He’d never seen a woman that athletic with an ass like hers. It was something to be admired. His fantasies later that night would involve smacking her impressive ass before gripping her purple hair and bending her over a table. Talia would like that—at least, he thought she would. He frowned, realizing he had no clue if she’d like it or not.
His vampire ability involved knowing what people wanted sexually. The older he got, the stronger it became. At times, he even got images of fantasies. With Talia, he had no clue what her sexual desires or fantasies were. Had he not spent time around other hunters, he might have assumed it was because she was a hunter. He even picked up some of what Mason wanted when he forgot to block it out. It annoyed him when he picked up images from any of Mason’s sexual fantasies. It was clear Mason and Talia were a couple, yet none of the images Drew had gotten from Mason involved Talia. His eyes remained fixed on the hunters as they walked to the trailer they were sharing.
“Why are you watching Talia and Mason?” Isaiah asked suspiciously. “Don’t make this awkward by asking to watch them have sex.”
“Do you think they’re really a couple?” Drew asked. “Sometimes they act like they might be, but other times I don’t get that vibe from them.”
Isaiah shrugged. “I assumed they were, but it’s hard to say.”
Drew continued to watch Talia and Mason as they disappeared into their trailer.
“You like her,” Isaiah remarked in a thoughtful tone.
“She’s definitely got attitude,” Drew agreed. “If I learned one thing from my fascination with Tempest, it’s that I like tough women. Not tough like my mom. I like them to have a conscience.”
“So, you’re putting Talia on a pedestal?” Isaiah asked.
“Possibly,” he agreed, brow furrowed. “I have a tendency to do that, especially with women I can’t have.”
“No one can say you live in denial,” Isaiah told him. “There are times when I think you’re better adjusted than most of us.”
Drew let out a bark of laughter. “You might want to talk to your brother about getting you on some meds if you believe that. I’m just honest about how messed up I am.”
“Talia and Mason might not be a couple,” Isaiah suggested.
Drew regarded him with a raised eyebrow. “Are you encouraging me to get involved with a hunter?”
“It worked out well for me,” Isaiah pointed out.
“It worked out well for you because you aren’t likely to do anything to make Phoenix want to kill you. With me, I’m bound to do something a hunter wouldn’t like,” he reminded Isaiah.
“You might do it just to see what happens,” Isaiah added with a grin.
He shrugged. “I do have impulse control problems.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Isaiah told him. “One good thing about Talia is she seems to be pretty good at dealing with people with impulse control issues.”
“I’m not sure if Mason has impulse control issues or if he just likes being a pain in the ass,” Drew mused.
“That’s something I often wonder about you,” Isaiah remarked. “I’m going to get settled in and watch the video feed. Why don’t you come over to our trailer and watch it with us after you drop your stuff off?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Drew told him.
As he walked to his trailer, his mind drifted to Talia and Mason. He wondered if they really were a couple. If not, he wondered what her type was.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” he grumbled to himself. Talia was with Mason—maybe. Even if she wasn’t, he needed to get his mind focused on finding Shayla. Shayla needed him, and he didn’t have time to indulge in fantasies about Talia.
Walking into his rundown trailer, he found all the furnishings surprisingly clean and in good repair. After tossing his bag on the bed, he headed to Isaiah’s trailer. The sooner they watched the video, the sooner they could eat. He didn’t expect to see much in the video, but Isaiah thought they might be able to at least identify the vampire by sending the picture to Roman.
He banged on the door three times before letting himself in.
“Come on in,” Isaiah said dryly without looking up from the laptop screen.
“If I waited for an invitation, I’d never walk in on you two fucking,” he told his cousin, only half-kidding. While Nixie was just a friend now, he enjoyed watching sex, and he’d never pass up the chance to see a hot woman naked.
“You can’t watch us,” Nixie told him as she came up beside him and wrapped an arm around his waist. His stomach picked that moment to growl loudly. “How much food do you eat in a day?”
