by Jo Penn
“Calm down, little brother,” Misha admonished. “Though I would like to consult Caspar—”
“What? You still don’t believe Constantin is my mate?” Tyler exploded.
Misha hissed, rising to stand over Tyler. “I want to make absolutely certain, and you will not be running off living in some dump of a house, brother, you will stay with me. Now, woe this human, I have work to do.”
“I’m sure you meant woo!” Tyler shouted after his brother.
Tyler glared at Misha as the older vampire strode from the room, quietly slamming the door behind him. How anyone could quietly slam a door Tyler hadn’t a clue, yet Misha seemed to be able to do the impossible often, probably just to keep everyone guessing and jumping around to his tune.
Their mother chuckled. “Poor Misha is very unsettled by all these mates appearing, losing Xavier half the time to Drake, and Valiant not quite his normal self.”
Xavier quirked a brow. “I seem to receive a similar complaint from my tiger mate over the hours I do not spend with him. Good luck, little brother, I am sure you will succeed in capturing your mate’s attention. Do this then claim and bring him home.”
“Thanks, Xav. Constantin’s got a lot of barriers up, though.”
Yeah, the human did and Tyler was growing impatient. Unlike shifters, who had to claim their mates very soon after scenting them, vampires could go longer before the need began to wear them down. That could lead to danger.
“My darling, you are an expert at slipping past barriers.” The Queen smiled sweetly. “Do hurry up with this wooing plan of yours, I want you both home for the annual coven Christmas party, and our private family one. I cannot wait to spoil my new son!”
Okay, Tyler had a few tricks up his sleeve and one week to win his mate over.
Chapter Three
“Flowers.”
Con and Donnie stared at the large bundle of flowers spread out on the crumpled, thread-worn welcome mat. They looked a touch frost bitten. It was cold out today.
“Gil!” Donnie called out. “You got a delivery.”
Gil came pounding down the stairs and pushed Con and Donnie out of the way, only to look around before down.
“What the?” He scratched his head. “Are they hiding my Chinese food underneath?”
“Dumbass.” Donnie slapped Gil’s shoulder then bent down looking for a card. “Here we go!”
Con and Gil stepped backward as though the thing had rabies. Donnie rolled his eyes and flicked the small envelope over.
“Constantin. Looks like you’ve got an admirer.”
“I don’t want it.” Con crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “Go give them to Mrs. Bruer next door.”
“Give me the card!” Gil snatched it and tore it open. “Oh, look at that. Flowers and a dinner invitation from some dude named Tyler. I’d go, Con. If the guy can afford flowers like this, he can afford a good burger and beer and maybe you’ll just have to give him a quick shag of thanks, which isn’t a bad thing if you’re into that sort of shit. Me, I like women, big ones, all soft and smelling sweet.”
“Yeah, that’s why I thought the flowers were for you, dumbass. Girls give and receive flowers, not guys.”
“Who says?” Con scratched his head, wondering if that were true.
“I don’t know, just seems right is all. I have to get to work.” Donnie stepped outside and squashed a few delicate petals under his big ugly work boots.
That made Con a little irritated but he hid it. After all, he didn’t want Tyler giving him flowers and paying him any attention. Why couldn’t the vampire leave him alone? When other guys had shown Con attention over the years, he had little to no trouble rebuffing them. Who would want to spend time on someone who avoided them, said no all the time and didn’t return their calls?
There were a few who thought he was a challenge. And that courier chick who tried to steal his hours, but they soon lost interest. Tyler wasn’t.
“If you don’t want these I’ll give them to that hot new girl at the supermarket.” Gil reached for the flowers.
“Oh, well, yeah, okay.”
For some reason, it felt wrong to give the flowers away to Gil but that was silly, right?
Returning to his bedroom and the desk he had crammed in the corner, Con dropped his head on it and sighed. He didn’t know what to do. Since the incident in the library, he planned to avoid Tyler even harder but that hadn’t worked.
