by C. L. Quinn
The last sip sliding down his throat, he had a hand on the door handle when he felt fingers wrap around his shoulder.
“Where you heading, buddy?”
Quattro faced Jack as he fingered the keys to the lift-car he and Dani had come in on. “Just taking a walk.”
“Didn’t look like it. Quattro, I know this is all new to you, but hear me out. You need a place to start again. We’ve built a relationship, the lot of us, respect, and you don’t want to lose that. Come work with us. I need to go back to Brazil for a while and the team could really use you.”
“I doubt that. They’ll be fine without you until you come back. They’ll definitely be fine without me.”
“Really?” Keeping his hand on Quattro’s shoulder, Jack called out to the party behind him. “Hey guys. I’m going home tomorrow. Can Quattro take my place?”
“Sure.”
“No problem.”
“Um, yeah.”
“I thought he was already part of the gang.”
The comments surprised Quattro. They really would accept him? Trust him?
“See? Come on. Come back. You’re with us now.”
Stunned, Quattro followed Jack and accepted a glass of wine as he punched him into a seat next to Eva.
She gave him the sweetest smile.
Maybe this would work.
“Saul, would you step outside with me?”
He would follow her anywhere, so Saul lifted a bottle of whisky from the table and followed Dani onto the porch that Jack had just left.
“So beautiful here. I love this island. Someday, we should travel up to Mauna Kea and use the telescopes to see the planets.”
“I’d love to. Discovering the world with you will be a miracle I could never have dreamed of.”
“You’re the miracle, Dani.”
Moving close, Dani slid her fingers up and curled them into Saul’s hair. Soft, so beautiful, she couldn’t pull her hands away.
“Saul, I have something to tell you. I don’t want to overwhelm you. This has been a crazy month for you. You found me, then we found your brother.”
“I’ve always wanted a family, Dani. All my years alive, I’ve never belonged to anyone. No one has ever belonged to me. It makes for an empty life. So, yeah, maybe it’s a little overwhelming, but in a wonderful way. I love you, I’m so grateful the universe brought you to me. And Quattro. I’ll get there. I admit only to you that I am more than curious about our brotherhood.”
“That’s good. Well, do you think you can handle one more piece of life-altering news?”
“I can handle anything with you at my side.”
“Okay.” She paused and stepped back, placing her hands on her belly. “I’m Shoazan.”
Saul didn’t speak. Moments passed before he dropped onto his knees and wrapped his arms around Dani’s waist, pulling her to him.
“Are you?” he finally asked, and knew she would know what he meant.
Nodding, although Saul couldn’t see that gesture with his face buried against her belly, Dani said, “I think so.”
Saul pulled the waistband of her pants lower and kissed the bare skin on a tight flat belly. He murmured something she couldn’t hear.
“Saul, what? I didn’t understand.”
He stood then, the absolute quintessence of masculine strength and aggression, tears running down his cheeks.
“I am blessed.”
Lifting her into his arms, Saul kissed Dani, his mate, the mother of his child, and knew that this, her, no matter where he was in the world, was home.
The End…for now…
Denver, Colorado
“Bura, just keep an eye on the nascent crops. I’ll be back to help soon, but Ife called, and I have to go look for my sister. Brigitte’s gone off the grid again, and it might spell trouble. Ife says she’s tried to reach her for two weeks with no response.”
Eras had awakened his longtime friend in Australia, who worked odd hours, days, sometimes nights, to ensure the farm nation stayed productive. Hundreds of thousands of people depended on it.
Bura’s deep voice sounded tired.
“You’ve gone after her before and it hasn’t helped.”
“I know. Honestly, my friend, I’m not sure anything or anyone can. Brigitte’s always been a hot head; she’s burned more bridges than she’s built, but she’s family and might need help. I have to go.”
Waiting for Bura to tell him he’d take care of everything, not to worry, as he usually did, after thirty seconds, he spoke again. “You get me?”
“No. Let me go after her, Eras.”
“You? You? Why?”
“Trust me, my friend. I’ll bring her home.”
“She’s difficult. Honestly, she can be a bitch and a brat all at once. She needs someone to beat the craziness out of her. Don’t you fucking tell anyone I said that. I’ll deny it.”
“Eras, I’ve watched Brigitte for years. Whatever you guys have done hasn’t worked. I know her. Let me be the one to go to her this time. Maybe I can help.”
“It is busy here right now, but I don’t know…”
“I’ve always been there if she needed me. She likes me. She trusts me.”
“That is true. Plus you’re the calmest, strongest man I’ve ever met. Maybe you are what she needs.”
Eras paused. Should he let Bura try? Bura had always been good with Brigitte. Yeah, it might be the best choice.
