Excitement fills my veins. “Tell me everything.”
He shoves his hand into the pocket of his cut and takes an old ornate key out. “There’s a library in the southern tower. It’s all yours.”
I clap my hands. “Thank you so so very much.”
Declan joins us. He’s wearing only his jeans. He pulls me into his arms and sits me in his lap.
“A very cute little thing, isn’t she?” Declan says with pride.
“She’s little, but she’s the brain and strength here,” Hugh says. “You’ll see, boy.”
Declan’s mouth wanders on my neck and I know he isn’t paying attention at all. Hugh winks at me and walks off.
Chapter 8
Brad
A loud banging on the front door of my wooden house tears me out of my nap on the couch. I get up and toss my hair back. The banging repeats, causing anger to sprout in my chest.
“I’m coming,” I growl.
I know it’s her. I can sense her, smell her, and hear her erratic gasps.
I rush towards the door and open it. Neve shivers in the rain flooding her body. The sky darkens as it keeps releasing the autumnal fury that’s been holding the world captive for two weeks.
Streams of water flow violently and puddles form on the ground. A gloomy wall of moisture surrounds my house, the chill of the air biting my skin, penetrating my bones.
“You even have your own house?” I growl.
“My dad—“
“What? Grounded you again?”
She sniffles. “I just wanted to see a few humans my age.”
“At a bar, right?”
“Well…” she drops her head as her body shakes.
“You are eighteen, Neve. Human bars are off limits for you. You should study, you know, not wander outside the compound.”
She has mastered the art of sneaking out of the compound despite the high wall and three men on guard every day. Nobody knows how she does it. Nobody except Zorica, but Declan’s wife never spills the beans.
She raises her head as her grey eyes lock on mine. “Don’t talk to me like you’re my dad.” Fierce anger coats her voice.
I see her roll her fingers into fists and something tells me there must have been a really big argument in Declan’s house this time.
My eyes sweep over her drenched hair and I wave my hand. “Come in.”
She squeezes the water out of her long brown tendrils and steps in. Her boots leave wet muddy prints on the stone floor in the hall. I grit my teeth. Neve removes her red leather jacket and attempts to pass it to me.
“Am I your servant or what?” I growl.
Neve shudders and starts crying. Fucking hell. There’s always a problem with her. I grab the fucking jacket and throw it onto the ornate hanger that protrudes from the wall. The water dripping down from it forms a puddle on the floor. I grit my teeth even harder and count to ten in my mind. Then I huff out. Neve kicks off her boots.
“You want a cup of tea or something?” I ask as I pull forward and she follows me to the kitchen.
“A cup of tea,” Neve shrieks as she drops into the chair by the table and looks out the window.
The water from her drenched clothes floods the wooden floor that I renovated a few months ago.
“Neve, for fuck’s sake, take those drenched clothes off.”
Her eyes fix on mine, her face stiff like a mask. She tilts her head as her eyes narrow. Her irises flicker with silver in a threatening way.
“You want me to take my clothes off, Brad?” Her voice is calm, but in some fucking dangerous way.
It’s so… sultry. I don’t know. It’s fucking wrong.
I feel unnerved by the way she’s staring at me.
Like I’m a man and she’s a woman. This is very wrong.
Her lips part in a very tempting way and I realise what I just said.
I feel fucking weird around her from the moment she turned eighteen. I can’t control myself around her for the last three months.
“I mean…” I say.
Right. Everything was fine when she was a kid. I used to take out her for a walk twice a week. I dropped her off to the local primary school twice a month. I bought her sweets and toys. Everything was normal until that fucking birthday party. She had that black glittering thing on and it barely covered her tits and ass. She had make-up on. She cast a spell on me and from that evening, I’m always edgy around her.
“You can borrow my bathrobe,” I say.
She shuffles over to the bathroom, wet footprints marking her way. I grab a piece of cloth and wipe the floor. Then I put the kettle on. It clicks when it switches itself off and the soft sound of the boiling water fills the air.
