Patrick scoffed as if even the suggestion of me not getting naked was an affront to him and his business practices. "I have seen a naked person before," he argued.
"Yes, but you haven't seen me naked."
He tried to come at me with his measuring tape again but I backed up quickly, running into a mannequin, which crashed loudly to the floor.
"Is everything okay in there?" Vallen called through the door.
Patrick gave me a dark look before going to the door and throwing it open. "He won't take off the dress! Vallen, I adore you, you know I do, but I can't work like this. He's your fiance. Explain to him that he needs to take off the dress so that I can get his measurements."
Vallen came into the small room and I met his gaze. I didn't want to be wearing this dress another minute, but I didn't want to exactly be naked with two strange men around me either.
"Patrick, can we have a minute?" Vallen asked, turning away from me.
He tossed up his hands, and then he was gone, closing the door behind him and leaving me alone with the man who was my fiance, but who I also barely knew.
"I can't do this," I told him before he could even think of arguing with me.
Vallen sighed, and then he sipped from a half full glass in his hand. It took me far too long to figure out that he was drinking blood. I shrank back a little more from him, though I was already pressed pretty tightly against the wall.
He put down the glass and came up to me, taking my hands in his. "What's going on?"
"I don't want to be naked around him." That should have been obvious.
Vallen kept holding my hand as we sat down together on the floor. "If you're worried that he'll take advantage of you, you don't have to be. He's not interested."
That sounded really final and I wondered what it was about me that Patrick would find so distasteful. I was about to ask Vallen what he'd meant by that when he pulled out his phone and started texting someone.
"Ainsley will be here in a few minutes with some clothes you can borrow until Patrick finishes making you some."
"Thanks for asking him," I mumbled. I pulled my knees up to my chest and got my dress around my feet as much as possible. I was so tired, worn out really, and I just wanted this day to be over already. But what would come next? At the end of all this, after Vallen had gotten me food and something to wear, we'd go to his place. And then... I forced air into my lungs to try to cut off some of my nervousness. It really didn't help. Would he want to have sex with me as if I was a woman? Did I really have another way to be with him?
I hated how much I was crying, but I couldn't really help it. I wiped my eyes again. The lace was supposed to be nice and soft, but it only felt rough against my cheeks, scratching at me as I tried to dry the tears from my face. "Do you live nearby?" I wasn't good at smalltalk really.
"I don't. I used to, but I work in the vampire district. I didn't want to live there too. I live on the coast. Do you like the ocean? I've got a private beach, though it's mostly just rocks. But, like I said, it is private. So if you wanted to shift and run out there, you could."
I heard someone come into the shop and I stiffened up, expecting another vampire, which it was, but I didn't mind when Ainsley joined us in the dressing room. He put a small suitcase in front of me, then nodded to Vallen. "That should get him through the next few days."
"Thank you." Vallen rose and I looked up at them both as Vallen turned back to me. "Put on some of these, enough that you'd be comfortable with Patrick taking your measurements. We'll be outside."
I felt much better that time as Vallen and Ainsley left me in that room. Getting dressed was as easy as taking off my dress and putting on some of Ainsley's clothes. They didn't completely fit with how they were tight through the hips, but they were better than the dress I had been wearing. And Ainsley had brought me a tank top and boxers as well. I stood in those and waited for Patrick to come back to me.
Chapter Seven
Vallen
Ainsley poured himself a glass of blood, and I got another, before we sat down together in the lounge at the front of the small store. It was just a few couches and chairs put together for people while they were waiting for Patrick to get to them, but it was a comfortable spot to sit and relax for a while.
"You don't have to stay," I told Ainsley as I sipped on a forty-five year old mother of two who was into video games and paintball. "I said that I would give you tonight off and I did mean it, despite that I called you back."
He smirked at me. He'd chosen a man that ran a pastry shop. I wondered if his blood was sweeter than mine. "Can I have tomorrow night off to make up for it? I'll still bring you someone, as usual, since it is Friday."
