Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Pat Cunningham

  Well, beggars in wrinkly shirts couldn’t be choosers. She slipped the robe off its hanger and pulled it on. It fell past her shins, and she had to roll up the sleeves, but otherwise, she found it quite comfortable.

  More than comfortable, in fact. She found it comforting. His sea-breeze scent filled her nostrils and filled her soul with reassurance. This robe had rubbed against his skin just as his skin rubbed against Jeremy’s. Wrapping herself in Wallace’s robe was almost like being naked next to them both. The notion sent a tingle through her clear down to her pussy, which became moist at the thought.

  No way could she blame this reaction on adrenaline overload. What in God’s name is wrong with me?

  Mandatory change in plans. Take a shower first.

  Afterwards, with her hair still damp and her nerves still jangling, she belted on the robe again and padded downstairs. She found only Jeremy up and around, still in his same shirt and slacks outfit as yesterday. He had coffee brewing and was fixing breakfast.

  Their kitchen was roomier than hers. Keeping her distance from him ought to be a snap.

  Colleen’s resolve took a solid hit when Jeremy turned and smiled. That one look made her want to run into his arms and snuggle there forever. She made herself hang back and smile demurely and hope the neighbors weren’t disturbed by the thunderous pound of her heart.

  “Good morning,” Jeremy said. “You sleep okay?”

  “Off and on.” She accepted his gestured invitation and took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “Would you like coffee?” Jeremy asked.

  “God, yes. I mean, thank you.” She gratefully accepted the mug he handed her and gulped the black brew without benefit of sugar. If that didn’t jolt her fully awake, nothing would. It did help dissolve the shreds of her disturbing dreams. As far as sexy Jeremy’s proximity—nope, no help at all.

  Time for a much-needed dash of discouragement. “Where’s Wallace?”

  “Sleeping.” He nodded toward the window and its incoming stream of sunshine. “He checked back at your place last night but didn’t find anything. Oh wait, he did. Hold on a sec.” Jeremy ducked out of the kitchen and returned with a pair of shopping bags. He handed them to Colleen. “These are yours, right?”

  She nodded silently. In spite of her use of the bag as a weapon, her new shoes had survived intact. The blue dress was similarly unscathed. Already it seemed like it had all happened a lifetime ago.

  “I have to call Norelle,” she said, half to herself. “A bunch of us are supposed to go out tonight.”

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” Jeremy said. “Even in a group, it’s too risky, unless Wallace or I go along. That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”

  “Pretty much.” Colleen set the bags beside her chair. At least she had something to wear now. “So what happens now? I’m supposed to stay inside all the time?”

  “Only at night. You should be safe during the day.”

  “Right. Vampires. I forgot,” she said sarcastically. “I suppose Wallace is lying in a coffin in the cellar right now?”

  “Of course not. He’s in bed upstairs. I wouldn’t disturb him. He can function during the day, but he doesn’t like to. He gets really grouchy.”

  Might as well go for broke. “Am I your prisoner?”

  He gaped at her. “Why would you even think that? We’re just trying to keep you safe.”

  “That attack at the school happened during daylight, you know.”

  “It was really cloudy, and he had a long coat and a hat on. They’ll come out in daylight if the need is great enough. They must want you really bad.”

  “What about work? I can’t just quit my job.”

  “No one’s asking you to. I doubt if they’ll strike there again. It’s too exposed. You can use your car if you take precautions, or I can drop you off and pick you up.”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as it takes.” He turned back to the stove to tend to the bacon sizzling there. “I wish I could give you a more concrete answer, but these are vampires. They know how to hide. You like pancakes?”

  He was certainly adept at avoidance and better at denial than she was. Colleen decided to allow it until after breakfast. She okayed the pancakes, then sat in broody silence while the odors from the stove got her stomach rumbling and her mouth watering. She tried to avoid staring at Jeremy’s lanky body and firm ass. She didn’t need any other parts of her watering in public.

  Jeremy brought their plates to the table and took the seat opposite Colleen. It was still too close. She found herself leaning over her plate, angling her body toward his. Jeremy was doing the same. This madness had to stop.

