I swallowed. “Why? What do you need that you can’t say out here?”
Glancing over his shoulder, his message was clear. He didn’t want our brother hearing.
Knowing I shouldn’t give in but helpless to resist him, I released the door, turned on my heel, and marched back to the bed. I crawled into the middle with a huff before crossing my legs and waiting him out.
What little light had entered my room when I’d opened the door was blessedly trapped out the moment he closed it behind him.
Vampires can see in the dark, and I couldn’t tear my greedy gaze off the sloping, predatory walk of his as he moved regally into my room and dropped into the wingback chair sitting against the wall across from my bed.
Frosty blue-green eyes locked with mine, and I wet my lips, waiting to hear what he would say.
“We need to find out all we can about the clan,” he said a moment later, and I hated the fact that, for just a second, I was disappointed in him.
I hadn’t honestly expected him to come in ready to ravish me, but damn, way to make a girl feel like a bucket of shit.
Blowing out a heavy breath, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. Same page. It’s what I was doing in here. But I can’t find any mention of them on the Net.”
He shook his head. “Stop thinking like a mortal, Scar. We monsters, we learn about each other through the winds.”
I cocked my head cuz those had been the exact words Blue had used. “The Internet always worked for me back at the precinct,” I shot back testily, irritated and not hiding it well.
He smirked, and God, I wanted to smack it off his face.
“Yeah, but...” He leaned forward, causing his abs to ripple and his forearms to pop with veins as he clenched his fingers together.
My breathing hitched. I couldn’t help it.
“You’re not looking for perps. So far as you know, they’ve broken no laws. The spin machine is already placing the brunt of the blame on the humans trespassing on Veiler lands, and the cold ones are coming out smelling like roses, as usual.”
A hint of disgust tinged his voice, and my lips turned down. I mean, vamps weren’t my favorite players in our world, but considering the fact that I was one, I was sometimes uncomfortable knowing just how hated we were by my own family.
He frowned and shook his head. “Don’t do that, Scar. You know I’m not talking about you.”
I snorted, rolling one wrist. “Whatever. I totally wasn’t going there, douchenozzle. I know that.”
Sometimes trying to laugh off the pain was easier than showing it, but I should have known that Mercer knew me better than that.
His voice was low as he said, “You are now and have always been outside of that to me. I will never let anything or anyone harm you, Scar, not so long as I have breath left in my body.”
The next breath I took was shuddery, and my insides quaked. He kept saying those things to me, opening up to me, and remembering to guard my heart was getting harder for me. Frankly, that thought was terrifying, to know someone held that kind of power over me.
“You asked me once to say something,” he said quietly, eyebrows lowering, and I sucked in a sharp breath because no way in hell was he alluding to what I thought he was alluding to.
“What?” I whispered. The silence in the room was deafening.
His gaze was intense and unswerving as he said, “I’m all in, Scar.”
My mind completely fritzed, and my ears were suddenly ringing, making me think I was getting ready to have a heart attack except no blood meant no high blood pressure. Still, I was dizzy and had to shake my head several times just to sort out the jumble of thoughts dancing through it.
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here, Mercer.” I held up a shaky hand.
“I’m sorry for hurting you yesterday—something I said—I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Look, whatever it was, let’s just start over.”
“Start over?”
Jeez, I knew I was sounding like a space cadet. I just wasn’t exactly sure I was lucid right then. Mercer never spoke like that to me. He shut me out. That was what he did.
Yeah, we’d shared a nice moment back at his office, but I’d been expecting him to slam on his brakes after that because that’s what always happened. He would let me in a little, just enough to get me hoping, believing that maybe, maybe this time things were different, and then boom... He was gone, and I was alone, left to pick up the splinters of my fractured heart.
The fact was I didn’t always know where I stood with him anymore, whether I was coming or going, and I was terrified to trust with my whole heart again because the moment I did that, the second I let him all the way in again, he was never coming out.
