by Kallysten
Leo didn’t take much blood at all; he never did. His lips were crimson when he raised his head. He arched it back as he buried himself inside Brett. He came with a groan that reverberated through Brett, causing him to shiver against Leo when he collapsed on top of Brett. Humming quietly, he closed his arms around Leo’s back, holding him in place even though his weight was a little uncomfortable. Leo’s mouth returned to the bite marks as though drawn to a beacon, and he licked the two puncture wounds, each slow, sensuous slide of his tongue drawing shivers from Brett.
Brett wished they could have stayed there forever, in that cocoon of warmth and contentment, but the more he tried not to think of Lisa, the faster his disappointment was returning, chasing away his afterglow. Leo must have noticed Brett was beginning to tense up beneath him, because he rolled over onto his side and gave Brett an indulgent smile, the same smile he always offered when telling Brett he worried too much. Usually, though, it was when Brett worried about the club, not about Lisa.
“All right.” Leo pressed a peck to his lips before he slipped out of bed. “Here’s the plan.” He pulled clothes from his dresser, glancing back over his shoulder, and said, “You get something to eat. Then you get dressed, and you come find us. We’ll probably be dancing.”
He stood there, clothes in one hand, the other scratching idly at the come drying on his chest, a conspiratorial grin on his lips, looking absolutely certain that everything would go exactly the way he wanted. Brett wished he could have been as sure.
“And then what?” Brett asked, sitting up gingerly.
A small shrug wasn’t all that reassuring. “We’ll take it from there. Everything will go fine, you’ll see.”
Leo flashed him a smile before leaving the bedroom. Lying back with his hands linked behind his head, Brett listened to the water running in the bathroom. Part of him wanted to join Leo for that quick shower; another part could only worry about all that had happened so far—and what was yet to come. Leo’s confidence was fine and dandy, but that was also his natural state; Brett had yet to find something Leo could worry about for more than a few moments. It could have made things difficult between them, but instead they seemed to balance each other out. Brett sometimes wondered if Lisa had known this would happen when she had pulled Leo into their bed. It had all happened very fast, but somehow he wouldn’t have put it past Lisa to have weighed possibilities and options in just a few seconds. That was usually the way she made her decisions, and Brett envied her that ability. Every decision he ever made was carefully thought out and reasoned—except that last one.
Had he made a terrible mistake? Leo had accepted his ring, and for that Brett was both proud and grateful, but Lisa was an integral part of both their lives. She was the one who had brought them together in the first place, who had pushed them closer, helped their relationship grow in ways she would never allow where she was concerned. If what Brett had tried to do destroyed what they had shared with her, he would never forgive himself.
The front door closing with a snick drew him out of his increasingly darker thoughts. Pushing himself out of bed, he took a quick shower and pulled on jeans and a t-shirt before padding barefoot to the kitchen. He felt a pang when he saw the untouched table set for three, the cartons of food still waiting on the counter. He put the take-out in the fridge; eating it alone would have been like twisting the knife in a still-bleeding wound. A frozen dinner would do just fine for now.
As the microwave hummed and warmed his food, Brett found himself falling back into old habits. He usually watched the club’s video surveillance feed on his laptop when he had dinner, a quick check that the night was starting smoothly. He turned on the computer and set it on the kitchen counter. With a touch of his thumb, he flicked from camera to camera until he found Lisa. She was dancing with a woman, but her movements weren’t as smooth or seductive as they usually were, as though she were only running through the motions of what was expected from her, rather than really enjoying herself on the dance floor.
He was surprised that Leo wasn’t there yet, but by switching through the different camera feeds he soon found him, leaning against the guardrail on the catwalk overlooking the dance floor. There was no doubt in Brett’s mind that Leo had seen Lisa and that he was watching her, but Brett wasn’t sure why Leo wasn’t going to her yet. Splitting the screen, he kept the image of Leo on one side and Lisa on the other. He watched them, waiting for something he couldn’t quite explain. Leo was very good at reading people, a quality he had honed with years of bartending, and Brett envied him a little, but Leo’s grasp of what went on in Lisa’s head was deeper than that, born of decades spent together.
As closely as he looked, Brett never saw anything change in Lisa’s demeanor. But after a few minutes, Leo pushed away from the railing and went down to the dance floor. He moved through the crowd, ignoring a couple of people who probably recognized him from the bar and tried to get his attention, and went straight to Lisa. Approaching her from behind, he slipped his arms around her waist and pressed his body to her back; she never flinched or tried to pull away, and Brett figured that she must have known it was Leo. She was facing away from the camera so Brett couldn’t be certain, but she seemed to say something to her dancing partner, who soon moved away and found someone else to dance with.
Lisa turned in Leo’s embrace, resting her hands on his shoulders as she continued to dance. She was now facing the camera, and Brett could see her expression. He had never seen her so sad. His chest tightened painfully, and he shut down the laptop before he even realized he had moved. It was his fault that she was unhappy; he had to go and try to fix it.
