“Regardless,” Bobby said, “Kaipo died almost six years ago and he never got married or had any children. I’m a bit confused on your meaning.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Imogen said. “I was told he had three daughters, at least one of them a suitable age for this contract. I was told by a very reliable source.”
“I am sorry to tell you this, and I mean no disrespect, but your reliable source was wrong.” Bobby rubbed the back of his head. “I love my nieces, but they’re just run of the mill, normal one-eighth-blood dracons.”
“Even the one who is in a contract with the Wyvern Rex?” Imogen articulated her words slowly. “Robert, did you really think that I would not be informed about a contract between your family and the Wyvern Rex?”
“We hoped.” Bobby smiled. “Mr. Manderson vacationed here, and he took a liking to my niece.” He shrugged. “She’s spunky and cute. We don’t expect the contract to last much longer now that he’s returned to New Anglo. Actually, we were hoping the whole thing would blow over before it drew too much attention. We’d have said no, but you can’t really say no to your monarch.” He grinned a ‘you know what I mean’ grin, and looked around the room.
“Wyvern Manderson is not the only monarch it is hard to say no to,” Imogen said. “I think you’ll find I can be very persuasive.”
The threat silenced my uncle and lingered in the air.
“The last thing we want is to be the battlefield for a power struggle between you and the Rex. Honestly, I doubt he’d even care if the contract between him and my niece dissolved—”
“You keep saying ‘my niece’, ‘my niece’. Why don’t we just use her name? Dakota,” Imogen said.
Bobby cleared his throat, his shoulders bunched in the first sign of tension. “What I was saying was… the Rex probably wouldn’t care if the contract dissolved. We expect it to happen any day now. He’s made it perfectly clear that he only kept it for so long out of respect for my father. I’m sure it wouldn’t look good to go after a girl the Rex has already lost interest in pursuing. Also, her father was my brother Lorien, I’m not sure if you’ve ever met him.” Bobby tapped his finger on his knee in a rhythm, tap, tap, hold, repeated three times.
Abort.
Chapter Six
Abort.
A hot flash of fear roared through me and before I could control my reaction, my whole body tensed.
The arm that had been wrapped tightly around me moved, Harrison’s hand letting go of mine and I felt his thumb start to make slow circles on my back. He found a knot in my muscle and my back tingled as he worked on it. I might be misjudging the situation; I had recently proven myself a pretty bad judge of character, but I really felt that Harrison was trying to comfort me.
A glance up at him told me that though his attention was on his sister, his quick glances confirmed he was very aware of me.
I knew Bobby wouldn’t take Lorelei out until I confirmed that I’d retrieved my phone from the wait-staff boat and I was safely on my way to shore. Unfortunately, our previous exit strategy did not account for me being tucked in Harrison’s arm.
Obviously threatening him to get out of there was no longer an option. I closed my eyes, knowing there was only one real course of action I could take to get me out of this room and in a position to escape the boat.
As Harrison was so much taller than me, I had to lift my butt off the seat and stretch until my mouth was directly beside his ear. I waited for a second, trying to gauge his reaction to me moving so close to him. He’d tolerated my touch earlier, but I had not seen any of the other servers trying to get attention from the dracons.
Harrison turned his head, his cheek brushing mine.
I released a small hitched breath. “I thought I would be able to do this, but I’m scared,” I whispered in a very low voice, “I mean… I want you to bite me, but not in front of all these people.”
He pulled his head back to look at me. He examined my face carefully, his expression showing nothing. For a minute, I was sure he didn’t buy it, but then his hand squeezed my shoulder. He turned to his sister and said in a low voice, “Would you mind if I excused myself for a short while? I would like to eat in private.”
Imogen turned to him, looking exasperated. She sighed. “Fine, but not for too long.” She reached over and patted his hand. “I’d like you to be here if I need you to agree to any terms.”
Obviously she wasn’t giving up on the whole me and her brother in a contract idea, if she only realized he literally had me in his arms. Harrison somewhat lifted me to my feet, then stood beside me. With a proprietary hand on my back, he led me through the room.
Sophie stood almost directly in my path as we passed the end of the couch. Follow, I tried to tell her with my eyes.
She must have understood because she stepped out of our path and toward Sarah, who looked equally ready to pounce. I did not have to fake my sigh of relief as we passed from the crimson room. I glanced around the moment we stepped through the door, hoping that that same dracon would be at the door to grab Harrison’s attention, but he wasn’t there. As we walked through the VIP lounge, the likelihood that Harrison would get distracted long enough for me to make my escape continued to lessen.
I had no idea where he would take me so we could be alone. I was certain however, that if he got me alone, he’d expect to feed on me.
It was possible that my dampener charm would make me taste like a human, but it was just as likely that the moment Harrison bit me, the jig would be up.
It was also pretty obvious to me that Bobby aborted the mission because he didn’t want me and Lorelei to reveal our powers to Imogen. If I had to fight Harrison off, I’d have to do it the old fashioned way—by pulling out my gun.