  “I’m going home after breakfast,” she announced.

  “Okay. I’ll come with you. If you’re going to be staying here for a while you’re going to need a few things.” He reached across the too-small distance and fingered her terrycloth sleeve. “Starting with a bathrobe.”

  “I mean, I’m going home to stay. I appreciate everything you and Wallace have done for me, but the police can take it from here. I’ll go home, report what happened last night, and we can all go on with our lives.”

  He looked at her with that sincerity she found so hard to resist. “I wouldn’t advise that. They’re sure to try again.”

  “You’re probably right, but I won’t live in fear, and you two shouldn’t have to put yourselves out looking after me. I’ll get a cross and some garlic. I’ll be fine.”

  “No,” he said. “You won’t. Last night should have proved that.”

  “The police will handle it,” she said, each syllable carefully enunciated. “Why don’t you really want me to call them?”

  “Because the police don’t believe in vampires. Wallace will take care of this. Just be patient. At least stay with us until we hear back from Gus.”

  “Gus? Gus Stanton? He’s in on this craziness, too?”

  “He and Annie are old friends of Wallace’s. They’re looking into a couple of angles for us.”

  Colleen quickly did the math. Gus was a psychiatrist. Gus knew Wallace. Wallace thought he was a vampire. Everything clicked into place. Okay, she could play along. If all else failed, she had Annie’s number. Surely the Stantons wouldn’t leave her in danger.

  “One more night,” she allowed. “I still need to go back to my place. For starters, my clothes are a wreck.”

  “Fair enough.” He dug into his breakfast again as if the matter were settled. Best to let him think so, for now.

  After breakfast, Jeremy took charge of the dishes, and Colleen went upstairs to get dressed. All she had was her new club outfit, but beggars and choosers, et cetera.

  At the top of the stairs she paused before the door to the second bedroom. Or was it the coffin room? Though Jeremy might deny it, she couldn’t help sneaking a peek. She might have to repeat all the facts later on to the cops.

  The knob turned easily under her hand. She peered inside. No coffin. The room’s single window had been covered by a black tarp over what looked like the outlines of a sheet of plywood. The sole illumination leaked in from the hall. When these wackos role-played, they didn’t mess around.

  Wallace sprawled on his back on a regular bed with the sheet pulled over his head. The jut of his nose and chin marked the location of his face. One pale-skinned hand hung over the side of the bed, limp as that of a corpse.

  Colleen watched the sheet for several minutes. It never moved, neither around his mouth and nose nor above the broad slab of his chest. Shouldn’t there be the occasional twitch and sigh or snore that came with sleep? Shouldn’t there be some indication of breath here?

  She set her bags on the floor and crept inside. Her foot hit a floorboard that groaned an alarm. Wallace didn’t murmur, stir, shift, or do anything other than lie there in a suddenly ominous silence.

  Spurred by concern and curiosity, Colleen sidled up to the bed. She gingerly plucked up a fold of the sheet. Lordy, what a build. He clearly took his w
orkouts to heart. Those pecs were wider across than her palm, and his stomach was flat as a board. None of those expertly sculpted muscles showed any indications of life. His skin had a waxy cast to it. Her late Uncle Oscar, lying in his casket in the funeral home, had looked more alive than this.

  Oh God. Oh God. He’s dead. He’s really dead.

  She wanted to scream for Jeremy but couldn’t get any sound to come out. Steeling herself, she pressed two fingers to his neck in hopes of locating a pulse. His skin was as chilly as death. Just like that other, the silver-eyed man in her dream.

  Wallace’s eyes snapped open. The so-called corpse went from dead to abrupt, violent life. The limp hand hanging over the side of the bed shot up and seized her wrist. His eyes had lost their green beneath a wash of crimson. His bared fangs looked enormous in his snarling mouth, barely an inch from her face.

  The scream that had failed her before erupted now. Colleen yanked frantically at her arm, but his steely grip held her fast. The emotions from her nightmare flooded over her at full force and shot her scream up the scale into a panicked shriek.

