Zoey nodded impatiently. “But, what does it do?”
“No clue, and it could take years of research to find out.”
She pouted. “I guess we’ll have to keep Lucas around as a guinea pig.”
If she meant it to be funny, no one laughed.
“We need him to feed Pedro regardless.” The stark neutrality of Andre’s tone betrayed his worry.
Pedro’s mouth went dry. Shit. His little blue-balls stunt with Lucas foreshadowed every meal he would ever have. What the hell had he been thinking? Andre had warned him not to kill his food. But apparently he needed to be told not to taunt or otherwise torment Lucas either. They were stuck together until they found a solution. Pedro could either play nice, or force Lucas. Lucas whom he hated, Lucas who had saved his life—
Over the speaker, Bel’s tinny voice sounded. “Still no luck with other blood, then?”
Pedro peeled his tongue from the roof of his mouth and croaked. “Nada.”
Three worried faces turned toward him, no doubt hearing his fear.
“That’s the best reason I can think of to get back to work, friend.” With a click on Bel’s end, the line went dead.
Pedro glanced from face to face. “There’s something else I need to tell you all. When I went to feed from Lucas earlier, he was on the phone with Ethan.”
“Davo.” Andre slammed his fist into Kos’s desk, making the stapler bounce. “Did he call him?”
“No, absolutely not. He was freaked—actually shaking when he hung up.”
“Shaking? What do you make of that?” Andre straightened the papers he’d disturbed on Kos’s desk.
“Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t ask him to lie down on a couch and tell me about his feelings.”
“But what did you overhear?” Ever patient, Kos’s gentle tone soothed Pedro.
“Basically, Lucas said his brother is a sadistic sociopath.”
An unnaturally high laugh came from Zoey.
Andre pulled her closer. “Your words?”
“Yes,” Pedro said, “but Lucas wouldn’t hesitate to use them. He was so not on board with what they did to me. Even before he rescued me, I could see his fear, and revulsion. I don’t know how the dude faked it with them for so long.”
He shivered. The icy fear triggered by Ethan’s voice jolted through him, freezing him from remembered wounds to brittle brain. He sank into a chair and squeezed his eyes closed.
He was safe. He was whole. He was a badass vampire.
Slowly, he thawed and regained control. He opened his eyes to find everyone watching him. Kos handed him a full glass of Blood Vine. At four in the afternoon? Why not? Vampires had no five-o-clock rule.
Andre opened his mouth, but Pedro cut him off. “Ethan said he knows Lucas better than Lucas knows himself.” He tightened every muscle to keep from shivering again. A sip of the wine sent heat down his esophagus. “Creep could mean anything with a statement like that. It’s sort of like his torture technique—get into your head, use your own fear and doubt against you.”
“So he’s trying to psych Lucas out over something?” Kos dropped into his chair and stroked his chin, looking professorial.
Pedro’s fingers curled with fury at Ethan, and he wished he possessed Kos’s characteristic calm. In the chair across the desk from Kos, Pedro sat on his hands. “Exactly.”
“But you trust that Lucas isn’t spying for him?” Andre took the third chair, and pulled Zoey onto his lap.
True, Lucas had seemed too interested in the carpet when they talked about his blood, but Pedro was certain about one thing. “I do. He’s hiding something from us, but he isn’t trying to help the Hunters.”
Andre shook his head. “I’m not convinced. I want to question him.”
Question? The ice prickled through Pedro’s veins again. Oh hell no. He owed Lucas. Andre was no sadist, but he was ruthless when it came to Hunters. Pedro would not let him question Lucas the way Ethan had questioned Pedro. Slowly, he leaned forward in his chair.
“No. Fucking. Way.”
Andre ground his teeth in reply.
Kos leaned forward, straightening the stapler, the phone, the stacks of papers on his desk. “Will he talk to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, can we use you as a carrot, since you don’t want Andre to be the stick?”
