It doesn’t matter, he told himself. He loved Nikita. He was pack, he was family, he was the single most important figure in Sasha’s life, and nothing could change that. Not even rejection; not even if Nikita told him, gently, that last night had been a mistake. That some lines shouldn’t be crossed.
He exhaled slowly, dread pooling in his stomach, and twisted around so he lay on his other side, so they faced one another. Heart pounding, he opened his eyes.
Nikita’s head rested on the pillow only a few inches away, gaze impossibly soft. The little groove so often pressed between his brows, a sign of tension and worry, was smooth, his expression relaxed, wide open in a way it never was.
Sasha wasn’t prepared for the raw, vulnerable look of him then, for the gentle steadiness of his stare, and he swallowed down the shocked little sound that tried to climb his throat.
“Are you alright?” Nikita asked, and even his voice was soft.
Sasha’s mouth was dry, and he had to wet his lips. Even then, his voice came out a croak. “Yes.”
“Did–” His brows tensed. “I didn’t hurt you, did–”
“No.” Sasha pressed his hand flat to Nik’s chest; felt the quick throb of his heartbeat, as unsteady as his own. “No, I’m fine. You didn’t–” His breath caught, and he bit at his lip.
They were at the precipice again. Still. They had been for a while, and probably even longer than that, Sasha thought. He wanted to leap across it, but if he didn’t land. If he fell…
Slowly, as if trying not to startle him, Nikita lifted his hand between them. And laid it, gentle as thistledown, on Sasha’s face. Cupped his jaw. Stroked his cheek with his thumb. “I think,” he said slowly, “that I’ve done a very bad job of showing you how precious you are to me.”
Sasha sucked in a breath.
Nikita tipped forward, bridged the gap between them, and pressed their foreheads together.
Another breath, almost a gasp. Sasha felt the sting of tears and shut his eyes, the warm touch of skin-to-skin an anchor.
“I’m sorry,” Nik whispered. His thumb swept back and forth, soothing. Grounding. “I’m so sorry. I can’t…” He sucked in his own unsteady breath, his whole body shuddering against Sasha’s. “You are everything to me. Everything.” Fierce. And then, uncertain: “I want to show you. If…you want. If you…”
“Yes.” Sasha angled his head, surged forward, and kissed him.
It had to be a terrible kiss. Sasha had no idea what he was doing, and just mashed their mouths together; too hard, too fast. Their teeth clicked.
A split-second where he panicked. What if he shouldn’t have? What if Nik hadn’t meant–?
But then he felt Nikita’s lips curve against his own. A smile.
Nik pulled back a fraction, just far enough to ease the pressure – but he didn’t break contact. His hand slid down so it cupped the side of Sasha’s throat, and he kissed back. Gentle, skillful, coaxing. With the kind of finesse Sasha wanted to have, but had been too overcome to attempt.
Sasha sucked in a breath through his nose, still now, feeling Nikita’s lips move delicately against his own.
It was happening. He’d imagined it – sometimes, when he hadn’t dashed his own hopes out of fear. But to live it now – the soft flick of the very tip of Nik’s tongue against his closed lips – defied all imagination. Was he dreaming? Had he hit his head?
Nik retreated a little farther, just enough to whisper, “It’s better to go slow at first,” hint of a laugh in his voice. Then he pressed back in for a slow, thorough kiss that left Sasha clutching at him, mouth opening in complete, helpless offering.
Nik hummed a pleased little sound. He tilted his head, deepening the angle. Pushed up on his elbow for better leverage, his hand sliding down Sasha’s throat, over his collarbone, to his chest.
He finally pulled back, and Sasha whined a protest, eyes opening. He wasn’t ready for the sight of Nik braced above him: the blown pupils, and the wet, soft mouth, and the way he looked absolutely ravenous. A hunger that was largely anguish, like a bruise that wanted to be pressed on.
“Sasha,” he said, voice in tatters. “Baby.”
His phone rang.
The familiar, innocuous iPhone chime froze the moment. They stared at one another, both fighting for breath, chests heaving.
