Ernie shrugged. “Could be a boon to the bakery, all this free publicity. Maybe you need to hand out cards.” He shot into the air. “Ladies and gents, if you’d like to see the Drakaina in her natural habitat, be sure to stop by her bakery, Vanilla and Honey, for a taste test. Out-of-this-world baked goods!” He swept a hand toward me, and I blushed as the crowd clapped.
“Ernie, knock it off!” I whispered.
He dropped back down to my eye level. “Nah, it’s more fun to watch you squirm. And let’s be honest. It will grind Roger’s gears to see your business really take off. If you make a crap ton of money, he will really lose his mind.”
“Oh,” I whispered. He had a very good point there. I smiled and held up my hand, tightening it into a fist. Ernie curled up his hand and knocked it against mine.
“Go team!” he yelled and did a backward somersault in the air.
Remo kept us moving through the bar, finally stopping at a secluded table, where he pulled a chair out for me. I slid in and smoothed my skirt down my legs. The edge of the silky, flowing material stopped at midthigh, far shorter than anything I’d ever worn before I’d been turned into a Drakaina. White with blue and green flowers speckled over it, the green brought out the color in my eyes, and the white showed off the warm tones in my olive skin. I’d worn it thinking only of how Remo would see me. Okay, that and maybe I just really liked the feel of the soft material.
Our waitress came, and I ordered a Shirley Temple. Remo raised an eyebrow. “Still not drinking?”
I shrugged. “I recall vaguely my behavior when I unintentionally imbibed at Zeus’s pool party. The results were . . . not pretty.” Actually the results had sent me into the lap of a god, after which his estranged wife, the goddess of love, had threatened to kill me just for looking at him. Not good all around, and I planned to avoid a repeat of that scene.
Ernie held up two fingers. “Ouzo for me.” The waitress wrote it down and then hurried off when Remo waved her away.
“Really, how can you drink ouzo?” I looked at the cherub, who leaned back on the high seat of the bench.
He smiled and winked. “It makes me think of cupcakes, and you know how I love my food.”
A rush of heat spread up my face. “May I remind you that my brush with poisoning others was not something I’m proud of?” I’d decided that putting my venom into a batch of cupcakes would give me a leg up on the bad guys. It had worked, with one small hitch. I’d mixed up the cupcakes and taken some of the poisoned ones to a family dinner. My parents were still complaining about the smell of vomit in their dining room.
“But it got the job done.” He pulled one wing forward and ran his fingers through the white feathers.
Not really, it hadn’t. The only good thing that had come from it was the satisfaction of watching Roger and Barbie barf all over each other. See, I wasn’t joking about my parents inviting my ex and his girlfriend over to eat.
The waitress brought us our drinks. “You sure you don’t want anything, honey?” She put a hand on Remo’s shoulder, rubbing it gently, and I tensed, a low hiss slipping out of me before I could catch it. She didn’t hear me, but I had no doubt Remo did. His eyes shot to mine, and I struggled to pull myself together. She was just getting fresh; it happened. No matter how big or the dangerous the aura he carried was, Remo was one dang sexy man, and I knew it, along with the rest of the female population of Seattle.
He shook his head and waved her away without a word. She gave a little huff and shot me a dirty look. Maybe she had heard me hiss at her. I smiled and reached across the table to take his hand. He pulled back, leaning in his chair away from me. That was . . . odd.
“We have to talk,” he said, a coolness in his voice that hadn’t been there just moments before. Even the first time we’d met there had been heat between us. We’d fought, but he’d never been cold with me.
Ernie flopped down on the table while my heart began to pick up its pace, a slow-burning adrenaline coursing through me. Something was wrong, and I was afraid of whatever it was that made Remo so different.
The cherub seemed oblivious to the rising tension. “What are we discussing tonight?”
Remo turned and stared at Ernie, giving him a glare that should have frozen the wings off the cherub. “Privacy for this. It is between Alena and me.”