We vampires tended to be highly emotional and volatile creatures, and nothing in the world could get me as charged up as Mercer. He was my weakness. In fact, I’d go a step farther and say he was my only true weakness. That was the reason I kept letting him hurt me.
Never in life would I have allowed anyone to yank on my emotions the way he did, but in death, something inside me had changed. The very foundation of me had morphed. I’d only ever believed that my vampiric nature had caused me to be so willing to hang in there and accept the crumbs, but some deep part of me understood that Mercer was vital to my well-being.
If all I could ever get was his friendship, I would have to be satisfied with that. Even if everything else was convoluted and messy and painful, as long as I had his friendship, I could make it.
That sounded totally sick and desperate. I knew that, yet it was a fact. That was also why I was so scared to let him in completely anymore. When I’d been young and dumb and naïve, I’d thought I could have it all, but now I understood on a visceral level that without Mercer, I wouldn’t be me, not the me I was now. I’d be something different, something wrong.
“Talk to me, Scar,” he said in his deep country-tinged accent, which made my toes curl despite myself.
Feeling as though I was falling into an existential crisis and slightly terrified by my sudden epiphany of just how deep my need for Mercer went, I shrugged and huffily said, “I don’t know what you want me to say. We’ve been down this road before. A million times. And I’m tired. Tired of the back-and-forth and the games. I’m just tired, Merc.”
Rolling his neck from side to side until it popped loudly, he sighed, and for the first time, I saw just how tired he really was. Mercer had always been a pillar of strength for me. No matter what came at him, he rarely let his guard down—only with me and only occasionally. Seeing that was a revelation to me in many ways.
I’d always thought he was cold, able to switch off his feelings at the drop of a dime because what I felt in his touch one day would be completely absent the next, making me question my own sanity over and over again. I didn’t want to hope anymore, didn’t want to believe that, maybe this time, things really were going to be different because I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to take the games anymore.
“There’s a lot of water under the bridge between us,” he said. “I don’t want that. No more.”
I frowned. “Me either. I never wanted this for us, but I’m not a machine. I can’t just turn off years worth of hurt.”
The silence stretched long fingers—one second... two... Finally, he said, “I don’t expect you to. I don’t think this will be easy for either of us. But I’m telling you now, things are different. Period. You mean a lot to me, Scar. Clarence doesn’t want you here. Most of the pack doesn’t either—”
I had already known that, but... “Burn. Yeah, I get it.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, “because the point I’m making is it’s just you and me from now on. How it should have always been with us. And I’m sorry, sorry that I’ve made you feel like shit before. But I’m done being a dickhead with you. From this moment on, it’s total transparency between us.”
I curled my fingers into the sheets, wanting with all my heart to believe what he was
saying.
“Not that I don’t want that, Mercer, but why? Why now? What’s changed? Is it Jamie, cuz—”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s not Jamie. This never was about him.”
I frowned, swallowing hard, so damned confused I couldn’t make heads or tails of this conversation. What did any of this even mean? What exactly was he saying? It sucked that I needed things spelled out, yet I kind of did because I no longer trusted my instincts, not where he was concerned.
“Then what is it about? Why did you always push me away, and how can I trust you now not to do more of the same?”
Standing, he looked down at me as I gazed up at him. Then leaning forward, he pressed his palms onto the mattress and moved in so close we almost bumped noses.
“I’m free, Scar. My eyes are open, and I know that if I don’t change now, I’ll lose you forever.”
My jaw dropped. What in the hell was he saying? What did that mean, lose me forever? What the hell was this? Had I walked into the Twilight Zone? Was I still dreaming?
Then his lips were on mine. I could have fought him. I could have pushed him away. The brush of his mouth so soft, so gentle, burned straight through me, reigniting a passion in me for him that had never been extinguished, no matter how many times I’d told myself that it was done, that we were done.
