by Lynsay Sands
They’d crossed the deck and reached the door of the house by then, and Teddy paused to turn back to Harper, saying, “I never would have told you all that had Jenny lived, and I didn’t say it when she died because I knew you were hurting, but now that you’re happily settled with Drina here, and enjoying that new-life-mate glow like the others, I have to tell you I think you made a lucky escape there. I don’t know all the ins and outs of this life-mate business, but while Jenny might have been a possible life mate for you and agreed to the turn, I don’t think her heart was in it. I kind of got the feeling she just saw you as another Bobby Jarrod.”
Turning away, Teddy opened the screen door and raised a hand to knock but paused as Mirabeau opened the door from inside.
“Beau,” Teddy greeted, stepping inside.
Mirabeau smiled, then glanced past Teddy to Drina and Harper and waved them in. “Come on you two. It’s cold out.”
Forcing a smile, Drina stepped inside, wishing she could drag Harper somewhere to talk and find out what he was thinking. But there didn’t appear to be much of a chance at the moment. She would have to figure out a way to get him alone and talk to him later.
“Decided to come out of hiding now that Drina and Stephanie have gone to bed, did you?”
Harper stiffened at that greeting from Anders as he stepped off the stairs and turned the corner into the dining room. The hunter sat at the table, a deck of cards spread out before him in what appeared to be a complicated version of solitaire. Harper frowned at the man, not appreciating that one of the few times the Russian chose to speak more than a word or two was to call him out on his behavior.
“I wasn’t hiding,” he lied, turning to walk along the L-shaped counter separating the kitchen from the dining room. Moving to the refrigerator, he opened it, his eyes sliding from the bags of blood to the available food inside.
“Right,” Anders said dryly. “You just like four-hour showers.”
Harper scowled into the refrigerator, and then grabbed both a bag of blood and a bowl of some sort of leftover. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was hungry. He’d heat it up and see what it tasted like. The dinner he’d had with Drina was the first time he’d eaten in a while. He hadn’t a clue what he would like, so everything was an experiment just now.
“Your avoiding her hurt Drina,” Anders growled.
Harper set the bowl on the counter with a sigh and lowered his head. He shouldn’t be surprised that his fleeing the minute they’d got their coat and boots off, and then not returning downstairs would hurt her, he supposed, but he hadn’t been thinking of her. He’d been thinking of-
“A dead woman,” Anders said grimly, reminding him that his thoughts were easily read at the moment.
“She was my life mate,” Harper said quietly.
“Was being the operative word. She died. Fate had other plans for you. Now you have Drina. It’s a damned lucky turn of events for you. Some never find a second life mate, and those who do usually have to wait centuries. And Drina’s already immortal, another bit of luck since you’ve already used your one allowed turn. It would be foolish to throw this good fortune away.”
Harper stared out the back window of the house, frustration coursing through him. Everything Anders said was true, but he couldn’t seem to rid himself of the clawing guilt. He’d managed to forget it for a while in Toronto, but the closer they’d gotten to Port Henry, the more he’d felt like a philandering husband returning from an elicit rendezvous with his secretary.
Harper closed his eyes. Jenny was dead and in the grave because she’d been willing to turn and be his life mate, and he was off laughing and playing with another woman. He felt like he was dancing on her grave.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The thing that really ate at him was that he couldn’t even remember what Jenny had looked like anymore. That wasn’t because of Drina’s arrival. He hadn’t been able to recall her face for a while now. Her image had faded from his mind almost before she’d been in the ground. It was wrong. Shameful. She’d died to be with him and deserved better than that.
“And what does Drina deserve?” Anders asked, obviously still in his thoughts.
Harper turned and scowled at the usually uncommunicative man. “What do you care?”
“I don’t,” Anders said with a shrug, moving cards around on the table. “If you want to throw away a good thing when fate is kind enough to give it to you, go for it.”
