Rampant, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  “We have one of the children. She survived—hell, she was converting wildlife when we found her. She’s….” I met Kyle’s eyes. It wasn’t pretty—there was a reason Marcus had Phillip off in a corner of the woods fucking him silly right now, and it had very little to do with sex and an awful lot to do with actual healing. “She’s not doing well,” I finished lamely.

  Andres put a hand on my shoulder, and I covered it with my own. “You know where this is probably going,” he said softly.

  I looked at Bracken, who raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips softly. We knew. We had always known how this might end up, but it had been worth the chance to not have to do it cold-bloodedly while she looked at us with some hope for salvation.

  “Yeah,” I said, sounding tired even to myself. “We know.”

  Andres nodded a couple of times and squeezed my shoulder. “So you traced the pedophile to Redding, and came and asked Rafael for him, and….”

  “And the next night they took a shot at Green. Except I was in his head, and I saw who did it, and her buddy gave himself away when we walked in, and I took them out.”

  “We,” Bracken said mildly. “We took them out.”

  I flashed him a supremely grateful look. “We. We took them out.”

  Andres grinned. I could feel his eyes collide and connect with Bracken’s over my shoulder, and I warmed to the sweep of Bracken’s heat as it flushed across his skin. Suddenly what my lover wanted seemed ever so much more important than what I wanted, and I had a desperate need to talk to Andres alone.

  “And that’s when Rafael called me. Interesting, you know—he extended his hospitality to me for the dawn.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “And you came here first….”

  He nodded and extended a fang. “I thought it would be… politic for me to strengthen my bond with Green’s people first. And, of course, to blood with my queen.”

  Oh, shit. I dropped my fork, and my stomach roiled with such ferocity I thought I might throw up right there and then. Blood with me? He’d bitten me before, yes. And it had been spectacular. But for me to take his blood in return? It would make him… well, mine. As it was, we were bound by his honor, but once we’d blooded—well, theoretically, I would have the same control over Andres that Phillip held over Gretchen. Andres was more than a hundred and seventy years old—he was a leader of his entire kiss, and it was bigger than mine.

  “Andres,” I squeaked, and then took a hasty gulp of tea because my voice sounded like an engine with sand in the oil tank. “Andres? Seriously, what in the hell?”

  “You. My queen. Basically the queen of every vampire in the northern half of the state. You’re not stupid, Lady Cory, and you heard me right. It’s something I would have done a year and a half ago, if I’d thought you were up to it at the time.”

  He had a little half smile on his face as he said it, and all I could do was shake my head at him. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  He shrugged—such an elegant, insouciant gesture that I suddenly heard Shakespeare in my head. To throw away the dearest thing he owned as though it were a careless trifle….

  “You love being a leader,” I finished weakly.

  “I love being a leader of my people,” he said softly. “My little family, in my little corner of the earth. What you did here—come up to police our kind—I have no wish to do that. And yet that is exactly what you did. You didn’t ask for my help, which would hurt me dearly if I didn’t know how important it was to you to do your job well, and you’ve shown no weakness. If I didn’t know any better, little Goddess, I’d swear you had fangs.”

  “I’m mortal,” I rasped. “You will be alive long after I’m gone. What will happen then?”

  Andres shrugged again, and this time even I could see the age and melancholy in it. “I happen to believe as Green. I have great faith such a thing will not come to pass. And if it does, then we will deal with it when it does. Life is uncertain even for the deathless, my lady. What is some uncertainty about the future, when there is the possibility of peace?”

  “So you want to bite me tonight?” My voice hit dog-whistle pitch on the last syllable. For the unholy love of gilded crap, how could we—and the bite! The thought of the bite made me shudder sensually when that was the last desire on my mind. Oh Goddess, was my mind screwed on crooked. Here we were, talking about a job I would hold for my entire lifetime, and the first thing I could think of was the sexual intensity of Andres’s bite. My skin felt like I was spilling spirit out the top, bubbling over with sexual saturation.

  “Tonight?” It didn’t come out any easier this time.

