Andre had reportedly found the spring because it smelled like their home on Šolta, and that scent alone had inspired him to buy the vineyards which eventually produced Blood Vine.
Bel had puzzled over just what the bloody hell his father had smelled to lead him to such a miraculous discovery. Trace amounts of gold or other hemoaurum precursors? A particular combination of plants that would only grow in soil like Šolta’s?
Vampires and humans shared identically structured nervous systems, so the sense of smell was most closely associated with memory for both species. But Bel’s perfectly average human sniffer could never have caught that scent.
Still, something about the small valley did remind him of Šolta. Not that the homeland mattered to him the way it did to a full-blooded vampire. Croatia had stopped being his home the moment Uta had dropped him. He wasn’t the least bit sentimental about the place.
Chapter 9
THE WATER GURGLED, soothing away Bel’s troubles. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when quiet chirps caused him to look up. The sun had sunk into twilight, and bats were stirring in the trees and flying out over the vineyards to hunt.
Who would you spy on, if you were a bat?
Uta’s voice rang out in melodic Croatian as if she were next to him in the copse. He looked over his shoulder, searching, but it was just a memory. Cherry-red toes peeking out of the sand, a perfectly oval face in the moonlight, and the unspoken answer to her question.
You. I’d spy on you, in your bath.
The thought had shocked his younger self, and the naked picture that had formed in his mind had filled him with shame—a fuzzy image concocted by his eleven-year-old imagination, right out of soft-core porn, with everything airbrushed and all the good bits hidden by house plants and camera angles. Hard to believe he’d once been so innocent.
His inner scientist spoke up. Any adolescent boy encountering a goddess like Uta would find himself beset with indecipherable urges. The remembered lump of shame in his throat dissolved.
And now one-hundred-and-seventy-eight-year-old Bel possessed enough experience to fill in the details his boyhood imagination had glossed over. Her small breasts would be high and capped with long, upturned nipples like pink top hats. The plane of her abdomen would be smooth and white, drawing his eyes down to a tangle of the darkest red curls between her legs. The skin of her thighs would be porcelain, and when he spread them her alabaster folds would open into the deep pinks and purples of her vulva. The flawless cheeks of her ass would be so small and temptingly round, he could cup each one in a palm and hold her aloft to bury himself in her.
A twig snapped and so did the vision.
“Bel?” Andre asked. He must have come out looking for him as soon as it was fully dark.
He crossed his leg to hide his erection.
Andre gave him a once-over. “Feeling her?”
“Thinking of her.”
“Likely more than just that.” Andre leaned his back against a tree and crossed his arms. “You will begin to be privy to occasional thoughts, feelings, and images that flash through her mind if they evoke strong emotions from her. You have probably sensed her before without grasping the significance.”
“And she can sense me too?” The idea shriveled up his erection like an ice bath.
“I assume so.”
An unbreakable bond, a psychic connection. There was no escaping her. “I am completely and royally fucked, aren’t I?”
“Do you think you could learn to love her?”
Andre still didn’t understand how much Uta’s rejection had hurt him. Bel tensed and his old anger surged. But the lines of regret deepened on Andre’s face, and so Bel swallowed the past hurt and just told the truth.
“No. Love is something freely given, and she took my freedom.”
Andre nodded. “I understand, son. But you are stuck with her forever.”
“Andre, unless I can make a cure for the wasting disease, none of you has forever.”
“What will you do about Lexi?”
“I suppose I have to send her home. But after that attack in my lab, I better set someone to watch over her.”
Andre offered a hand and yanked Bel up to a stand. His father rested a palm on Bel’s shoulder, an unexpected comfort as they walked back to the house.
He found Lexi where he’d left her, in the dining room, alone and scribbling in a notebook.
“Hi.” She stood, wearing a smile too shy for all they’d been through together.
Shite.
“Lex, listen…”
She closed her notebook, shaking her head. “Bel, don’t bother with the blow off. I felt it.”
“What?” He stiffened.
“That I’m not the one you want. It was in your kiss, like it always was. Only now I know enough to recognize it. I’ll stick with Mister Doctor. He worships the hem of my dirty lab coat.”
