Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  “Don’t move, sweetheart.”

  “Xaine—”

  “I mean it. You pop a stitch, we go straight back to CasDec.” I exhale again, this time rubbing my five o’clock shadow against her inner thigh. “Is that what you want? Another long talk with great-great-granddad? Some time tracing back the family tree to some boring ancestral seat? Finding out whose nose you have?”

  “Feels like I have your nose in my—” she starts to mouth off, so I make good on the observation, pressing my face to the warm-and-wet and not coming up for air until she’s wriggling again.

  “Seriously, love, behave yourself,” I tease. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “I am going to—”

  “You’re going what?”

  Lore starts to threaten me, but a couple long, slow licks steal the words right out of her mouth again. Jax Trace can keep his lectures about heaven and earth. This is all the heaven that’s left in the world: my face buried Lore’s pretty little snatch, my nose to her landing strip, my hands pinning her hips to the mattress. She’s in no position, literal or figurative, to disagree with me, either. Not when honey pools out of her, sweet and slick and somehow even more her than the blood. She’s panting, too, tiny gasps for air that claw me up inside, because some things are always going to remind me of that helicopter ride to CasDec.

  Only one thing to do for that, then.

  I let go of one leg, but only so I can tease two fingers inside her tight passage. There’s no jokes from her now, no quippy repartee, because my mouth is on her again. I delve into her as she moans my name, two fingers sliding three-knuckles-deep, again and again in desperation and reaffirmation. I rock against her, against the bed, against the knowledge that I almost lost her. It would have been oppressive here without her, desolate, echoing with the heaviness of nothingness where there was something before.

  Empty house, empty bed, empty life, empty—

  And then absolutely everything inside Lore contracts, her muscles clamping down and a sudden gush telling me—as if I might miss it—that she’s coming and coming and then coming some more. I’m still lapping at her as her entire body bows and her throat convulses around a sharp cry that splits the air. The sound of Lore’s orgasm tears through all the empty, filling it up with every lascivious thought I’ve ever had and leaving me aching in ways that I couldn’t explain if I knew every single word in the English language.

  Fuck.

  Yeah, that’s about as close as it gets, really.

  The muscles in her stomach and legs go completely lax. Her breathing evens out. Her pulse slows, and I’m concerned enough by the idea that she might have blacked out that I raise my head and bring the blankets up with me. Lore’s eyes are closed, but her mouth is curled into a dreamy kind of smile. When those baby blues flutter open, I get matching pink spots on her cheeks and that trademark half-grin. It’s the healthiest she’s looked since I dragged her off the plane in Vegas.

  Right, lady. Doctor’s orders: all the orgasms ever for you.

  I brace myself on my elbows so I’m not putting any weight on her, doing my best to ignore the fact that my dick is really close to where it most wants to be at this moment. I guess turnabout is fair play, because Lore gets this evil look on her face and rolls her hips against me so all that impossibly warm and wet flesh teases the head of my cock.

  “You’re not actually afraid you’re going to break me, are you?” Her legs wrap around my waist, drawing me closer.

  “Lore…”

  Before I even get the chance to protest, her hands are on my face, palms pressed to my skin. She holds me captive so I’m looking right at her when she says, “Xaine, I’m okay.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I manage between gritted teeth, pressing my forehead to hers, trying to tamp down the desire that’s threatening to overwhelm me.

  “You won’t.” And because my hands are propping me up, hers are free to reach down and make a grab for the brass ring. “I promise.”

  When her soft fingers close around my shaft, the hiss that escapes me sounds like someone opened the cap on an overheated radiator. Peering down at her through the dark hair that’s completely escaped the rubber band I was using earlier, I mutter, “Sweetheart, I’m all good if you want to drive stick.”

  She doesn’t answer, doesn’t even give me time to think before she guides me in. Then I can’t think of a goddamn thing. Every single nerve ending in my body has apparently been rerouted, and every bit of my mental circuitry blows up. Buried deep inside her, a long moment passes before my brain starts firing on all cylinders again, and that only happens because Lore moves her hips. She urges me to go faster, deeper. I try to slow it all down, mostly because I can already feel my sack clenching up. It’s been more than two weeks since I’ve done this, or anything else vaguely resembling this.