“Thank you,” Harper said dryly, turning back to the counter.
“But I’ll tell you this,” Anders said in a conversational tone. “If it had turned out that Drina could have been a life mate to either you or me. . you’d be dead. I’d have killed to claim her. Most immortals would. So I’m thinking you’re either a fool or seriously fucked up. Either way, she’s better off without you.”
Harper whipped around to gape at him, but Anders didn’t even glance up from his cards and continued matter-of-factly playing his game as he added, “I’m doubting she’ll see it that way, though. This’ll eat at her, distract her from what she’s supposed to be doing, and a distracted hunter usually ends up a dead hunter.”
Anders paused to glance to Harper, and added, “That’s all right, though. You’ll have two life mates’ deaths on your hands and can completely submerge yourself in guilt and misery, right?”
“Gin,” Stephanie said triumphantly, laying her cards on the table.
Drina tore her gaze from the ceiling and reached for a card from the deck.
“Hello. I said gin,” Stephanie said dryly, making Drina pause and blink at her in confusion. Heaving a heavy sigh, the teenager shook her head. “You aren’t even paying attention, Dree.”
“Sorry,” Drina muttered, and then a small smile tugged at her lips, and she set her cards down, saying, “Beth calls me that.”
“Dree?” Stephanie asked, collecting the cards and beginning to shuffle them again. “She’s your partner, right?”
Drina nodded, suddenly wishing Beth were there. She could use some advice at the moment.
“Harper’s avoiding you,” Stephanie murmured sadly as she began to deal cards.
“It would seem so,” Drina said on a sigh, her eyes sliding to the ceiling again. He’d been avoiding her ever since their return the night before. He’d escaped to his room to shower and change the moment they’d gotten their coats and boots off and hadn’t left it until she and Stephanie had retired for the night. She’d heard him come down from the third floor and descend the creaky stairs.
Now it was midmorning, and he was apparently still sleeping. Or hiding in his room. She didn’t know which but suspected it was the latter.
“What are you going to do about it?” Stephanie asked quietly, finishing dealing and setting the remaining cards on the table.
Drina shook her head. She’d lain awake most of the night trying to figure that one out, and she’d been fretting over it since rising with Stephanie this morning and still didn’t have a clue. It was hard to know what to do to drag him out of his gloom and preoccupation if he was going to just hide in his damned room.
Oh, she knew what she wanted to do. Drina wanted to go to his room, climb into his bed, and wipe the memories of Jenny from his mind with hot, live-life-mate sex. Unfortunately, she had responsibilities here. She had to spend the nights with Stephanie to be sure the girl didn’t take it into her head to run off to her mortal family, and she had to spend the days watching out for her until Anders took over. That left only the evening hours for her to do anything, and Drina suspected Harper was going to use the presence of the others to keep her at arm’s length, or-
Her thoughts scattered to the four winds, and Drina stiffened as she heard footsteps moving along the landing above them and then start down the stairs.
“It’s him,” Stephanie whispered, sounding excited, and Drina glanced at her with surprise. Before she could ask how the girl knew it wasn’t someone else, Harper came around the corner and into the kitchen.
“Morning,” Drina whispered huskily, surprise and relief leaving her wide-eyed as he straightened.
Harper paused halfway upright, his gaze caught by hers, then bent to kiss her again, this time on the lips.
“Oh geez, gag,” Stephanie said with disgust, as the kiss turned carnal. “Really, Harper? At least Dree is imagining dragging you upstairs to the privacy and comfort of a bedroom and not throwing you on the table to have her way with you.”
“The table?” Drina asked breathlessly when Harper immediately broke their kiss.
“Sorry. A stray thought,” Harper muttered, straightening.
Stephanie snorted. “More like a full-blown fantasy. I mean, it was pretty detailed.” Standing, she moved around the table, heading for the stairs. “I’m going to brush my hair and change my clothes if we’re going out. That gives you two about ten minutes to get it out of your system, so I’m not stuck with a couple of frustrated horndogs all day. But no pressure,” she added on a laugh as she swung out of the room and started upstairs.
