by Trina M. Lee
Annoyed with his continued denial, I hit him with an aggressive pulse. He grunted and tried not to crumble beneath the assault.
“Tell me how many are left in the rebel group. Tell me your role.” All I needed was an admission of guilt. Then he was the FPA’s problem.
Charlie spoke with pained reluctance. “There are only a few left. The rebels have abandoned their cause. They plan to fly under the radar, avoiding your attention if possible. I was there the night Alexa was attacked.” His gaze went to Jenner. “With them. The fight broke out, and I ran when things got bad.”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Satisfied to have gotten the answer I sought, I laid a hand on Charlie’s head and grabbed hold of his power. Then I tore it from him like tearing a bandage from a wound, sudden and painful.
Weak and unable to defend himself, he clutched at a nearby SUV, nearly tearing the side mirror off in his desperation.
“Well, that was easy,” Jenner observed. “Too easy. We should have kicked his ass before giving him to Juliet.”
“He’s not worth it.”
At exactly two hours after leaving the park where I’d spoken with Juliet, we were back with her vampire in tow. I leaned on the trunk, ignoring the shouts and bangs from inside. When a black sedan pulled around the corner, my shoulders slumped in relief. Though I hadn’t allowed myself to entertain the thought, I’d had my suspicions about Juliet’s ruse.
Juliet was alone. She should really know better.
“Did you get one?” She was all business, ignoring Jenner who openly leered at her.
“Right here.” I opened the trunk to reveal the weakened, irate vampire.
“Perfect. I knew you’d come through.”
We wrestled the flailing vampire from my trunk to hers. She produced a set of silver cuffs, which once locked onto his wrists, prevented Charlie from attempting anything power related. They were clever and dangerous, something the human government should not possess.
“Arys,” Juliet called as she was about to get back into her car. “You’ve got to do something about Alexa. She’s relying on you, whether you know it or not. She’s got to be stopped before she creates an eternity of regret for herself.”
“Stop tracking her, Juliet. You’re going to bring her more harm than help.” It was all I had to say to her. She had no right to tell me how to deal with my twin flame. As well as she thought she knew Alexa, I knew the parts of her that had no voice.
Juliet pulled away with a foot heavy on the gas. The sedan lurched away and disappeared as fast as it had come.
“I bet she’s just as feisty in the sack,” Jenner mused, laughing when I punched him in the shoulder. “Now, let’s get back to that orgy waiting for me at The Wicked Kiss.”
I met his mischievous gaze and shook my head. “Not tonight. You’ll have to settle for a motel room and a few call girls.”
Jenner considered this with a halfhearted shrug. “Ok. I can work with that.”
Chapter Three
Blood filled my mouth. The sound of cries and begging filled my ears. There was a hand on my cock, but I shoved it away.
The motel room was less than savory. It looked like something out of a horror film, which made it perfect. The TV in the corner was so old it still had a rabbit ear antenna. The walls were yellowed as if they hadn’t been painted or washed since the place had been built. There were more stains covering the carpet than clean spots.
Feeding in a place like this was not ideal. Though it did allow for one hell of a mess with little need for clean up. And right then, that made it perfect.
Jenner was sprawled across one half of the king-size bed with one of three call girls atop him. She rode him like it was an Olympic event, oblivious to the blood running in small rivulets from her neck, down her chest and stomach.
Lady number two was trying to wrap her hand around my dick despite my rejections. Being a monogamous incubus was a challenge at times like this. Being near me was enough to make her want me with an irrational need. Though I didn’t need to fuck her to feed off her desire, it would have made things easier.
With a wolfish growl, I captured both of her hands in one of mine and pinned them above her head. She squirmed on the bed beneath me. I stared down at her, finding it hard to stay in the moment.