  Wallace recoiled from the noise. He blinked at her. “The hell?”

  The thud that echoed beneath her screams wasn’t her heartbeat. That was Jeremy charging up the stairs. She broke free of Wallace and leaped for the door and straight into Jeremy’s arms. He flung her at the doorway, almost into the wall. Her scream died at the look on his face. The concern she’d expected to see wasn’t there. He glowered down at her with a cold, still fury that scared her more than Wallace’s red eyes.

  He hadn’t set his body between them to protect her from Wallace, she realized. He was protecting Wallace from her.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” he demanded.

  Colleen waved her arm in Wallace’s general direction. “He wasn’t breathing.” She peered around Jeremy to Wallace as if she expected him to confirm it. Wallace now sat on the edge of the bed. He glared at her with a look that somehow combined exasperation with amusement.

  His nostrils didn’t flare. His chest didn’t rise or fall. The only part of him currently twitching was—

  Oh, dear God, he was naked.

  Wallace continued to stare at her. His one-eyed little buddy—“That ain’t no way little,” her inner Norelle voice snarked—rose up to stare at her, too. Colleen yanked her own stare upward to that muscular, motionless chest.

  “You weren’t breathing,” she repeated weakly.

  “Yeah, I gave that up when I died. Down, boy.” He slapped his thickening penis. “You like busting in on people when they’re trying to sleep?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Some guard you are,” Wallace grumbled at Jeremy. “I should just get a dog. Is that my robe?” His eyes, a normal, human green once more, treated themselves to a thorough study of her body. “Looks good on you. Okay with you if I go back to bed now?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again before Jeremy thrust her into the hallway. Wallace called out after her. “Next time you want some, sweetheart, all you have to do is ask.”

  Jeremy slammed the door on Wallace’s chortle. His stormy eyes boiled with fury. “What were you thinking? You don’t disturb a vampire when he’s asleep. He could have killed you.”

  “He wasn’t breathing.” Under the blast of his glare Colleen weakly admitted, “I wanted to see if he really slept in a coffin.”

  Jeremy muttered a curse and raked his hair out of his eyes. “No, he doesn’t sleep in a coffin. He doesn’t turn into a bat or a wolf or a cloud of smoke, either. He does get pissed off if people wake him up during daylight. So do I. Don’t ever do that again.”

  No chance of that. Wallace’s fangs right up in her face had cured her curiosity quite nicely. “He’s really…he’s really…I thought you two were, I don’t know, D&D geeks or something.”

  Jeremy sighed. “You’re not making this any easier.” He snatched her bags off the floor and shoved them at her. “If you still want to pick up your stuff, we should get going.”

  He made it clear he wasn’t going to budge from in front of Wallace’s door until after she made herself scarce. Colleen complied by darting into the bedroom and shutting the door behind her.

  * * * *

  Colleen let close to an hour lapse before she dared to reemerge. When she peeked outside the bedroom, the hallway was empty. She heard Jeremy downstairs, making deliberate noise. Giving the opposite bedroom as wide a berth as the short hallway would allow, Colleen went down to face the music.

  One look and she knew he wasn’t angry anymore. Colleen caught her breath. His look said “lust” in all caps and italic, and she knew what brought it on. She wore her only change of clothes, the clingy blue dress with its flirty skirt and her new black three-inch heels. Even with minimal makeup, she’d achieved her intended aim and gotten a hot guy’s attention. She just hadn’t intended it to be this hot guy, or here, or under these circumstances.

  They spoke in unison. “I’m sorry.”

  Jeremy held up his hand. “Me first. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. It’s just that he’s really vulnerable during the day. I get overprotective.”

  “No, I was wrong. I was way out of line. I shouldn’t have gone in there. Believe me, I’m never that snoopy. Well, not much.”

  “I’ll bet.” He smiled faintly. “As long as you never do it again. He could have really hurt you.”

  “I promise not to go near him again. Even when he’s awake.”