I wanted to run my tongue along his. I wanted to claim him and to mark him in every way, to sink my fangs into his vein and drink until I was high. He growled, and I growled back.
However, he didn’t kiss me like that, and I didn’t kiss him like that, either. When he pulled away, my chest was heaving, and so was his.
“I have to get to work, but when the sun goes down, come to the bar and find me. Make sure you’re dressed in your sexiest best. I’m taking you out.”
If my heart hadn’t currently been flatlining from lack of blood, it would’ve been pile driving through my chest. “On a date?”
He snorted, trailing his finger along my jaw. “I’d say yes, but then you’d be very disappointed. No, we’re going to Diane’s. I know a woman who knows a thing or two about anyone who is anyone round these parts.”
Feeling just the tiniest bit deflated but not completely destroyed about it either—because for the first time in forever, Mercer was actually opening up to me—I smiled.
“Let me guess. Helen.”
He nodded, and I chuckled, realizing how much sense that made, and I wondered why I’d not thought of her sooner. Helen of Troy, or HOT as we sometimes called her, had secrets on just about anyone who was anyone.
“Of course the bodiless vixen knows. What doesn’t she know?”
Mercer started to move away, and I was suddenly desperate to hang on. I yanked on his hand, squeezing so tightly on his fingers a lesser man would have had each one broken.
Mercer let me do it, though. A moment later, he only said, “See you at eight.”
That’s when I suddenly remembered my “date” with Blue.
“Oh no,” I growled. “I can’t. I have a dress appointment.”
“With Blue?” he asked, gaze focused.
“Yeah. I could always cancel it.”
“No. You can’t. Much as I’m pissed at what that fae did to you yesterday, you can’t show up to a vampire ball without a gown.”
I glowered, sticking out my jaw, which he chucked.
“Don’t worry, Scar. Just come find me after you wrap up with him. If you’ve got time. If not, we’ll do it tomorrow.”
“No, I’ll find you,” I was quick to say.
“Good. Then I’ll see you.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, still not really sure that conversation had actually taken place. Biting the corner of my lip, I shook my head and sighed. I had a ball to get ready for. Everything else was just gonna have to wait for the moment.
Chapter 11
Scarlett
“Are you serious?” I glared at Blue as a statuesque faun practically yanked the tenth gown off me and walked into the back room, looking far more dignified than I imagined a woman with long, curving horns and goat’s hooves should be.
I’d never actually seen a faun before. Part of the fae world, they were a novel breed in ours, but if one had enough money and knew the right people, anything could be had for a price. If nymphs knew one thing well, it was fashion, and no one was higher up on the food chain of haute couture than a forest nymph.
Blue eyed me with a greedy cobalt gaze as he bounced his crossed leg up and down on the tufted divan where he was sitting behind me. I saw his mind working a mile a minute as he sized up my image in each of the three full-length mirrors surrounding me.
I lifted an eyebrow, waiting for him to nitpick that last dress, too. I thought it’d been perfectly fine, a sheer pink mermaid gown with stones in the train—which the faun had mentioned were actually diamonds, and I’d almost fainted—but no sooner had she zipped me up than Blue started choking on his laughter and demanding someone fire her for ineptitude.
The poor faun was practically in tears.
I tossed my hands wide, getting completely irritated. “Well, what was wrong that one?”
He rolled his eyes, twisting his full lips with derision. “Everything. Too frumpy and Dolores Umbridgey,” he said with a wiggle of his fingers.
Eyes thinning to narrow slits, I licked my front teeth. “Keep it above the belt, dark fae.”
A sexy curl of his lips caused me to stomp my foot in response, which looked absolutely silly, considering I was currently standing there in my bra and panties. Blue hadn’t even had the grace to look remotely excited when the faun had all but forced me out of my perfectly fine blue-jean skirt and crop top. He’d been nothing but business, bossing the entire store around, demanding our own room with velvet curtains and ropes when a line at least thirty faes long was waiting to be serviced outside.