  “It would be logical,” Andres said with mild amusement. I looked at Bracken—but if he’d been a cat, his mouth would have been half-open, and he would have been tasting the possibilities on a savoring tongue. He didn’t sense my panic or dismay, the smug bastard. All he was thinking about was getting….

  Oh, Goddess. I remembered his excitement when we’d seen Marcus and Phillip. I knew exactly what he was thinking about getting, and… and he gave me so much. How could I deny him this?

  “Why logical?” I swallowed, stalling for time. I looked around the table, trying to find a reason not to do this, but all I saw was the usual claustrophobic ring of faces staring back at me with unabashed interest. Even Kyle and Teague, who had been shy around the sort of kindred theater that was performed so often at the hill, were watching me avidly to see if I was going to get the ultra-super-special get-down-and-dirty tonight, and I didn’t have any ground to stand on to so much as stick my tongue out at them and tell them to mind their own business. I was their queen, and fuck it all, I guess I was their business.

  “In all likelihood, I’m going into a trap tonight—but I doubt a fatal one.”

  I blinked. I had to admit that the thought had occurred to me, but I’d assumed Andres had a contingency plan. I just hadn’t realized I was it!

  “I’m the best you can do?” I had to ask. “You’ve been the king of San Francisco for a hundred years, and a college student on sorcery steroids is your backup? Come on, Andres, I know you’ve got better hoodoo up your sleeve than me!”

  Andres didn’t even chuckle. He simply put a steadying finger under my chin and tilted my head up to meet his gaze. “You and your people,” he said softly, “are better than anything I could have planned. Look at them.” We both looked at the avid, fierce faces around us. “Kill or die, my lady. They would kill or die for you—and you for them, I don’t have a single doubt. You have no idea how formidable and terrifying that makes you. And I have every trust in you. You will not abuse them. You would sooner… sleep with that big-titted human bitch who screamed and ran away when I walked down here than violate their faith. And if you go rogue….”

  Oh Goddess… okay. I could buy into this. “You’ll stop me?” I asked hopefully. He laughed and shook his head. “Not possible. I was going to say, if you go rogue, damned if I don’t eat my own tongue!”

  I felt ill again and scrubbed my face with my hand. I looked at Bracken, but he was still in I’m-gonna-get-laid land, and he wasn’t really picking up on my I’m-not-worthy vibe. I had to laugh, but at the same time, I felt adrift. I was so used to him being there, being in tune with me, and….

  “It’s a logical step, beloved.”

  Oh, thank the Goddess. Green was here.

  “I don’t think I’m ready, Green. It would make me his boss, and I’m feeling like my pants are too damned big as it is.”

  “All the better to fit another lover in, you think?”

  “No!”

  “Well, then, why not blood with him? He’s offering you unlimited backup and a pretty decent guarantee that the next time you try to police your kiss, a master vampire will give up his own mother rather than piss you off!”

  This conversation was starting to piss me off. Dammit, did nobody see that I was not all that? Annette had just called me—

  “If you complete that thought I will drive up in that ap
palling heat and spank you myself.” And there was no arguing with that beloved, infuriating, calm voice of reason in my head, so my next thought was as far from reason as I ever got.

  “I’m a baby! I don’t want to be in charge of him!”

  The next sound in my head was hard to translate, and I have no idea what my expression was, but suddenly the attention of every person at the table shifted to an amused silence. Of all people, Teague broke the silence.

  “What in the hell did he say to you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Seriously,” Katy said. “Whatever it was, you look like you swallowed a bug.”

  I looked at Katy and managed a blink and a sour smile. “It tasted worse.” I turned to Andres. “Sir Vampire, my night vision sucks, but if you and Bracken want to steer, I bet Tanya would let us take out one of the flatboats before you leave for Redding. You think?”

  Nicky made an “ooooooh” face at me over Andres’s shoulder, and I could pretty much feel Bracken’s full-body grin on my other side.

  “Don’t get all excited,” I grumbled. “It’s a boat ride. I need some fucking air.”