  And this is everything.

  Levering myself up, I tow her as gently as I can against me, greedy and wanting and wishing I could clamp my mouth down on her pretty pierced nipples and kiss her mouth and sink my fangs into her neck, all at the same time. It’s not easy to take my time, to move slowly, to match the rhythm of my hips to hers, to watch her skin flush and her pupils dilate again. I listen to her panted breaths, her soft moans of encouragement, and I let her urge me on as I reclaim her, thrust by thrust.

  Thankfully for her health and my sanity, it doesn’t take long. The urge to spill myself inside her has been there from the beginning, but soon it’s a driving need, a raw nerve tingling all the way from my balls to my brain. A second climax starts to ripple through Lore, and that’s the last shove that sends me over the mental and physical cliff. I bury myself as deep within her as I can and let myself go, a hoarse shout escaping me as I shoot her so full of me that I can feel it sliding out of her and down our thighs.

  I want to fall forward onto Lore and pass out on the full softness of her breasts, but she’s not well enough for that yet. As it is, I figure I’ve only got five, maybe ten minutes tops before the sweat and assorted other things override her desire to spoon. Shifting to one side, I pull her against my chest as gently as I can manage. For all that I recently emptied out the bank account, my skin is still on high alert, hyperaware of everything from the way she’s pressed against me to how her eyelashes flutter every time she blinks.

  “You all right?” I murmur.

  “Better than all right.” She stretches out, as content as any cat that’s found its pool of sunshine.

  Or shadows.

  All the information Jackson Trace coughed up at the medcenter has been replaying in my head on an almost nonstop loop. One more reason for the Great Upcoming Disappearing Act, with bonus all-the-plans-ever for getting the hell out of Dodge. Hard to figure out when to clue Lore in on all of it, but it will have to be soon.

  A familiar voice interrupts my train of thought with a song playing from the vicinity of my discarded pants. Lore laughs, then presses a hand to her middle with a groan.

  “You made the chorus from ‘In Your Light’ your ringtone?”

  Fairly certain it must be Cas ready to run down the newest series of international hiccups, I sigh, slide out of the bed, and retrieve the denim-trapped tech. “Yeah. And for your information, the song is at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.” Lore’s mouth drops open, so I tack on, “And climbing,” as I swipe over the screen. “What the hell, Reece?”

  Asher’s voice sounds like he’s been gargling cement. “Nice to hear you, too, Xaine. Look, before you pop off with some asshole comment, would you please let the gatekeepers know I’m barreling your direction at approximately ninety miles an hour, and if they don’t open it, I’m gonna drive through it?”

  I’m already on the move, figuring we hit some kind of DEFCON1 and all hell is breaking loose. I don’t even respond. I simply hang up, jerking on my pants and yelling for Rosa to buzz the guards.

  Lore’s eyes have gone wide, and she’s thrown off the sheets like she’s going to teeter downstairs on her sp
indly fawn legs to greet the goddamn apocalypse. “What’s happening?”

  “Stay in bed,” I yell at her, already headed for the wall safe. By the time the PFC Humvee throws gravel all over my front walkway, I’ve got guns in both hands and the other members of the security detail closing rank. Lonan’s there, and he’s wearing the grimmest expression I’ve seen on him to date. “Did you know he was headed in?”

  “We haven’t heard from him since he took the away crew and headed back east,” Lonan says with a shake of his head. The muscles under his shirt clench as Asher bails out of the vehicle with Jess right behind him.

  Baby Vamp, I can smell you from here.

  And not some punk-turned neophyte, but old blood. Not as old as mine, but then again, I hadn’t exactly volunteered it. If I had to guess, Asher probably did exactly what Jax Trace told him to do: limped her along until Cas Declan got back and donated a few quarts of high octane. Despite all that, I’m impressed that she survived. She looks hale, hearty, and astonishingly monochromatic. The clothes and the hair have been toned down and ironed out, more fatigues than fashion, from the sleek black ponytail down to the green cargo pants tucked into a pair of high-shine combats. Jess glares back at me, tilting her chin up, and I find myself staring into eyes that changed from dark brown to startling red.