Neve comes back from the bathroom with my bathrobe on, so I put a cup of herbal tea on the table. The steam rises from the top, filling the air with the aroma of camomile and honey.
“Can I stay here until tomorrow?” she asks.
“No fucking way.”
“Why not?” Her chin trembles.
She makes me feel angry and so fucking uncomfortable I want to get rid of her as soon as I can.
I’m fucking hard for her. So hard my balls hurt.
I shouldn’t have let her in. She should be grounded in her own bedroom. Declan will be furious with me if I don’t send her back to her house.
“Drink your tea and go back to your house,” I say.
“I don’t want to go back to my house.”
“Drink your tea and get lost.”
“Dad said he’d never allow me to have a boyfriend. He said I didn’t need a boyfriend.”
“He was very fucking right.”
She rises from her chair and storms out of the kitchen. I follow her to my living room.
“I said go back to your house, Neve.”
She ignores me and jumps onto the couch, wrapping the blanket around her chest.
“Alright.” I scratch my head. “A movie?”
Her eyes gleam with joy as she nods.
I drop onto the couch beside her, grab the remote and turn on the DVD player.
“My brother has more freedom,” Neve murmurs. “And he’s younger than me.”
“He’s a boy.”
“So what? I’m not some fucking sweet damsel in distress, you know.”
“Ross is more of a hunter—“
She snorts. “I’m not a Mora. Maybe a bit.”
She is a hunter, but I saw her feed on a squirrel. Declan saw her feed on a deer. Zorica needs a day rest, but Neve can enjoy the sun. She prefers night to day, but the sunlight does her no harm. Hugh can’t explain that weird phenomenon.
Ross seems like a pure hunter, but he can have fangs if he wants to. He’s never drunk blood, but he can hibernate like a vampire. Hugh can’t explain that either.
Neve should be a pure hunter, but she’s both.
“I feel like a prisoner, Brad.”
“If you focus on studying maths and science you’ll feel like a fulfilled person.”
“You’re so stiff, Brad.”
That’s the fucking problem. I am stiff. For her.
“You were more relaxed when I was younger,” she continues.
“Watch the movie, Neve. Your burbling is hurting my ears.”
She turns her face to mine and frowns. A delicate pink tints her cheeks.
“What?” I explode.
“Nothing.”
Neve
His manly smell calls to my primal part like never before. I can focus only on his broad naked chest and the rune symbols that adorn his tanned skin.
I have similar rune symbols. They run along my spine—the hunter’s mark indicating my origins. They’re very tiny. I’m a tiny hunter after all. Everybody in the compound laughs at me. My brother, Ross, is as massive as my dad. I’m as tiny as my mom.
I’m hungry like a predator. Hungry for blood.
Hungry for Brad’s blood.
Embarrassment rolls over me. He’s my uncle Brad. I shouldn’t lust fo
r his blood. Or his body. My God. He’s much older than me. My feelings and desires are inappropriate.
But he looks so gorgeous, gorgeous forty. Yummy forty.
His icy blue eyes turn to mine like he knows my dirty thoughts.
“Hungry?” he asks in a deep husky voice.
“Very hungry.”
I’ve been hungry for him since I turned sixteen. One rainy night, I woke up with the agonizing desire burning inside of me, and it only grows in strength as time goes by.
“Want a sandwich?” Brad continues. “A glass of milk?” Humour tinges his voice.
Yes, he’s always been so easy to be with—straightforward and funny.
My heart pounds in my chest and I can focus only on his neck artery. I can hear the tempting murmur of his blood.
“Neve?”
“I’m hungry, Brad.”
“Neve, are you alright, sweetheart?”
I like it when he addresses me like this. When he’s nice to me like this.
I inhale the tantalizing smell of his light sweat and woody cologne, and my blood starts to boil. My surroundings blur and shimmer like I’m in the desert. Everything inside me pulsates, chants, and craves the man sitting beside me.
