Lynsay Sands - [Argeneau Family 15]

by One Lucky Vampire

  Dante pursed his lips and then said, “Give her twenty minutes and then take her coffee.”

  “And jump her bones,” Tomasso added.

  “What?” Jake asked on a half laugh of disbelief.

  Dante shrugged. “You’ve rocked her world.”

  “Not in the good way,” Tomasso added, in case he’d misunderstood.

  “Nicole’s spinning right now,” Dante added.

  “You need to anchor her,” Tomasso said.

  Jake arched one eyebrow and said, “You want me to anchor her with my cock? Seriously? We barely know each other.”

  “Sometimes it’s incredibly obvious you were born in the Leave It to Beaver era,” Dante said dryly.

  Jake stiffened and scowled. “Excuse me, you two are older than I am.”

  “Yeah, but we’re Italian,” Dante said with a shrug.

  “And that means what?” Jake asked dryly.

  “The Brits are known for bad food, the French for good food, and the Italians for being the best lovers,” Dante explained.

  Jake gave a disbelieving laugh. “You’re delusional.”

  “Casanova.” Tomasso rumbled, and then added, “Enough said.”

  “One man does not—Ah hell, never mind,” he muttered standing up. “I’m going downstairs … to talk to Nicole.”

  “I’m telling you, sex is the way to go,” Dante assured him as he headed for the doorway. “It will bond her to you.”

  Tomasso added. “One taste of life-mate sex and she’ll be hooked like a heroin addict.”

  Jake halted in the door and turned back. “Life-mate sex?”

  Dante raised his eyebrows. “No one’s told you about life mates?”

  “Well, I know about life mates. Can’t read ’em, can’t control ’em, a perfect mate.”

  “And crazy, blow your mind, so intense it leaves you unconscious, sex,” Tomasso added.

  “It leaves you unconscious?” Jake asked with a frown.

  “And blows your mind,” Tommaso repeated.

  Jake narrowed his gaze on the pair. “You’re pulling my leg, right?”

  The twins merely shook their heads solemnly.

  “Hmm,” he said dubiously, but then merely turned away and headed for the stairs. He wasn’t sure he believed Dante and Tomasso. After all, surely someone would have mentioned that to him prior to this?

  Even as he mentally asked himself that question, Jake realized how ridiculous it was. No one would have told him that before he was turned. It wouldn’t have meant anything to him as a mortal. As for after the turn, he hadn’t given them much of a chance to tell him anything then. Anytime his mother had tried to point out the benefits of being an immortal to him, he’d shut her down. His brother, Neil, hadn’t tried to coddle or convince him his being turned was a good thing. He’d simply stood by him, silent and supportive, but Jake hadn’t wanted support. He’d wanted to be mortal again … a real boy, just like Pinocchio. But he wasn’t Pinocchio anymore. He wasn’t exactly happy to be immortal, but he was grateful to be alive. Vincent’s turning him had saved him the first time, and being immortal had saved him from the poisoned hot tub … and now he might have a life mate.

  Jake considered that without the bitterness of being an immortal that had plagued him on first realizing he couldn’t read or control Nicole. He didn’t really recall his birth father. The only father he recalled was Roberto, and his memories of his childhood were very happy ones filled with love. Love between his mother and Roberto, and the love they’d showered on him and Neil. He supposed the reason he’d reached fifty-one years as a mortal without marrying and having children of his own was because no relationship he’d ever had, had ever come close to the love, friendship, and joy that his mother and Roberto had shared … and he’d wanted that. Now, he might be able to have it.

  Jake knew how lucky that made him. He also knew he was extremely lucky to find it so soon after being turned. Most immortals waited centuries, even millennia to find a life mate. The twins were over a hundred years old, his cousin Christian was over five centuries, and while Marguerite had found Julius centuries ago, they were only reunited and able to enjoy each other now, and Marguerite was over seven hundred years old. His finding a life mate so young was a gift, and it was one he didn’t want to mess up.

