Venom in the Veins

by Jennifer Estep

  “Because it is.” I shook my head. “I just don’t know exactly what else it’s about. Alanna has plenty of reasons to hate Mosley, and me too, if she knows I killed her mother. But I can’t figure out how Tucker fits into it.”

  Owen frowned, obviously worried, so I grabbed the lapels of his tuxedo jacket, stood on my tiptoes, and pressed a quick, reassuring kiss to his lips.

  “But don’t worry. I can handle Alanna Eaton. Up close and personal with the point of my knife, if I have to.”

  He grinned and kissed me back. “That’s the Gin I know and love.”

  “Yes, it is.” I grinned back at him. “Yes, it is.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I glanced around the ballroom in case Alanna, Phelps, or Tucker might have doubled back, but it looked like they had left. So Owen and I headed over to Finn and Bria.

  Mosley stood a few feet away, shaking a final round of hands. The same two giant guards I’d noticed earlier were still shadowing the dwarf, eyeing everyone who approached him. Mallory was standing by Mosley’s side, with Lorelei nearby, checking her phone.

  I turned to Finn and opened my mouth, but he held up his hand, cutting me off.

  “I know what you’re going to say, but I’ve already taken care of everything,” he said. “Mosley wants to camp out here at the estate tonight to keep an eye on the auction items and make sure no one tries to help themselves to something that they didn’t buy. I’m bunking with him in one of the guest suites upstairs, and a dozen giant guards will be here too. This place is going to be wrapped up tighter than an Andvarian vault. Don’t worry, Gin. Nobody’s getting to the boss man on my watch.”

  I opened my mouth again to protest that Hugh Tucker was a dangerous enemy who was capable of anything, but then I noticed the hard set of Finn’s jaw and the way he kept tapping his fingers against his leg. Tucker showing up here had worried him too, a lot more than he had let on, and I knew that he would do everything in his power to protect Mosley.

  “And I’m going to follow Mallory and Lorelei home to make sure they get there safely,” Bria added. “Plus, Xavier and I will be on call tonight in case Finn needs us here. We’ve got this, Gin.”

  I nodded at them. “You’re right. You two have totally got this.”

  Finn and Bria both blinked in surprise, as if they’d expected me to put up a fight about letting them handle things, but I wasn’t worried. Finn’s guns and shooting prowess and Bria’s Ice magic made each of them strong and powerful in their own right, and I trusted them implicitly, especially when it came to something as important as protecting our friends.

  “That’s it?” Finn asked, an incredulous note creeping into his voice. “You’re not going to insist on staying here tonight? Or forcing Mosley to hide in some anonymous safe house?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. You’re right. This is the safest place for Mosley. Even Hugh Tucker isn’t going to be stupid enough to launch a full-scale assault on the night of such a public event.”

  Bria’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “So what are you going to do?”

  I shrugged. “I’m going to go back to Owen’s house.”

  They both kept staring at me with those disbelieving looks. Even Owen was frowning, wondering what I was up to. But for once, I didn’t have any ulterior motives.

  “What?” I said. “Even the Spider needs to sleep sometime.”

  * * *

  Owen and I left Finn and Bria to their protection details and waved good-bye to Mosley, Mallory, and Lorelei. Then we exited the ballroom, got into Owen’s car, and drove back to his mansion.

  Along the way, I called Silvio and filled him in on everything that happened. He promised to start digging into Alanna to see what connections she might have to Tucker and the Circle. I had just hung up with him when Owen parked his car in the mansion’s driveway.

  Eva, Violet, Catalina, and Elissa were in the downstairs living room, talking, laughing, eating, and ostensibly studying for their community college classes, although the TV was turned up a little too loud for that. Owen and I told the girls good night before heading to his bedroom.

  Owen closed the door behind us, while I went over to one of the windows, pushed the curtain back, and peered outside. My gaze roamed over the backyard and the woods beyond, but nothing moved or stirred in the shadows.