Brad
She moves closer to me as her eyes turn into two blazing rubies.
“Fuck,” I growl.
I’ve never seen her like this—she looks so wild yet so pristine at the same time. Her scent hits me hard with hints of earth after rain, violet blossom, and female musk. My mind spins out of control. My dick wants to explode.
Her hands rise and I jerk mine up, gripping her wrists. Blocking her wrists. Preventing her from crossing the line that we should never cross.
“Neve, baby, what’s going on?”
I see her white little fangs lengthen. I see the bathrobe slide down her shoulder and expose her breast. It’s large with a pink areola and an erect nipple.
“I’m hungry, Brad.”
“You need to go home, Neve.”
She needs to leave or I’ll do something stupid. My dick is so hard it just replaced my brain. All my senses zero in on her. On her full lips I want to kiss. On her hard nipple I want to suck and bite.
Neve squeals like a frightened animal and jerks her body away from me. She moves back as though hot water has scalded her.
“Brad, I’m so sorry.” She corrects the bathrobe, covering her beautiful breast. “So sorry.”
I rise to my feet and move towards her, but she steps back, so I stop. “Neve, everything is fine. Don’t worry, sweetheart.”
“Nothing is fine,” she yells, her eyes like two red flares.
She turns around and runs off. I hear the front door of my house bang shut.
I remain frozen for a moment, my heart pounding in my chest, and then I follow her. The kid is unwell. I can’t let anything bad happen to her. I start running, my nostrils catching the traces of her tantalizing musk. Her smell guides me and I notice her form tumbling into her bedroom through the window. She must have climbed the tree to reach the balcony that adorns the side wall of the house.
I stop and realise my feet are naked, covered in cold mud.
Declan walks out of the house through the front door. He stops and looks at me like I’m some lunatic.
“You okay, brother?” he asks as his eyes slide down to my feet.
“Church tonight?”
“Tomorrow.”
I nod. “Thought I’d check whether you and your family are okay.”
“We are okay.”
“Neve…”
“Man,” Declan starts as he grabs his head in both his hands and stops paying attention to my weird presence here.
“Want a glass of beer at my place?”
“It would do me good.”
I turn around, waving my hand to him, and we go to my place. Declan drops onto the couch and tosses the blanket aside. The same blanket that was wrapped around Neve only a few minutes ago.
I bring two bottles of beer from the kitchen, pass one of them to him and sit down in the armchair.
Declan takes a long pull from the bottle. “She fucking got drunk, brother. And almost ripped some dick’s throat out.”
“He touched her?” My hands jerk up as my mind seizes with an urge to murder.
“She said he’d tried. Fucking hell.” He shakes his head. “It’s sorted, but… There’s been less trouble with Ross.”
“Lock her up until she’s one hundred years old.”
Nobody is allowed to touch Neve. I’ll fucking kill whoever dares to lay their hands on her.
Declan takes another pull of beer. “I broke the motherfucker’s arm, you know. And Neve said I shouldn’t have poked my nose into her life. You imagine? Fucking hell, brother, I just got my first grey hairs. You imagine?”
“Lock her up until she’s two hundred.”
Declan nods. “Not a bad idea.”
We drink our beer in silence. Declan’s clearly worried about Neve and I don’t know how to help him. I’ve never had kids of my own. I helped raise Neve and Ross, that’s all.
“You fine, brother?” Declan asks unexpectedly.
I nod as I clear my throat. “Still free like a bird.”
“Bianca wants to be your old lady.”
Bianca is my lay twice a week. She’s nice and attractive, but there’s no spark. Two of the boys have recently taken human women for their old ladies. They’re reasonably happy, but have no kids. Hugh can’t explain that phenomenon either.
“Nah, I’m gonna be single until I rest in my coffin,” I say.
Declan looks at me with concern like he’s my fucking nanny. “Bianca is a good woman. She could—“
“You fucking have your own problems to deal with, brother.”