“We’re going out?” Drina murmured, turning her gaze back to Harper.
“I thought I’d take you girls to the city for lunch and some shopping,” Harper admitted, catching her hand and dragging her from her chair.
“Oh,” she breathed, stumbling after him through the kitchen and into the pantry. “What are we doing?”
Harper came to a halt in the small pantry, turned to catch her by the waist, and lifted her onto the counter in front of the window overlooking the backyard.
“What-?”
“You heard her. We have ten minutes,” Harper muttered, catching the hem of her T-shirt and tugging it upward to reveal another of her new bras, this one a pale pink that stood out against her olive skin. Pausing, he breathed, “Damn, I think I have a new favorite.”
“Harper,” Drina protested on a laugh, grabbing for his hands as he tugged one cup aside to free a breast. “Stop, we can’t.”
“Ten minutes,” he reminded her, bending forward to latch onto the nipple he’d just bared.
“But we’ll pass out, and she’ll find us naked on the pantry floor,” Drina groaned, releasing his hands to grab his head instead. Unfortunately, while her mind was being sensible-at least a tiny part of it was-her body wasn’t like-minded, and instead of forcing his head away, she laced her fingers through his hair, silently urging him on.
“Damn,” Harper breathed, letting her nipple slip from his mouth. He remained still for a moment, and then straightened and slipped her breast back into her bra.
Drina nearly groaned aloud when he then tugged her shirt back down, but she knew it was for the best.
“We’ll just have to manage it with our clothes on.”
She blinked with confusion. “What?”
“We’ll stay dressed,” Harper announced, and then stepped between her open, jeans-clad thighs and kissed her.
Drina didn’t have a clue what he was up to, but his tongue was now in her mouth, his hands finding and caressing her breasts through her T-shirt and bra, and she found it hard to think about anything but the sensations now flooding through her.
When he moved closer and ground his hardness against her through her jeans, Drina groaned and dug her nails into his T-shirt, dragging it upward. Harper immediately broke their kiss, and muttered, “Clothes on,” as he trailed kisses across her cheek to her ear.
“Clothes,” she echoed without comprehension, and released his T-shirt, only to move her hands around to reach for his belt buckle.
Harper immediately released her breasts and stepped back to lift her off the counter. That snapped Drina out of it a bit, and she opened her mouth to protest, but then bit her lip in surprise when he suddenly turned her so her back was to him, and growled, “Hands on the counter.”
“What?” she asked with surprise.
“Hands on the countertop,” Harper ordered, his own hands moving around her waist and up to cup her breasts again through her clothes. It immediately reminded her of his apartment and his doing this in front of the mirrored closet doors. The erotic memory of their reflection filled her head and ratcheted her mounting excitement by several degrees.
Drina ground her teeth and leaned on the counter, her head bowing as one of his hands slid down between her legs, both caressing her through her jeans and pressing her bottom back against his hips and the hardness growing there.
When Harper suddenly used his hand at her breast to pull her upright and back against his chest, Drina leaned her head back on his shoulder. Closing her eyes, she covered his hands with hers and moaned as he nearly lifted her off the floor with the hand between her legs in his effort to affect her through her thick jeans.
“Eight minutes,” he breathed, nipping at her ear.
A breathless laugh slipping from her lips, Drina opened her eyes, and then blinked as she spotted movement in the backyard. She squinted against the bright sunlight pouring through the window, trying to make out what she’d seen, then gasped and stiffened as Harper stopped cupping her between the legs and shifted his hand to slide it down her pants. Slipping under the waistline of both jeans and panties, his fingers dove unerringly between her legs, intensifying everything for them both.
“Oh God,” Harper muttered against her neck, his caress becoming frantic as their mingled pleasure and excitement bounced between them in growing waves.