Ernie stopped in midmotion, a pretzel halfway to his mouth, his shot glass of ouzo in the other. “Oh . . . one of those talks. Got it. I won’t be far.” He popped the pretzel into his mouth and zipped into the air, flew a few booths away, and then leaned down as if he was listening in on the conversation.
My stomach twisted into a sudden knot, as if the snake in me had turned in on itself and was hiding her head. I reached across the table again and took Remo’s hand, wrapping my fingers around his, but he didn’t react. “What is it?”
He pulled away from me, brushing my fingers off his—as if I were dirty. Part of me wanted to smack him, and the other part of me wanted to smack him too. What was going on?
He closed his eyes. “You understand there are unspoken rules in our world? That there are not supposed to be cross-species relationships? We have discussed this before.”
The coil in my belly tightened further, constricting my ability to speak well. I knew what he was talking about, but I thought we were past that issue. “Yes.”
His jaw tensed. “I’ve told Dahlia to break it off with Tad. Their relationship is not right and is bound to fail.”
“You what?” I jerked, slamming into the booth back behind me. “But they have something special. They really love each other! How could you do that?”
“I know that they care for one another.” His jaw ticked again. “That doesn’t negate the reality of their lives, or mine.” He paused, his eyes flickering over me and then staring just over my shoulder. “I have other vampires coming in to join me in my fight against Santos. Vampires who are older than me and who are sticklers for the rules. I cannot have cross-species dating happening. If your brother were only a favored donor, that would be something else. But Tad’s not, and we all know it.”
I felt the prickle along the back of my neck, but I refused to cringe. I refused to beg like Roger for something I could see Remo had already decided on. I straightened in my seat and folded my hands on the table.
“You can’t be with me, can you? That’s what you are saying?”
His whole body tensed as he slid farther away from me and leaned back in his chair. “No, I can’t.”
CHAPTER 2
I sat there, frozen in place. I shouldn’t have been bothered Remo was breaking things off with me. It wasn’t like we’d been dating long, only a week or so since my divorce had been finalized, and before that we’d not really been together. Just . . . working toward it. We hadn’t even had sex. I mean, I’d slept beside him more than once, but no nookie because . . . damn it, I couldn’t seem to find a good enough reason now that I was losing him.
I shouldn’t have been upset—this was minor in the scheme of things and all I’d faced so far—but I knew I wasn’t going to find another man like Remo. One who knew when to let me fight my own battles, who let me make my own mistakes and respected me enough to let me find my own way. A man who didn’t even push me into having sex, though we’d come close, each of our own accord.
“Just like that?” I was proud of how my words came out without trembling. Without a single sobbing quiver, no matter what my emotions were doing to me on the inside.
His eyes hardened ever so slightly. “You forget that I am not like you. I’m not designed to be monogamous; no vampire is. Do you really think you’ve been the only woman in my arms the last few weeks?”
Lies. I could almost taste the lie on the air and had to fight not to flick my tongue out to confirm the scent of it. But if he wanted the lie to make himself feel better, then there was nothing I could do about it.
“Oh, you didn’t just do that, you idiot,” Ernie muttered from the ceiling above us. I d
idn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on Remo, because I knew this would be the last time I saw him.
There would be no going back after this.
The vampire mob boss stood, his whole body tense to the point that I could feel the irritation rolling off him, the heightened adrenaline and emotions strong between us. My own skin quivered, sensitive to all the tension he threw off. It twitched like mad in response.
“We have a business arrangement still,” he said. “You owe me two more feedings at my discretion for helping you, as per our agreement. If you’ll step outside, I’ll take one now. I’ll give you a few minutes to collect yourself. Don’t make me come back in for you.”
I flattened both my hands on the table and forced myself to raise an eyebrow. I would not let him see me cry over him. If he could be unaffected by this, then I could be too. “I don’t go back on my word, and that you think I would do that is insulting.”