All he did was slip on his shoes before hurrying down to the club. As he was crossing the first floor toward the staircase that led to the lower level, the head of security intercepted him, wanting to talk about some guy who was apparently drunk and causing trouble. Brett loved his club, and he had worked hard for years to make it successful. Even now he still conducted just about all of the business himself rather than delegating. At that moment, though, the last thing he wanted was to deal with any of this.
“I trust your judgment,” he told John and meant it. “However you want to deal with it is fine with me.”
The look of surprise on John’s face was unmistakable, but Brett was already walking away.
The staircases that descended to the dancing floor were a crisscross of crowded stairs and catwalks spanning all four walls, but Brett wove his way through them easily, finding the shortest route down.
When he reached the lower level, rather than going straight to Leo and Lisa, Brett approached the DJ at his station against the back wall, leaning in close to tell him, “Give us a few slow ones.”
The DJ touched two fingers to his forehead to show he had understood. Brett started heading toward his lovers. He wasn’t even halfway there when a slower beat began playing along with the current song, its volume slowly rising while the faster one became quieter.
He approached from behind Lisa, and caught Leo’s eyes over her shoulder. Leo’s faint smile and nod were all the encouragement Brett needed to press his body to Lisa’s back, both his arms slipping between her and Leo to encircle her waist. She tensed in their double embrace, but for no more than a second. Relaxing again, she pressed back against Brett as she continued to sway to the music. Brett lowered his head to press his mouth to her neck.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments.
She didn’t react right away, and Brett started to wonder if she had heard him. Her hearing was better than a human’s, but with the music coming at them from every side, he might not have spoken loudly enough. Before he could decide whether to repeat his apology, though, she turned in Leo’s embrace, facing Brett and shaking her head slowly. Her arms easily slipped around Brett’s waist, and when he stepped closer to her so that his body molded to hers, she leaned in to breathe into the shell of his ear, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Brett kissed her temple, t
hen her cheek, before leaning in again so she would hear him over the music. “I upset you. I didn’t mean to.”
“I know you didn’t,” she sighed. “And it’s not you. It’s got nothing to do with you. My issues are my own.”
Brett was surprised enough that he drew back. He had never heard her say anything like that before. Her past wasn’t something she had ever liked talking about.
The song changed while he was looking at her. She returned his look without flinching, but he could tell how uncomfortable she was. Was she regretting having shared this much already? There was so much he wanted to ask and so much he wasn’t sure he was allowed to ask. At least, he didn’t have to make that decision; the music was too loud now to have any kind of conversation without shouting, and this wasn’t exactly the kind of topic he wanted to explore at the top of his lungs.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Leo said, loud enough for both of them to hear.
He didn’t wait for either of them to reply and took hold of Lisa’s hand. Brett took her other hand, and he and Lisa followed Leo through the dancing crowds and to the staircases. They had to walk up in a single file, one behind the other, but they never let go of each other’s hands. Brett didn’t know what it would have taken to make him release Lisa’s hand, especially since her fingers had closed over his and were holding him just as tightly. He had been so afraid to lose her that even this small gesture was reassuring.
When they reached the main level of the club, Leo stopped and brought Lisa’s hand to his mouth to kiss her knuckles.
“Why don’t you two go up?” he suggested, dropping Lisa’s hand and briefly touching her waist instead. “I’ll get us drinks and join you in a minute.”
Lisa’s hold on Brett’s hand tightened a little, and without looking at him, she led the way to the door at the back of the club that led to their private quarters. They both remained silent until the apartment door had closed behind them, shutting out the music and the noise of the club. They finally looked at each other for the first time since the dance floor, and Brett was sad to see how tense Lisa looked.
“Sit down with me?” he asked, and when she nodded, he led her to the sofa, his thumb gently stroking the back of her hand.
He sat first and drew her in, hoping she would sit on his lap, longing for an increased connection. He didn’t protest when she sat next to him with her legs curled under her. She was there, with him, and it was more than he had expected earlier.
“Do you want to tell me?” he asked, trying not to pressure her but unable to fully hide how much he wanted, needed to understand.
Lisa’s answer was flat, almost automatic. “No.”
Before Brett could figure out how they were supposed to move forward from that, she gave him a pained smile as though it were an apology. “But maybe I should,” she continued more gently. She looked down at her left hand and rubbed the inside of her ring finger with her thumb. “I was engaged,” she said quietly. “When I was turned, I mean.” She looked up, but didn’t meet Brett’s eyes. “I was just weeks away from getting married.”
In all the years they had known each other, lived together, she had never given a hint of this, and it took a few seconds before Brett could wrap his mind around the idea of an engaged Lisa. He always had a hard time picturing her as a human, but it was even more difficult to think of her as monogamous. He loved her immensely, and while he didn’t mind sharing her with Leo, there had been times, over the years, when he had been tempted to ask her not to sleep with anyone other than them. He never had, though, not because he knew those affairs meant nothing to her, but rather because he was convinced it would be the fastest way to push her away from him and lose her for good. That was one reason why, even though he had wanted to offer his lovers wedding rings, he hadn’t intended to say the word ‘marriage.’ All he had wanted was to offer a symbol of his love, not chain either of them to him with a bit of shiny metal.