  Eleven

  Jake paused outside the studio’s French doors and peered through the window. He wasn’t surprised to see that Nicole was not working. He’d expected the information she’d been given would disrupt her ability to concentrate. He was concerned though to find her simply standing in the middle of her studio, staring at her uncovered paintings. He suspected she wasn’t really seeing the portraits. Her shoulders were hunched and Jake was quite sure he knew exactly how she was feeling. It was the same way he’d felt when he was eighteen and had been told about immortals. Betrayed, confused, as if the world wasn’t the place he’d thought it was.

  Jake didn’t knock, but simply opened the door. Nicole didn’t turn, but he could tell by the way she stiffened that she knew he was there.

  “I came to see if you were all right,” he said quietly. “I know this is a lot to take in.”

  She gave a little snort and Jake smiled wryly.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s an understatement, huh? Believe me, I know. Been there, done that, and have a whole wardrobe full of T-shirts to prove it,” he said quietly.

  “You said you were turned when you were attacked?” Nicole asked quietly.

  Jake nodded, and then realized she couldn’t see him so cleared his throat and said, “Yes.”

  “When was that?”

  “Seven years ago, give or take six months,” he answered and wondered what she was thinking when she nodded. He wished he could see her face, but she still had her back to him.

  “Was that the health crisis that made you run away?”

  Jake sighed and pushed the door closed. He walked over to the nearest of the half dozen swiveling stools she had in the room and sat on it, before saying, “Yes, but it was just the last straw of many.”

  Nicole was silent for a minute and then asked, “What was the first straw?”

  The question surprised him and he took a moment before saying, “The first one was more of a tree than a straw.”

  “Which was?” she prompted.

  “It was when I was eighteen and my mother and stepfather sat me down and told me about immortals and that they, my brother, and every Notte I had ever met, which was all the family I knew, belonged to that select party.”

  “All the family you knew?” Nicole asked, turning to peer at him curiously. “The Nottes are your stepfather’s family. What about your mother and father’s family?”

  “My mother had a brother, sister, and parents, and my father had two brothers and parents. Apparently there were cousins and grandparents too, on both sides.”

  “But you don’t know them?” she asked.

  Jake shook his head. “They didn’t approve of my parents’ marriage. On my mother’s side it was because they were Jewish and my father was Catholic. On my father’s side it was a combination of that and the fact that as far as they were concerned my mother came from the wrong side of the tracks. My father’s family had money, my mother’s didn’t. Dad’s parents expected him to marry a nice girl from a comparatively rich, Catholic family, not a poor Jewish girl whose family didn’t even own their own home. So …” He shrugged. “After Dad died, Mom was pretty much on her own with me.”

  Jake paused briefly, but when she didn’t comment, he said, “I guess she was struggling something fierce when she met Roberto, working two jobs to try to support us and taking night courses at university in the hopes of getting a better job, to better support us. I gather she had no time for romance and made Roberto work hard to win her.”

  “He was immortal?”

  Jake nodded. “And he turned her.”

  “But not you?” Nicole asked with a frown.

  “I was a child,” Jake said with a s
hrug. “I gather they frown on turning children.”

  “But when they told you at eighteen, why didn’t she turn you then?” she asked.

  “I gather that was the plan,” Jake admitted with a grimace, and then explained, “They told me on my eighteenth birthday. My mother thought it would be a grand gift to tell me all about immortals, and then offer to use her one turn to turn me into one.”

  “But she didn’t,” Nicole said with certainty and then arched an eyebrow and asked, “You wouldn’t let her?”

  Jake shifted uncomfortably, and then sighed and said, “You have to understand, I was a horror buff. I watched every monster movie ever made. They scared the crap out of me and I slept with a nightlight until I was twelve, but I had to watch them. I was crazy for horrors.” He shook his head slightly at the memory. He’d lost his taste for horror since then, but he’d been addicted to them then and that hadn’t really helped the situation. “Back when I was a kid, they didn’t have your Twilights and True Bloods. In every movie where vampires made an appearance, the vampire was the bad guy and the Van Helsing types were the good guys running around staking them and ridding the world of their evil.”