  “Hey, Chiquita Banana, nice to see you again.” I nod in her direction, but she only curls her lip and turns toward Asher. I’m sure she knows that I walked away and left her to rot. People tend to hold grudges over things like that.

  “Get in the goddamn house,” Asher barks, and the boys from PFC fall in line like the soldiers they are. He unceremoniously hustles us all in and slams the door shut. “Activate the alarm.”

  I lock us up good and proper in time for Lore to start picking her way downstairs. She’s located a pair of silk pajamas and a robe, but instead of covering her up, they melt around her body like chocolate on a hot sidewalk. Amazing how a recovering attempted-homicide victim can look so much like sex-on-a-stick.

  My stick.

  I shove past the gape-mouthed mercs to meet her halfway, catching her around the waist when she wobbles. “Go back to bed, love. You shouldn’t be up and about.”

  “Like hell, Capello,” Lore starts to protest, then has to reach out and plant a hand on my shoulder to keep from swaying. Her fingers fist up in my shirt, and I’m about two seconds away from packing her back to the bedroom Scarlett-O’Hara-style when Asher intervenes.

  “Bring her down, Xaine, she needs to hear this.”

  I turn my head to glare at him, like maybe I can make him spontaneously combust if I hate his face hard enough. For as many moments as I’ve spent waiting for him to come back, I’m sure I’ll spend just as many regretting that he didn’t stay wherever the fuck he was. Eventually, I give a slow nod and return my attention to Lore, guiding her down the steps.

  “You look like shit, Ash,” Lore says, and she’s right. He’s living up to his name with a complexion that’s gray and pale. Lost a little weight too, if I had to guess. He’s sporting the same hollow-eyed, gaunt-cheeked look as Lore, but I don’t smell blood and I don’t see a scratch on him.

  “Says the girl with a knife wound in her gut and a vampire for a husband,” he says.

  “Touché,” she says, tacking on an accented, “douché.”

  He shoots her a withering, big brother kind of look before motioning for everyone to follow him into the media room. The second that Lore lays eyes on Baby Vamp, though, every muscle in her body tenses, and she stops in her tracks with the tiniest squeak of bare feet on marble.

  “Jess?” Definitely a question this time, like she can’t quite believe it’s her. Lore tries to take a step toward her friend, but I try a little harder to prevent it, holding her against me. When she turns those angry eyes upon me, I know I’m in for it. “Let me go, Xaine.”

  “Nope,” I say, keeping an eye on the newest addition to our undead ranks. “Not a chance, sweetheart. Last time I let you wander alone in the presence of strangers, you ended up in a hospital for two weeks.”

  “Jess isn’t a stranger,” Lore insists.

  “She is to me. I don’t know her.” Because I don’t. Not really. And what I do know, I don’t like. “I don’t trust her.”

  “You trust Cas and Asher,” Lore counters, getting all stubborn. “And they trust Jess.”

  “Perfect. So when Cas is here to stand between the two of you in case his progeny decides to get bitey, then you can hug her.” I raise my voice to make sure Jess gets the message, too. “Until then, I want more distance between you than two awkward teenagers slow dancing at a Catholic school prom.” I gesture to a space of about three feet with my hands. “Leaving room for the father, the son, the Holy Ghost, and me.”

  I glance over at Jess, who’s drilling those creepy red peepers of hers into Lore. There’s a flicker of something small and sad and wholly familiar—

  Regret.

  —before we’re treated to the hard-as-nails routine again.

  “Jess,” Lore starts. “I—”

  “No, niña, it’s okay.” But judging by the way Jess averts her gaze, it’s not.

  Personally, I’m pretty satisfied with the way things have panned out on this one, but then Lore gives me that stare. The puppy-eyed, pouty-lipped, tears-balanced-on-lashes look that will get her what she wants from me, now and forever.

  Man, are you wrapped around her little finger, or what?