I’d wanted to die of embarrassment until I realized everyone was actually rushing around to do as he bade. Whoever Blue was to those people, he was important enough for them to listen.
That didn’t mean he was nice about it, though. The pompous douche had already dismissed two other dressers for simply daring to offer me an alternate opinion.
I’d gone there that night with the hope of finding something decent, but I was soon regretting my decision to allow Blue any part of the process.
“It’s just a dress. I seriously don’t underst—”
His kohl-rimmed eyes went agog, growing wider and wider with each word until a blood vessel in his forehead was practically pulsing. He snapped, silencing my words with a cutting motion. “By the gods,” he hissed, “it’s obvious you don’t understand any of this, young Veiler. Because if you did, you’d understand that a gown worn to the vampire ball is a silent pronouncement of one’s status, wealth, and power.”
I chuckled. “Considering I’m not that strong, and I sure as hell ain’t rich, this all screams hypocrisy to me, and they’ll know it. Why can’t I just go and be comfortable?”
He visibly wilted in front of me, grabbing the bridge of his nose with a loud moan of obvious disgust. “I sometimes question my strange fascination with you.”
I would have laughed at his theatrics if he hadn’t truly sounded so downright disgusted. Holding my reaction in, I nodded and pretended to be listening, but I was getting tired. We’d been there far longer than I’d anticipated, going into the fourth hour, and more and more, I was realizing the trip to the Pink Lady would be postponed for the night, at least.
“You’re laughing,” he said.
I started. “No, I’m not.”
“In your head. You think I can’t tell. If my time means nothing to you, Scarlett Smith, then I’m going to leave and let you drown in that lavish sea of Chanel Number Five alone.” Crossing his arms, he glared at me, looking for all the world as though he really meant it, but he didn’t. I knew my Blue. He was all bark and no bite.
“Love you.”
He sniffed, but I could see his lips twitching a
lready. Whether he wanted to or not, the sexy dweeb had already forgiven me.
I sighed. “Sorry, okay? But I still don’t get it. Explain to me what it is I’m missing here because, to me, a dress, some boots, and a little makeup should set me right.”
His face was a stony mask as he stared at me without blinking for a full ten seconds before finally saying, “You’re lucky you’re so hot, Scar. I’ve killed for less. Now...” He held up a finger, twisted on his heel, and slowly paced back and forth before me. “Let me explain this in a way that even a pleb would understand.”
“Hey!” I said, but he was ignoring me.
“Vampire society—and you’d know this if you hadn’t been raised by a pack of mutts—is very black and white.”
I pursed my lip at the insult, crossing my arms over my ample chest and tapping my foot in impatience.
“Looks are everything to the old ones. Everything. You are lucky. You hit the genetic jackpot in death, so you’re a step ahead of some just by mere fortune of happenstance. Body language, Scar. It’s how you carry yourself, how you speak, how you act that all conveys your sense of power. Vampires respect nothing so much as power. They’re a conniving, backstabbing, power-thirsty bunch. You have to make them see you not as prey but a fierce predator.”
“I mean, I know this. I handled a few cases in the—”
“No.” He held up a perfectly manicured nail painted the colors of a mermaid’s tail—blue, green, and aqua—even had the fish-scale design on it.
God, I loved Blue’s sense of adventure and style, not that I could ever mimic it with any degree of competence, but I loved how uniquely him he was. Even amongst the fae, who were all feminine in their own ways, Blue stood out as a cut above the rest. He was a peacock in a sea of pea fowls.
That night, he’d dressed fiercely male. Loose-fitting jeans encased his strong yet lanky body. A white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just above his forearms showcased the natural burnished hue of smooth flesh. A gray vest with a bright-red silk Windsor-knotted tie was timelessly classic. His dark hair lay in messy spikes, but his face was as dolled up as any proper cocktail singer’s should be.
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