“Yes,” Drina gasped, eyes closing and hips rotating to his touch, so that she ground back against him with each movement. She was clawing at his hands now with excitement, her only thought reaching that peak they were racing toward, and then he slid two fingers inside her and sank his fangs into her neck at the same time, and Drina screamed as pleasure exploded over them.
“So tell me again about that mouse Drina saw that made her scream and faint?”
Drina turned in the front passenger seat of Harper’s BMW to make a face at Stephanie in the backseat. “All right, smarty-pants. You can read our minds and know there was no mouse. Get over it.”
“Well, even if I couldn’t read your minds, you don’t really think I would have bought that whole mouse story, do you?” Stephanie asked with amusement. “I mean, seriously, a hunter who faints at the sight of a tiny mouse?”
Drina shook her head and turned to face forward again. As usual, Harper had woken from their postcoital faint before her. He’d been trying to rouse her when Stephanie had found them on the pantry floor. She had no idea why he’d even bothered to make up the mouse story when the girl could read them so easily, but he had. As one would expect, it hadn’t gone over.
“It wasn’t exactly a postcoital faint, was it,” Stephanie said dryly. “I mean coitus is-”
“Stephanie!” she barked, swinging on her with horror.
“Well, it wasn’t,” Stephanie said defensively. “Harper didn’t actually insert part A into part B. Well, I suppose there was some insertion, but of part F not-”
“How do you know that?” Drina interrupted her teasing sharply.
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “We’ve been through this. I can read your mind, remember?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t thinking of it,” Drina said at once, aware that Harper was glancing from the road, to her, to Stephanie in the rearview mirror with a troubled frown.
Stephanie shrugged. “You must be. Otherwise, how would I know what you two did?”
Drina stared at her silently, more than troubled. She hadn’t been thinking of what she and Harper had done. She’d been thinking of the after, the waking up on the floor. Yet Stephanie apparently knew what had happened between her and Harper and obviously in detail. It should embarrass her, but she was too concerned by what the girl’s apparently pulling-not just thoughts, but-actual memories from her mind could mean to worry about embarrassment.
Usually, for an immortal to access someone’s memories, they had to get the person th
ey were reading to recall them. Stephanie apparently could access them whether the person was thinking of them or not.
“You think I’m a freak now,” Stephanie said unhappily.
“Not a freak,” Drina said quietly. “Apparently very gifted.”
The girl relaxed and smiled a little at that. “Gifted?”
“Very,” Drina murmured, and turned in her seat to face front, doing her best to keep her thoughts as blank as possible. Stephanie’s abilities weren’t normal, but she didn’t even want to get near that thought in the girl’s presence. She needed to think, but away from Stephanie.
She also needed to find a chance to talk to Harper, Drina thought on a sigh. While she was glad he wasn’t avoiding her this morning, he had last night, and his blowing hot and then cold was leaving her uncertain and worried about the future. She had started out her journey to Port Henry determined to be patient, but that was before she’d met and spent time with him. The more Drina got to know Harper, the more emotionally invested she became, and she’d started out pretty invested to begin with for the simple reason that he was her life mate.
The moment Drina had walked into Casey Cottage, tried to read him, failed, and acknowledged that Marguerite was right, and he was her life mate, she’d thrown in half her emotional chips. But with every conversation they had, and every experience they shared, she was throwing in more chips, and Drina was afraid of getting hurt here if his guilt proved too strong for him to put aside.
“Are you feeling all right, Stephanie? You look pale.”
Harper glanced to the girl at Drina’s words and frowned as he noted her pallor.
“I’m fine, hungry is all,” Stephanie mumbled. “Can we stop and get a sundae or something on the way out? That’ll settle my stomach.”
“I don’t think it’s food you’re hungry for,” Drina said solemnly. “We’ve been at the mall for hours now, and you’re a growing girl. You need to feed.”