Low murmurs drifted through the group, and one by one, Remy’s guests drank a toast to those he’d lost.
Eric raised his glass to Remy. “Our condolences, Master.”
“Thank you, Eric. They were beautiful women, fierce and strong. My youngest sacrificed herself for me. For me.” He shook his head again and stared down at the residue of amber liquid in his glass. “Two years out of the turn, and her life was gone in an instant.”
Paolo slid through the crowd and sat down beside Remy. “No melancholy, not tonight.”
“You’re right. Tonight is for celebrating the promise of new friendships.”
“And new alliances,” Eric said. “Oriana has taken too much from the people of this area and given nothing in return. We have a proposal that might balance the scales.”
“Indeed.”
A chill tightened the skin along my nape. I twisted in my seat, searching for the cause. Tangi wound through the crowd dressed in a pair of loose, drawstring pajama bottoms. The stark white fabric offset the golden skin of his nude torso. Both of his nipples were pierced. The metal rings glinted in the room’s soft lighting, drawing my gaze to his hairless chest, then down his body past flat, washboard abs to his bellybutton and the line of dark hair trailing from there into the low slung waistband of his pajamas.
His feet were bare and silent on the carpeted floor, but it was his tat that held my attention. A black line drawing of a wolf decorated his upper left arm, surrounded by geometric angles and curves covering his left shoulder to his neck and partway down the left half of his torso. My eyes zeroed in on his nipple, highlighted in the design, and my mouth went dry.
Christ. I really needed to get out more.
He sidestepped through the gap between my chair and the couch Remy and Paolo were sitting on, and sat down on the floor between Eric’s legs and mine. Tangi’s hand snaked around my ankle under my pants leg and he rested his cheek against my knee, for all the world like a pet dog. I curled my hand into a fist against the urge to tangle my fingers in his hair and discover its exact texture and feel.
“Jason,” Eric said.
The word held enough amusement to snap my attention back to the conversation. “Sorry. What?”
“Would you like something else to drink?”
Another pet was standing in front of us, closer to Eric than me, and holding out a tray filled with assorted beverages. I promptly set my empty glass on it, chose a chilled bottle of water, and nodded a thank you. Tangi’s heat spread through my clothes, warming me. His hand shifted higher and met bare skin, and I gritted my teeth. How was I supposed to get through a business meeting with him touching me?
Remy waited until the pet moved away before speaking. “Your proposal?”
“If Oriana should fall,” Eric said, “would you be interested in moving your power base to the Twin Cities?”
Paolo thunked his glass against his thigh. “You’re serious.”
“I am.”
“You expect me to leave Fargo unprotected?” Remy asked.
“I have someone in mind to hold the city in your name.”
“Someone loyal to you.”
“More of a shared ally.”
Remy breathed out a short laugh. “Trillium? She’s mad.”
Eric smiled and sipped his bourbon. “Yes.”
“And you want to turn this area over to her. Why?”
“We have interests here.”
Remy’s eyes narrowed on me. “So the rumors are true. There are other beacons in your family.”
“Leave them out of this,” I said flatly.
Tangi’s hand tightened on my thigh, and I could’ve sworn I heard a low-pitched whine come from him, like the sound a distressed dog might make. I’d never been around a lot of werewolves before. Were they really that much like canines? Did their inner wolves dominate them even when they were human?
“We are understandably concerned about the safety and well-being of Jason’s family.” Eric lifted his glass, sipped once, a delicate taste of the bourbon we’d gifted Remy. “Oriana has twice attempted to pin Jason under her control, and has twice failed. Our goal is three-fold, to eliminate the danger to him and his family, and to protect them from future dangers.”
Paolo’s eyebrows arched upward. “You said three.”
“The best way to achieve both those goals is to bring long-term stability to this area.”
Remy leaned forward and hissed, “You’re going to kill her.”
“I never said that, and if a rumor to that effect circulates among the Vampyr, I will deny it with my last breath.”
“Hmm.” Remy’s back thumped against the couch. “Is the queen aware of your interests?”
Eric’s smile stretched wider as he lifted his glass to his mouth and sipped.