“As he should.” Bel took her hand. “Doll, I didn’t know it back then either. And I’m sorry. You can’t imagine how much I wish it were you.” He pressed a kiss onto her knuckles.
“Who is she?” Lexi dragged him to a chair and sat herself down alongside him.
“She’s a heartless bitch, and if you stick around to help with this experiment, you’ll meet her tomorrow.”
“Really?” Lexi’s eager grin bordered on predatory. “Then count me in. I’ve booked a room in town. Can you give me a ride?”
“There’s plenty of room here.”
“Actually, your stepmom says the vampire United Nations arrives tomorrow and there is a shortage.”
Stepmom? Did she mean Zoey? Weird.
“Besides…” She stuffed her notebook into her bag. “No offense, but I think I will sleep easier in a vampire-free hotel.”
“Lexi, I can’t let you leave. I was attacked at the lab, and I can’t guarantee your safety in a hotel. We’ll find room for you.”
She visibly bristled. “Are you saying I’m a prisoner here?”
“Shite, Lex, no. But you’re protected. If you insist on going to a hotel, I’ll just have to send someone to watch over you, and I can’t guarantee he won’t be a vampire.”
Chapter 10
THE SUN HAD SET long ago, and all humans with good sense had tucked themselves into bed.
Pedro rested his shoulder against the doorframe, studying his human unobserved. Lucas worked at the dining room table with such intensity, he didn’t even look up to see Pedro arrive.
His man didn’t look so good. Well, his man always looked good, but currently not as good as usual. His face had grown thin, and dark circles shaded his eyes.
He looked…unappetizing. Pedro winced at the thought, which felt like a small betrayal.
Lucas slumped at the dining room table in front of a laptop. In contrast, Trys glowed with rosy health. She’d gained weight since the shield around the estate had condensed to a house-sized dome, no longer extending around the vineyards. When she wasn’t eating chocolate to fuel her magical ability, she worked with the other ex-Hunter in residence, Leo, and Bel’s tech geek Ani, to scour the Internet for chatter from Hunters and vampires alike. From that room, they had charted Ethan’s ascent to power and reported it to the Justicia.
“Did you catch the son of a bitch red-handed yet?” Pedro asked.
All the humans’ heads shot up at once.
“Not yet, but I’ve got some leads,” Leo replied. The kid had more than justified his place on the team. He’d gotten them into Ethan’s email several times with his hacking skills. “The Hunter sites are full of all the outrage and self-righteousness you’d expect. More bluster than usual, but when we see any real plans taking shape, we forward it to the Justicia.”
When the vampire council had tagged Andre as the tenth oldest vampire in the world, they hadn’t known he had two Hunter insiders and a world-class hacker in his household. But they were making good use of the new resources.
Pedro’s gaze drifted to his lover. “Lucas, you mis
sed dinner. Come eat something. Lena’s lasagna smells good, even to me.”
Lucas pursed his lips, refusal clearly spelled out on his face. But then his mouth opened and a yes came out. They’d had this discussion a dozen times. Lucas had to take care of himself both for his own sake and Pedro’s. “Okay. Lasagna sounds good. You three all right if I call it a night?”
“We’ll find you if anything happens. Get some grub and some rest.” Leo patted Lucas between the shoulder blades.
Pedro growled at the kid for good measure. The gesture seemed harmless enough, but Pedro couldn’t have the kid getting any ideas.
Lucas led the way downstairs, and remarkably, they had the kitchen to themselves. Pedro took a moment to appreciate that singular time of day after dinner when a kitchen was quiet and clean, warm and dimly lit, and smelling of food. For that instant, he missed being human. Then it passed and he settled in to watch Lucas eat.
A strand of cheese trailed from one big bite of the meaty pasta, and Lucas’s lips parted to receive the mouthful.
Pedro imagined kissing him, the decadent feel of his tongue when it slid hot and wet—damn. But if he started that shit, Lucas would never eat. “First time we’ve been alone since we saw the news this morning.”
Lucas set his fork down on his plate. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
“You look tired.” Pedro didn’t want to nag, but he couldn’t shake his worry for Lucas.