“I like food,” was his only reply.
“After two food stops on the way here, your stomach shouldn’t be growling like that,” she told him.
“I’m starving, so let’s watch this video and eat,” he insisted.
He and Phoenix stood behind Isaiah as he started the video. They watched as the last moments of Alonzo’s life played out. Nixie was the most disturbed by what she saw and ended up sitting on Isaiah’s lap with his arms wrapped around her. Drew always experienced a strange tightness in his chest when he saw them like that. It was an intimacy he was unfamiliar with. There’d been a time when he’d offered Nixie comfort, but it had mostly involved sex. Sex he understood. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to experience intimacy without sex, but he wanted that—wanted to feel normal.
After they’d watched the video all the way through without interruption, Isaiah backed it up to a close up of the vampire, Corbin. “I don’t recognize him, but I’ll get the picture off to Roman and see if he recognizes him.”
“Send it to Grandmama, too,” Drew told him.
“Good idea,” Isaiah said as he sent the picture. “Sofia seems to know everyone.”
Drew was the only person who didn’t call his grandmother Sofia. Even Roman called her that, and he’d grown up believing she was his mother. As it turned out, she wasn’t Drew’s grandmother, but she’d been good to him, and he loved her. During his younger years, his mother had done her best to keep Sofia out of his life, but on those rare occasions when he’d been allowed to spend time with her, he’d felt almost normal. His grandmother was far from sweet and loving with most. She definitely had a brutal streak, but she’d never been crazy like his parents. His grandmother’s brutality came from years of fighting to survive.
“Do you recognize the hunter?” he asked Nixie, even knowing it was unlikely, considering how little contact she’d had with hunters outside Seattle.
She shook her head. “She seems old. I’ve met older hunters before, and they all seem to lose touch with their humanity.”
Next, Isaiah worked with the video until he got the best picture of the little girl. There was something oddly familiar about her, but Drew couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
“That’s definitely not Shayla,” Phoenix said.
“The hunters agreed it wasn’t her,” Drew reminded her. “They already know who the girl is, and they aren’t planning to share that information.”
“I guess we don’t really need to look at this one,” Isaiah uttered, studying the picture intently.
“There’s something familiar about her, isn’t there?” Drew asked him. “I’m not the only one who sees it, right?”
“Yeah, but I can’t figure out what it is,” Isaiah admitted.
“It’s the hair,” Nixie told them.
“That’s it,” Isaiah agreed. The little girl had long blonde hair that probably went nearly to the back of her knees when it wasn’t in pigtails. “She must remind us of Lyd since she’s got that Rapunzel thing going on. You don’t see many people with hair that long.”
Drew studied the picture a little longer, not convinced it was just the hair making her seem familiar. Shrugging off his sense of having seen the little girl somewhere, he stood. For now, he needed to focus on keeping Shayla safe. “Let’s eat. I could really go for a nice steak. This had better not be one of those hippy town
s filled with vegan restaurants.”
Chapter Ten
There wasn’t much in the way of restaurants in the small town they were staying in, but there was a steakhouse, so Drew had no complaints. Isaiah, the sick fuck of a vegetarian, didn’t seem thrilled with their options.
“Am I wrong for assuming my side salad would have no meat?” Isaiah asked.
Drew grinned at him. “You’re wrong for giving up meat. That’s by far the best looking salad I’ve ever seen. Can you believe they put chunks of steak on it? Too bad that steak on your salad is so overcooked. That’s the only flaw I can see, other than all that green crap.”
“They’re called vegetables,” Mason told him. “You should try eating them.”
“Screw that,” Drew shot back.
“I guess that’s one benefit of your genetics,” Talia remarked. “You don’t need the same types of nutrients to survive, so you don’t have to eat fruits and vegetables.”
“Vegetables are good,” Isaiah argued.
“They’re awesome if you’re a rabbit,” Drew agreed.
Isaiah let out a sigh. Having finally pushed his meat to the side of his plate, there was very little left to eat.
