The Vampire's Favorite

by V. R. Cumming

  “You can watch me later, when I suck you off.” I wiggled his jeans down over his hips and cupped his balls, squeezing, tugging, playing. “You were right the first time. I don’t need to be anywhere near him.”

  “You say the sweetest things.”

  “How about this, then? I love you.”

  “Jase—”

  “I love you.” I wrapped my other hand around his cock and pumped it slowly up and down the broad length. “I love you. Tell me you know.”

  He shuddered and ground his hips into my tight fist. “I know.”

  “Show me.”

  “I don’t… Oh, God, Jase, I’m close. I’m so close.”

  He yanked his t-shirt over his head and held it against the tip of his erection, and his mouth met mine, a luscious grind of lips and tongue and teeth, and he hmmd and came, and his release spurted into his t-shirt and over my hand. I eased him down slowly, softly, tenderly, and he finally ended the kiss and drew back.

  “Was that good enough?”

  I grinned. “I don’t know. I might need a repeat in a little while.”

  “Soon,” he said, and the promise hung in the air between us for hours afterward.

  After Ma and Pop left, Eric and I rounded my kid sisters up and fed them supper, and had a blast. Just like I’d imagined, we played Uno and Candy Land, then we crashed on the sofa around a huge bowl of popcorn in front of Frozen, Anna Grace’s favorite movie.

  Like all good things, our fun ground to a pretty quick halt. About a quarter of the way through the movie, somebody tapped a lively knock on the door. I arched an eyebrow at Eric. We weren’t expecting company.

  His mind shifted along mine. Feels like a vampire and a pet.

  Fuck. Nothing like an uninvited vampire showing up on your doorstep to spoil the evening. Girls upstairs?

  He shook his head. There’s no intent to harm, but they don’t feel quite right either. I’d rather keep the girls close, so we can protect them more easily.

  Give me a minute to get in my chair.

  The knock came again. Charity elbowed Eric. “Hey, Mr. Grown Up Man. It’s your turn to answer the door.”

  I rolled my eyes as I yanked my chair over and maneuvered into it. “I’ll get the damn door.”

  Anna Grace turned a wide-eyed stare on me. “You said a bad word.”

  “Get used to it, munchkin. I was really into that movie.”

  Charity snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  Eric pushed himself off the sofa and ruffled Charity’s hair, a fond smile stretching his lovely mouth. “Stay here and cuddle up with Anna Grace while we take care of our visitors.”

  Eric beat me to the door and opened it while I was still six feet away, and my stomach flipped over and dropped like a stone. Trillium was standing on the porch, bouncing on bare feet, her parasol on one shoulder and one hand tucked into Kyle’s. She wore her normal outfit, a striped bustier over cutoff jeans. Her impossibly red hair was pulled into two braids, one on either side of her unnaturally pale, slender neck.

  She waved at Eric, her hand a blur of frantic hellos. “Runty Boy! There you are.”

  “Mistress Trillium.” Eric deliberately body-blocked the entrance. “What an unexpected surprise.”

  Kyle stepped into view, his expression clearly visible over Eric’s shoulder. “We carry a message from Remy, Master of Fargo. May we come in?”

  “I’m not at liberty to allow entrance right now.”

  Trillium poked the tip of her parasol at Eric. “Let me in, little piggy.”

  Eric deftly swatted the parasol away. “Whatever you need to say can be said here.”

  “Not exactly.” Kyle coughed into his closed fist and his gaze slid to his mistress. “I was hoping we could have another session.”

  Code for, Trillium needs more of your blood and super vampire healing mojo. Considering her mental state, I had to agree. Anything that helped her regain even an ounce of control deserved a fucking humanitarian award.

  I rolled closer to the entrance. “Can you guarantee her good behavior?”

  “I can,” Kyle said.

  “Eric, let them by. If she gets out of control, I’ll take care of her myself.” Hey, payback’s a bitch, right? And I owed her a return of some of the pain she’d given me the last time I’d seen her. “We can talk here in the hallway if everybody keeps it quiet.”

