Francesca couldn’t repress a stab of jealousy at the fact that her friend Sidonie had a purpose among the Dark Angels, a role in protecting the immortal community, while she remained—Flare, Fantasy Lust Object To All Primedom.
Boring.
Ben and Domini had left the kitchen and had probably gone back to playing Arkham Asylum. Francesca started to get up to see if she could get in on their game night. A thought from Strahan stopped her.
Stay. There’s something I want to discuss with you. But first . . .
Chapter Nine
He dialed a stored number on his cell phone, then put the phone to his ear. He smiled in anticipation.
As the phone rang Francesca stared at him in surprise. What the demons could he want me for? Other than the usual.
When the phone was answered his anticipation turned into a glow of pleasure. “Working hard or hardly working, Saffron, my love?” Tobias Strahan said after a young female voice said hello.
“Daddy!” An enthusiastic squeal carried to Francesca’s ears.
“Daddy”? A daughter? Wait a minute. Francesca was almost viscerally aware that Strahan wasn’t bonded. But only bonded Primes took any part in rearing their female offspring.
Well, Sidonie’s sire had been involved in her life, but Sid Wolf and Tony Crowe never did anything like other vampires.
Strahan had been born Tribe even though he was raised Family, and as Jake had so recently pointed out, Tribe Primes weren’t exactly loving parents of mortal offspring. And this girl must be mortal.
But there was love in Strahan’s voice as he spoke to the girl and love in his thoughts and feelings toward this Saffron even as he began to lecture her about some trouble she was in at school.
It looked like he was a hard man with a soft center.
She smiled at the thought, but only for a moment. Until she realized seeing this side of the Prime threatened to bring down the necessary walls she’d built up.
His caring emotion was so strong it twisted Francesca’s heart. She almost ran from the room but refused to be so cowardly. She wanted to hate Strahan, but her grief wasn’t the Prime’s fault. Probably it was only biology. She loved a mortal but was attracted to an alpha male of her own species.
Alpha female to alpha male was the natural order of things. Damn it.
She got up and walked to the patio doors, rested her forehead on the cool glass, and concentrated on the sound of the nearby ocean instead of the telephone conversation behind her. Seeing the reflection of the back of Strahan’s head in the dark glass didn’t help. There was something . . . appealing in the way his ears marred his perfection just a little.
She closed her eyes and remembered—Patrick. She hadn’t let herself think his name for a while, or think about the way his gray eyes could go from bright with laughter to an icy warrior’s stare. A shiver went through her and a fist tightened around her heart.
He was dead.
Lately she’d been more obsessed with the idea of her love for him than loving him, hadn’t she?
She wanted to remember the touch of his lips on hers, the feel of his hands on her, but those tactile sensations were lost to her even though her body ached with growing longing.
Strahan’s suddenly raised voice drew her attention back to the conversation. “No, I will not call Mrs. Palmer. If you were given detention, you know better than to try to get out of it.”
“But it’s not fair! I should be able to read whatever—”
“What does fair have to do with it, Saffron Strahan? Weren’t you raised to take responsibility for your actions?”
After a stubborn silence the girl said, “Yes, sir.”
“Good. What lesson will you take away from this?”
“Not to get caught if I want to study magic.”
He sighed. “All right, I won’t argue with you on that one. Make sure to keep up with your academic studies.”
“Can I come home, Daddy?”
It was Strahan’s turn to be silent for a few seconds. “Your winter holidays are coming up soon.”
“I want to come home now. I miss the Angels.”
“The Angels miss you too. You’re safer where you are right now. Your friend Kelsie’s mother contacted me about your going to London for Christmas with their family,” he said rushing on. “You’d enjoy that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Think of all the old bookstores with arcane magical texts.”
The girl gave a loud sigh. “I can order that stuff online, Dad.”
“Christmas in London with your best friend,” he said. “Think about it.”
She muttered a grudging, “I will.”
“Good. I have to go now.”
“Ass-kicking in L.A.? Dee’s been keeping me up on the op. I could help.”
“I have to go now,” he repeated. “I love you. Go to bed.”
Tobias put away the phone and sat thoughtfully considering his daughter for a moment. It had been easier when she was little . . . but how was a Prime supposed to deal with a mortal teenager? Dee did her best to help and was the closest thing the girl had to a mother, but the ultimate responsibility was his. How the hell did I ever get myself into this?
Oh, yeah, I walked away from a plane crash with an orphaned baby in my arms.
And now he was being blackmailed into purposefully siring a vampire child. Imagine how surprised Lady Anjelica and Flare were going to be when he insisted on helping to raise his child, even if the baby was a sacred, shielded daughter.
When he looked around he found Flare standing with her back to the kitchen, her tension palpable. He moved silently up behind her and found his hands massaging her knotted shoulders. She leaned into his touch and her head came back to rest on his shoulder. Tobias didn’t think she was aware of anything at the moment. Her reaction was as automatic as his had been. As she began to relax, Tobias found his concentration narrowing down to awareness of the pulse of her throat, so vulnerably exposed to his fangs.