Paolo laughed, short and sharp. “I bet your enemies rue the day they crossed you.”
“Fortunately, I have few.”
And the ones we knew of in the South were well under control. Selena was dead, Zane was under the thumb of the alpha of the Greater Atlanta area werewolf pack. Nobody else there dared to openly stand against us. Eric’s connections were too well known. Only a fool would forget the way the queen had relied on his advice when doling out Selena and Zane’s punishments.
“I need time to consider your proposal,” Remy said.
Eric nodded. “Of course.”
“Please, bestow the dark kiss upon me, a sign of our budding friendship and of my support of your cause.”
Eric set his glass down on the floor in front of the couch and stood. His eyes locked on mine as he shrugged off his suit jacket and placed it on the couch. Be careful with Tangi. He’s…fragile.
My eyebrows snapped into a furrow. Wasn’t planning on doing anything with him.
Why do you think he’s here?
Eric loosened his tie, skirted around Tangi, and dropped a quick kiss on my cheek. As if his movement were a cue, pets began drifting off in groups of two and three. Some shucked their clothes where they stood, others didn’t bother. Eric straddled Remy’s legs and buried his face in the master’s throat, and soon, the slap of flesh against flesh and soft moans of pleasure filled the room.
Tangi hadn’t moved an inch, and that kind of minimized my options. I rubbed a finger across my lips. If he was fragile, I really didn’t need to startle him. Sure as hell, he didn’t need my raging hard-on waving in his face. Short of forcefully removing his viselike hold on my leg, I had no clue what to do.
I glanced around, hoping to spot inspiration. Eric had tilted his head to the side and allowed Remy the dark kiss, lots and lots of pets were getting busy. Paolo was sitting exactly where he had been next to Remy. His dark gaze was locked on me, and it dawned on me that Eric had been wrong, or maybe Eric had been right and my interpretation was wrong. Tangi was there for me, but he wasn’t there for sex or even blood. He was a test, and I was pretty sure I was about to fail it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tangi’s hold on my leg slowly relaxed. He shifted onto his knees in front of me, head bowed, and turned his chin to the side, exposing his throat. The tat winding around his shoulder and up the column of his neck shimmered in the play of light and shadow thrown across it. I reached slowly toward him. He was fragile, right? So going slow was good. Or I could ask. Yeah, I should definitely ask before I touched him.
A hand slapped around my wrist, holding my arm in place, and Paolo crouched beside Tangi, his glittering eyes on me. He isn’t offering himself to you. He’s submitting. If you had touched his throat, it would’ve broken his trust.
Fuck. The only werewolf I’d ever been around long enough to know was an alpha, and he did not submit. Ever. So how the hell was I supposed to know that Tangi’s body language meant something other than what it looked like?
Ignorance was one thing, and yeah, I’d be more careful around different sentient species in the future, but the fact that Remy and Paolo had used Tangi to test me really pissed me off. I twisted m
y hand, breaking Paolo’s hold on me, and glared at him. “Don’t ever use someone too weak to defend himself against me again.”
Tangi dropped his head into my lap, and this time, I wasn’t imagining it. A low, almost kittenish mewl issued from his throat and his shoulder muscles bunched and tightened.
Paolo eased away from us, his gaze speculative. “We weren’t. Tangi is…special. You’re the first stranger he’s connected with since he came here. Given your own situation, we thought the two of you might be able to help each other.”
My own situation. Right, my legs. I clamped my jaws together, stifling an angry bark of laughter. That would probably freak Tangi out, and it sounded like he’d been through enough already. “I don’t know anything about werewolves.”
“You know something about being wounded.” Paolo shrugged his suit jacket off and draped it around Tangi’s shoulders, then undid the cufflinks holding his shirtsleeves together and rolled his sleeves up. “My blood is strong. Please.”
I stared at the wrist he proffered. He was fine-boned, almost fragile, and his pulse beat steadily under his rich, creamy brown skin. Eric would tell me to take the blood, to enrich my strength with Paolo’s, but there I had a little problem. I could have sex now, could use it to help control the bloodlust, but I had a one hundred and forty-five pound werewolf in human form clinging to my legs.