  Eric stepped aside. I didn’t need his disgruntled glare to know he was pissed at me. That drifted through our bond fine and dandy. Too bad. We couldn’t stand at the front door debating all night. My folks would be home sooner or later, and the girls were bound to get curious.

  Trilly tiptoed across the threshold. “Hello, Adonis,” she said in a loud whisper. “I missed your kisses and your hugs and all your pretty lovings.”

  “I’ve never hugged you, Trilly.”

  She leaned closer and hissed, “But you will.”

  Eric’s hand shot out and landed flat on her chest, above her breasts. “Don’t threaten him again.”

  I loved the way he said that, without even a hint of an implied or else tacked onto the end. He was learning. It was sexy as hell.

  “What message is so important we have to give up our Saturday night for it?” I asked.

  “Master Remy cordially welcomes you to the Crookston area on the outskirts of his territory,” Kyle said, “and kindly requests that you meet with him at your convenience.”

  Great. Another vampire to deal with. “Why didn’t he come himself?”

  “The same reason Oriana feared stepping foot outside her own home. We’re in a wilderness.”

  “So he sent Trilly to threaten us into meeting him.”

  Kyle’s auburn eyebrows veed. “She’s one of the few vampires who can travel freely wherever she wants. That’s why he sent her, not to force your hand.”

  Eric released his grip on Trillium and backed up until he was even with me. Together, we blocked the first entrance into the living room where my sisters were still caught up in Frozen. “What does he want with us?”

  Trilly popped upright and gasped. “Oh, I know this! Adonis has a secret.”

  “Yeah, me and everybody else on planet Earth.”

  Kyle shook his head slowly and his gaze shifted to somewhere over my head. “It’s not a secret, exactly. More like a potential and an indeterminate.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said flatly. “Maybe you should just spit it out.”

  “Anna Grace and Charity,” Eric murmured. “They’re beacons.”

  “No, they’re…”

  Eric’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “Anna Grace knows what we are, and Charity suspects it.”

  I opened my mouth on a denial, then snapped it shut. Fuck. He was right. My baby sister could see our inner glow, something only another beacon should be able to do. But she was so young, not anywhere close to the kind of maturity needed to purposefully focus her will and delve into another human’s essence. I slouched in my seat. Anna Grace was a fucking vampire prodigy. Sounded like Charity wasn’t far behind, and both were without any kind of protection whatsoever.

  Anger swirled hard and fast through me. “You tell Remy to go fuck himself. He lays one hand on my sisters, hell, if he even breathes in this state, I’ll come after him so fast, he won’t know what hit him.”

  Trillium’s expression fell and, bizarrely, her lower lip trembled. “But I wanted a playmate.”

  “Trilly,” Kyle said.

  She rounded on him as a tear slid down her cheek, streaking white powder. “You promised I could have one of them.”

  Kyle sucked in a sharp breath. “I said we could approach them when they’re of age and allow them to choose.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want the Vampyr outside our crèche anywhere near my family. Is that clear?”

  “Of course. That isn’t Remy’s only concern, however. There’s still the matter of your kidnapping at the hands of Oriana.”

  “We’re dealing w
ith her in our own way,” Eric murmured.

  “And you need no help from her rival and blood enemy? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe it,” I snapped. “We’ve had enough juvenile vampire games to last a lifetime.”

  Kyle turned his luminous gaze on me. “And the other?”

  “Our friends will always find help when they need it.” Eric held his hand out for Trillium. “Unfortunately, I can only spare half an hour. Jason’s parents will be home soon.”

  “I understand. Half an hour should be plenty of time.” Kyle bowed deeply to Eric, then draped an arm around Trillium’s shoulders. “Before we do that, I thought you should know. There’s a rumor floating through the local wilderness that a hunter is in town.”

  “A hunter?” I asked.

  “An enemy of non-humans,” Eric murmured. “Any idea who this hunter is?”

  “None,” Kyle said. “If one is active here, he or she is keeping a low profile. No killings, no disappearances. Nothing anybody can pin down.”

  “We’ll keep an eye out.”

  Eric bussed my cheek. Keep the girls in the living room. I’ll be back soon.