  “Well, then,” Bracken said, bright and undeterred, “maybe you should go change into something that will let you appreciate all that ‘fucking air.’”

  I would have said “Fuck me!” but he seemed to think that was what was going to happen. Funny, actually, since I wasn’t the one who was going to get nailed to the boat deck—but I didn’t want to tell him that in front of Goddess and everybody and the goddamned picnic table, now did I? As it was, I stood and let Bracken drag me to our cabin, where I was pretty sure he was going to make me wear that goddamned bikini.

  Which he did. It turned out there was a pretty cool fancy wrap that went over it. Awesome.

  But as he was setting the wrap around my shoulders and fussing with my sun-streaked curly nightmare hair, I took his hands in mine and told him to stop.

  “I’m not doing this, beloved,” I said softly. “I can’t.” I could taste the disappointment in the expression on his face, so I reached up and smoothed my thumb over that lean, chiseled, pouting mouth.

  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t,” I told him, cupping his cheek. In response he closed his eyes and leaned into my touch.

  “I could spend eternity,” he said, “with only your touch on my skin.”

  “I know you could.” I held up my other hand, holding his face in my hands. I knew—I knew—without a doubt, without a question, that I held his heart. “I know you could, which is why you shouldn’t have to. You deserve… everything, Bracken Brine. I would give you a thousand lovers if I could, just to have you look at me the way you do. I don’t have to—I know it—but I would if I could. I can’t, so the least I can do is give you Andres.”

  He bent and kissed me, which was what I’d been craving, because you never seem as close to a lover as you do when his mouth is hot on yours and his hands are skimming your body. He pulled back and without any more fussing grabbed a couple of towels and a spare blanket under one arm, then took my hand as we left the cabin.

  “So,” he asked, as we walked back down to the table to get Andres, “what did Green say?”

  I grimaced. “I told him I was a baby and I couldn’t handle Andres.”

  Bracken grunted. “That’s a laugh.”

  Green’s golden laughter, even more like church bells in my head than when it was actual sound waves in the air, still echoed in my cranium. “Yeah, that’s sort of what he said too.”

  And now Bracken’s laughter, straight from his belly and shaking his broad shoulders, rang through the night as well.

  At least I’d made them happy, I guess.

  Bracken went down to the water with Tanya to gas up the boat and fix up some lights on the prow. Like I’d said, he didn’t need them, but other boaters might want to know where we were. Odds were good we’d go to a secluded cove and “park,” and don’t think that idea didn’t make me wiggle like a worm on a hook, but all I could really think was that the sky was bright as a diamond razor overhead and the blackness of the water as it reflected the stars was alien and lovely.

  I wanted to go out on the boat. Everything that happened on it, well, I’d probably enjoy it—but mostly? I just wanted to be out with the pine-scented wind on my face and Bracken by my side. The idea of it felt like freedom, felt like vampire flight above the dark world, felt like setting your burdens on the ground and soaring into the black velvet sky. Oh Goddess, did I want to lay down some worries and fly.

  Andres and I waited on the bank for the boat to be prepped, and I took in his moonlit profile as the breeze ruffled his hair. He was so beautiful, and so not for me.

  He grinned at me, suddenly appearing younger. I knew he’d been in his twenties when he turned, and it occurred to me that by the time I was ready to actually make love to this very pretty man, I would probably look too old for him, but I didn’t think that would stop him one bit. And even if it would, I didn’t think I could change where I was—where my heart was—at this very moment, and forcing it wouldn’t do any of us any good.

  “I can’t,” I said softly. His brows lowered in puzzlement even as he reached out and took my hand.

  “Can’t?” He stroked the soft space between my fingers with the pad of his thumb, and I caught my breath.

  “The bite…. I think I can do the blooding, Andres. I think I can—I mean, I have my doubts, but Green and Bracken….” I shook my head and looked out to where Bracken and his überconfidence were making short work of attaching running lights to the outside of the boat. “They think I can do anything, and I keep surprising myself by living up to that, you know?”

