“You left him with them? With his people, then?”
“Yes. He wasn’t mine to keep.”
Vlad nodded, seeming satisfied with the news. “Your mate?”
Full of questions, Val thought. Struggling to adapt. But he said, “Mia’s wonderful.” Because she was that, too, even if she doubted her own future.
“And your Familiars?”
“Fretting over me like parents. Especially the baron.” Val smiled, remembering Fulk’s face tonight, the way he’d leaned into touch. “We’re doing well, Vlad.”
“Good.” His gaze went to the fire, the strong lines of brow, nose, and chin limned in red-orange. A stranger would have thought him frowning; sullen. But he’d been this stern-faced as a boy, in Val’s earliest memories. He looked thoughtful, now.
“And how are you, brother?” Val asked, quietly.
“I’m putting together a mission. Most of the foot soldiers here are hopeless, but perhaps with–”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Vlad turned toward him, expression touched with surprise. “I’m well.” When Val continued to stare at him, he said, “It’s vital that I find Romulus, that I kill him and any of his foul offspring.”
Oh, Vlad. He’d gone to sleep bent on one revenge quest, and awakened nearly six centuries later to pick another right up, without missing a beat. “What will you do after?” Val asked.
Vlad’s brow furrowed. “What does it matter? I’ll succeed or die trying.”
Val shoved down the immediate swell of panic that boiled up in the pit of his stomach. He attempted a smile. “Why is everything always so bleak with you? Always life or death. You might try a little optimism for once.”
Vlad snorted. “I’m optimistic that I’ll kill him or die trying.”
“Vlad,” Val breathed, patience wearing thin. “Couldn’t you humor me at least a little?”
“What good would it do?” he asked, genuinely curious.
To be so intelligent, he was an absolute idiot when it came to matters of the heart. “Because I don’t like to think about you being dead, you fool,” Val said, chuckling despite himself.
“Oh.” Vlad’s brow knitted and smoothed, knitted and smoothed. “Well. I can’t promise anything like that.” Coming from him, it sounded almost like an apology. He cleared his throat. “Where are you staying?” and there was the stern older brother again, blustering his way through his disapproval.
It was, in all honesty, a comfort. Familiar waters.
“In a hotel,” Val said, sinking back in his chair. “And let me tell you, modern hotels are marvelous. A great improvement over the old medieval inns of our day…”
They talked for another half hour or so, Val expanding upon the wonders of New York and all its modern conveniences, and Vlad listened, something like fondness plucking at the corners of his mouth every so often. Val wasn’t conscious of leaving; didn’t return to his body. But he must have drifted away, because the next he knew, he was opening his eyes to his hotel room, a dim strip of light filtering in through the parted curtains, and Mia’s face was right in front of his on the pillow, relaxed and innocent with sleep.
She was depending on him: to guide her into immortality, to help her understand all her new senses and instincts. It felt like a huge task, one he’d failed at so far.
He took a deep breath, snuggled in closer, and closed his eyes. A few more hours of real sleep, and he’d try to start over again – start better – in the morning.
35
Alexei retracted his fangs and passed his tongue over the puncture wounds a few times, clotting the blood flow, swallowing the last drops down. A wolf’s blood would have left him feeling stronger, rejuvenated after all their wild adventuring lately – he had felt the way even the simplest bruises had bled and bled beneath his skin, reluctant to heal. Stress made it worse. Now, with a belly full of human blood – his blood humming and crackling like he’d snorted a line of cocaine – he could feel the bleeds receding; the fever leaving his limbs. It wasn’t as effective as wolf, no, but human blood was world’s better than the butcher’s shop leftovers he was forced to microwave and swallow down at Lanny’s place.
The woman he’d fed from, compelled enough to think nothing of offering her throat to his fangs, sat up with a drowsy smile, gaze heavy-lidded, her mascara smudged. She passed a hand down his chest, flirting with the hem of his shirt, just above the obvious bulge in his jeans. He was hard, excited, from feeding, but tonight it felt like a simple chemical reaction, aimless, and not anything he wanted to pursue.