  I nodded and watched them walk down the hallway toward our bedroom, Eric first, then Trillium, and finally Kyle. That was one encounter I was happy to be left out of. Trillium needed help, yeah, but I had no defenses against her. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe I’d grown any in the short time since she’d nearly pained me to death.

  I wheeled into the living room to rejoin my sisters, and nearly laughed. They were cuddled together on the couch, sound asleep, the half empty popcorn bowl snug between them. I pried it out of Charity’s hands and set it on the coffee table, and settled in to play watchdog while Eric repaid Kyle for his kindness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kyle left Remy’s contact information with Eric on his way out and thanked him for helping Trillium. I stayed out of it. I liked Kyle, sure, but Trillium set my vampy senses on edge. Besides, Eric needed time to think the whole Remy thing over. When he needed my input, I’d be ready to give it. In the meantime, it wouldn’t do any good to pressure him about it.

  Days passed without either of us bringing it up, though I could feel Eric’s mind slowly chewing through our options. Once school let out, life calmed down in the Bellmont household. Ma and Pop acted like they were on a second honeymoon. Di perked up a little after graduation and stopped talking about fashion in favor of her upcoming freshman year at the University of Minnesota, Crookston. Charity went to a softball day camp for a week. When Anna Grace wasn’t over at a friend’s house, she was Eric’s mini-me.

  Her, we talked about. There was no way we could leave Minnesota without providing for her and Charity’s protection. Oriana had tried to get to her through me twice that we knew of. Now that we were on to her nefarious scheme, what would she resort to in order to get her hands on one of my sisters, especially Anna Grace?

  The whys were a no brainer. If Anna Grace was already able to spot beacons, without maturity or the ingestion of vampire blood, she had the potential, as Kyle had put it, to become an incredibly powerful vampire in her own right. Oriana hadn’t struck me as being a fool. The number one goal of every vampire was to shore up her base of power. Having control of a potential of equal or greater strength would go a long way toward aiding Oriana’s ultimate goals. Two guesses what those goals were.

  We didn’t want to give Oriana a chance to regroup after Eric had taken out so many of her pets, but our options were limited. Our power base, most of our connections and friends, all of that was in the South. The few allies we’d made in and around my hometown were relatively weak. Trillium wasn’t stable enough to help us, and Kyle would never abandon her for another, saner mistress. Her stable was out. They were loyal to a fault. That left Mike, and he was only attached to Eric temporarily.

  Eric visited his second pet every few days, more to heal him than anything. Eric hadn’t discussed it with me. In fact, we didn’t discuss Mike at all, but I knew what my lover was up to. I knew simply by understanding his nature.

  And because I knew his nature, I worked a lot harder on changing mine. I reached out to Eric more often mentally, opened myself to him emotionally when I remembered to, and peeked into his heart, just so I could feel his love. It was a little pathetic, really. Sometimes, I felt like his fucking lapdog, desperately clinging to him whenever my hope waned, so goddamn dependent on him for every little thing, it drove me crazy.

  June’s humidity morphed into July’s heat as Ma made plans for a Fourth of July family picnic. Pop relented on the barn and hired somebody to paint it, but Eric and I pitched in wherever we could, inside during the brightest part of the day, outside whenever we could find adequate shade or darkness.

  The day before Ma’s big picnic, Pop led me and Eric into the barn to overhaul the tractor again.

  I dragged the back of my wrist across my forehead, swiping off the sweat. “When are you gonna give in and get a new tractor, Pop?”

  “When this one can’t be fixed anymore.”

  Eric flashed a grin at me. “Isn’t that the same thing you say about your truck?”

  “Not the same thing,” I grumbled. “That truck’s a classic.”

  “So’s this tractor.” Pop dug a rag out of his back pocket and scrubbed grease off his hands. “Your ma’s got lemonade. What say I fetch some?”

  God in Heaven, that sounded good. It was stifling in the barn, twice as hot inside as it was out, even without the sun burning down on us. I opened my mouth to say so and was interrupted by the ring of Eric’s new phone, a gift from Marco during his visit the month before.