His eyes softened, and I thought he’d say something, but he spun and walked away. I watched him go, unable to take my gaze from his retreating back, from the shape of his broad shoulders to the narrowed taper of his hips.
“Ernie,” I said.
“Yeah.” He floated down. “I got nothing for you. I thought he was going to go to bat for you, stand up against the world for your love . . . I’m sorry.”
I rose, smoothed my skirt and top, then strode after Remo. I would not break my word with him and go back on our deal. Why he wanted to feed now was beyond me, though. Maybe he wanted to impress the new vampires with his strength? That was probably it—the stronger he was, the better when dealing with them. The business side of my brain got it. My heart, though, was struggling.
I drew in a breath as I stepped out of the bar. I held the air, rolling it over my tongue and picking up on Remo’s signature scent of cinnamon and honey. I was going to miss that smell, miss the way it soothed my senses. I followed it around the corner of the building. His hands shot out of the darkness and yanked me to him. I gasped and put my hands on his chest, shocked at the aggression he was showing.
And more than a little turned on by it.
“You can’t just bite me, you know that.” I blurted the words out, shocked at the mix of anger and desire raging in me. The emotions were a heady mix.
“Then do it, and let’s be done with this,” he growled.
Be done with this, be done with me. He wasn’t doing this to impress anyone; he was doing it because he wanted me out of his life as fast as he could, and that meant using up my offers of blood as soon as possible.
Ernie cleared his throat. “You still got Beth’s feather on you? It’ll cut through clean.”
I nodded and put a hand to my purse, pulling out the silver-and-gold feather. It was from my friend Beth. A Stymphalian bird who’d died at the hands of Theseus. I kept her feather to remind me of her, and also to remind myself of the power I carried as a Drakaina. But also to remind me that I was not invulnerable to being hurt, or even killed. The feather could cut through even my snakeskin, making the innocuous-looking item deadly in the wrong hands. Remo’s hands tightened on my waist as I lifted the feather to my neck.
“Your wrist will be fine,” he snapped.
Of course, the wrist was far less intimate than the neck. But if he wanted my blood, he was going to do it my way. Which meant being reminded of exactly what it was he was about to give up. With a sharp motion I made a tiny cut at the base of my neck on the left-hand side. “Bite me,” I said.
With a growl he slammed his mouth against the wound, all traces of the man I knew disappearing under what he really was. A vampire. A mob boss. Out for himself and no one else.
A spike of pleasure shot from his mouth, down through my chest, and pooled in between my legs. I whimpered even as I clung to him, feeling his muscles bunch and flex under my hands. His mouth slipped from the wound and up my neck, trailing kisses, trailing love bites that made my knees weak. Our lips met, and there was an explosion of hunger in our kiss, our hands seemingly unable to draw one another close enough. This was good-bye, I knew it, and I fought to make it last longer. To make him see that I was good for him.
I was good enough.
Maybe I wasn’t.
He bit my lower lip, tugged it toward him, and then let go. I looked up into his eyes to see the same dazed hunger that had nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the body.
“You are a siren; stop trying to sway me.” He pushed me away from him. I clamped a hand over the wound in my neck. I had to get it stitched up right away, to close off the wound that could be used against me. That’s what I focused on, that physical vulnerability. That’s why it hurt so much. It had nothing to do with the pain in my heart. Nothing to do with the realization that I’d been used again by a man who professed to care about me.
Remo stumbled away from me, and as he stepped into the light in front of the bar, a woman approached him. She had short spiky blond hair and huge hooped earrings that brushed the tops of her shoulders. She threw her head back, a perfect invitation to a vampire. He caught her around the waist and picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder to take her with him.
I stared in blank, mute silence as I struggled to understand what had just happened, and more than that, why. Why was it always the blondes who stole the men in my life?
A small hand touched the top of my shoulder, and I closed my eyes. “Ernie, tell me that didn’t just happen.”
“Sorry, kid,” he said softly. “That was . . . not expected. I thought you’d gotten through to him. I thought he saw you for all the amazingness you are.”