And then there was the other problem. His ex-professor was mad at him and threatened to get even just because Con got the lecherous old man fired. It wasn’t really his fault. He hadn’t made the dude crack onto him nor obtain his position at the university using fraudulent documents. Con just had the misfortune of quizzing the professor when something he said didn’t make sense. Throughout the class, Professor Treman evaded answering the damn question and when class finished, he asked for Con’s number and suggested they hook up some time.
Completely stunned, and still irritated the professor wouldn’t answer the question on what the hell he was talking about in class—Con really liked answers and hated being confused—he’d put in a complaint. He hadn’t really expected the situation to be taken seriously but hitting on students wasn’t done. There were rules about that, and Con liked rules. Okay, he liked rules that worked for him, others he didn’t give a shit about. Anyway, he just wanted a stupid answer and instead, the professor got fired for coming on to a student. Then Con heard from the student teacher that Professor Treman had actually faked his credentials to get the job.
Last Con heard, the Professor was spitting mad and threatened to pay Con back.
He so didn’t need the hassle of that right now, not with work, study and the situation with Tyler Durand hanging over his head. But the Professor was angry and had e-mailed Con a dozen or so times, sometimes ranting how he was going to kill him dead, other times suggesting they meet for a coffee, discuss it and see where it led.
The guy had a screw loose.
Checking the time, Con groaned and cleaned up his desk. He had to get to work.
* * * *
After working late in the afternoon until ten, then up at four and working until ten again, Con just had enough time to shower and rush to university, where once again he slammed into Tyler.
He was convinced the vampire saw him coming and stepped out of the doorway just as Con was entering, resulting in the collision. Tyler caught hold of Con before he could fall and pressed them close together, the vampire smiling, and lightly caressed his thumb over Con’s left cheekbone. Next thing he knew the vampire was kissing him right there in the entrance to the humanities building lecture hall and there wasn’t a reason in the world Con could think of to stop it.
In fact, he may have kissed the vampire back just as passionately, just as wildly, dropping his backpack to free his hands so he could grip one muscular arm and slip around Tyler’s waist and touch there, wanting to feel and know and taste all of the man.
When his back hit the wall he barely registered it as his tongue was being sucked and a hand was holding the back of his head still. At the same time, a very hard groin pressed against his and rubbed slowly, so very tantalizingly slowly. He was lost in the man, wanting more for the first time in his life, wanting to be touched and to feel, to know the pleasure and trust.
And then someone whistled and told them to get a room or put on a show. Jerking out of his lust filled stupor, he pulled back a little and stared into Tyler’s beautiful pale green eyes.
“Morning, sweets. You look a little tired. Let me take you to lunch after class. I’ll feed you and give you a massage.”
Con managed to extract himself, though it wasn’t easy. Tyler seemed reluctant to let him go and even huffed out a frustrated sigh or two.
“I have to go to class. That—this.” Con waved a hand between them. “Can’t happen. I’m sorry, but you have to stop now, Tyler.”
“What do you think of mates?” Tyler moved around, Con doing the
same and found himself with his back against the wall again.
How had that happened? Usually, he was so aware and prepared for anything, he didn’t let people close, not even his roommates, who were just that and not really friends. His only friend was Hadley, who worked at the local supermarket filling shelves. Tyler, though, just seemed to make Con loosen some of his barriers and caution. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
“I—I don’t know. What about them?”
“Do you know what they are?” Tyler was standing close and, leaning forward, pressed his lips near to Con’s ear. “Do you, Constantin? Do you know that a mate is the most precious creature in the world to a paranormal? That we adore, live for and cherish our mate, that they are the other half of our soul and bring us happiness? We could wander the world forever feeling like something was missing, there was something not quite right, until we are fortunate enough to scent our mate, then everything feels complete inside us—”
“Oh Gods, no!” Con was rigid. He used one hand to move Tyler back from him and looked into the other man’s amazing eyes. What he saw there did not fill him with happiness. “No, Tyler.”