  “Okay, fine,” I mutter, turning her loose. The brilliant grin she shoots me is almost worth the pit of anxiety that opens in my gut when she flings her arms around her former-roommate-turned-bloodsucker. At first, it’s like Lore’s hugging a statue, and Jess just kinda takes it. She stares over my girl’s shoulder, those eyes boring a bitter hole in my face. Nothing can resist the Fuzzy Bunny for long, though, and a second later Jess’s arms come up, wrapping tentatively around Lore’s waist. Inwardly, I wince, mostly because Big Bad Baby Vamp is ten kinds of gentle and twenty kinds of scared, holding onto Lore like she’s made of glass.

  I remember those early nights, when I was terrified of my own strength.

  “Enough already,” Asher says from the doorway. “Save the reunion for later.”

  Lore lets go with visible reluctance, squeezing both of Jess’s hands before she allows her to move away. It’s almost eerie the way Jess walks in front of us, no telltale jingling of jewelry to give her away anymore, no smart-mouthed comment to betray whatever thoughts are rolling through that predator head of hers. But once we hit the other room, my focus shifts to Asher. He’s hijacked my flatscreen, plugging it into one of his ToughBooks.

  “The first facility had been cleared out by the time we got to it,” he’s telling the others. “Patients, prisoners, medical records, equipment, all gone. But there was enough evidence to confirm that’s where they detained Mrs. Capello. Then we got… an anonymous tip… leading to a second facility, so we used demolition charges to secure the first site.”

  His definition of “secure” and mine sure as shit aren’t the same, because next Asher pulls up GoPro footage of some spectacularly big explosions. There’s no sound, but we can see the way the camera vibrates before the ground under the compound shudders and then opens up, swallowing it whole. Lore draws closer to me, the light from the TV hitting her full in the face. She’s got one hand on my waist and the other wrapped around my wrist, fingers tightening down on the ink-needled words.

  “The second facility was four hundred miles away and locked down tighter than a maximum security prison. Despite our… intel…” Another hesitation. Confirmation, if I needed it, that Asher’s not telling us the entire truth. “The infiltration didn’t go as smoothly as planned.”

  Jess has her hands on her hips and her gaze trained on him like a guard dog. Whatever went down, it was serious business, but the way Reece refuses to meet my eyes, I know it’s not only about his team.

  “What information did you get before you ended up �
�detained,’ Reece?”

  He shifts his attention to me, frowning, but not at the interruption. “It’s big. Bigger than we ever realized.”

  “How big?” Lonan wants to know.

  Jess cuts in. “Big enough that they didn’t even feel the crater we made in the ground.”

  “They have lists of your assets, bank accounts, real estate, political alignment,” Asher says now that he has my undivided attention. “They’ve also amassed an inordinately large amount of information on your family: Roman Scipio, Caspian Declan, Patrick St. John, Matthias Addison, Margot Vauclain. And they had a huge file on Lourdes.” He pauses, letting it all sink in. “I don’t know what their plan is, Xaine, but they’ve got your number, Lore’s number, and they sure as shit have my number now.”

  “So basically,” I hear myself say, “we’re sitting ducks at the moment?”

  “Yeah, basically.”

  “Clear your boys out, Reece.” I am not saying one word in front of them about the plans I’ve made with Cas. Not that I don’t trust them, because hell, I’ve put Lore’s safety in their hands, but there’s no telling what information the Legacy might be able to torture out of them later.

  Asher hesitates, then jerks his chin toward the door. The PFC guys head out, but there’s not a single grumble out of any of them, even Lonan. They understand clearance and the fact that we just leveled up several significant notches, I guess. I wait for the door to click shut behind them, leaving Lore and me, Asher and Jess.

  I start. “Lore and I are going to disappear. Drop off of the Legacy’s radar.”

  Asher leans the nearest couch, looking suddenly and disconcertingly tired. “That’s not going to stop them, Xaine. They’re going to hunt her down, and you with her.”

  “Why?” Lore whispers.

  “For the same reason that they’d prefer I was dead, too,” Jess says. “Because we survived. Because any one of us can blow the cover off all their dirty secrets.”