“Hmm,” she hummed tracing a nail around the button of his jeans, and then palming his erection. “Maybe we ought to do something about that. No sense letting everyone else have all the fun.”
Earlier, Dante had made a few phone calls, and four young, beautiful women had shown up, all of them willing and eager. Jamie had gone red-faced, and stammering, and tried to beg off on participating, indignant and, really, just exhausting. When Alexei had taken this woman back to the bedroom, he’d heard Dante laughing, and the others teasing Jamie, and from the sound of things, he’d finally stopped protesting and started enjoying himself.
Good, Alexei thought a little savagely. He needs to get over himself.
Uncharitable thoughts – just like all his thoughts, lately.
What the hell was wrong with him?
When the woman reached for his zipper, he stopped her, gently, and sat up. “Sorry,” he said. “Guess I’m just not feeling it tonight.”
She made an indignant sound, and followed him when he went out of the room and out into the main area of the apartment.
In the living room, the coffee table had been pushed aside, and Jamie lay on his back on the rug, shirtless, his jeans open. One woman sat astride his hips, riding him with languid rolls of her hips, and another knelt at his head, her wrist in his mouth as he fed. His chest heaved, and his spine lifted as he was wracked with sensation, a scene Alexei knew intimately, from experience. Knew the exact kind of ecstasy that came from feeding and fucking at the same time.
Now, though, it held no attraction. “Go hang out with them,” he told the woman behind him, giving her a little push and a bit of compulsion, and headed for the kitchen.
Dante sat on the sofa with the other woman, a redhead in a black mini dress, the two of them kissing lazily while Dante’s hand played down the front of her dress. He lifted his head when Alexei went past, brows lifted. “You fed?” Even breathless and pink-lipped, he sounded far too much like a caretaker checking up on his charge.
“Yes,” Alexei growled, and went to stare vacantly into the fridge.
Dante joined him a moment later, arms folded, leaning up
against the counter. He’d smoothed his hair back and wiped his mouth. “She wasn’t to your taste?” he asked.
“She was fine.” Alexei finally selected a water bottle and let the door fall shut. The cool water was delicious after the salty heat of blood, and he drained half of it in a few long swallows before he made eye contact with Dante.
“What about this, then?” He pressed his palm to the bulge in Alexei’s jeans.
Alexei swatted him away and turned his back on him. Went to stand in front of the cooktop on the island, and drink his water, and stare mindlessly at the scene unfolding on the rug. Jamie had all four women all to himself, now, and clearly had no idea what to do with that many of them, eyes glazed, drunk on blood and pleasure.
Alexei knew a distant urge to smirk. A thought of good for him. But there was a veil between those sentiments, and what he currently felt – aggravation-touched numbness.
Dante gave him a moment’s peace, and then his bare feet shifted over the floor tiles, and his hands landed lightly on Alexei’s biceps. Alexei tensed, but Dante pressed in close behind him, undeterred. He was taller than Alexei, his breath rustling the hair at the back of his head, though leaner.
“What’s got you so preoccupied?” Dante asked, low, in the Americanized pu
rr that he used on the women and men he talked into his bed. It was a ruse, a fake persona, and Alexei didn’t want to hear it right now; a spike of irritation that threatened to pierce the numbness.
“Don’t play stupid,” he snapped. “Basil.”
He heard a quick intake of breath behind him, and Dante stiffened a fraction. But then he exhaled, and his hands slid down Alexei’s arms and moved to his hips, fingertips digging in through denim. “Is that what you want, then?” Still low, and full of promise, but his true accent, crisp and cultured.
The sound of it sent an unwanted shiver down Alexei’s back.
“Ah,” Dante said, shifting in closer, pressing his hips into Alexei’s backside. “Is it the accent you want?” His hands migrated forward a fraction, fingers stretching out. “Or the honesty?”
Alexei snorted, and didn’t answer. His hand tightened on the water bottle until it crackled, though, so he set it down on the counter.