  “Good luck with that.” He swallowed hard and averted his eyes. “There’s something else we need to talk about. What’s going on between us. You and me.”

  She didn’t need to ask him to explain. She’d been on the verge of moving toward him, just to apologize, or maybe more. His words stopped her just in time. “There’s nothing going on.”

  “Yes, there is.” He raised his eyes to hers again. The naked hunger in them sent a rush of desire straight to her loins. Funny, the dress hadn’t felt so tight, or the neckline so plunging, when she’d tried it on last night.

  “I want you,” he said baldly. “You’re psychic. You have to know it. What about you?”

  She didn’t answer. Her flaming cheeks spoke for themselves.

  “Okay.” He was flushing, too. “So what do we do about it?”

  “Other than the obvious, you mean?”

  He laughed shakily. “I’m open to suggestions. Want to hear Wallace’s?”

  “You told him?”

  “I didn’t have to. That’s how obvious this is. He thinks we should, uh, scratch our itch and get it over with.”

  “Wow. Generous of him.”

  “And polite. He’s usually a lot cruder.” His expression shifted into one of apology. “I swear I’m not always like this. I’m not normally interested, in, um…”

  She had to smile. “Women?”

  “The living.”

  Oh. Well. That sure made her decision easier. “I’m not like this either. I don’t date married men, or help them scratch their itches. Even if they have their partner’s permission.” Even if her own itch could do with a robust scratch, and she wanted Jeremy to do the scratching.

  “Okay, then.” He was trying desperately hard to sound relieved. “You ready to go? In the car, I mean. To your place. To get your stuff.”

  “Look, I can stay with Norelle or somebody. I don’t have to stay here if it’s going to be this big a problem.”

  “It’s not a problem. There’s no point in putting your friends in danger. Just so we’re clear on everything.”

  “We’re good,” she said. That was half true. One of them was good. Jeremy had Wallace to scratch his itches. But hey. Colleen dealt with preschoolers on a daily basis. She’d get through it. She was tough.

  The second this mess was over, she resolved to seriously start dating again.

  Chapter 7

  They left her car at the curb out front and took Jeremy’s. The world looked so different from last night, with everythin
g shiny and normal. Especially the people, with their laughing, fangless mouths. Colleen caught herself staring at teeth and looked at the dashboard instead.

  She said, “Vampires are real.”

  Jeremy glanced at her, his eyes full of sympathy. “I’m afraid so.”

  “How about werewolves?”

  “Them, too. There aren’t many packs around here. They like to be near woods. I’ve seen coyotes, though. They’re more adaptable, and they love the beach. I’ve heard there are cat-shifters in LA, but I only ever met one. A jaguar. Man, was he finicky.”

  “Demons?”

  “They’re rare, but they’re out there.”

  “Zombies?”

  “Never met one.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Never met one of those either, but I know people who have.”

  “Aliens?”

  He chuckled. “Don’t be silly.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He spoke so matter-of-factly about knowing monsters from creature features. Heck, he lived with one. Slept with one.

  “How’d you get involved with Wallace? Did he sneak up behind you and bite you or something?”

  “Hardly. He doesn’t bite humans, as a rule.” He shot her a furtive glance, as if he wanted to trust her with something monumental. More shocking than sleeping with a vampire?

  “I met him on my last job,” he said, his gaze trained on the street beyond the windshield. “He was a client of mine.”

  “Right. The customer service job.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. I used to be a prostitute.”

  They had come to a red light. He looked her straight in the eyes when he said it, without a hint of humor or deceit. “There used to be a brothel in San Rudolfo that catered to what we call ‘nightsiders.’ Vampires, werewolves, demons even. I’ve slept with a lot of things you don’t believe in. I won’t apologize for it. I like vampires, and I needed a job.” The light changed. Jeremy took off at an even speed. “I don’t do that anymore, though. Wallace likes to keep me all to himself, and I don’t mind letting him.”

  Okay, w-a-a-a-a-a-y too much information. Colleen edged up against the passenger door, her desire effectively squelched. Perhaps that had been his intention. “Is there anything else I should know?”