Nixie patted Isaiah’s arm. “I’m sure your cheesecake doesn’t have meat, so at least you’ll be able to eat that.”
“I’d better tell the waitress I want it with no meat,” Isaiah told her.
“Even I think adding meat to cheesecake is sick,” Drew said with a shudder of disgust.
“How the fuck can you eat that?” Mason asked as he watched Drew cut into his steak. The blood ran across his plate, soaking the bread he’d set there. It was just the way he liked it.
“This is how we all eat it,” Drew told him. “Except my cousin, the rabbit.”
“I’ve never seen anyone other than Talia eat meat that raw,” Mason muttered. “I didn’t know you vampires had a thing for raw meat. They never mentioned that in any of our hunter training.”
“They were teaching us to kill vampires, not make a nice dinner for them,” Talia pointed out.
Drew chuckled. He really liked Talia’s sense of humor.
“You like your meat rare, babe?” Drew asked Talia, grinning when her jaw clenched at his use of the word babe. He was only doing it to get on her nerves. It had been obvious the first time he’d called her babe that she didn’t like it. To be honest, he wasn’t crazy about calling her that himself. He used the term for every other woman, and Talia deserved a different name. It was a strange reaction, adding to the puzzle that was Talia.
“If you call me babe again, I’m going to stab you in the junk,” Talia warned.
This was not the first time Drew had been threatened by a woman—far from it. The women who’d married into his family recently had no qualms about threatening him with bodily injury. When Talia did it, he got more than a little turned on. “I’ll bet you’d do it, too,” he said, his voice thick with arousal.
Talia’s breath caught, making Drew wonder if she was as turned on as he was.
Mason glared at Drew. “No,” was all he said.
Drew regarded Mason, waiting for him to explain what he meant.
“Don’t even think about trying to mess around with Talia,” he warned in a low, threatening voice. “She’s not your type.”
Talia smacked Mason’s chest. “Knock it off, Mason.”
“Knock what off?” Mason asked.
“The macho attitude,” she clarified. “You know damn well, I don’t need your protection. I am perfectly capable of handling Drew.”
Mason glared at her for a moment before nodding. “You’re right. You can take care of yourself with any vampire.”
“I’ll bet you can take care of yourself,” Drew murmured. Maybe he imagined it, or it might have been wishful thinking, but he could have sworn he saw Talia shudder ever so slightly. He definitely couldn’t have her, but that didn’t prevent him from enjoying the tension between them—imagined or not. His dick was straining at the zipper of his pants as he fantasized about her pressing her thighs together and struggling not to squirm in her seat.
“Did you get anything from watching the video?” Talia asked, pulling him from his dangerous thoughts.
“I pulled some still images of Corbin, so we can try to figure out who he is,” Isaiah told them. “We’ve sent it out to a couple of people who may be able to identify him.”
“Have you had any luck figuring out who Nicola is?” Phoenix asked.
“Yes,” Mason told them, but he didn’t elaborate.
“Mason doesn’t really want to play with us,” Drew mused.
“It was his idea to include you,” Talia argued.
“Because he thinks he has to include us,” Drew insisted. “He’s not happy about it, so he’s going to give us minimal information.”
Mason let out a frustrated breath. “That’s not really the issue. I’m just frustrated and looking for a fight. It’s why I’m being an ass about Talia. I know you’re too obsessed with the breeder to try anything with Talia. Knowing who Nicola is won’t help. She was presumed dead until she was spotted on this video. We have no way of knowing who she’s connected to, but we doubt it’s her own family.”
“Why would they think she’s dead?” Phoenix asked.
“She was supposedly killed by vampires nearly a century ago,” Talia explained. “There seemed to be plenty of evidence to support that belief.”
“I remember that,” Isaiah said thoughtfully. “It happened when we were still working out truces with the hunters. At the time, we still needed blood, but we’d agreed to only use a pool of willing volunteers. Many hunters didn’t think it was good enough.”