  Andres smiled kindly. Ah, Goddess, that’s what I remembered most about Andres. The sexiness, well, that seemed to dim, mostly so it could just assault me again every time I looked at him. But the kindness—just like with Green, it was what gave the sexiness a deadly serious lethal quality that could level a girl at the knees. Or between them, I guess.

  “I think you can do anything as well, little Goddess. Are you telling me I just caught you on a good day?”

  I laughed shortly. The day Andres and I had met had been in the top five worst days of my life. It might even have been number three. Of course it was in the top three best days of my life as well.

  “I think you caught me at an amazing time,” I told him softly. “Everything—possibilities, my heart—seemed to be wide open, which was why I could catch the best and the worst of things. You know?”

  Andres nodded and put his arm platonically around my shoulders—he seemed to know where I was going with this. “I do know, Corinne Carol-Anne. And now?”

  I shrugged in the steel circle of his cool embrace. “Now… my heart is full, Andres. I know Bracken. He can… he can share his body with someone he merely likes, and that is all it is. Sharing his body. But me…. Nicky and I love each other as friends. We like each other enough that making love is a pleasure and not a chore. And… I think that’s as close as I can get to an affair, you know? I think….”

  Oh Goddess. His eyes were so brown… and they were so hurt. I couldn’t hurt this man—the very idea was horrible. But all of the worries I had been prepared to leave on the shore came back and settled on my chest, making my breaths shudder in and out of my chest. It was all so muddled….

  In an act of desperation, I bared my shoulder and placed his hand on the mark there. I could still feel it but couldn’t see it in the dark.

  His eyes went round, his mouth made a little “ooh,” and I had to catch my breath.

  He wanted me. Purely and simply, he wanted my power and my flesh. He liked me—sincerely and without prejudice, and that alone was an incredible mind-fuck—but he had admired me since that horrible night when he saw me face down his enforcer, saw me kiss Bracken and make the two of us one, saw me save lives using desperation and a fading power.

  “You could love me?” he said in surprise.

&nb
sp; I flushed and looked away. Compared to how he felt about me, it sounded melodramatic and overwrought, but it was very nearly the truth.

  “Not as much as Green, not as much as Bracken,” he said softly, exploring the ideas even as he said them. “Not even close. But you could. And that would complicate things—and your feelings are complex beyond complex right now.”

  He shuddered, and I backed away and covered my shoulder nervously with the wrap again. Andres reached out and grasped my chin, looking me in the eyes.

  “Don’t look away, little Goddess. I understand, more than you think. I’ve been balancing people in my bed and people under my rule for nearly a hundred years. Your heart is… full. Your life is full. There’s no need to explore someone else’s flesh, no matter how tempting. You are happy.” His lips twisted in a smile so bittersweet it stung. “You are very happy with the people who love you. You would not upset that balance for all the potential in the world.”

  “But,” I said softly, flushing at how accurately he had read me in that one touch, “a night in your flesh wouldn’t upset Bracken’s balance at all.”

  Andres smiled wickedly, and oh Goddess! did my switch flip. Not enough to change my mind—but those white teeth in that pretty, light brown skin… mmmmm….

  “As I recall Bracken’s preferences, I think I shall be spending the night in his flesh.”

  I laughed then, giddy with arousal, and with Andres, and with the thought of my lover, pleasured and cared for in a way I could not see to.

  “Damn, brother, if anyone was worth messing with my equilibrium, I swear to the Goddess it would be you.”

  Bracken jumped off the boat and onto the dock, and gave us a wave. We walked down the embankment and over to the dock, holding hands like friends.

  And oh, the wind in my face as we motored through the liquid dark was heaven. I leaned out over the side of the boat and watched the running lights in the velvet matte blackness of the water, feeling the humid air on my skin. The temp was down to a tolerable eighty-five degrees, and the sliver of waning moon was bright. In a few days, it would start waxing again, and I was glad we wouldn’t be here long enough to see it full. I wouldn’t want to be obligated to turn furry in this foreign place—I would feel too vulnerable, too at the mercy of the other lycanthropes to spend my full moon comfortably. I certainly didn’t want to saddle my friends with that burden.