“Here’s what I think,” Dante continued, dropping his head to nose at Alexei’s ear, and the tender skin behind it. Skimming his lips in the faintest pass along the side of his throat, where he could of course feel and hear the quickening throb of Alexei’s pulse. “I think you’ve gotten bored with charades. I think you want something real.”
He shivered again. The tone and the touching were Dante the Playboy, but the voice, and the insight, were all Basil, and he didn’t know what to think about that.
(A lie. His cock knew what to think about it, straining now against his fly, his adrenaline surging.)
“I think,” Dante said, “that you’re very lonely, and very sad, and you want to feel something honest.” A hand slid forward, down, covering his cock, and squeezing in just the right way.
Alexei’s mouth opened on an unbidden gasp, and he felt Dante press a smile to his throat.
Honesty. Had he ever had that?
As a boy, yes. His mother’s honest love; his father’s honest doting; his sisters’ honest teasing and kindness.
But there’d been nothing honest about government. About Grisha. About the revolution, and the regime that had replaced his father’s own flawed rule; nothing honest about the life he’d lived in the intervening century. Every time he started to feel something like affection for anyone, every time he thought it might be possible to build himself another family, it all crumbled.
He’d hoped, with Sasha, and Nikita, and their pack, around people unimpressed by him, who treated him like a person, and not like a prince or a pawn, that he might have finally, finally found a place to belong. A pack to which to contribute. A new family.
But then he’d met Gustav, and been reminded of Nikita’s sins, and he just…he couldn’t decide…he…
“You’re thinking too much,” Dante chided gently, and opened his jeans. “Just relax, and let me take care of you.”
Yes. Yes, that sounded wonderful, to be taken care of.
He closed his eyes and gave up the last of his forced tension. Tipped his head back against Dante’s shoulder as he touched him; drew him out of his jeans and stroked him, firm and steady, his grip expert. Caring, even. Loving, he lied to himself. He wanted honesty, yes, but for a little while, it would be so nice to allow himself a little lie, to cling to the idea that Dante – Basil – really cared.
Afterward, when he went boneless, Dante spun him gently around, let him sag back against the counter, and cupped his face with his clean hand, kissed him with leisurely thoroughness, a lush play of lips and tongues that Alexei chased with a little whine when Dante pulled back.
He looked lovely in the low light, his cheeks flushed, his hair disarrayed. His sharp features were becoming familiar, becoming alluring in a way wholly disconnected from the swaggering appeal he tried to project out in public. A loveliness that was purely his, purely a trick of bone structure and a warmth in his gaze. Honest.
That word again.
Alexei brought shaking hands to his shoulders, and clung to him, too wrung-out to feel shameless. “What am I going to do?” he asked. Because he had to do something, he realized now, with startling clarity. He’d been rocking along, letting himself be tugged in two directions, bowing to Nikita’s leadership, and being swayed by Gustav’s suavity and chatter. His father had been the Tsar of all Russias, and he still played the part of the terrified, bullet-riddled boy who’d crawled out of a mucky hole in the Siberian soil.
Dante thumbed at his chin, his smile fond. “I don’t know, love. But I think you must do something.”
~*~
The women had gone, and Jamie looked like he might be in some sort of wakeful coma. Dante had given him a blanket, and he’d wrapped it around himself and settled back into a chair. His eyes were open, staring sightless into the middle distance, his face totally slack. His hair stuck up ridiculously, there was lipstick smeared all over his throat, and a dab of dried blood in the corner of his mouth. Every few seconds, he’d lift the bottle of water Dante had given him and take a mechanical swallow.
“I think you broke him,” Alexei remarked, from his position sprawled across the sofa, his head in Dante’s lap.
Dante chuckled and ran his fingers through Alexei’s hair. “Not me, that would be our lovely lady friends.” He made a thoughtful sound. “Perhaps four was too many at one time. They’re a rather…experienced lot.”
“You weren’t a virgin, were you?” Alexei asked, raising his voice. “Jamie!”