  “See anything?” he asked, loosening his bow tie and shrugging out of his tuxedo jacket.

  “Nope.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?”

  I sighed and let the curtain drop back down into place. “For now. But Alanna is out there somewhere, plotting her next move against Mosley, and most likely me too. I know she is. And Tucker is probably right there by her side, giving her pointers on all my weaknesses.”

  “You think too much, and you worry even more,” Owen rumbled, draping his jacket and tie over the back of a chair. “Finn won’t let anything happen to Mosley.”

  I sighed again. “I know. And you’re right. Finn would take a bullet for Mosley. I just hope he doesn’t have to.”

  “But that’s not the only thing that’s bothering you, is it?”

  I sighed for a third time. He knew me too well. But Owen had a way of drawing me out and making me actually want to talk about my feelings, including my intense guilt and shame. “It’s Alanna and what I did to her.”

  “You mean killing her mother.” He said the words without a hint of reproach, but more guilt twisted my stomach.

  “For starters,” I muttered.

  “But that was one of your jobs as the Spider, right? From what you’ve told me, you and Fletcher didn’t go after innocent people.”

  “No, we didn’t, and Amelia Eaton was one of the worst of the worst. But things shouldn’t have gone down like they did.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean? What was different about this job compared to your other ones as the Spider?”

  I told him all of it. That first nightmarish memory I’d had of sneaking onto the Eaton Estate and confronting Amelia, as well all as the other memories that had bubbled back up in my mind tonight when I’d first seen Alanna. All the horrible things that had happened after Amelia had captured me and finally, the one thing that I had done to Alanna that was so terrible, so heartless, and so totally unforgivable.

  When I finished, Owen winced, realizing why I was so upset, but he immediately came over and put his hands on my arms, squeezing gently and letting me know that he was here for me and that he loved me no matter what.

  “Oh, Gin,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t feel sorry for me. You should feel sorry for Alanna.”

  “I do feel sorry for her,” he said. “She got dealt a shitty hand as a kid, losing her mother and her home. But I feel sorry for you too. You’re right. Things shouldn’t have gone down like they did, but you didn’t have a choice. You couldn’t let Amelia keep hurting people.”

  Tears stung my eyes, but I managed to blink them back. “Deep down, I know that. But it doesn’t take away my guilt and shame, and it certainly doesn’t absolve me of anything. I’ve done a lot of bad things, but what I did to Alanna…it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done to anyone, which is why I tried to forget all about it. What I did to her…it was the one thing I never wanted to do to anyone.”

  This time, I couldn’t stop the tears from streaking down my face. “And now it’s coming back to haunt me and, even worse, Mosley too. All of this started because I killed Amelia. I don’t care about myself, but Mosley doesn’t deserve this. If Alanna murders him, that’ll be on me. And I’ll never forgive myself if that happens.”

  Owen reached up, cupped my face in his hand, and gently wiped away my tears, his violet gaze steady on mine. “Don’t you dare think like that. You are not responsible for Alanna going after Mosley. She made her own choice to do that, despite the fact that he has been nothing but good to her all these years. And if she keeps going after him, then she’ll suffer the consequences, and rightly so, whether
it’s you or Finn or someone else who takes her down.”

  “But I do feel responsible for her. Maybe if I hadn’t done what I did back then, she wouldn’t be going after Mosley right now.”

  He shook his head. “And maybe things would be worse. Maybe Amelia would still be alive and killing people.”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I just don’t know.”

  Owen pulled me into his embrace, and I looped my arms around his waist and leaned my head on his chest, soaking up his love, strength, and support and letting it comfort me, steady me. We stayed like that for the better part of a minute. I hugged him tight, then dropped my arms and stepped back.

  I didn’t want to think about what I’d done to Alanna any more tonight, and I really did want to get some rest like I’d told Finn and Bria. I had a feeling that I was going to need it before this was all said and done. So I went over to the bed, sat down, and toed off my black stilettos. This time, my sigh was one of genuine relief rather than sick confusion.