I hadn't considered my usual Friday routine now that I would be living with a werewolf. "That's fine." I went quiet as I thought about how I would work around having Tad in my life every Friday from now on. Or, at the very least, our child would be in my life even if Tad and I eventually decided that this arrangement wasn't going to work out. I didn't expect him to stay married to me indefinitely after all, just until our child was born and things were settled. But I did expect Tad to stay in our lives. He would be the father of our child and I wanted our child to have two parents nearby who cared deeply about them.
I didn't want Tad going back to the pack though. And I didn't want our child growing up in the same unwelcoming environment that he had. So he would need a house near mine at some point down the road. I pictured our child walking along the beach between our houses, picking up pretty rocks to share with me before they went back to Tad's house. That thought had me smiling into my glass of blood.
"You look happy," Ainsley said.
I looked over to find him smiling at me. "I am. I'll have a child soon."
"Good. You've only been wanting one for the last twenty years or so."
It had been more like a few hundred years, but that was okay. Some people were meant to be farmers or bankers or what have you. As for me, I'd known for a few centuries that I wanted to become a father but being a vampire had certainly put a damper on that plan. Until now.
"Do you like him?" Ainsley quietly asked me.
I could hear Patrick and Tad talking in the dressing room, though they were keeping their voices too low for me to hear what they were saying.
"I don't really know him," I said, as I thought back on the short time that we had actually spent together. "I'm thankful for his choice and it's not as if I dislike him. I simply need more time to get to know him."
"Perhaps a date then?"
Ainsley had the right idea but had no idea how to go about having a date with a werewolf. If he'd been a vampire we could have gotten hunting together. I could have taken him to a blood bar which was far more civilized. I could have listened to live jazz music or we could have seen a movie. Something with gore and humans dying that would have made us hungry afterwards. But Tad was not a vampire and so I did not know how to entertain him on a date.
"Do you know what werewolves enjoy doing?" I wasn't coming up with any ideas so I might as well have asked him.
"Not a clue. In case you've forgotten, we don't actually interact much." He made a sour face as he said it. As if the very idea of being with a werewolf was somehow a turn off.
"I didn't realize you held such prejudice."
"I don't. At least not with Tad anyway. But his father is another story altogether. I have no love for that werewolf. And at this point, knowing what I now know about Tad's life, I don't even know if I could be civil to him if I was forced to be in the same room with him."
I agreed with Ainsley wholeheartedly. I never wanted to see Novak again.
Patrick came out of the room, followed by Tad, and we rose to greet them. "Ainsley, I will see you the day after tomorrow."
"That's fine. See you then."
I nodded, but I wasn't paying attention to him. I was far more focused on Tad as he came out of the room too. He came up to us, looking amazing in a pair of slim cut blac
k slacks and a dark blue button down shirt. He had a vest on too, just as black as his pants, and Patrick had gone through the trouble of cutting his hair. It wasn't too short, just down to the base of his ears, but it was a vast improvement over how long his hair had been before.
I went to him, and I couldn't help but reach up and touch the chopped ends of his hair.
"It's better, right?" he asked me, his voice full of uncertainty.
"Yes, much better." I wanted to kiss him then, but I didn't. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since he'd come to my office and proposed the deal.
Tad gave his attention to Ainsley, but I wanted to keep it for myself. "Thank you for letting me borrow your clothes."
Ainsley shrugged him off. "No worries. I've got a big closet. Those were a little small on me so I hadn't been wearing them lately anyway." He patted my shoulder. "See you later, Vallen. You better be serious about giving me the rest of the night, and tomorrow night, off."
I barely looked at him. "I was. Goodnight."
Ainsley gave me a peace sign, something he rarely did but that seemed to be a holdover from his time as a human, then he was gone.
Patrick was no where to be seen as I took Tad's hand and took him out of the little shop.