“Yes, Constantin, you are my mate.” Tyler slipped Con’s hand into his and smiled softly. “I would have liked to tell you over dinner or lunch, but you haven’t exactly been jumping to accept my invitations. Can we meet after class and talk, please?”
“I don’t…this is…” Con felt overwhelmed and thoughts were pushing themselves around in his mind.
Tyler squeezed his fingers, still smiling. “I know it is a shock and you’ll need a bit of time to get used to the idea. But if you think about the fact we’re mates it explains why you want to say no to me but cannot quite manage to stay away or rebuff me entirely. You like my touch and when I’m around everything else just fades to the background. I guess it’s an intense feeling and even some humans can experience a degree of it for other humans, but not to this scale. How about I come back and meet you here after class? We can talk, okay?”
Not knowing what else to do and no coherent thought readily available, Con just nodded and was thankful that Tyler let him go and didn’t use that stupendous mind gift. He rushed away and up the stairs to his lecture hall and made like he was going inside. Instead, he opened and closed the door quietly then stood back against the wall and waited. After five minutes of not hearing anything, he crept back along the hall, down the stairs and peeked around the corner to the front door.
All clear. Tyler was gone. And Con was out of here!
And he went. Walking quickly through the campus and taking the first available bus going in the right direction, Con made his way to the little supermarket by his house. Hadley, his best—and possibly only—friend worked here and was on duty today stacking shelves with one headphone in. He saw Con and smiled, holding out a can.
“Want to have an early lunch?”
Con looked at the can. Cocktail wieners. He shuddered. “Sure. You have a break?”
“I don’t know, I’m just hungry.”
Yeah, that was Hadley. The guy was a complete airhead, sweet as rich homemade jelly, and just as soft. He rented one of the rooms in Con’s ramshackle old house and, though he couldn’t pay the rent, he pottered around fixing things as best he could and drew in his spare time. Hadley always had a pencil or charcoal somewhere on him. The supermarket boss, a lovely woman in her fifties who had so much Botox she looked somewhere in her twenties, just encouraged them to go and have fun while they were young.
Not everyone appreciated Hadley’s dippy ways, some got so wildly angry they went for his throat. Hadley had even ended up in hospital beaten up so badly he couldn’t remember what had happened. They grabbed some wraps at the local fresh market and sat in the little concrete park across the road.
“What do you know about mates?” Con picked at his wrap, not really hungry.
Time to find out what he’d gotten himself into, and how to get out of it. Best to always be prepared.
* * * *
Constantin had not met Tyler after class as they planned. Tyler hadn’t been surprised, not really. Constantin hadn’t wanted to spend time with him before knowing they were mates, why should anything change now that the human knew they were?
Heavy hearted, Tyler walked through the university grounds with his head down and thoughts on the kiss he shared with Con. It had been mind-blowing, the most intense experience of his life. Would it be his last kiss with his mate?
No. Tyler’s head snapped up. Dimitri was right, Tyler was persistent. Con was his mate. He’d give the human this afternoon to come to terms with what Tyler told him, then they’d be together. He smiled at that thought and though he knew it’d take a bit more time, he was looking forward to having Constantin in his home, with him. They would enjoy their first Christmas together.
Hearing his phone ring, he took it out of his pocket and checked the display. Archie.
“Hi, Archie, what’s up?”
“So how did it go?”
Tyler knew what Archie was asking without having to elaborate. Before leaving the coven this morning, he and Archie talked about how to tell Constantin and wondered what his mate’s reaction would be.
“In one sense, okay. Constantin was more shocked than objecting, which was good, and agreed to meet me for lunch. Downside, he didn’t meet me for lunch.”
“Oh, well, humans always need more time to get used to the idea of being mated. Maybe he got held up in class?”
“I’m going to check with the coven security and see who’s following him. They’ll know where he is and if he seems okay.”
“I’ll pop in there now, hang on.”