An offer? A tease, more likely. This was Flare after all.
If he took her up on the temptation to taste her and she rejected him outright, it would get in the way of the seduction she surely knew he had planned for later. No way was he letting her play him.
He made himself step away. She shivered and shook her head, as though coming awake, and spun to face him. “Where—? Oh, it’s you.”
He barely stopped himself from a sarcastic comment when he saw the unshed tears in her eyes. “What’s the matter with you, woman?” he demanded instead.
“None of your business, Strahan,” she shot back.
Animosity crackled between them, hot as lightning. The scent of her blood permeated his being. For a moment he could taste it, heady and life giving.
How could any Prime deny himself . . . ?
Tobias stepped back, putting his hands up before him. His claws were fully extended. Fangs throbbed in his mouth. He’d never been so close to losing control, and his response to Flare was as much a need for combat as it was a need for sex. He’d never reacted so strongly to a female before.
Her fangs and claws were as sharply evident as his. Fire glowed in her eyes.
The thrill of the hunt coursed through him.
And he didn’t like it.
It must be a trait of his Tribe ancestry, he thought. Tribe Primes mastered their females. Even if they have to tie them down to do it, he added ironically.
He wondered if there was anywhere he could get his hands on pure silver bondage equipment in Los Angeles.
She felt his amusement and demanded, “What’s so funny?”
“Me,” he answered.
Chapter Ten
Francesca knew what was happening between her and Strahan, but she didn’t think he did. His simple answer to her angry question helped calm her down. He was embarrassed as he got himself under control. That was a good sign.
She wrestled her body back into its mortal form as she struggled to remember how they’d come
to be standing like a pair of horny gladiators ready to rip into each other. He’d been on the phone. She’d been trying to meditate. Then—he’d touched her. A simple touch.
But nothing was simple about what was happening to them. Or maybe bonding was the simplest thing in the world. Struggling against it was the complicated part, but battle it she would.
Strahan couldn’t want it either, not with his obsessive need to fight the good fight leading his Dark Angels. A bondmate would only get in his way. Especially useless spoiled princess Flare.
“Wait a minute,” she said, remembering suddenly. “You wanted to talk to me about doing something.” Before the world went weird.
The flicker of amusement from him told her that Strahan picked up her thought and agreed with it.
“I can’t help it,” he said apologetically.
“I know. Maybe it’s the weather,” she added. “That raging storm outside must be messing up our electromagnetic signals.”
He glanced out the patio door at the clear night sky and nodded. “Yeah. All that thunder and lightning must be messing with our telepathy.”
She was pleased that he went along with her fiction.
He gestured, and she followed him back to the table. They sat across from each other, the width of the table offering some distance between them.
“What can I possibly do for the Dark Angels?” she asked before he could say anything. “You don’t want anything personal from me, I hope?”
His dark gaze roamed over her hungrily, but he said, “Nothing personal. You’ve heard of Rose Cameron.”
“Would that be the red-haired mortal who was with Tony Crowe at the Citadel? The one who reminds me of an old-time movie star?”
“That’s her. And she is an old-time movie star, the Rose Cameron.”
“But Rose Cameron would be ancient for a mortal. Shouldn’t she be dead? Or at least in a nursing home?”
“I think she may have been both.”
She looked at him suspiciously, but he didn’t seem to be the joking type.
“I’m not good at guessing mortal ages, but the person I saw was very young. And there was bond energy arcing between her and Tony,” she recalled after scouring her memories. “Just a beginning thread of it.”
“Yes. The beginnings of the bond is the problem I need your help to get around.”
Francesca prepared to be indignant. “Don’t tell me you want me to seduce Tony Crowe away from this woman?”
A dark shock of jealousy washed over her, quickly cut off by Strahan’s tightening his shielding. “You think far too well of your charms if you think you can break a bond.”
“I would never try to!” she shot back. “But it’s the damn fool sort of thing somebody might think I would try to do. Femme fatale Flare, Flare the vamp—wait, I am a vamp. But I’m not a home wrecker.”
Strahan held his hands in a T sign. “Time out, lady. Let’s start over.”
His gesture was another reminder of Patrick, of the type of sports-loving jock her mortal warrior had been and Dark Angel Strahan was.
“Do you like football?” she asked.
“Who doesn’t?”
“You military types are all alike.”
“No, I think it’s just a man thing.”
“I like football. Basketball. Hockey.”
“Baseball?” he asked hopefully.
“Best of all.”
“But you’re—”
“Yeah, yeah, snooty bitch princess Flare. There’s more to me than getting my claws manicured.”
“Really? For example?”
“I don’t get polo and I’ve never been on a yacht. I have a pilot’s license and—” She decided it would be self-serving to tell him about the charity she worked for.
Strahan eyed her with solemn curiosity for a moment. Then he laid his big hands flat on the table and took a calming breath. “Meanwhile, back at Tony and Rose . . .”
She repeated his gesture and fought off the temptation to reach across to him. Fortunately, the table was too wide for that. “What do you want me to do about them?”