As good as it felt to have her begging for more while I opened her vein, something was missing. I sucked at the small bite marring her throat and groaned. Alexa’s wolf was strong in me. It floated about inside me like a shadow, a being without form seeking to break free. Learning to live with Alexa’s wolf was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. It didn’t belong to me. I had no connection to it, and times like this proved difficult. I’d wondered if it would get easier after she turned. It hadn’t. The wolf continued to dwell within me, surfacing at the most inopportune times. It was a constant presence, like a ghost that never went away.
“Fuck.” I couldn’t keep pretending this was what I wanted. It wasn’t. I wanted Alexa, mortal or not.
Shoving away from the bleached blonde escort, I stepped over the passed out form of the third girl and left the room. Jenner could have my share.
Sitting on the front stoop of the motel, I stared out into the near empty parking lot. The fall night air was crisp. It didn’t affect me. I felt neither warm nor cold.
I rubbed a hand over my face and swore again. It had been my decision to leave Alexa where she was, with Kale Sinclair. It was a decision that Shaz told me nightly was stupid. I was starting to think that he was right.
The night she rose as vampire was one of my best and worst nights. My relief had been immense. In my heart of hearts, I’d harbored the fear that she would remain dead. Since the moment I felt her life slip away in my arms, I had been faced with what it would mean to lose her. Three days I waited in total distress, praying to a God who had no reason to grant my request. It had been the most agonizing wait of my life.
Then she had risen. The confusion in her vampire blue eyes was hard to witness. I was overjoyed to see her there before me, back from the dead. But the betrayal in her gaze when she looked at me had made me ill.
When she fled from me, I let her go. Shaz had demanded that we follow. He had been so afraid for her out there alone, so close to sunrise.
Giving chase would only encourage her to flee further. Knowing Sinclair would go after her, I let him. That choice had haunted me every night since.
A car pulled up to a door at the other end of the motel. I watched as a middle-aged couple got out, falling all over each other in their haste to get inside. They caught sight of me and broke apart. I shrugged and turned away. I didn’t doubt that they were having an affair. It was no business of mine. Casting one last glance back at the couple, I studied the woman, wondering if somewhere another man waited for her.
Projecting my own issues onto strangers served only to plunge me deeper into my tortured thoughts. When at last Jenner emerged from the motel room, the night was beginning to dissipate.
“Are you all right, brother?” Jenner’s hand was heavy on my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to hog the ladies.”
“Yes, you did.” I rose and clapped him on the back. “I’m fine. Can we go home now?”
“Ready when you are.”
“And the ladies?”
“Alive,” Jenner snickered. “I promise.”
His word was good enough for me. I was ready to leave. I walked away from the seedy motel without a backward glance.
Like I did every night before dawn, I drove by Alexa’s house on my way home. It was on the edge of town, surrounded by a cluster of trees and a cemetery. Not once had she been there. Which meant she was with him.
Again her car was absent from the driveway. Again I fought the urge to head straight for Sinclair’s house. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to leave him in a pile of dust and drag Alexa out of there against her will.
But that wouldn’t be love.
The need to control my twin flame was part o
f the conflict that ruled us. We belonged to each other. That’s what made it so hard to let her go.
“You’re a sucker for punishment, Arys. Why do you do this to yourself? Go get her.”
“I can’t. She’ll hate me for trying to control her. This is a choice she has to make.” Making Jenner or Shaz understand bordered on impossible. I was ready to give up trying.
When I turned onto my street to find Shaz’s car parked in front of my house, I knew that it was an argument I was about to have again. The young wolf sat on the front step, drinking one of the beers I’d begun keeping in the fridge for him. He’d been here a lot lately.
“Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?” Shaz scanned the horizon. “I’ve been here over an hour now.”
The loud clink of beer bottles crashing against one another drew my gaze to the half a dozen empties piled around his feet. Just what I needed, a drunken werewolf with an attitude parked on my front porch.
“I’ve been doing this for over three hundred years, pup. I think I can handle it.” With a pointed glance toward the empty bottles, I added, “Do you think this is the best time for you to start drinking?”