Tyler could hear Archie moving fast and guessed his friend was back at the coven from the assignment Xavier had him on this morning. Getting to his car, he swore at finding a big ding in the passenger door and a note under his windshield wiper apologizing. Okay, fine, it was good they had apologized, but damn, they didn’t leave their name and insurance details! What a pain in the ass.
“Security says Con’s at his job delivering packages around Cape Cod and the area. Apparently, he takes risks on blind spots and speeds on open stretches of road. I wonder if I should get a motorbike.”
“No!” Tyler laughed as he climbed into his car. He could also hear security personnel objecting loudly to that idea of Archie’s. The vampire had a moped and so far had come off it five times. The moped was covered in dings and scratches and the front wheel looked like it needed to be replaced.
Archie was not good on the moped, he’d be a disaster on a motorbike, even one of the smaller ones like Constantin rode.
Hmm, thinking of Constantin in his tight faded blue jeans and the beat up old leather jacket he rode in, had Tyler’s body coming alive. His dick filled and tried to stand up straight and be noticed but was trapped in his underwear and jeans and kind of hurt as it was in a bent position. He adjusted himself and took some deep breaths.
“Fine, okay,” Archie grumbled. “I’m getting better, though.”
“Nah, you just don’t fall off as much now that Vinn adjusted your moped so it wouldn’t go above fifteen miles an hour.”
Archie sighed. “Yeah, damn demon. Anyway, coming back to the coven? We can go hang with Jayce and Blazh, or pop over to the pack or pride. Maybe Linc’s around.”
Driving out of the campus grounds and navigating through town, Tyler agreed to return to the coven and hung up. Archie was a heap of fun and always up for anything. He also had a major crush on one of the Sanchez pride’s mountain lions who was an adoptive member of the pride’s royal family. Linc was a little shy and so sweet Tyler could just eat the gorgeous shifter up! But that’d make the creature uncomfortable so they were friends instead. It took fifty minutes to reach Milson City, an ever expanding medium size city twenty-five miles from Martha’s Vineyard.
When first hearing his home coven in New York were going to set up another coven here in Milson Valley that had a larger population o
f paranormals than humans, he had immediately thought it a stupid idea. It seemed like the middle of nowhere and he was a city boy, loved New York, London, Milan, Paris and couldn’t ever imagine living in a smaller city in the middle of what seemed like nowhere.
He was wrong, Tyler was happy to discover. Milson City was trendy, funky and really close to everything. The place was spread out and had every facility imaginable. There was a good vibe of nightlife, cafes, shopping and restaurants and at the same time was safe and a lot more relaxed than competitive New York. He really liked it here and was glad he was wrong.
Winding through to the older section known as the Village, very upscale and architecturally beautiful, Tyler turned down the narrow street leading to the big old castle his brother purchased a year ago and slowly repaired and rejuvenated until the coven moved in six months ago. As he moved along the lane, something pinged off the hood of his car and ricocheted into the windscreen, cracking the shatterproof glass in a few places. A moment later there was a direct hit to the windscreen, quickly followed in rapid succession by dozens of more hits.
Tyler knew what they were and quickly turned his steering wheel into the high, thick stone wall that ran along the right side of the road and slammed into it. He hit the brake and as the air bag deployed, he ducked down beneath and pulled out his phone.
A second later something heavy landed on the hood of his car, but as he was staying low to avoid being hit by bullets, and hoping his bullet- and shatterproof glass didn’t give way, he kept down.
“Tyler, I will call you back, there is an emergency outside—”
“Misha! It’s me, someone is firing at me. I’m stuck in my car—”
“I’m coming, Tyler, stay down and take out the gun from your glove box. It is loaded and ready to go.”
Misha had been moving as he spoke, Tyler could hear his brother’s footfalls. As the fastest vampire around, no one could touch Misha, he moved so damn fast, Tyler did as his brother said and retrieved the gun from the glovebox. Though he’d been taught to defend himself and was getting good at it, and had his natural weapons of speed, agility, long razor sharp talons and fangs, he didn’t get into many fights and wasn’t about to step outside until he could get a better line of sight.