At the final doorway, I turned and looked back as we stepped through, but Sophie and Sarah weren’t following. Stopping in front of the elevators, I turned to Harrison. Though his hand stayed firmly on my back, his gaze actively examined our surroundings.
“Did anyone come in or out of the VIP area?” Harrison asked the vampire-dracon who had taken his place as guard.
“No one, sir,” the guard said, promptly. When I glanced at him, it was obvious that he looked almost identical to the group of half-dragons from the couch. I could not see any power wreathing him, aside from his other-worldly beauty. With my dampener on I perceived him just as a vampire.
“Make sure no one else does before I return. I’m not sure how long I’ll be, so have the host seat whoever comes downstairs and refund them if you have to,” Harrison said. “Also, please don’t let anyone into the elevator to the roof.
The guard nodded. “I understand, sir.”
The elevator on the end dinged, then opened. Leading me into the elevator car, Harrison flashed a smile at me. I didn’t see fangs. I hadn’t seen them on Imogen or her other brothers either.
I wondered if it would hurt to be bitten. I’d actually never even considered letting a vampire bite me in my life. I knew that celebrity dracons sometimes had bites, usually under headlines like, ‘Living the Party Lifestyle in Vangolas’. But the idea of letting fangs sink into my neck for some sort of thrill had never appealed to me. It was strange to know that both Sarah and Sophie had been bitten before. From the sound of it, Sophie might have had a whole relationship with a vampire.
Harrison pressed the button labeled ‘roof’ and we started moving up. I noticed this elevator moved considerably slower and more smoothly than the staff elevator we had originally come up in.
The servers didn’t seem all that unhappy about being bitten, though being bitten was their job so their reactions might not mean much.
If Harrison fed from me, he would probably leave me afterward, and I could just walk away with no one suspecting anything. But it was just as likely that if he bit me, he would not only have me weakened and in a vulnerable position, he’d figure out who I was.
Another big risk was that if Harrison bit me, Wyvern would flip out. Yeah, I br
oke up with Wyvern, and he didn’t really have any right to be possessive over me, but from Wyvern’s prospective, he had every right to me, to be possessive over me, to tell me what I could and could not do. Basically, he thought he owned me.
That thought really pissed me off. I would never be complacent with the idea that Wyvern could just claim me, and when I told him it was over, he could just refuse to listen. It also pissed me off that my security guards thought that they should warn me off flirting when I needed to for my job. They just decided that I owed Wyvern absolute fidelity because he claimed me as his possession.
The elevator doors opened, but Harrison didn’t move, he stared down at me. He might have been staring for a while. “What are you thinking?”
I looked up into his bright blue gaze. “Nothing.” I smiled. “A lot of things actually, but they’re really not important.”
“Come out here.” He gestured to a rooftop patio.
We stepped out into the night. With only the boat’s lights around us, stars lit up the rest of the sky. The area we stood on was large with a couple outdoor couches, chairs and lit fireplaces, but no one was out there. Thankfully, tall glass walls surrounded us on all sides, keeping out the wind.
“What is your name?” Harrison asked me, drawing my attention back to him.
I gave him a small smile. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, I’d like to know.”
“You like your regional cuisine to have a name?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
His jaw clenched. “My brother is an asshole. I don’t feel the same way about humans as he does.”
As Harrison stepped closer, I felt my heartbeat quicken. I should be talking him out of biting me. I should be telling him I have some horrible communicable disease. I should be pulling out my gun. Instead, I was staring at his mouth, curious about how it would feel to have his fangs puncture my neck.
It would be a bold move, bold enough that perhaps Wyvern would dissolve the contract.
Harrison’s chest was inches from mine, and I knew that this was the moment for me to voice an objection. There were about a thousand reasons why I should do everything in my power to stop him.
Yet, ever since that moment I broke things off with Wyvern, I’d felt lost, so much more alone than I’d ever been before Wyvern blasted through my life. For the first time in a long time, standing here in this very dangerous situation with this very dangerous stranger, I didn’t feel lonely.
Harrison’s hands touched my arms and gently moved up and down. “You’re shivering, are you cold?”
“No,” I whispered, looking up at him.
“Tell me your name.” His gaze again moved over my face slowly.
“I don’t want to have a name right now, please.” My heart picked up speed as he leaned in.
Adrenaline and a dangerous curiosity pumped through me from my stomach, and I let my head fall to the side just slightly, showing him my neck.
Harrison’s canines lengthened as his head moved forward.
My body was electric with nerves and anticipation.
His lips brushed my skin. I felt a sharp sting and my whole body relaxed. Warm waves rippled through me, calming me. I could have floated away into a blissful sleep right then. My legs did not quite want to support me, and Harrison’s arms tightened around me to support my weight.
He took another couple of long drinks from my neck before lifting his head away. I was limp in his arms and the warm, tingly feeling echoed through me.
He picked me up and set me on one of the couches around a small fireplace. Heat from the fire licked across my skin, rejuvenating me.