“I am tired.”
“How are you feeling?”
“How do you think?” Lucas snapped. “I’m disgusted by those attacks, although I know why they happened. In my gut, I know Ethan’s been setting up dominoes. Yesterday, he knocked the first one over, and this is only the beginning.”
“Shit, you never said—”
“What could I say? That I have a bad feeling? We’ve all had a bad feeling.”
That was true. Pedro sat quietly, waiting to see if Lucas would say more. He didn’t. “Are you scared?”
“Not for myself, if that’s what you mean. I trust you and Andre. I guess I’m scared for all of us, and for the humans who get in the way.”
Pedro watched his man eat. Eventually he asked, “How’s the lasagna?”
“Damn good, as usual. If she becomes a vampire, do you think she’ll still cook for us?”
“Yeah, I do. I don’t think she can live without it.” Pedro loved making wine, but it wasn’t in his soul the way food was in Lena’s.
“That’s good news for you, because if she quit, I might have to whore myself out to the vampire with the best cook.” Lucas smiled down at his empty plate, licking his fork clean.
Pedro hadn’t seen him clear a plate all week. He laughed. “Then I’ll make sure she doesn’t. But since you mentioned whoring?”
“Upstairs?”
“Oh thank God.” Relief poured out of Pedro. In spite of appearances, his man wasn’t too tired for a little fun.
They held hands along the way to Lucas’s room, across the hall from Ally and Susan, a long-time couple in Andre’s household.
Lucas pushed the door open and tugged Pedro in after him. “You should move your things over here, you know, to the gay side of the house.”
“Really?” Pedro closed the door and leaned against it. “It is crowded over in the master wing, with Andre and Zoey, and Lena and Kos. Hearing all that straight sex grosses me out.”
Lucas reached over to smooth a lock of hair from Pedro’s forehead. “If you think Andre and Zoey are having straight sex, you aren’t listening closely enough.”
“Jesu Cristo. I so do not want to picture that, whatever it means. And for the record, I’m not listening at all.”
Lucas laughed. “I wonder if you feel that way about it because he’s your sire, or whatever you call him.” Lucas inflected the word to make it sound all solemn, as if vampires sires could control their offspring, or some other supernatural crap from the movies.
“Nah, I don’t think so. He was like a father to me a long time before he turned me.”
The lines on Lucas’s fine face deepened, and Pedro pulled him into an embrace, whispering into his neck. “Hey, I just got lucky this time. My real father was only slightly better than yours.”
“Slightly? That’s how much you weigh genocidal hatred and sadism against your dad’s run of the mill homophobia?”
Pedro stiffened until Lucas chuckled, letting him know he wasn’t offended.
“Yeah, as far as fathers go, Andre is still a pain in the ass, but a lovable one.”
“He’s worried about Bel.” Lucas’s fingers played over Pedro’s chest, sending notes of electric excitement all the way to his limbs.
Pedro caught his wrist to still the distracting caress. “Wouldn’t you be? To find out your son was bonded to an old-as-hell praying mantis of a vampire. She’s going to eat Bel alive.”
Lucas stepped back and grinned. “Just because you don’t want to be devoured by a six-feet-and-change mantis vampiress doesn’t mean Bel doesn’t want to.”
Pedro lunged for Lucas, nuzzling his neck. “True. Some dudes get off on that femdom type.”
Lucas tilted his head. “I don’t think you’re giving Bel enough credit. He can stand up to her—he is Andre’s son after all.”
“Yeah, which gives him major mommy issues.”
“Hmm. Somehow, I’m not worried about him. She’s a knockout, and she may be freakishly tall, but don’t pretend you didn’t notice her suit.”
Pedro liked to keep his appreciation for clothes under the radar. He didn’t want to be that kind of fag and Lucas knew it, so Pedro elbowed him playfully in the ribs.
Lucas grabbed him, tumbling them down onto the bed. “Hungry?”
Pedro was, but even after the plate of lasagna, Lucas didn’t look like he could spare the red blood cells.
“Not for blood.” Pedro waggled his eyebrows and leaned in for a kiss.