“Unfortunately, I was being a stick earlier.” Pedro looked at his still bulging erection.
Kos snickered, and Pedro glared at him.
Under the hostile gaze, his vampire-brother turned sympathetic. “So that’s how you ended up with the hard-on from hell? I don’t envy you, but it sounds like you better make nice and figure out what he’s hiding.”
“I hate making nice.” Pedro finished off his glass of wine in one swallow.
Kos frowned with his sensitive therapist expression that got him all the chicks. “Are you angry with him?”
Pedro spun the stem of his glass between his palms, watching the remaining drops of wine slosh and swirl. Could he do it so vampire-fast that he made a whirlpool?
Andre coughed, an annoying ploy for Pedro’s attention.
Pedro took a deep breath. “I’m furious, I pity him, and I resent my debt to him. But I won’t let any harm come to him while he’s here. And right now, I could really use a distraction. Where the hell are the wine bottles?”
Kos looked at his watch. “I don’t know. I’ve got to go meet Lena, but I’m sure they’ll be here any minute.”
“I’m going to call, just to be certain.” Andre removed his phone from his pocket.
A knock sounded on Lucas’s door, and Ally appeared.
“This is all I could find in the office.”
She handed him a pile of blank copy paper and a box of colored pencils. Nothing fancy—the kind he’d had in his school supplies as a kid.
“Thanks, this is great.”
“No problem, I imagine you’re getting a little stir crazy. You know you’re welcome to hang out in the living room. There’s a television, and help yourself to the bar.”
“That’s kind of you, but I’m not really a TV person.”
“If you prefer to read, Kos has practically every book ever written in his room. I can ask him for something, if you want.”
He bounced, dying to get started. But he pushed his hair out of his eyes, smiled, and tried to be polite. “Oh yeah? I may take you up on that.”
“Good. See you at dinner? Lena’s making her homemade lasagna.”
“Yeah, later.” He closed the door behind her and set the paper and pencils on the desk.
In his fantasy life—the one where he wasn’t raised a Hunter—he lived with a hot guy who looked a lot like Pedro, a Golden Retriever, and a daughter adopted from China. And he was an architect.
As a kid, he could sit with paper and pencil and draft for hours. He had a nearly perfect visual memory—if he paid enough attention, he was able to recall it in exact detail. And, he could get the memory on paper pretty nicely too. He wasn’t an artist; he was a copyist. He could walk through a house for a few minutes without taking any measurements, then go back to his desk and draft an accurate picture of the house to scale.
Could he remember the book, though? He hadn’t seen it in twenty years. But when Pedro’s eyes had gone yellow, its ancient, gory images came back to Lucas.
Vampires, in the sun.
If his blood did that to Pedro, he needed to know. He hunched over the desk and began to draw.
Chapter 9
KOS MADE HIS WAY to the kitchen. The sound of leaves rustling outside drew him to the window to investigate. In the back garden, Lena perched on a stool, picking green figs from a tree. Reaching high, she bared her belly above a low-slung purple skirt. Her taut, fair skin was hidden again when she placed the fruit in a bucket dangling from her other arm.
She was an angel, and they’d brought her only grief.
Over and over, the rhythmic reaching and picking bared her belly an
d lifted her full breasts. Her movements mesmerized him, casting a hypnotic spell. With her every stretch, he inhaled, and then exhaled as she placed a fig into her basket. His cock stirred, and suddenly he felt like a creep. Voyeurism was acutely unsatisfying, given his vampire limitations.
He tapped on the window. She waved and then stepped down from the stool. It wobbled, and fear flashed across her face. His heart lurched before she righted herself. She hadn’t been in any danger, yet her momentary panic swept through him like it was his own. Palm pressed to the window, he took a moment to calm himself.
In the kitchen, she rinsed the figs in a colander.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” She spoke to the fruit.
“Don’t worry. You didn’t.”