The phone stopped.
And then rang again.
Nikita growled savagely, and rolled away, reaching for the nightstand.
Sasha dropped his forearm over his eyes and blew out a breath. Baby. The word echoed like the tolling of a bell in his head.
“What?” Nik snarled.
Sasha could hear Trina on the other end of the line, taken aback. “Good morning to you, too.”
He growled again, an awful, aggressive, open-mouthed sound.
Sasha rolled onto his side, and laid a hand on the small of his back.
The growl choked off, a low, unhappy rumble, but not as openly hostile. “What do you want?” he asked, half-civil.
A pause. Trina said, “Did you go by the morgue last night?”
Nikita panted a moment; reached with his free hand to push his hair off his forehead. “Yeah,” he said, and the growl finally died away completely.
“Lanny said he caught a familiar scent.”
“Yeah. Us, too. We should…” He sighed. “We should meet up.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Trina said, brisk and busy. “Diner in a half hour? I’ll call Jamie and Alexei.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
If she heard the defeated note in his voice, the one that had Sasha rubbing soothing little circles into his back, she didn’t let on. “Great. See you then.”
The call disconnected.
Nikita tossed the phone on the bed and they sat there a moment, just breathing. “We should go,” he said at last.
Sasha sat up. “Yeah.” He slid out of bed and was rounding the end of it, heading for the door–
When Nikita caught his hand, and tugged it gently. He glanced up, and met Nik’s regretful look.
“Later,” he said, firmly. “Later, Sasha. I promise.”
Butterflies fluttered in his stomach. He’d waited this long; he could definitely wait for later.
~*~
“Pass me the ketchup?” Lanny asked, holding out his hand.
Trina slid it along with a snort of disgust.
“Hey, half of America puts ketchup on their eggs.”
“But…so much of it?” Jamie asked, brows lifted skeptically.
“You’re disgusting,” Alexei said with undisguised delight.
“You guys are just jealous,” Lanny said, and shook an obscene amount of ketchup over perfectly good scrambled eggs.
“Of what?” Jamie wanted to know.
Trina checked the time on her phone, and not for the first time wished she wasn’t the only woman in their strange little group. She loved Lanny, and Nik, and Sasha, was starting to love Jamie, and she didn’t hate Alexei. But being the only girl in the boy’s club was getting old.
As was being the only human.
“Where are they?” she wondered aloud. Sasha tended toward punctual, if not early, and always managed to drag Nikita along with him. But they were fifteen minutes late, today.
“Hey,” Lanny said, after he’d already shoveled ketchupy eggs into his mouth. “Maybe my little nudge helped and they’re…” He waggled his brows.
“For the love of God, close your mouth,” Jamie said, turning toward the window with a grimace.
Trina sighed. “You’re–”
“An awesome matchmaker?”
“An asshole.”
“They’re here,” Jamie said, as the two Russians passed the big plate glass window beside them, headed for the door.
“Lanny,” Trina warned. “Don’t you dare say anything stupid to them.”
“What?” he asked, affronted.
Jamie glared at him, then he and Alexei, without prompt, slid out of the booth and went
to snag chairs, leaving the good seats for Nik and Sasha.
Sasha slid in first, into the window seat, with a cheerful, “Good morning.” His face looked tired, though, Trina thought, noting the dark smudges beneath eyes that sparkled in the sunlight. Tired, but anxious, too. A rapidly-healing pink bite mark graced his throat, the distinct dots of puncture wounds.
Nik looked as stone-faced as ever; he wore a black hoodie under his denim jacket, the hood pulled up over his head. His color was better than the last time she’d seen him, though; he’d finally fed. Good.
The waitress circled back just as Alexei and Jamie wedged their chairs in at the table’s end, and took Nikita’s order of “black coffee and toast.” Sasha wanted orange juice and oatmeal.
When they were alone, effectively walled in by the clatter and tumble of busy morning diner sounds, Nikita said, “It’s Gustav,” without preamble.
Alexei went very still, for just a second, and then picked up his coffee mug, expression clear.