“Rose was a captive of our bad guys. She was experimented on by them. Tony, Sid, and Joe rescued her last night. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet. I need to know what she knows, and I need to know it from her, especially the information she doesn’t know she knows. But Tony won’t let a Prime near her.”
“Of course not, he’s bonding with her.”
He nodded. “But he would let her talk to a female vampire. Allow one into her head.”
“That’s why you recruited Sid Wolf,” she said. He gave her a speculative look that told her he was waiting for her to figure it out. “Ah,” Francesca said, “you’re not willing to risk Sid’s relationship with her sire.”
“There’s no reason to make trouble within a family if it can be avoided. You’re a female telepath.”
“And if Tony Crowe ends up angry with me what difference will that make to anyone?” Except maybe to my friendship with Sid.
“Precisely,” Strahan answered. “Will you talk with this mortal woman?”
“Will I mess with her head and bring you everything inside it?”
“I believe that’s what I implied.”
“And interrogate her in such a way that no one will suspect the Reynard heiress did it for the Dark Angels?”
“Do it in a way that no one knows you did it at all. And be gentle with her. She’s a good guy and has been put through hell by the bastards we’re after.”
Does he think I’m inept enough to leave burn marks all over some nice old lady’s mind?
“You have to spend time at the clinic anyway,” he added. “It should be easy for you to find some private time with Rose. Will you do it?”
It was a straight-up question, no puppy-dog little-boy pleading in his big brown eyes. Most Primes she knew were more the cajoling type when it came to getting what they wanted out of females. His method of simply asking worked far better than anything else would have.
“All right,” Francesca said. “I’ll give it a—”
Boss! Situation developing!
The shout came out of nowhere, not from the earpiece Strahan had put away or the phone in his jacket pocket. It was simple, effective telepathy, aimed at Strahan, but Francesca heard the alarm as well.
Attack on the Prime actor’s house, the Dark Angel added.
On our way, Strahan answered. He rose to his feet, shouting, “Dee!”
Then he grabbed Francesca by the wrist and dragged her along.
Chapter Eleven
“What are you doing here?” Tobias asked Flare.
Dee spoke up from the backseat. “That’s what I’ve been asking.”
“She has,” Flare said from the passenger’s seat. “You haven’t been listening.”
It hadn’t been a long drive from Lancer’s house to an even wealthier part of Malibu. Tobias had concentrated on getting to their destination with the greatest amount of speed while dealing with the developing situation telepathically. If Dee had said anything in those few minutes he hadn’t noticed, which he didn’t understand and didn’t like. The ability to multitask was essential in his job.
And how had Flare Reynard sneaked into the car with them?
“Sneaked?” She held up a bruised wrist. “You did this, Strahan.”
“You did,” Dee said in agreement. “You dragged her along, boss. Can’t you stand to have her out of your sight?”
It was not a facetious question, and Tobias didn’t like the answer that sprang instantly to mind. That he couldn’t bear to have Flare out of his sight. Away from his touch. To be away from constant intimate awareness of her mind, her body, and her blood.
Damn instinct! Didn’t it know he had an op to run?
“Stay here,” he told Flare. He ignored her flash of annoyance. “Let’s go, Dee.”
He filled the mortal woman in on his telepathic communications as they walked toward the actor’s gated mansion
two blocks away. He’d parked far enough back not to draw the attention of the attackers. It wasn’t an attack yet, but the Purists were gathering for one, cautiously avoiding any contact with the police and private security teams that patrolled the streets of the wealthy community. One by one mortals were slipping through the shadows, massing for an assault.
Of course, the point was that the Purists wanted the mansion’s security system to be triggered. They wanted all those police and private security people to head straight for the house. They wanted the alerted media to rush to the scene. They wanted to draw attention to the supernatural community, just as they’d tried to do with their other attacks over the last several days.
“Theater,” Tobias muttered.
What were the bad guys really up to with these distractions? He’d find out eventually, but he had all these little fires to put out first—before some of his own kind really got burned.
Jake and Jerame were stationed on the estate’s grounds, monitoring the approach of the enemy. His Crew was spread thin tonight.
“I had only Jerame guarding the house because it’s the last place I thought would be attacked,” Tobias informed Dee. “When I told a movie star to go about his business I thought he’d spend his off hours out partying, safe in the embrace of pretty girls and watchful paparazzi.”
“I thought he had a reputation for drunken brawls and sexual excess.”
“Turns out he’s a domestic sort. His bad rep’s a product of his publicist’s imagination and media manipulation by our very own Corbett twins.”
Dee tsked. “Is nothing sacred anymore? Young movie stars are supposed to be bad and reckless.”
“So are young Primes.”
“And what is a virile Prime doing lolling around his home? Please tell me he has a live-in harem. And if so, how do I join it?”
“Don’t let Jake Piper hear you talking like that. Our ex-Tribe boy may believe you. As for our actor friend, he told Jake he’s having a business dinner.”
Dee was disgusted. “I bet his name’s not even James Wilde.”
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