  Eric retrieved it from his front pocket and checked caller ID. “It’s Marco.”

  He stalked toward the other side of the barn, phone to his ear, his voice low.

  Pop tucked the rag back in his pocket. “That Marco. What is it you and Eric do for him again?”

  I deliberately put my back to Eric and fixed a bland expression on my face. “We work for his boss, Elizabet.”

  “Doesn’t tell me what you do.”

  “Pop—”

  “I know, I know. You’re a grown man. You just be careful with that Marco. He struck me as a dangerous man to be around.”

  “You have no idea,” I muttered.

  Keening sorrow lashed against my mind, and I sagged into the back of my chair. Pop staggered sideways and braced himself against the tractor.

  “Eric,” I told him. “Something’s wrong.”

  I wheeled around and spotted Eric huddling in the shadows twenty feet away. His soft voice drifted to me, a series of uh-huhs, okays, and muted protests. There was only one thing that would cause his reaction. Something had happened to Gianna, something so bad, it had broken Eric’s control. The air in the barn doubled in weight, pressing the breath out of my lungs, and my heart tripped into a pounding gallop. Oh, God. Elizabet had sworn Gigi would be ok while we were gone, and we’d believed her.

  Eric rang off, stumbled across the barn toward us, and dropped onto his knees beside me. “She’s hemorrhaging. The baby’s fine for now, but if they can’t stop the bleeding…”

  Well, fuck. No need to finish that thought. “I’ll call a cab. We can pack while we’re waiting for it to get here.”

  We can’t leave. Remy controls the nearest airport, and if not him, then another unknown vampire.

  Then we’ll drive.

  Through how many vampire territories? Eric cupped his hands over my knees. We’ll have to meet with him.

  And risk being captured again?

  What else can we do?

  Pop cleared his throat. “You boys need money, your ma and I can help.”

  I jerked back into reality. Christ, I’d forgotten he was standing there watching us with those astute, gray eyes of his. “Money’s not the problem, Pop.”

  “Then you tell me what is.”

  Eric huffed out a humorless laugh. We’ll have to tell him.

  I goggle
d at him. I’m not telling my father you’re a fucking half-vampire and I’m your sidekick, and that’s why we’re stuck in Crookston.

  Pop smacked the flat of his hand against the tractor. “You boys are in trouble, have been since the minute you landed in St. Paul. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the odd visitors and the way you stick close to home.”

  “We’ve got it under control, Pop.”

  “The hell you have.” He jabbed a finger at Eric. “Control got him knifed up and you without food for three days. It dragged your boss’ right-hand man here all the way from Georgia, and let me tell you, I don’t appreciate having that kind of danger around my girls.”

  Eric shoved himself upright and faced Pop squarely. “I would never allow anyone or anything around your family that would harm them, Mr. Bellmont. I would give my life to keep them safe, and so would Jason.”

  “And so would Marco,” I retorted. “He’s not a danger to you. You gotta believe me, Pop.”

  The tension in Pop’s wide shoulders gradually ebbed away. “You know, sometimes I wonder what the two of you are really up to.”

  “Survival,” Eric said flatly. “Right now, I need to figure out how to get home to my wife. If you’ll excuse me.”

  He skirted me, grabbed an umbrella, and stalked out of the barn into the midday sunlight under the dubious safety of the umbrella’s scant shade.

  I turned a hard stare of my own on Pop. “You ever consider that maybe we don’t tell you stuff because we’re trying to protect you?”

  I wheeled around him, snagged the other umbrella, and followed Eric into the house, struggling to breath under the weight of our combined worry.

  Marco texted updates every hour, on the hour. No change, the bleeding’s slowed, the baby’s fine. Each message, good or bad, ratcheted Eric’s nerves tighter and tighter. By the end of the day, he’d sunk so far into himself, even Di noticed. That didn’t keep her from poking at either one of us.

  Over supper that night, we took our usual places, him between Charity and Anna Grace across the table from Ma and Di, me at the end opposite Pop. I pushed my fork into Ma’s twice-baked potatoes and searched for my appetite. Strangely enough, it had fled the minute Eric had told me about Gianna. Go figure.