  “That bad?” Owen teased, trying to lighten the mood.

  I groaned and wiggled my toes into the plush carpet. “I would like to go back in time and kill the person who invented high heels. They’re nothing but torture devices.”

  “Well, maybe I can help with that.”

  He knelt down on the floor in front of me, picked up my foot, and began kneading my tight, tense muscles. I groaned again, this time with pleasure. He grinned and moved on to my other foot. Back and forth he worked, massaging first one foot, then the other, easing out all the aches and pains there, as well as comforting the far more serious ones in my head and heart.

  “How does that feel?” he asked.

  “You missed your calling, Grayson. You should have been a masseur.”

  He grinned again and kept working on my feet.

  Eventually, the discomfort faded away, replaced by a slow, simmering heat. I leaned forward, reached down, and ran my hands through Owen’s thick hair, enjoying the feel of the silky black strands sliding through my fingers and massaging his scalp the way he was massaging my feet. This time, he groaned with pleasure and leaned forward to give me easier access.

  Owen’s hands left my feet and slid up my legs, stroking, caressing, and stopping to knead the tight, tense muscles. My fingers drifted lower, slowly trailing down the sides of his face and neck before digging into the strong muscles of his broad shoulders. Neither one of us spoke. We didn’t need to. We both knew exactly what we wanted now—each other.

  Owen rose onto his knees, his hands gliding to my knees and then farther up my thighs. Our gazes locked together, gray on violet, even as our hands kept moving, moving, moving, sliding every which way. Owen’s right hand eased up my thigh, higher and higher, one slow inch at a time, until he cupped my warm, wet heat. He rubbed his fingers back and forth against the silken barrier of my panties, deliberately teasing me. I groaned again, grabbed his head in my hands, and crushed my lips to his.

  The simmering heat between us immediately ignited into a raging fire.

  In an instant, we had both surged to our feet and were fumbling at each other’s clothes. Owen hooked his fingers inside my panties and slid them down. I stepped out of them, kicked them aside, and then pulled his shirt open, making several buttons fly off and ping-ping-ping against the lamp on the nightstand. Owen grabbed his wallet out of his back pocket, pulled a condom out of it, and tossed the black leather aside. I reached for his belt while he tore the foil packet open with his teeth. I took my little white pills, but we always used extra protection.

  I unbuckled his belt, then unzipped his pants. Owen leaned forward, kissing my neck, even as his hand darted down between us, crept up my thigh, and found my center again. The soft, sure stroke of his fingers made hot pleasure shoot through my body like an arrow hitting its target. I stopped and sucked in a ragged breath, my fingers still clenched around his zipper.

  “Don’t distract me,” I murmured.

  “But it’s so much fun.” Owen grinned and stroked me again.

  I let out a low groan and yanked his zipper down, along with his pants and his black boxers. Owen stepped out of his clothes, covered himself with the condom, and picked me up. Our mouths crashed together, our tongues licking against each other. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and Owen walked forward and laid me down on the bed.

  We kissed again, hard and deep, and then Owen drew back. His gaze locked with mine, and he thrust into me with a quick, hard motion. We both moaned at how good it felt.

  I kissed him again, then ran my hands over his shoulders, enjoying the quick bunch and flex of his muscles. He pulled back, then thrust into me again. I wrapped my legs tighter around his waist, drawing him even deeper inside me.

  Our rhythm became quicker, faster, harder, until the bed moaned, creaked, and rattled from the force of our passion.

  More and more of those hot arrows of pleasure shot through me, morphing into one continuous wave of heat, until Owen was all that I could see, hear, taste, smell, feel.

  Just when I thought we couldn’t go any higher together, he thrust into me a final time, and the world exploded. The passion, the pressure, the pleasure cascaded through my body, wave after wave of it, each one searing my nerve endings with its exquisite electricity.

  Bull’s-eye, baby.