“Start?” he echoed. “I started at dusk. I’m just finishing up now.”
A sniff in his direction confirmed that claim. The wolf stank of booze. I ushered him inside. I couldn’t very well leave him to wallow by himself in the bottom of a bottle.
Once inside I grabbed a can of coffee from the cupboard and tossed it at him. His reflexes were still sharp. He caught it without a fumble.
“Make some coffee,” I ordered. “Time to sober up. You’re a real ass when you drink.” The coffee was something I’d kept around for Alexa. It was the one addiction she’d claimed she would never give up. I scowled at the coffee can, hating it for being such a painful reminder.
“Oh yeah?” Shaz raised a brow and gave me a cocky grin. “So what’s your excuse? You’re an ass all the time.”
Jenner chuckled and held his hands up in surrender. “Don’t even get me started on that one. I’ll leave you two to antagonize one another. I’m hitting the shower.”
I waited until he’d gone into the bathroom and closed the door. Then I turned to Shaz, letting my serious concern show. “What the hell are you doing, Shaz? This is no time to be drinking your life away. You’re better than that.”
A sneer curled his lips. He shook his head and drained the last of the beer in his hand. “Don’t tell me how to cope, Arys. I know better than to take advice from someone who has done nothing but hide out at home drawing endless pictures of dragons and wolves. You’re not coping any better than I am.”
I frowned. He’d reacted pretty much how I’d expected him to. “It’s not a contest. You need to keep your shit together right now. Alexa needs you to do that.”
A sharp bark of laughter erupted from him. He slammed the empty bottle on the counter. “Alexa doesn’t give a shit about us anymore. If she did, she would be here.”
“That’s not true, and you know it. Alexa is going through the hardest time of her life. She needs you to be there for her when she’s ready. Don’t let her down.”
Our gazes locked, and there was a silent struggle between us. Shaz was so incredibly young and stubborn. Trying to tell him something was like bouncing my head off a brick wall. Painful and ultimately pointless.
“What about what I need? When does that matter? When she’s done fucking Kale?” Shaz’s green eyes became wolf. He clenched his fists, drawing my attention to the cuts and bruises adorning his knuckles. He’d been fighting too from the looks of it. If he’d come here to continue such activity, things might get interesting.
I had no answers for him. I wanted to smack him for saying such a thing though I had thought it myself. “That’s not how it is, Shaz. She died. Do you get that? Alexa died, and now she’s something that she doesn’t know how to be. Try to have some sympathy.”
His gaze dropped, and he studied the pattern on the linoleum as if it held some great secret. “Do you think they’re sleeping together?”
It was something I’d done my best to avoid thinking about. Picturing my wolf in Sinclair’s bed was enough to send me into a rage. It was dangerous. “Does it matter?” I tried to redirect the question rather than tell him what I really thought. He didn’t want to hear it. “The important thing is that she’s safe.”
“Wow,” Shaz said, running his hand through his hair as he often did when uncomfortable. “That is such a load of shit.”
“Shaz,” I warned. “Let’s not have this conversation again.”
“The sooner we go get Alexa, the sooner this conversation ends.” There was a hard set to his jaw. His wolf stared out at me, issuing a silent challenge.
But there was something else there, an unspoken need that shone in his eyes. Shaz’s pent up frustration was being fed by more than just emotional upset. It appeared to me that the wolf was hurting for a fix.
“What’s really going on with you, pup?” I leaned against the kitchen counter, pinning him with a fierce stare. I didn’t have to use power on him. He would talk.
“I just want to see Alexa. I’m tired of arguing with you about it. Tired of waiting for her to come home.”
“And?” I prompted.
Shaz paused. He wanted to tell me. I could feel it. He fought with himself until it finally spilled out. “I’m starting to feel like I need it again. The bite. Alexa’s bite.” Those dazzling wolf eyes gleamed with intrigue as he looked me over. “Or yours.”
