concentrated on her own cooling coffee. She would not think about Lukas being closeted up in a conference room with a smart, nice, cute—no, make that adorable—human woman who men got into fights over. And who had great hair, one of Sasha’s highest accolades. Time for a change of subject. “Annika, aren’t you supposed to be at a Council meeting?” Annika worked as a voice actor, supplying dialogue for animated characters in movies and cartoons, and was slowly learning to balance the demands of her profession with her responsibilities as the Siren Second.

  “Just as I was about to dial in, I got a text message from Willem that the meeting had been unexpectedly adjourned.” She shrugged. “So I stayed at work. I’m not sure anyone will ever see the movie, but the character was interesting, and the dialogue was fabulous.” She grinned and stretched languorously. “As was the writer.”

  No long-term relationships for Annika—not yet, anyway. Her sister was an erotic adventuress, always on the hunt.

  “Speaking of fabulous…” Annika readjusted the pillows behind her. “I saw someone down at the Crack a half an hour ago that I thought might be yours. How do you keep your hands to yourself? Or do you?”

  “Huh?”

  Sasha pawed through a bunch of silver bracelets to look at her watch. “Most of your band is downstairs catching a bite to eat while the roadies finish loading in. Sound check starts in about an hour.”

  Sound check. Exhaustion washed over her in a wave. One more show. Just one more show. “I’d never sleep with a band mate or a member of the crew. That’s just… incestuous.”

  “The one who caught my eye was the new guy—small, dark, wicked tattoos. Looks like the Lucky Charms leprechaun, only hot.”

  “Stephen,” Scarlett and Sasha answered together.

  “I think Stephen looks more like a faun than a leprechaun,” Sasha mused.

  “Whatever.” Annika waved her hand. “Love the eyeliner. And those arms! Where did you find him?”

  “L.A.,” Scarlett said. “You really haven’t met Stephen?” It seemed like Stephen had been with them forever. When their former drummer overdosed, Stephen had… been there. She pointed her finger at her sister. “Just leave me something to work with, hmm? A drummer needs all his strength. He’s no good to me all worn out.” Actually, now that she thought about it, her sister and the hyper-hormonal drummer might be pretty darn compatible.

  Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” chimed from the PDA hanging off of Sasha’s hand-tooled leather belt. She looked at the caller’s number, muttered “damn it” under her breath, and answered.

  “Jack.” Silence as she listened. “What?” Her brows jerked up in exasperation. “No, I don’t have time to meet with you. Do you have any earthly idea how many logistical nightmares I have to deal with today?” She fell silent, and her expression shifted to worry as she listened. Her body stiffened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Is she going to be okay?” She listened again, and put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Andi Woolf was attacked last night,” she said to Scarlett and Annika. She listened some more, then looked steadily at Scarlett. “She’s right here. Let me put you on speaker.”

  “What?” Scarlett said to Sasha, who pushed a button on her PDA and placed it on the quilt. Her stomach fell. She was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like this.

  “Scarlett, it’s Jack.” His voice was Scotch-smooth, even through the tinny speaker.

  Annika fanned her face. “I think I just came.”

  “Shut up,” Scarlett hissed, swatting at her. “Is Andi okay, Jack?”

  A pause. “She came out of surgery about an hour ago. She’s hanging in there, getting the best possible care.”

  Surgery? How badly had she been hurt? She didn’t know Andi Woolf very well, but they ran into each other occasionally at Council family functions.

  “I’d like to do a quick review of tonight’s security plan,” Jack said. “Just as a precaution.”

  Not smooth enough, my friend. “A precaution for what? Underbelly is the safest possible venue for me to perform in, and we both know it. What’s going on?”

  Stress finally entered his voice. “We’ll tell you more when we see you, Scarlett.”

  Hmm, the “I” had turned to “we.” Suddenly Scarlett had a pretty good idea who really wanted to review security procedures.

  “Scarlett?”

  Maybe she should blow Lukas off. Tell Jack to tell him to go to hell. Actually, Jack should be telling him to go to hell on his own behalf, because after completely washing his hands of Scarlett’s security needs, Lukas was sticking his big, honking nose right back in. She clenched her hands into fists under the quilt. No. No, she had to do this in person.

  “Scarlett?” Jack repeated. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m really getting tired of people asking if I’m okay,” she snapped.

  Sasha snatched up the phone, took it off speaker, and quickly finished the conversation with Jack, eyeing Scarlett all the while. “Underbelly’s conference room in an hour,” she said as she hung up. “The band will have to start sound check without us.” Her tiny nostrils flared. “But you’ll still have time to catch a nap afterward, easy.”

  Suddenly Sasha’s careful regard was too much. Scarlett’s throat clogged with tears, but she tightened her jaw and swallowed them down, watering the seed of anger sprouting inside her. Anger felt more productive than exhaustion. “I’m going to take a bath,” she choked out. She dragged herself out of the warm bed and shivered, nude, to the bathroom, closing the door on her sister
’s gasp at the condition of her body.

  I know. Not a pretty sight, is it?

  She turned the knob, filling her pond-sized bathtub with hot, steamy water. She climbed in and prepared herself for the battle to come.

  Was she okay? Probably not. But that was about to change.

  Chapter 5

  Bailey Brown looked to the corners of the conference room for hidden cameras. I’m being punked. “Could you… repeat that?” She swallowed noisily. “Just the part about the…”

  “Crashed spaceship?” Lukas said, watching her closely.

  “Um, yeah.”

  And then he repeated it. The same damn thing. Her boss was an incubus, an incubus whose ancestors’ spaceship—yes, spaceship—had crashed on Earth. And the incubi hadn’t been alone. Oh, no. Vampires, werewolves, valkyrie, faeries, sirens, God knew what else had been along for the cosmic road trip.

  And humanity had shared the planet with them for nearly a thousand years.

  She sat back in the large conference room chair, hearing air shushing in and out of her lungs. Intellectually, she knew she was going into shock, but thankfully her brain kept working, the hard drive kept spinning. Because… ho-ly shit. Her employer, her co-workers, most of her new friends were…

  Holy shit.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Sasha Sebastiani breezed into the windowless conference room and dropped into the huge leather chair next to Bailey. “Problem with the delivery from the blood bank. You know how crabby the vamps get when they can’t drink an authentic Bloody Mar—” Her nostrils flared. “Jeez.” Sasha grabbed her hands and rubbed them. “Time out, guys. She’s freezing. Give her a minute.”

  For some reason, Sasha’s touch, and her blithe reference to Underbelly’s vampire clientele’s drinking preferences, injected a note of normalcy into the conversation. Just a delivery problem at the bar, because vampires, who drank blood, got really annoyed when they couldn’t get their favorite drink. Bailey laughed, a laugh even she could hear veer toward hysteria.

  The friction felt good. Why wasn’t she pulling away from Sasha, instead of clutching at her hand like a lifeline? She was being touched by a succubus whose ancestors had come from another planet, who’d been cruising through the neighborhood when—oops!—a cosmic fender-bender had altered Earth’s history forever.