  Jake grimaced. “So, essentially, on my eighteenth birthday, my mother told me that not only was my stepfather and his entire clan a bunch of bloodsucking fiends, but that she’d allowed him to turn her into one, and that the half brother I adored and looked out for was one too … and I’d been living with them all, unsuspecting all that time.”

  “Seriously?” Nicole asked with suspicion. “Before they told you what they were, you didn’t have a clue?”

  “They made sure I didn’t,” Jake said quietly. “I suspect they used some mind control to keep me unaware while they fed, or fudged my memory a bit here and there, not erasing anything, but adding things here or there to explain inconsistencies.” He shrugged. “I didn’t have a clue before then that I lived with what I thought were monsters.”

  “And you didn’t agree to the change at that point,” Nicole said quietly.

  It wasn’t a question, but he treated it as one. “No. I was shocked, horrified, repulsed. They were all suddenly monsters to me, and I didn’t want to be a monster too.”

  “It must have been hard for you,” Nicole said quietly, moving to sit on the stool next to his.

  Jake hesitated and then swung the seat slightly toward her and said judiciously, “Probably no harder than it is now for you.”

  Nicole smiled wryly, but shook her head. Swinging her stool to the side and back with one foot, she said, “It’s a bit of a shock for me to find out such things exist. But for you …” She frowned and stopped swiveling to peer at him solemnly. “It was your family. You must have felt—I don’t know, alone?”

  Jake nodded. He had felt alone. He’d also felt betrayed, abandoned, lost. “I guess at that point I felt like I was just finding out that I’d really been orphaned at four and had been living in a fantasy world all the years since Roberto came into our lives. In truth, I suppose I ran away emotionally that day, and my actual leaving seven years ago was just me physically following up on what happened emotionally years earlier.”

  “Why didn’t you run away back then, at eighteen?” she asked curiously. “I mean if you felt they were monsters …”

  “My brother,” Jake said quietly. “I was angry at my mother for letting Roberto turn her, but I was close to my little brother, Neil, and it wasn’t his fault he was born immortal. Besides, logically, after she explained everything, I understood that they weren’t monsters.”

  “But there was still a part of your mind that thought of them as monsters,” Nicole guessed.

  Jake nodded. “Eighteen years of training via horror movies can’t be eradicated that easily.”

  “And then you were turned to save your life?” Nicole commented.

  “Yes.” Jake’s mouth twisted at the memory. “My boss, Vincent Argeneau, who also happens to be Marguerite’s nephew, was being plagued by someone who was trying to ruin his life. They attacked me, and stabbed me just to the side of the heart. When Vincent found me I was dying and he turned me to save my life. I woke up an immortal … and didn’t handle it well.”

  “Why?” Nicole asked quietly. “Surely it’s better to be an immortal than to be dead?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Jake said with dry amusement, and then glanced down. After a moment, he sighed and admitted, “I was fifty-one years old, miserable, and bitter.” He smiled wryly and lifted his head again, meeting her gaze. She was silent, waiting, wanting to understand, so he had to explain. “I was in a pretty dark place at that time. I’d had a happy childhood, but after finding out about everything, it felt like that childhood had all been a house of mirrors. After that I went through life feeling like an orphan. On top of that, nothing had turned out as I’d intended. I had no wife or kids, no one but my family and they were monsters as far as I was concerned. By the time I was attacked, I felt alone and tired and, frankly, I guess I was at a place where I was just killing time and waiting for the end … and then I got attacked. I remember lying there on the office floor, thinking, this is it, the end of my story. No more loneliness, no more disappointment, no more betrayal … and, instead, I woke up a vampire.”

  “You keep saying vampire, but you told me you guys aren’t vampires,” Nicole pointed out quietly.

  “Yeah,” Jake smiled faintly. “But I’ve been thinking of them as vampires so long …” He shrugged. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

  Nicole was silent for a minute, and then tilted her head to peer at him, a frown growing on her face. “Fifty-one?”