In the beginning, after Lucas had freed them from their blow job limbo, they had explored every facet of super-hot bitey sex. Pedro had bitten Lucas there, there, there…pretty much everywhere. Pedro’d always been in a hurry, afraid Lucas might change his mind. He had stripped their clothes off with vampire speed, destroying what few shirts Lucas possessed. But as he began to trust Lucas was his for keeps, he’d grown to enjoy taking his time undressing his lover.
Now he ran his palms around Lucas’s neck, down his chest, and splayed them around his waist. “You’re losing weight.”
“It’s the stress. I’m fine.”
“I worry about you.” He unbuckled Lucas’s pants.
“Yeah, well, I worry about us all.”
When Pedro reached for him, Lucas wasn’t even close to being hard. Pedro cupped him, gazing into the golden eyes that made them a matched set.
“A lot, I guess.”
Lucas smiled. “Just give me a minute.”
Pedro’s own erection ebbed, but he kept undressing them both. He kissed Lucas’s neck then whispered in his ear. “How about you take the world off your shoulders for a while, and let me treat you right?”
“How can I say no to that?” Lucas lay back on the bed, and Pedro climbed between his knees to suck Lucas into his mouth. True to his word, it only took Lucas a minute to get in the mood. Slow and steady, Pedro took him all the way.
After Lucas had grunted his orgasm, he looked a million times better. And he looked tasty again.
Pedro climbed up his lover’s body and stroked featherlight fingertips up his neck. Lucas’s skin broke out in goose flesh, nipples hardening.
“Dinner still on the table?”
“Always, for you.”
One particular inch of artery in Lucas’s neck was Pedro’s heaven, the skin soft and thin, the blood so full of potent Hunter mojo that Pedro soared, high on whatever mysterious chemistry existed between them. Pedro found that sweet spot and rocked them, chest to chest as he drew on Lucas’s vein. All that skin on skin was ideal, because Lucas became so sensitive to touch. He
was an oral kind of guy, so they’d played with candy and fingers, and curling up together in the shape of an infamous number.
But it turned out to be Pedro’s lowly, innocent ear that took them both over the edge every time. After one wet swipe around its rim, conveniently just in reach of Lucas’s tongue when Pedro fed at his neck, Lucas whispered, “I swear to God, I can feel how much you like that in your fangs. They tingle inside me.”
Pedro believed him. Nothing about this crazy-ass vampire world could surprise him anymore. But with his fangs in his lover’s neck, all he could do was squeeze Lucas’s ribs tight.
When the bite worked its way into Lucas’s muscles and he’d relaxed to his core, Pedro slipped inside him. He was hungry enough to keep pulling blood, but the shadows under Lucas’s eyes warned him off, so he licked the wounds closed. Locking eyes with his man, he thrust into Lucas until the feeling that had been growing inside him for weeks finally spilled out as words he once thought he’d never say.
“I love you. I love you.”
Lucas’s eyes went wide. His lips, slack from pleasure, formed a sultry smile. “Me too. I love you too.”
A rush of emotion flooded Pedro, a river of passion and lust and contentment—more than only one heart could hold.
Which could mean only one thing—
He’d bonded to his man.
His fragile, mortal, exhausted man.
He gathered Lucas close, wanting to squeeze with all his strength, but newly aware of Lucas’s debilitating humanity. He could be taken from Pedro in one fell swoop—a bus, an illness, a goddamn Hunter. And then Pedro would unravel, heart and soul, suffering the death of Lucas inside his every cell.
There was only one thing to do to make sure Lucas stayed nice and safe, and he wouldn’t like it one bit. He would have to become a vampire.
Chapter 11
THE EMPTY STREET OUTSIDE Gwen’s window reflected a sterile, urban gray light under the street lamps. The clock on her computer read nine p.m., but outside her door, the office still buzzed with workers. Her stomach grumbled for dinner, but Ethan would probably work even later. Her slacks stuck to her ass because she’d slathered an anesthetic cream on her raw skin. Maybe Ethan wanted her stinging all day, but she was out of sorts over his stunt with the television. No thank you, Sir, she didn’t want to feel the burn of her submission until bedtime.
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