“I’m sure there were also vampires who didn’t like having those kinds of limits put on them,” Nixie added.
“That’s true,” Isaiah agreed. “The hunters in Italy killed several vampires because of Nicola’s death. That’s one of the biggest reasons hunters and vampires still experience more strife in Europe than any other continent. It was big news over here because vampires were afraid the aggressions from the hunters would spread. One of my uncles was killed by hunters in Austria around that time.”
“Why the hell didn’t anyone tell us about this?” Talia asked Mason.
“The only hunter involved who’s old enough to remember Nicola or the events following the rumors of her death hasn’t responded to any of my emails or calls,” Mason grumbled before looking at Drew and Isaiah. “The hunter who rescued the girl is old. There are times when he doesn’t handle reality well and just disappears for several months. Older hunters aren’t good with technology, so even getting him to check email is a challenge.”
“Great,” Isaiah muttered. “Another crazy person involved.”
“He’s not crazy,” Talia argued. “He’s just not exactly comfortable with the modern world. I’m sure you’ve seen it happen with older vampires, too.”
Isaiah chuckled. “You should see Roman with his smart phone.”
Drew let out a bark of laughter. “He still can’t figure out how his wife keeps changing his ringtone. Last time I was over there, it was playing I Feel Pretty every time his phone rang.”
Talia had just taken a drink, so she ended up spitting water across the table, right at Drew.
Rather than looking annoyed, Drew gave her a slow smile as he wiped the water from his shirt. “This is a change.”
“Please don’t say anything about her being a spitter,” Nixie grumbled.
“I was just going to say this usually works the other way,” he remarked.
“Huh?” Talia asked.
“I’m usually the one who gets the girls all wet,” he teased.
“That was awful,” Talia told him with laugh.
“Worse than I expected,” Nixie agreed.
“It was clever,” Mason chimed in.
“This is why Mason is my second favorite hunter,” Drew stated.
“Only second favorite?” Mason asked.
>
Drew shrugged. “You’ll just have to work harder to wow me with your awesomeness.”
“That happens to be what I excel at,” Mason boasted. “In fact, I am so awesome, few people can resist me.”
Talia sighed. “You’re going to have to sleep with Drew tonight.”
“Why?” Mason asked.
“He’s the one who made your head this big,” Talia began. “He can try to squeeze it through the door of his trailer.”
“I’m not sleeping with Mason,” Drew argued. “He’s definitely not my type.”
“I am everybody’s type,” Mason insisted. “Just ask Talia.”
“Yes,” Talia replied in a dry tone. “Mason is the man. Everyone wants him. Women, men, and assorted farm animals are all lined up to get a look at his enormous ego.”
“She’s talking about my dick,” Mason added in a loud stage whisper.
“No, I’m not,” Talia argued.
“Sure you are,” Mason insisted. “My dick is enormous. Anyone wanna see?”
“Dear God, it’s like having two Drews,” Nixie grumbled.
Chapter Eleven
They’d decided it would be best to split up into groups to ask questions about Shayla. Talia was paired with Drew. It had also been decided that Drew and Mason should never be in the same group since Mason and Drew were obviously prone to behaving badly around each other. Talia was more concerned with Mason acting like an ass about Drew flirting with her. He hadn’t been happy about her being paired with Drew, but he’d been smart enough to keep that to himself.
They’d gotten lucky. The first person they’d spoken to had known where Shayla had lived and worked. While the others were at the diner where she’d worked, Talia and Drew were at the house where she’d rented a room.
“Poor thing didn’t talk much,” the woman they were questioning explained. “In all the months she rented a room in my home, she never joined us for dinner. Most days, she left early and didn’t come home until after dark. She had a job at the diner, but she only worked there four days a week, and just the breakfast and lunch shifts. They used to be open for dinner, but most people prefer the steakhouse.”
Wicked Crazy Vampire Love (Psy-Vamp Book 7) Page 6