Her shoulders slumped over the sink. He’d done this, stirred up all her shame with one kiss. He wanted to shake her and say, Wake up, I want you like crazy! He didn’t even care anymore that she wanted Andre. His pride could be damned. He ached to rescue her from all that hurt.
But how could he, when it already took every ounce of his will to stay away from her?
“I’ve got some recipes marked over there.” She pointed to the kitchen table where one well-worn cookbook lay.
An array of sticky-paper flags poked out of its pages. He loved those things, had a whole drawer full in his desk. When he first discovered them, he’d used so many to mark his favorite passages in books they had become unreadable. Lena’s lined up in perfect rows, just as orderly as her well-stocked pantry.
Of course, fate would send a planner to tempt him. Her penchant for being prepared was possibly as sexy as her long legs, or her full…his eyes dropped to the assets in question. No. Those were, in fact, far sexier than her sticky notes.
Swiping his tongue over his lips, he forced himself to turn away and sit down at the table.
“Coffee? I just made a pot.”
“Thanks.”
“So tell me what kind of food you’re thinking about.” She carried two mugs over and sat across from him.
“Kind of food?” What did she mean? Back when he ate food, there was only one kind.
“I mean, California cuisine, or traditional Croatian fare…that sort of thing.”
He had no idea. Did Zoey realize how poorly suited he was to plan the menu? Lena waited for his answer, peeling off a sticky note and aligning it with the edge of a photo inside the cookbook.
Idiot—Zoey knew precisely what she was doing, and damn she was good. She’d fooled him completely with her thinking-about-food-makes-me-sad story.
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought much about it. Do you have any ideas?”
“I thought it would be fun to do a combination. Blood Vine is this ancient wine coming to life in a new place. So what if I did some California takes on the traditional foods?”
She passed him the faded book of Croatian recipes and stretched over the table to find the marked page. Her shirt rode up, and she twisted awkwardly, kneeling in her chair. They really couldn’t look at the book together when she was so far away. She glanced at the seat next to him.
“Lena, please, come sit here.”
Her head bowed. Then, without looking up, she obeyed. She smelled like figs, both the sweet fruit and the green leaves she’d brushed against. He hadn’t especially liked figs when he was human, but he pictured her biting into a ripe one, and licking her lips. Krist, it was hot in the kitchen. He tugged at his collar.
Focus.
The cookbook looked fifty years old, at least. “Where in the world did you get this?”
“I ordered it online when I first took the job. Thought it might come in handy.”
Of course she did. The faded black and white pictures showed food Kos couldn’t even imagine was appetizing, but he vaguely remembered eating it. He waved his hand over the book.
“What did you have in mind?”
For the first time, she met his eyes. “Well, grilled sardines. I can get fresh ones from a guy I know at the farmers’ market.”
“We ate those all the time when I was young. The fishermen pulled them out of the Adriatic and filled cart after cart.”
She almost smiled, and he wished he could go back in time to that morning, when they’d talked easily about his past.
“I was also thinking about stuffed peppers. They’re still in season.”
“Yes, those are very traditional—good idea.”
“Okay, and this is the special one.” She sat straighter, her voice growing more confident. “What about wild truffles and pasta? A friend in town just brought me a sack full, and he promises more next week. The season’s just started up north.”
“Truffles? Those mushrooms they hunt with pigs?”
“Yeah. The ones growing here are different from the European variety, but I think they’re just as good.”
The dish sounded familiar. He squinted at the antiquated cookbook photo and tried to place it—a steaming earthenware bowl of noodles, the rich, meaty smell of the mushrooms, his mother smiling. Nostalgia gripped him, and he fell backward into the vision.
“My mother used to make that. I loved it.” His words caught in his throat.
Lena watched him, the corners of her deep blue eyes creasing. Always kind, her compassion had swallowed up her awkwardness. She inched her hand toward him, but stopped just short of his arm. “Were you remembering her?”
“Yes, an unexpectedly happy memory amidst the tragic ones.”