He raises his hands in a warding gesture. “Just wanted to say this shit called a family life is stressful as fuck sometimes but so worth living it, you know.”
“Yeah, grey hairs you’re saying?”
“Zorica likes them.” He rises to his feet, slamming the empty bottle on the coffee table. “Thanks for the beer.”
I salute him. “Anytime.”
He leaves my house and I fall into numbness. A strange hollowness fills my chest. I need something.
Someone.
I need my own little Mora.
No fucking way.
Neve is off limits.
I change my clothes and walk out of my house. After a chat with Hugh, I go to replace Jax at the top of the hill, a mile away from the compound. An old half-burned tower stands there and gives a perfect view over the area—our watchtower.
I need solitude.
I need to be far from Neve for a moment and everything will be back to normal.
Three weeks later.
We’re seated around the table in our office.
“One scumbag dead,” Colin says as his eyes shine dark grey with a few silver flecks.
“There’re rumours,” Alastar says, his green eyes gleaming, “about some resistance inside the Order.”
Prez nods. “Good.” He juts his chin out towards Sorley, Alastar’s son. “Check it out.”
“We’ve killed one third of them,” Declan says. “When—“
“Soon,” Prez says. “We are still outnumbered. We must be wise if we want to win this war. The scumbags have resources we don’t have.”
We’ve been at war with the Order since they almost killed Zorica. We kill two, three of them a month. Soon, we’ll attack their headquarters and make things right for the first time in a millennium.
The Order kills monsters whether they are dangerous or harmless. They can’t see the difference. We can. We don’t kill innocents. They do. That must end.
We’re dirty bastards but we know what’s right and what isn’t.
Not to mention that they dared to hurt our woman. Our pregnant woman. That’s unforgivable.
But Prez is right.
They have money, numbers, citadels, spies and access to knowle
dge. We have our fury and sense of justice.
“Go get drunk,” Prez says.
We rise from our seats and walk over to the bar, bathed in our growls and rumbles. As I enter it, I see Neve tidying up the tables with a damp cloth and Ross dusting our photos that hang on the wall. The boy must earn the privilege to attend church. Neve? Declan said he’d put her in the nuns’ coven. She isn’t interested in becoming a hunter. She wants to go to university and move out of the compound, but that’s not gonna happen. It’s too dangerous for her to be so far away from the compound.
I drop onto the black velvet sofa that’s two centuries old, and Emily sits down beside me. Six human girls are living in the clubhouse. Four of them know nothing about our true identity, but they provide us with entertainment every evening.
We change the meat every five years so that they won’t realise we don’t age like them.
Those of human women who are old ladies are stuck in the compound, but it’s always their choice. They want to live in prison. They call it love. We call it safety measures.
Each time one of the brothers takes a human wife, we catch an undead. We use them to compel the human old ladies—they are to leave the compound only in the company of their old men and temporarily lose the memories of their life while outside the compound. Cruel? A bit, but necessary.
I’ve been married once. She was one of the club girls. She died of a human disease. I can’t tell if she was the love of my life, but my bed was warm every night. We respected each other. We were good friends. That’s a lot in life.
Emily strokes my cheek with her fingers. “You’re very brooding tonight.” She kisses me on the angle of my jaw as her hand travels to the front of my jeans. “Want to have some fun?” She rubs her hand up my crotch, but my dick is dead.
A scraping sound diverts my attention, and I raise my eyes. Neve is standing by the table, her eyes shooting lightning.
“Get lost,” Neve hisses to Emily.
“Neve.” I raise my finger in a threatening gesture.
That’s none of her business. I’m a grown man. I have the right to allow a club girl to entertain me.
Neve tilts her head, her lips moving, but making no sound, and Emily shudders like spiders are crawling up her body.
“I… maybe… I should go have some sleep,” Emily says in a faltering voice as she rises to her feet and runs off.
Zorica and Declan: Restless Spades MC (A Bad Boy Paranormal Vampire Romance) Page 8