“Okay, but be careful. That kitten has a nasty bite and equally vicious claws.”
“I will bring her home, one way or another.”
“I appreciate this, Bura.”
“She’s family, too.”
“That’s a plateful of things. Don’t let her argue with you, just make her come home so we can help her.”
“Trust me, I will.”
“If size matters, you certainly can do it. Let me know if you need me, and I’ll come at once.”
“Where to?”
“We finally found her. She’s in Bergen, Norway, for some godforsaken reason.”
“I’ll go at once.”
The following night in Bergen, Norway
Brigitte woke confused, but that was just normal for her these days. Since she’d been bingeing on kyselo, a lab-created recreational drug powerful enough to provide incredible highs even for vampires, the world had been sort of fuzzy.
Rolling over, the room spinning, she grinned. She liked it fuzzy. Somewhere in her head was the idea that she should get out of bed and eat something. And how long had it been since her last blood meal?
Rolling back onto her stomach, she lifted her head and looked around.
Where was she? Oh, in her own room for once, thank the Gods. Searching again, glancing toward the open bathroom door, she sighed in gratitude and dropped her head back onto the pillow.
And she was alone too. All good. Her head was still spinning from that last spitball of kyselo. It was high quality shit that Einar had brought with him last night, last week?...or…whenever.
“All I want to do is sleep,” she whispered.
A loud snap drew her head back up as the door to her one room apartment opened.
Who in the fuck?
A massive figure filled the narrow doorway, so big he had to slide in sideways to shut it behind him.
Ah, motherfuck. A bear had come into her room!
Brigitte kept her head up, watching every heavy footfall as he stomped into her small space.
She moaned. “What the hell are you doing here, Bura?”
Bura looked around the tiny wooden room. Even the floors were nothing but wooden planks. What a dismal place for a first blood vampire. Finally ready to see Brigitte for the first time in over a year, her appearance shocked him.
She looked like hell. Her beautiful hair was so matted, he thought it might have to be cut off rather than combed out, face slim, gaunt even, eyes more luminous than ever though. His gaze continued down her body, almost fully exposed on the flat narrow mattress. A
sheet wrapped around her calves, but the rest of her naked body, perfect round buttocks, strong slender back, shoulders he wanted to bite…stop it, Bura, you’re here to save her from herself, not fuck her!
“Ife and Eras sent me to bring you home.”
Dropping her face dramatically back into her pillow, her groan nearly drowned out, she lifted it back up seconds later and rolled over.
Bura nearly had to leave the room. Brigitte, fully naked, gorgeous breasts he’d never seen, a dream of his for decades, and her pussy, the place he wanted to be more than anywhere else, so beautiful, as she lifted a leg.
Unrequited love never stopped hurting.
Brigitte moaned again, her eyes squinting at him as if the low light hurt. “Fuck, no. I’m happy here.”
“You’re drunk and high, all the time. I can tell by how you look and how you smell.”
“Really? How I smell?”
Standing, unsteadily, trying to pull the sheet around her, he noticed she tried hard to look regal. “I smell like I’ve been good and fucked.”
Abandoning the sheet when it wouldn’t pull free from the bed, she tripped over it as she moved forward to run a finger down Bura’s coat.
Shoving the thick fur aside, she tore open his shirt and punched her finger into his chest, nearly as furred as the coat.
“If I gave you permission, would you want to fuck me too?”
This bravado, this aggressive play was her way of trying to save face, he knew that, but it was impossibly hard, because, Gods!, he desperately wanted to take her up on it. In all the years he’d known her, she’d never wanted him.
“No. I’m here to take you back to your family so they can help you get clean. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Brigitte. Vampires get addicted too. But you must come home now.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, big Bear. I came to Norway to find some Vikings.”
She crawled back onto the bed and ran a hand from a nipple down between her legs, her fingers lingering there as she grinned up at him. “I found them, and boy, did they know how to storm the castle.”
Bura thought he was going to explode. Yes, she looked like crap, and she smelled like she hadn’t had a shower in days, but, yes, he wanted to lay that perfect naked body back onto that mattress and pound into her.
He’d been in love with Brigitte since he met her over a century ago when they were children.
As promised, he would bring her home, he wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t rise to her mean taunts, but this was going to be much harder than he thought.
The journey continues, my wonderful readers, with DAYS LOST in 2018.
Love unrequited, the topic of many poignant poems, tales woven in books and movies that tug at our own hearts, comes front and center as a man who has loved a woman for several lifetimes must help her find her destined path before she is lost.
Even vampires fight drug addiction, self-loathing, and wonder if they have a place in this world.
You’ve stayed on the path with me so far. Let’s keep traveling that beautiful, rocky trail, my friends.
Charlie Quinn