“Oh.” Lena closed the cookbook, leaning forward. “Your mother wasn’t a vampire, was she?”
“No. She didn’t want to turn.”
“And Andre adopted you?” She studied him with an intense focus he’d never seen from her before.
“Yes.” Where was she going with these questions?
Her bottomless eyes held his. “But what about Bel?”
Bel? Krist. She wanted to have babies. And, she wanted to serve a vampire. Of course she wondered about Bel. He looked exactly like Andre, was clearly his biological son. Kos clung to the seat of his chair, the wood denting under the tips of his fingers.
If only life were the fairy tale where he could give her everything she wanted.
“Bel is a mystery, Lena. He’s the only one of his kind. Even Andre doesn’t know how he was conceived.”
“So there’s no way…” Averting her gaze, she tucked a strand of her silken hair behind her ear, and he wanted to pull it out and run it through his fingers.
“There’s no way to have a baby with a vampire, Lena. If you want to be a mother, you must leave household service and choose a human life. Is that what you want?”
She folded her hands on the table, an almost peaceful gesture. But her fingertips turned white with a pressure rivaling his grip on the chair.
“I’m not ready to decide.”
“I understand. Then, I will continue to advertise your services, unless you tell me otherwise. All right?”
Her eyes glittered, and she stared toward his mouth. He wiped his lips—could they be stained by a drop of blood? He hadn’t fed all day. Maybe it was wine.
“Yes, that’s all right.” She squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”
“It’s my duty, and my pleasure, to help you, Lena.” He pulled his hand away, unable to stand the longing her touch stirred. He tapped the cookbook to refocus her attention. “Now, did you have any other dishes in mind?”
“I thought I would make baklava. I know it’s not really Croatian, but I have tons of pistachios.”
He laughed. A memory came to mind, of Bel pouting and pointing at him.
“What?”
“Our cook made it often and I loved it. I would steal it from the kitchen and get in trouble. I would always blame Bel and then get caught licking my sticky fingers.” He doubled over with laughter, his eyes tearing up. Who knew that discussing food could bring on floods of emotion and fits of nostalgia?
She wore the first real smile he’d seen all afternoon. “Baklava it is, then. I ha
ve a whole case of honey I bought at the farmers’ market. I wonder if I can find it? Somewhere high in the pantry, I think.”
The fear on her face when she’d teetered under the fig tree flashed in his mind. “Let me help you get it down.”
Lena’s neck flushed with Kos behind her. Was he looking at her, or was she just imagining he was? More importantly, had he noticed her staring at his mouth? He must think she was a total freak. Some kind of succubus who’d turned her attention to him since she’d failed to seduce his father.
She swung open the door to the pantry and flipped on the lights. A folding step stool hung from a hook on the wall, and she placed it on the floor in front of the shelf. Kos’s gaze left a trail of embarrassed heat down her body. Maybe she just wanted him to be looking at her, while in reality he was reading the labels on her obsessively organized shelves.
“The case of honey is on the top.” She pointed. “I can’t see it from here. It must have been pushed behind something.” The distant top shelf spanned the room about nine feet off the ground.
“Why did you put it all the way up there?”
“Pedro did it months ago. I took one jar out and he put the box on the shelf.”
Kos climbed the ladder and looked down at her over his shoulder. “What does it look like?”
“It’s just a regular cardboard box, maybe a foot square.”
“Labeled?” he asked, winking.
She smiled, feeling a little more like herself. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably not.”
“I still don’t see it. I’m going to have to stand on the top of the ladder. Would you mind keeping it steady?”
“Of course.”
Her view of the shelf was blocked by his very nicely shaped butt. She bit the inside of her cheek. It was seriously a tragedy that he was so beautifully built, and she would never get to touch him the way she wanted. Her fingers twitched. Good thing her job was to keep the stool steady or her hands would be all over him.
Above her, boxes scraped against the wooden shelves. “Any luck?”
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