“What? Oh, um.” He blinked a few times, shook his head, and a fraction of life came into his expression. “No, um. I wasn’t.” He blushed; as much blood as he’d ingested, it was a miracle he wasn’t blushing constantly. “I wasn’t. But.”
But fumbling in your dorm room was very different from what had happened tonight.
His blush deepened, and he brought his free hand up to press to his forehead with a groan. “Shit. Did that really happen?”
“Yes,” Dante said, gleeful, “and it was quite the show. Bravo, old chap.”
He groaned again, louder, cheeks tomato red. “God, I can’t believe I…and in front of you guys…damn it, I’m a–”
“Nope,” Dante said, tutting. “We don’t disparage ladies that way.”
“I’m disparaging myself.”
“We don’t do that, either. You’ve done nothing wrong. Pleasure isn’t wrong.”
Jamie gapped his fingers and peered at them between them, swallowing, expression miserable. “I didn’t mean to get so carried away,” he said in a small voice.
“You didn’t mean to enjoy yourself, you mean? That’s all it was: innocent fun. You didn’t hurt any of them, didn’t take too much blood. They’re on their way home satisfied, happy, and none the wiser of the existence of vampires. There’s no need to self-flagellate like your captain,” Dante said breezily.
Didn’t take too much blood. With a startled jolt, Alexei realized that he hadn’t taken too much, either. His greatest vice, the sin that had haunted his entire immortal lifespan, was his tendency to overindulge. To leave those he fed from nearly dead with blood loss. But tonight, all four women had been smiling and laughing as they left, with water and protein bars from Dante’s pantry. None had swooned; none had needed to be revived, or, as he’d done too often, turned.
He rolled his head, so he stared up at Dante, and Dante’s brows went up.
“What is it?” His fingers kept scratching along Alexei’s scalp, easy and affectionate.
“I didn’t drink too much,” Alexei said, unable to keep the wonder from his voice.
Dante grinned at him. “No, you certainly didn’t.”
He hadn’t a few days ago, either. He hadn’t been scolded, nor belittled, nor threatened, but somehow, Dante had seen him through two human feedings, and neither had ended in disaster.
Something bright and warm unfurled in Alexei’s chest, and it took him a moment to recognize the emotion as pride. And hope, too. Hope that he could be stronger than he had been. That he could control himself.
He sat up and headed
for the front door, the peg there where his jacket hung.
“Something wrong?” Dante called after him.
“No. But I need to make a phone call.”
~*~
Nikita was usually a restless sleeper, waking often, plagued by nightmares. But after the stress of the last few days – capped off by the trauma of seeing Kolya – he dropped into a deep, dreamless sleep, with Sasha’s fingers still coming through his hair. He woke in the gray hush just before dawn, opening his eyes to find that he’d slept through Sasha repositioning them. He was on his side, Sasha too, facing one another, snuggled up together, touching, arms and legs intertwined. Sasha’s face was peaceful in sleep, his mouth slack, and soft, and pink in the scant light, lashes long shadows on his cheeks.
Nikita allowed himself to stare; to drink in the sight of him, nose full of his scent, feeling the slow, steady thump of his heart against his own arm. Guilt threatened, his constant companion, but he shoved it ruthlessly away. Let Val’s words from last night fill his mind instead; let himself think about love, its perfect simplicity, its forgiveness and generosity, and the way it was the strongest thing he’d ever felt – stronger than guilt, stronger than fear, or worry, or hate.
He sighed, and Sasha’s eyes fluttered open, hazy with sleep.
“Are you okay?” he asked, right off, voice drowsy.
Out in the living room, he heard the slow, careful slide of the window going up, and realized what had awakened him: Kolya stirring.
He leaned forward, and kissed Sasha on the forehead. “Go back to sleep, baby. I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Another kiss. “I’m going to see Kolya.” He disentangled them carefully, and Sasha snuggled into the warm spot he’d left behind, sighing, already drifting off again.
He tugged on sweatpants, grabbed his smokes and lighter, and went out into the other room.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 44