Just as I’d suspected. “I thought you kicked that shit.”
“I did. It’s not like this with anyone else. It’s just Alexa. And you. You both feel the same.” Shaz was unapologetic. “This is the last thing I want to be saying to you right now. But it’s starting to get inside my head. Help me out here, Arys.”
There had been a time when I would have loved to hear him say that. The last time he’d come to me like this, I’d accepted the offer of his potent shifter blood. It had upset Alexa who’d made me promise I wouldn’t do it again without her being present.
“Shaz, you know I can’t help you with this. I made a promise to Alexa.”
“Yeah, well, she isn’t here. We don’t need her permission. God knows she doesn’t seem to need ours to do whatever it is she’s doing right now.” Anger emanated from him, a delicious scent that taunted me.
The sense of victory that filled me was wrong in all ways. That didn’t stop me from enjoying it though. Shaz had made me out to be his enemy many times in the past. Yet here he was standing in my house asking me to bleed him. Yeah, I was definitely enjoying that.
“You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re asking for.” I nodded to the coffee can he’d abandoned on the counter. “Make some of that shit and come back down to earth.”
“I don’t want any,” he refused. “I know what I’m asking for. And I know that you’ve got to be trying pretty hard not to gloat in my face right now. So go right ahead. But don’t make me beg. Because that I will not fucking do.”
For a moment I half expected him to throw a punch at me. He’d done it before. But he just stood there staring at me with a challenge written all over his face.
I was faced with a decision. I could give Shaz what he asked for and bleed him with great joy. Or I could refuse. Refusal would mean forcing him to make a decision as well. Suffer or seek out relief in a place like The Wicked Kiss.
It was obvious to me which would cause greater upset to Alexa should she find out. Shaz’s dalliances at The Wicked Kiss had caused serious damage to their relationship. It was unlikely they would survive a repeat of that scenario.
“Fuck.” I slammed a fist down on the counter. “You’re forcing me into a pretty tough position here, you know.”
Shaz held his hands up and shrugged. “Too damn bad. Consider it payback. I’m sure I owe you. I’ve been put in some pretty tough positions because of you.”
I couldn’t argue there. The wolf pup had suffered m
uch throughout the past year. Learning of my twin flame bond with Alexa had caused him undeserved pain. I was sure that it contributed in many ways to the recent changes in Shaz.
“You should never have let Alexa start feeding from you after you came back to town,” I said, accepting defeat.
“Probably not,” Shaz agreed. “But if we all did the things we should do and avoided those we shouldn’t, we wouldn’t be here right now. Would we?”
“Touché.” As an afterthought I added, “You really piss me off, you know that?”
He continued to stare at me with intense wolf eyes. All it did was remind me of Alexa, and I knew that’s what this was really about. Shaz and I reminded each other of her. It was only natural that we’d seek out comfort in one another. Tasting Shaz’s blood would be bittersweet. No doubt it would flash me back to the night I wished I could forget. I was going to do it anyway. It wasn’t in me to refuse such an offer.
Turning my back on Shaz, I entered the living room and took a seat at the end of the couch. The anticipation that gripped me as I watched him come to me was greater than any I’d experienced all night so far. His approach was slow, calculated. He might have been the one to ask for it, but he knew how this worked. Rushing it wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable for either of us.
Wearing an expression that was somehow both cocky and nervous, Shaz sat on the opposite end of the couch.
“Let’s not make this any weirder than it has to be,” he said, facing me with expectation.
I suppressed the urge to laugh but just barely. I did, however, grace him with a broad, fang-revealing grin. “So no hand job?”
His pulse quickened ever so slightly. I could hear the pace of his heart, and if I concentrated, even the rush of blood through his veins. “Don’t even fucking joke about that.” A blush colored his cheeks, and he tensed. “I’m trusting you not to take advantage of me.”