I was pretty sure that ixnayed sex.
Maybe I could take just a little blood. It would strengthen me and satisfy Vampyr courtesy in one fell swoop, a win-win. And since Tangi obviously wasn’t going anywhere…
“Thank you, Paolo,” I said.
“The pleasure is mine.”
I clasped his arm gently to my mouth and struck, digging my fangs carefully into the tender flesh at his wrist. His gasp was cut off almost immediately.
I sent a quick thought to him. Fangs in or out?
“In.” His eyelids fluttered shut and he gasped as his head rolled back and his pulse thundered against my lips. “Definitely in.”
So in they stayed. His blood dribbled into my mouth, an exotic blend of dark chocolate, vanilla, and citrus. Mmm. God in Heaven, that was good. His essence absorbed into mine, pulsing through me in slow, heated throbs, and the erection I’d sported since Tangi offered me a drink swelled and lengthened into agonizing need.
Tangi turned his head, and his moist breath filtered through my pants into the skin of my inner thigh, warming me. I squeezed my eyelids shut. Oh, fuck. A minute more of that and I’d come all over my pants, probably scaring the shit out of him.
Somebody really needed to tell me what had happened to him to make him fragile and special before something bad happened. Christ, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him.
I yanked my fangs out and sealed the holes I’d cut into Paolo’s skin, then released his arm. “Ah, thanks. That’s good.”
Paolo placed his mouth over where mine had been and mmmd, and Tangi slid his head higher on my lap.
I cut a helpless look at Paolo. “What do I do?”
“Pet him. Encourage him, if you like.” He pushed himself upright and moved to stand behind me. “May I?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I loosened my tie, started unbuttoning my shirt. Paolo brushed my hands aside and did it himself, then grazed an open-mouthed kiss down my throat.
My dick throbbed behind the fly of my pants. Had to do something about that soon. No idea what. I peeked at Tangi. Yup, still attached, like I couldn’t tell from the iron grip he had on my thighs. But Paolo had said I could pet him. Maybe if I did, the wolf would relax and let go.
Paolo struck, scoring the skin over my pulse in one swift scrape of his fangs, and I jerked, startled. Tangi let go and reared away, his golden skin ashen. Paolo’s suit jacket slipped off his shoulders, and he hunched into himself, a wounded animal frightened by the harsh realities of a life gone somehow horribly wrong.
I held a hand out to him and whispered, “No, sorry. Really sorry. Paolo startled me. You can come back. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Little by little, Tangi inched his way back to me, his head hung low, his eyes hidden beneath lowered eyelids. I murmured softly to him, gentling him, and coaxed him onto my lap, all the way on, not the half-hanging thing he’d been doing. Paolo’s draws on my throat seemed to be linked directly to the throbbing in my dick. Suck, throb, suck, throb, and Christ, between that and Tangi’s hip resting against my erection, his head on my chest, and his breath feathering along my skin through my shirt, I was about ready to explode.
Paolo scraped his tongue across my throat and let go, and his lips brushed across my ear. “Exquisite.”
“Ah, hmm.”
He laughed, soft and sensuous. “Remy wants to exchange blood with you, a token of his respect for you and your master.”
“Ok, sure.” Just what I needed, more suck without the fuck. “Ah. I need a minute.”
“He and Eric aren’t quite finished yet.”
I didn’t want to know. I really did not want to know.
I peeked anyway. Remy cradled Eric in his lap, one hand supporting Eric’s shoulders, the other under his shirt, stroking Eric’s abs. They were kissing, hollow-cheeked and deliciously rough. I jerked my eyes away. How come Eric got to have sex and I was stuck babysitting a damaged werewolf?
Paolo moved in front of me, blocking my view of three pets on the opposite sofa having what looked like really great sex. His fingers flicked down his shirt, unbuttoning it. “He likes skin on skin. It’s reassuring.”
“Who? Oh. Ah.” I didn’t mind skin on skin. Hell, I loved it, but Tangi barely looked old enough to shave, which kinda made my hard-on not so much inconvenient as really uncomfortable in a way that had nothing to do with how blue my balls were gonna be if I didn’t come soon. “How old is he?”