  Jake smiled wryly. “When I was turned yes. I’m fifty-eight now.”

  “You do not look fifty-eight,” she said firmly and then asked, “Is that something to do with the nanos?”

  He nodded. “They were programmed to keep their host at their peak condition. I don’t think the developers intended that to include age, but the nanos are basically fancy, hybrid computers, and computers are pretty literal. Every immortal looks somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.”

  Nicole considered that and then said, “So Marguerite … ?”

  “I’m not sure of her exact age, but I know it’s over seven hundred.”

  “Oh cripes.” Nicole sagged on her stool.

  Jake eyed her worriedly, but waited, and then she suddenly straightened and peered at him accusingly.

  “You said she wasn’t even in her forties.”

  “I said she wasn’t in her thirties,” he corrected. “And she isn’t. I haven’t lied to you about anything, Nicole. I knew almost from the start that we were life mates and didn’t want to lie.” Jake grimaced and added, “I have kind of a thing about lying anyway … ever since finding out I was lied to for so long while growing up …” He shrugged.

  Nicole was silent for a few more minutes, and then sat up straight again and asked, “So what is this life-mate business anyway?”

  “Well …” Jake paused and swallowed. This was the tricky part, or perhaps it was just the most important part so felt tricky. If she didn’t accept that they were life mates, and agree to be his, or at least agree to consider it, then it could very well be decided that she should have her memory wiped and be left as ignorant of their existence as she’d been before he’d explained things. It would be necessary to ensure the safety of their kind. But if that happened, he wouldn’t be allowed to be around her again. None of them could, in case their presence made the memories return.

  It was an odd thing. Jake felt odd and somewhat confused. While he knew that she was a life mate, or could be if she agreed, he hadn’t really known her long. Jake liked Nicole, or at least he liked everything he knew about her so far. He also found her attractive. But he wasn’t experiencing any mad, passionate desire to have her or anything, and he was wondering about this life-mate business himself. Shouldn’t he feel more? Want her more? Shouldn’t his every waking thought be about her?

  That l
ast question made him pause, because Jake suddenly realized that his every waking thought had included her in one form or another since meeting her. Still, he supposed he’d expected more.

  “Jake?” Nicole prodded.

  “Oh, sorry,” he murmured, and then blew his breath out and tried to gather his thoughts to answer her question. Finally, he said, “Well, I mentioned that the nanos didn’t just give immortals fangs, but other skills to help with survival.”

  “You said mind reading and mind control,” she recalled and didn’t look pleased. He understood that. He hadn’t been too pleased himself to know that his mother and everyone else could read his private thoughts. It had been pretty inhibiting to an eighteen-year-old full of raging hormones. Made aware that they might all be reading his thoughts, Jake had suddenly become aware that sex played a huge role in most of his thoughts at that age. And forget about masturbation in the same house with them. Dear God, what if they all knew? Or read it in his head in the morning? Even thinking about that now made him shudder.

  “It’s not just mind reading and control,” he said when Nicole shifted restlessly on her stool. “We’re faster, stronger, have better hearing, sight, night vision, et cetera.”

  “Okay,” she said patiently.

  “But, the mind reading, that isn’t just of mortals. We can read each other’s minds too. Usually it’s only older immortals able to read younger ones, but it can go the other way too if the older immortal is distracted or not blocking their thoughts,” Jake explained. “So, it means when we’re around each other we have to constantly guard our thoughts, and of course mortals can’t really guard their thoughts from us. It can make relationships tricky.”

  “I would think so,” Nicole said dryly.

  Jake nodded, but added, “Any relationship. I mean, you can’t imagine what it’s like to be eighteen and know your mother can read your thoughts.”

  “I think I know,” she said grimly. “Perhaps not what it’s like to have a mother reading your thoughts or control you, but if you, Dante and Tomasso can read and control me—”

  “I can’t,” Jake interrupted.