“Good morning to you, too,” Trina said. “Who’s Gustav?”
Nikita pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, frowned at it when he remembered he couldn’t smoke in here, and put it away. “A vampire we met thirty years ago.”
She felt her brows go up. “Just the once? And you remembered his scent that well?”
He sent her a direct look. “This one I did.”
“Alright,” she said, when he didn’t back down. “Who is he?”
He glanced away, then, just as the waitress returned and thumped down plates. When she was gone, Nikita shook his head and said, “Not a friend.”
Trina looked to Sasha – whose cheeks gleamed rosy pink in the incoming sunlight. A trick of the glass, she guessed. “We met him and his Familiar years ago. It was….” He narrowed his eyes and tipped his head, thinking. “The eighties. Late eighties.”
“You had that mohawk, then,” Nikita reminded.
“Oh, yeah! Eighty-eight, then. I only had it the one winter.”
Trina tried to imagine Sasha with a mohawk; it would have suited his black leather jacket and tight jeans look – in fact, both he and Nik didn’t seem to have outgrown the eighties when it came to fashion – but she thought the shoulder-length hair suited the narrow shape of his face.
“It was Christmastime,” he continued. “And we were shopping for a tree. Or, I was. Nik was still on the sidewalk.”
Trina snuck a glance toward her ancestor, easily imaging his sour face – much like the one he wore now – as he waited, hands in pockets, for Sasha to finish up whatever fun thing he was doing so they could go sit moodily in a bar somewhere. But then he surprised her, his gaze flicking toward Sasha, his expression softening a fraction. A minute change, but one that offered a glimpse of bottomless warmth and fondness.
“I caught their scent, Gustav and his Familiar, and went to see. He knew who we were,” Sasha continued, and Trina could hear the way memory sent a chill down his back, the catch in his voice.
“He knew what I’d been doing,” Nik said, and lowered his voice a fraction. “That I don’t like other vampires.”
“That you kill them,” Alexei said, voice flat, drawing all their gazes. Face still blank, pale; throat bobbing as he swallowed.
Nikita met his stare, his own expression shifting from his usual, vague irritation to a kind of cold detachment that left Trina’s fingertips drumming on the table. She’d seen this look enough times to know what it was; to know this was the face of a government-sanctioned killer.
“I kill the ones who need killing,” he said, flat-voiced.
Silence.
“Ahem,” Trina said, clearing her throat. “I don’t think we’re here to argue, are we?”
They glanced away from each other, guilty.
“Nik,” she said, “did Gustav kill that man?”
“No. But the wolves did.”
“His wolves?” Lanny asked. “How many does he have?”
“Two were the ferals from earlier this year,” Sasha said. “Could you smell them?”
“Yeah.” Lanny fidgeted in his seat a little. He was still new at this, and Trina had the sense he was self-conscious among their older immortal friends; that he didn’t trust his instincts just yet, but didn’t want the others to know. “But there was another one.”
“That’s his Familiar,” Sasha said. “Hannah.”
Nik growled, just one low pulse, and Sasha touched his arm to quiet him.
The sooner this breakfast was over, the better. “We need to get hold of Gustav, then,” Trina said.
“And kill him?” Alexei asked, mocking.
“And stop him from siccing his wolves on innocent civilians,” Trina said, firmly, before Nik could respond. “If he’s been in New York since the eighties, then he knows what he’s doing is illegal. Finding him’s the first priority. We’ll worry about what to do after when it’s time.”
She earned nods from everyone, Alexei’s reluctant, Nikita’s just a single dip of his head.
“I mean it,” she said, and sounded like her mother, God. “I don’t care how badass any of you are, I’m the one with the badge.”
Lanny cleared his throat.
“We’re the ones with the badges. And this guy he killed? Ended up on our ME’s table. So it needs to go through the right legal channels.”
“Going to tell your boss about vampires?” Nik asked, lifting his brows.
“Maybe,” she bluffed.
The corner of his mouth twitched, once, and he glanced back down at his toast.