"He said that the clothes would be ready in a few weeks. Ainsley brought me enough to get me through until then."
"Good." I wanted Tad home. My home. I hadn't thought that his transformation would be that different. They were only clothes after all. But he walked a bit straighter. He held his chin up more. He had a confidence that definitely hadn't been there only an hour before, and it made me want him, despite how much I knew reaching for him right then would have been crossing a serious line. He was mine, in a way, but he wasn't at the same time.
I did take his hand though. I needed at least that much of him. He crossed his legs in the car. I hadn't realized how long they were until he'd had on pants that actually fit. I drove faster, racing us toward the coast.
"Do you have to go into the office today?"
He'd put down the window and the cold air whipped his hair back from his face. I needed to stop admiring him and keep my eyes on the road. "Not necessarily. I like to work from the office, so that I have some distance between my home life and my work life, but I do have my laptop at home and I can work just fine from there. However, I don't do meetings at my house and I do have some people coming to the office tomorrow night. Do you have anywhere you need to be? I can make sure a car is available for you. You certainly won't be expected to stay at my house all the time."
I caught Tad's smirk out of the corner of my eye. We were twenty minutes from my house.
"I don't have a license. In the pack we don't actually get out much. You've never been in the pack right? The day to day stuff I mean. Not just meetings with my dad in your office."
"I have no reason to be, and I've never been invited." I also wasn't sure what he was getting at.
He let go of my hand and I instantly wanted him back. "I'm not completely clueless. I mean, we did have TV and internet there. But going outside of the pack for school? Or medical care? Or even our clothes? That doesn't happen. My dad did go shopping, with a few of his top men, but the rest of us? Not a chance. In the pack my one and only job was to have babies and then raise them with the rest of the pack. I didn't even know what being trans was until I caught a few minutes of a show I wasn't supposed to be watching. Someone changed the channel right away, but that was last year and I've been getting information in the small snippets of time that I've had available. It's not like we're overly busy in the pack either. It's more like everything is monitored and looking up anything out of what's considered safe and normal definitely doesn't fly there."
I was quiet as I kept driving. I was sure that my silence was probably bothering him. He kept chewing on his bottom lip, but I didn't want to talk about something so serious when I was trying to drive and when I couldn't actually look at him. Or touch him. Vampires weren't normally so touchy feely but I couldn't seem to keep my hands off of him. And I didn't want to either. He was in my care now. As was our child, whenever he gave birth to them. I wanted them both safe and as far away from the pack as possible. Anything less than that wasn't going to be an option.
Tad's eyes went wide as we pulled up to my house. I knew it was nice. I'd helped design it in the forties. Every wall was full of huge windows. I didn't have neighbors for about three acres on either side of me and we were surrounded by trees everywhere except for the beach out back. Nearly three thousand square feet of reclaimed wood, old stone, and dark metals greeted us when I brought Tad inside. I still loved my house, even after all these years. Maybe I loved it more now that it had been weathered and worn in. The wood outside had faded to a deep gray, streaked with white from the salt air. I couldn't wait to show him how the metal roof sang in a rainstorm.
I had his hand as I walked him through the kitchen and to the bedroom on the left side of the house. My office lay between the two bedrooms so he would have plenty of privacy if he wanted to be alone ever. I assumed that he would be. The pack certainly didn't seem to have encouraged his privacy or individuality at all. I'd never thought that the vampires would have been better than the werewolves. In my mind we'd simply always just been. We were two sides on the same supernatural coin and the humans were rightly below us. Now I wondered how the werewolves had ever survived so long without progressing into society. And they called us heartless monsters.
I pushed the door open and stepped aside, letting him enter his space first without me. "This will be your room."
He looked surprised and he didn't go in. "We're not sharing one? I know I've been sheltered but I thought that was how babies were made."