  Owen went over the edge with me too, and we both fell completely silent again, breathing hard, our bodies locked together, foreheads touching, just enjoying the emotions surging through us, between us, binding us together.

  Tonight, tomorrow, always.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Eventually, Owen and I stripped off the rest of our clothes, took a long, hot, satisfying shower together, then snuggled together in bed and fell asleep. For a long time, everything was calm and peaceful, but eventually, the peace fell away, shattered to shards by another horrible dream, memory, nightmare from my past…

  I woke up tied to a chair.

  I blinked and blinked, staring at the ropes that lashed my wrists to the wooden chair. My ankles were also tied down, and my flat sandals were gone, leaving my feet bare. My toes were blue with cold, and I dug them into the black plastic on the floor, trying to warm them up—

  The sight of that black plastic made the rest of the night come rushing back to me, and I remembered where I was: Amelia Eaton’s so-called wine cellar.

  My head snapped up, and my gaze darted from left to right and back again. Stone walls, expensive furniture, the chilly feel of being underground. The murder room was exactly the same as when Amelia had knocked me out with that stun gun, right down to the black plastic on the floor that was just waiting to soak up my blood.

  I was alone, and I held my breath and tilted my head to the side, wondering if I might hear someone talking beyond the closed door twenty feet in front of me.

  Silence—nothing but cold, dead silence.

  Amelia must have summoned a couple of uninjured vampire guards to tie me down and haul away the two men I’d killed. I wondered if she had taken a couple of bites out of the dead men before she’d ordered them to be whisked away. Probably. My stomach turned over at the thought.

  I had no idea what time it was or if the party was still going on. But I had no doubt that as soon as the event was finished and her guests had left, Amelia would come down here and deal with me.

  I needed to get out of here before that happened.

  I shifted in the chair, but the two knives strapped to my thighs were gone. I looked around again, searching for them, but I didn’t see the weapons anywhere. My purse and sandals weren’t in here either.

  The loss of my shoes puzzled me. With all those leather straps, there was no way the sandals had just fallen off my feet. The guards must have deliberately stripped them off, although I couldn’t imagine why. Either way, they were gone.

  Besides, I had more pressing matters to think about—like getting out of these ropes. I struggled and strained against my bonds, but the ropes were so tight that I cou
ldn’t move or loosen them at all, not even a fraction of an inch.

  I was looking around the room for something to help me cut through the ropes when footsteps tap-tap-tapped on the floor outside, growing louder and closer with each stride. A few seconds later, the door swung open, and Amelia stepped into the room, followed by four vampire guards.

  Amelia had unwound her hair from its braided bun, and her black locks now hung loose around her shoulders. The emerald-green gown that I’d spilled champagne on was gone, and she was now sporting knee-high black boots and tight black pants topped by a blood-red jacket with gleaming gold buttons running down the front. The outfit reminded me of something an Englishman might wear when hunting foxes. A wave of disgust washed over me. She had actually dressed up for this, and I knew exactly what she was going to hunt tonight.

  Me.

  “Cut her loose, and bring her outside,” Amelia ordered.

  She smiled at me, showing off her razor-sharp fangs, then slowly licked her lips, like I was a juicy steak that she was about to sink her teeth into—literally.

  Another, stronger wave of disgust washed over me, and hot, sour bile rose in my throat. She was planning to make me her nightcap, just like she had so many other poor, unfortunate souls. I wondered if she would only drink my blood or if she would go the extra step of tearing into my body with her fangs, ripping out my organs, and slurping them down like oysters. Probably both, knowing my bad luck.

  Fletcher had been right. I had totally jinxed myself earlier by saying that nothing could possibly go wrong. Everything was going wrong, and I didn’t know how to escape the gruesome fate that was staring me in the eyes.

  More bile rose in my throat, and I almost vomited. But I drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out, forcing down my fear, anger, disgust, and panic. This was exactly what Fletcher had trained me for—how to make the best of a dangerous situation, escape, and live to fight another day. Even when that situation involved a bona fide vampire cannibal.