“Eighteen,” Tangi whispered.
Paolo arched an eyebrow at me as he shrugged off his shirt. “Two words in one night. Will wonders never cease.”
“Har.” I took a chance and brushed the backs of my fingers along Tangi’s temple. “So werewolves prefer full-skin contact, huh? What else? Should I scratch behind your ears, maybe get you some kibble?”
Tangi huffed a silent laugh into my chest. “Pizza.”
“Christ, yeah. Let’s get some pizza and watch a movie or something. Can you call it in while me and Remy, uh, talk?”
He nodded and slipped off my lap, and Paolo braced his hands on the arms of my chair and leaned into me. “Thank you.”
“For what? I’m hungry.”
“We have food.”
“No offense, but hors d’œuvre ain’t food.”
His mouth touched mine, there for a moment and gone just as quickly. “We owe you.”
“Nope. Besides, I’m not really in the mood for sex games right now.”
“Which is why you’re sporting a magnificent erection under your pants.” Paolo trailed a fingertip across my lips, back and forth, slow and easy, and my skin tingled under his touch. “Don’t touch his throat, even if he seems to be inviting you to. He won’t make the first move, so if you want something from him, ask.”
No, absolutely not. I was not asking Tangi for anything except maybe a rundown of what had happened to send him away from his pack and into a stable of blood slaves. “Is there somewhere we can go?”
“He has a room, or you can use the one you and Eric have been given.”
I drew away from him. “You were serious about that.”
“Of course.” Paolo kissed me again, lingering a fraction longer. “Remy’s ready for you.”
Gentle hands skimmed down my throat, shifting my shirt aside, and heated skin pressed against mine. “The dark kiss, nothing more,” Remy said. “Paolo drank too long at your throat.”
Paolo smiled. “He’s jealous he didn’t get there first.”
Remy mmmd and sank his fangs into my throat, and my back arched. Fuck. I loved being used like that, absolutely adored it. Eric knelt in front of me and undid my p
ants, and Paolo moved to the side, I guess to help him since no way did Eric have four hands. I was pretty sure he wasn’t using his mind mojo on me. Well, almost sure.
My gaze skittered across the room, half blurred, and landed on Tangi. He had his arms wrapped around himself and was staring at the floor, and even from across the room, I could discern the shudders running through him.
An epiphany snapped through the sexual haze, its bright dawn carrying a kernel of the whys of Tangi’s fragility.
“Stop,” I said, my voice so thin and hoarse, I barely recognized it as my own.
The hands caressing me melted away and Remy released my throat. A wrist appeared in front of me. Obediently, I drank from it, but the whole time, my eyes were on Tangi and the white-knuckled grip he had on his cell phone.
Remy’s blood was dense and wondrous, a colorful blend of aged whiskey and, bizarrely, the pine-laced bite of rosemary.
I was barely aware of it hitting my tongue.
The buzz it left behind was another thing. Awareness expanded within me, collapsed, and stretched outward again, and I honed in on a familiar rhythm. It took me a minute to figure out what it was, and when I did, I had no idea why that particular noise caught my attention. Why Tangi’s heartbeat and not Eric’s? Why had I focused on this stranger and not my lover?
Eric swam into focus in front of me and smiled. “You’re drunk.”
“Naw,” I said, and shook my head for emphasis. It swam and spun, and I nearly keeled over on the spot.
Yeah, ok, I was drunk. Vampire blood. Had to remember to be careful with it.
“The pizza should be here soon,” Eric said. “Go downstairs with Tangi. I’ll be up here if you need me.”
“Home soon.”
I need a little longer. Remy’s being obstinate. He kissed me soundly, no hesitation or doubt or anger over my arousal. I love you, Adonis.
“Love you, baby.”
Somebody nearby laughed and said, “I’m sorry. I had no idea it would affect him like that.”
“That’s the most blood he’s had at once in a long time,” Eric murmured. He said something else, about sex or legs, or maybe it was motorcycles, then his voice faded out.
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