I expected him to walk away, discard me as I saw his brother do with that server. Instead, Harrison sat down on the couch beside me. His arm wrapped around me, and he pulled me into him. My head was suddenly resting on his chest. He produced a white napkin from somewhere and pressed it to my neck. Even after a couple of minutes, he was showing no sign of leaving.
As I felt my strength return, I knew it was way past time for me to make my escape.
“Could I just stay here for a little while to recover? I’ll be okay alone. I know you have to get back,” I said.
Harrison leaned over to kiss my hair. “No, I would rather just wait for you to recover, beautiful girl I don’t know the name of,” he said. Then he sat there, rubbing his hand over my arm.
My body was too incredibly relaxed to muster the panic I should have been feeling. I’d just let a complete stranger suck my blood, thinking that he would send me packing the moment he did, but that was obviously not the case here. He was holding me and cleaning me up, and saying that he would stay with me.
My voice was a little hoarse when I told him, “Can I tell you the truth?”
He gazed down at me. “Please.”
“I really don’t want to go back into that room. It kind of scared me. I would rather just stay here for the rest of the night. I’ll be fine.”
Harrison smiled again, and I noticed his canines had returned to normal. “That’s fine,” he said. “My sister will send someone up if she really needs me. She ordered me not to work anymore tonight and right now, that’s an order I’d like to follow.”
Maybe I should draw my gun. This situation was absolutely not going to work. If Harrison was determined to stay with me, any excuse I made before slipping off would only make him suspicious. I needed him to forget about me and the only way that he’d forget is if he was called away and left me behind.
“Go to sleep if you’d like. I’ll wake you in time for you to make your boat back.” He brushed my hair away from my face.
I closed my eyes, knowing my only real choice was to wait it out. Eventually, he’d either be called away by his sister or Sophie and Sarah would manufacture a crisis, and he’d be called away.
“How old are you really?” he asked.
“Seventeen. How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” he said.
“Only eighteen, and your sister is already planning your wedding?” I regretted the words the moment they came out. What was I saying? The last thing I wanted was for him to know I had been paying attention during their meeting.
Harrison sighed, his chest moving against my cheek. “No, I’m not going to have a wedding. My sister is just being the way she is. The girl she’s trying to set me up with, she’s already engaged to someone else. I don’t even know her.”
“Oh,” I said.
“What about you, do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
I looked up to find him gazing down at me.
After a pause, I said, “Not really.”
“What does ‘not really’ mean?”
Just like with letting him bite me, I knew I shouldn’t tell him anything. But—and I didn’t know why—for some reason, I wanted to talk to an outsider about it. I wanted to talk to him about it. Everyone I’d talked to in the beginning had been so full of opinions, I’d just stopped bringing Wyvern up.
This whole situation with Harrison was so wrong. Consciously I knew that, but at the same time, I wanted someone to hold me. And it felt so good to be held by him. I’d wanted to feel strong arms wrap around me for months.
Harrison was offering me kindness and affection with no giant, secretive strings attached. Likely, I’d never see him again and I could just have this one stolen moment, getting affection from a beautiful boy who would never know who I really was.
Tucking my knees into my chest, I sighed and curled deeper into his hold. Staring at the flames, I said, “I told him it was over, but he’s refusing to accept that. And it’s complicated because his family is linked to mine, businesswise. They all pretty much consider us a couple.”
“Do you still have feelings for him?” Wow, this guy had no problem asking the hard questions.
I watched the fire for a long minute. “Yes,” I said. “But he was too controlling for it to ever have worked. I’d tell him I didn’t want to do something, then he’d go ahead and arrange it anyway and expe
ct me to go. He also had no boundaries and felt that it was his right to invade my privacy in every way. I could never be happy being treated like that. And even if it wasn’t impossible because of who we both are as people, it turned out that him wanting to be with me had a lot to do with him wanting connections with my family as well.”
“That last part sounds very much like my world. You should be glad you’re not a dracon,” he whispered. “We’re not allowed to fall in love; or at least we’re expected to only fall in love with someone with advantageous family connections.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“For what?” He craned his neck to look down at me.
“For being so nice to me,” I said, looking into his bright blue eyes. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Neither was I,” he said, glancing down to my lips.
The elevator doors dinged open.
We both sat up quickly, turning to face the elevator. The vampire that had been guarding the door practically fell out of the elevator, using one hand keep the elevator door open.
“Harrison, come now! There’s a serious situation!” the vampire yelled.
Harrison stood, but turned to me. His eyes burned into mine as he asked, “Do you work tomorrow night?”
“Uh… yeah,” I lied.
“Just tell whoever is at the door that I asked for you, I’ll give them your description.” He spun on his heel, then jogged toward the elevator.
Chapter Seven
I smiled at the host of the VIP as I passed and walked toward the staff stairs behind him. No one else waited in the small host area between the VIP room and the elevators.
“Did you by any chance see the servers I came up with earlier?”
The host looked at me with disinterest. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t recognize one server from another.” He turned back to his podium.
Rex (Dakota Kekoa Book 2) Page 6