I stood there, my heart hurting far more than it should have over a man I’d known for only a few weeks. But there was something I would not admit to anyone out loud. I’d known Remo would be in my life from the first moment I met him. That he would be pivotal—the connection between us had happened within seconds of meeting. But apparently I was wrong about that.
Again, I’d been wrong about a man I loved. I shouldn’t have been surprised, not after Roger. I just thought . . . I thought Remo was different.
Shaking, I pushed myself away from the rough wall of the building. “Ernie, you want to go bake something?”
“Hell yeah!” He flew around so he was in front of me as I made my way out to the street. “What are we going to make?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Anything to take me away from what just happened.”
There was a small crowd waiting to get into the bar as we passed the front entrance, and a hand reached out as I passed by and touched my elbow. “Hey, could I get an autograph?”
I paused and stared into the face of a woman who was obviously a werewolf. She had gorgeous sandy-colored curls that cascaded all around her face, as though they’d been dried by the wind. She was built lean and wiry, and she barely came up to my chin. Her face was heart shaped, but it was her eyes that told me all I needed to know. The eyes of a wild animal lurked in the amber depths.
Or at least it was obvious to me what she was; the people around her, mostly human, didn’t give her so much as a second glance. The smell rolling off her was of wide-open plains, the rush of a winter wind, and the feel of fur ruffling in the cold air, which only confirmed what I saw.
“An autograph?” I blinked stupidly, as if I were trying to understand a new language.
She smiled up at me, the tip of her pink tongue peeking out one side of her mouth. “Yeah, you’re a hero for us, you know that, don’t you? My name is Amy.” She thrust a piece of paper and a pen at me.
I glanced at Ernie, and he shrugged. “Might as well.”
I took the offered pen and paper, hesitant at first, then I stepped to the side of the building again and used the wall to flatten the paper. I stood there and stared at it a minute, thinking about what to say. An autograph seemed weird, but advice . . . I could give her a piece of advice. I put words to the paper after a moment of thought, then handed it back to her. She read it, her amber eyes watered, and she th
rew her arms around me in a tight hug, the smell of winter enveloping me for a brief moment. “Thank you . . . that was exactly what I needed.”
I patted her back, and she let me go. “You’re welcome.”
Ernie flitted around my head. “What did you write to her?”
“None of your business,” I said. “It was for her, not you.”
“What, you think you can read the future now? That isn’t in your range of talents, you know, girlfriend.” He snapped his fingers at me, saucy as usual.
Another time I would have made a quip, would have said something silly back. But not tonight. Not while feeling as though my heart were cracking. I’d not felt like this even when I realized that Roger was leaving me to die alone in a hospital bed while he played house with his Barbie.
I slid into my new car, a sporty Dodge Charger that I’d gleefully spent a small portion of my inheritance on. It was dark blue with white racing stripes that ran up the middle of the hood, over the roof, and down to the back of the trunk. I loved it, and the smell of new car was lovely, but all of that meant very little in the moment. I reached under the passenger seat and pulled out a tiny first-aid kit. In it were a needle and thread and some butterfly bandages. “Stitches for the snakeskin, bandages for the human,” I said.
I handed them to Ernie, who dutifully placed them over the wound. “Yeah, I got it,” he said while he put me back together. If only my heart could be so easily patched as the wound on my neck.
He finished and tucked the kit back in its place. I put my seat belt on and leaned forward so my head pressed into the steering wheel. I stared down at my legs as the tears fell, plopping onto them. Ernie sat on the middle console, his legs dangling near my right elbow.
“I could always shoot him with an arrow, and he’d come running back,” he offered.
“I don’t want him if he doesn’t want me. Remember Roger? I’ve gone that route, and it sucks donkey balls.”
He grunted. “True. But Remo does care for you. I can see it, and I should know. It’s kinda my job, if you’ll recall.”
Hisses and Honey (The Venom Trilogy Book 3) Page 2