7
They split up after breakfast with the intent of searching for Gustav’s trail.
“See you tonight?” Jamie asked Lanny at the door, just before he and Trina headed off in the other direction.
“What’s tonight?” Trina asked, and it was probably good Lanny’s back was toward her, the way his eyes went suddenly, comically wide.
He shrugged and managed a casual, “Yeah.” He turned to Trina and they walked off toward her unmarked car. “Hitting the gym,” he told her. “I’m gonna get our young Jamie super jacked.”
She snorted.
Alexei stuck his hands in his pockets and started the opposite direction, Jamie hustling to catch up. “That was stupid.”
“Shit, I know,” Jamie said with a wince. “I forgot.” He chewed his lip a moment as they walked, expression troubled. He had such a conscience, this boy. So very, very young as an immortal, still doubting, still resistant to his own nature.
But Alexei felt a certain softness for that kind of doubt. “You think Lanny’s being foolish,” he guessed.
“I think Trina’s gonna be really pissed when she finds out he’s been fighting humans for money.”
“Weak humans,” Alexei said. “Who want money. They fight willingly.”
“With no chance of ever winning,” Jamie said, voice growing frustrated. “It’s not a fair fight. Lanny’s stronger than all of them, and he’s absolutely destroying these poor guys. Where’s the sport in that?”
“You think he does it for sport?” Alexei stepped around a letter-carrier who was opening a mailbox, and dodged a woman’s leashed, snapping Yorkie. “He’s doing it for fun,” he continued when he and Jamie came together again. “Because he’s strong, and because it feels good to put that strength to use.”
When he snuck a glace, he found Jamie gaping at him, horrified.
“Don’t look so innocent. You fed from a man’s throat.”
“Yeah, but – but,” Jamie sputtered. “That was – that was different!”
“Because that man was a rapist?”
“Well…yeah!” He closed his eyes a moment, and made a frustrated sound – and nearly ran into someone handing out fliers. Once he’d straightened, and apologized, and caught up – Alexei had kept walking during the awkward giving of sorrys and excuses – he let out a deep sigh and said, “If you’re a lot stronger than the people around you, you shouldn’t abuse that. Maybe that’s just what
I believe, but it’s important. And Lanny’s not playing fair. He’s taking advantage. I don’t like that.”
“And yet,” Alexei said, voice going sing-song, “you play his bookie every night.”
No comment. A glance proved Jamie had caught his lower lip between his teeth, chewing it unhappily, a fang glinting in the sunlight.
Alexei relented and put an arm around his shoulders as they walked. “You are very sweet.”
Jamie made a half-hearted attempt to shrug him off.
“You are. Just like my father.” Bitterness rose, a sudden, choking tide of it. “And look where that got him.”
Jamie looked at him, eyes wide – he could feel it. But he didn’t look back, steering Jamie down an alley.
“Here. I want to show you something.”
Jamie tried to hold back, but Alexei pushed him on. “Show me what?” Less curious, more hostile.
“A place I’ve been going to. You’ll like it.”
That earned a dramatic sigh, but Jamie stopped resisting and went along.
In the bald daylight, the entrance to Nameless looked less sinister and more sad. A gritty, greasy, falling-apart shell of a building, its floor littered with detritus better left unidentified. The hatch opened with a groan.
Jamie peered down into it, and then cast Alexei a flat look across the dark opening. “You’re not serious.”
“I’ll go first,” Alexei said, and started down the ladder.
After a moment, he heard Jamie mutter a curse and follow.
The usual nighttime doorman – door wolf – had been replaced with a near-identical comrade. Also a wolf, also bound. He smelled, Alexei now knew, like Gustav.
“Good morning,” Alexei greeted brightly.
The wolf lifted a disinterested glance and grunted.
Jamie landed behind him, and reeked of anxiety.
Alexei could relate, somewhat. Being around a large, powerful wolf who wasn’t a packmate or Familiar had a certain nerve-wracking quality. But they were vampires: Rasputin-related vampires. They had this. And Jamie needed to learn how to embrace his strengths.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 6