She was quiet for such a long time, staring ahead, her gaze unfocused, that Brett caressed her arm softly to draw her attention back to him. “Lisa?”
She finally looked up at him, her lips curling into the ghost of a smile, and shrugged. “Vamps don’t love,” she drawled, her mouth twisted as though the words were bitter. “That’s the first lesson I was taught. And as proof that I had learned it, I had to… to hunt down my fiancé.”
She hesitated on the word ‘hunt,’ and Brett could easily guess why. What she did every night—going to the club, shimmying on the dance floor, finding willing prey that would give her a throat or wrist along with a few mouthfuls of blood—that was hunting. He had no doubt that her Sire had made her do something different. She had said hunt, but what she really meant was kill.
“I’m sorry,” he offered quietly, derisory condolences for a death that had occurred long before he had even been born.
“I still loved him,” she continued as though she hadn’t heard him. “But I didn’t have a choice.” A sad, resigned smile rose to her lips. “A day-old vamp, under my Sire’s thrall… No, there was no way I could have resisted.”
Brett frowned, confused. His thumb, which had been rubbing small circles on her hip, gradually came to a stop. “If you know that,” he said slowly, “then you can’t blame yourself.”
“I do know that,” she conceded. “It took me a while to understand it, but I finally did. But my fiancé didn’t know I was under thrall.” Her voice was trembling by now, and so quiet it was barely more than a whisper. “He thought it was me attacking him. He kept telling me he loved me while I…”
She trailed off, closing her eyes but not before Brett could see they were full of tears. He caressed her hair, and gently drew her head down to rest on his shoulder. In all the years he had known her, he had never known Lisa to be squeamish about what she was and what she did. She bit and took blood from humans with no apologies for what she was. He had never given much thought to why she had decided to go against her Sire’s wishes and stop killing, but he was beginning to understand why her rebellion had started.
“Every time you say it,” she whispered, “every time you ask me to bite you…”
Brett’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach. “Lisa…” He breathed her name like a caress against her cheek. “I’m so sorry. I never imagined… I won’t ask anymore, I promise. I won’t say—”
“No,” she sighed. “You can say whatever you want. Whatever you need to say. But… I just wanted you to understand why it’s so hard to believe it.”
He caressed her face with his fingertips, a gesture he had done dozens, hundreds of times before. He knew her face as well as he knew his own, knew that light dip beneath each of her cheekbones, and how it always made her smile seem a little wider, a little brighter. She never smiled as warmly for anyone else as she did for him. But she wasn’t smiling now, not even when he stroked the corner of her mouth, trying to draw her lips up.
“I really do love you,” he murmured.
She shook her head, and even if she softened the denial with a faint smile, it still broke Brett’s heart.
“I know you think you do,” she said, a little apologetic. “But at the same time, you only know part of me. And I don’t think you’d like that other part at all if you ever met it.”
“Is that… is that why you wouldn’t take the ring?” he asked, trying to piece it all together.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” she said, and if at first it sounded like she was avoiding the question, Brett realized it was an answer, of sorts. “I never want to hurt you again.”
“Lisa…” Caressing Lisa’s cheek and looking into her eyes, Brett wondered if there was anything he could say to make her see that she was wrong. In any case, he had to try. “I do know all of you,” he said, and put all his conviction into his words. He had rarely been more certain of anything in his life. “That other part you’re talking about, it’s gone. It was never real. It was your Sire making you do what he wanted. But you proved you were stronger than him. You prove
d you’re your own person, and no one’s puppet. You proved it twice. And the woman who left her Sire and stopped killing? The woman who chose me and Leo over him? That’s the woman I love.”
As he finished, he could see something shining in her eyes, like the beginning of understanding. He had tried to tell her this, or variations of it before, but she had never listened, always interrupting him before he was done, turning it all into a joke, or requesting sternly that they never talk about her Sire again. He wondered if he had gotten through to her this time, if she finally understood that he meant this.
She leaned forward for a kiss that had never been so tender, her arms sliding easily around him. He pulled her onto his lap and held her closer, deepening the kiss as tears trickled down her cheeks. Lifting his mouth from hers, he kissed her tears away and was still caressing her cheeks with his lips when the front door opened and Leo walked in.
Leo stopped two feet from the sofa, and the look of shock on his face was all too clear, and all too understandable. Lisa had stopped crying, but when she turned her face away, it was obvious that she was wiping the tears off her cheeks. Brett wondered if Leo had ever seen her cry before; Brett never had.
Hoping to forestall Leo’s questions, Brett tried to put as much teasing as he could in his voice when he told Leo, “I was beginning to think you decided to pick up an extra shift at the bar.”
“Well, I did,” Leo said, raising both his hands and showing the three tall champagne flutes he held by their stems in one hand and the bottle in the other. “But just for us. And did you know we’re getting low on champagne?”