I laughed and put my hand on his shoulder, giving him a gentle nudge into the room, which he thankfully took. "It is, but I don't have sex with people I don't know well and when we were talking there was no mention of a time frame. We'll have a child. I know this. But that doesn't mean that you'll be in my bed tonight."
I still had my hand on his shoulder so I was able to feel the tension leaving him as I spoke.
"But you do want to, right?" he asked uncertainty. I could read him easily. All that wonder there, not knowing if I wanted him because I wanted a man, or because I wanted what he was hiding under his clothes.
"You have no idea." I stepped back. I wanted to kiss him too much right then as he blushed and we both needed some space. "I'll be in the office if you need anything. It's the next door over. Feel free to look around. The fridge has nothing but blood in it but if you order something I have cash to cover it."
I left him then and went to my office where I didn't want to be and in front of my computer when I would have loved to have been in the living room in front of the TV with Tad. I loved romantic comedies, especially those with impossible, unlikely situations. Most vampires my age had long ago given up on the entertainment industry as a whole. I didn't know what they did for fun but it certainly wasn't watching a bunch of movies in a marathon of binge watching on the days when I was having trouble sleeping.
Still, I had work to do. I had bills to pay, an assistant to keep employed, and now a fiance to feed and clothe. There was also the matter of the money transfer. I was happy to give it. I wanted Tad to have whatever he wanted in life, especially since he was giving me everything I'd ever wanted. But I wasn't a billionaire by any means. I might have been a millionaire. I would have had to check my stocks to be sure of that.
I wanted him to have more though. I wanted him to have the security that a future in the vampire world would give him. I wanted a job waiting there for him after he gave birth, and rested up for a while. Was a year of being a father enough time to take off before he found a job? I should have been replying to emails and checking on the portfolios of my clients to make a sound investment plan for those that were requesting updates, but I was more focused on figuring out Tad's life after he gave birth to our child. I started thinking about who
I knew that might be looking for an assistant. I didn't want the father of my child to also be my assistant. That would become far too tangled for me to deal with and I needed simplicity in my life because my job was anything but.
Patrick was out. He worked alone, and besides, Tad didn't seem at all comfortable around him. I tapped my pen as I thought about my contacts and those people that would be open to working with a werewolf, as well as someone who was trans. The werewolf aspect would be a harder sell than Tad's gender was. We were vampires. We, especially the oldest of us, didn't care about gender or sexuality. The very oldest of us simply looked at everyone else around as either food or not food. I wasn't anywhere near that old but I'd met people who were and they hardly had time for anyone who wasn't able to do something for them, and not many people could satisfy their needs unless they were humans looking to sell some of their blood.
An hour after I'd gone into my office I was no closer to setting up a life for Tad after we had our child than when I'd gone in. Worse yet, I had a headache from my lack of blood. I was too old to be forgetting to drink regularly and I couldn't let having a new house guest interrupt my daily routine to the point where I stopped caring for myself regularly.
I came out of my office and was surprised to find Tad sitting on my couch, looking at his phone. He'd taken off Ainsley's clothes, most of them anyway. He still had on a black tank top and a pair of green plaid boxers. "You look comfortable," I said, pointedly avoiding looking at his long legs or the way he was back to chewing on his lower lip as he tucked a piece of hair behind his ear.
I felt his gaze on me as I went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of blood. I read the label, decided against the English professor, and went for the waitress instead as I came over to sit next to him on the couch. Tad sniffed, and then made a face, which he quickly fixed but not fast enough for me to not notice his displeasure.
"I can drink when I'm in another room away from you if it bothers you," I offered.
He went bright red. I liked to think that he was embarrassed at having been caught. "No. It's fine. It's your house and everything so I need to get used to it. Just kind of weirds me out a bit. You know? I guess you wouldn't. But it's like, I see you with a bottle of blood and I'm just thinking of some poor person that you hunted down and bent their neck over while you milked them like a cow or something all horror movie style." Tad shuddered, but I just laughed.
Defying His Fate Page 4
