by Martha Woods
She didn’t think the world worked in that kind of perfect way but she cherished him for thinking so. She closed the space between them, wrapping her arms around his torso. Could she do this again? The feeling of his torso pressed against hers told her that she could. When she tilted her head back to look up into his honey eyes she made a decision.
“One last try,” she whispered into his chest. “If this does not work then we stop doing this to ourselves. We move on. No more crawling to each other whenever we’re in proximity of one another.”
Morgan sucked in a breath. She was sure that he was going to argue, but, after a long moment he let loose a sigh. His thumbs made small circles on her lower back.
“Alright, but we try this away from the mind reader. Just you and me somewhere where no one can bother us.”
Veronica smiled and echoed him. “Alright.”
Kristian crushed his sister in a hug. He did not want her leaving the beach house. They were stronger together, but as Veronica looked between him and Tessa, she knew that they needed time together without her interference. Not like it had worked last time, anyway, she thought begrudgingly. They’d ended up with not only a mind reading human, but a bratty teenage demon and a busted house as well.
Kristian and Tessa would be on their way to Miami by midday. Jared would be tailing them for added protection. Ally, Ryan, and the newly reformed demon, Charley, would stay here to draw the witches’ attention off Veronica and Kristian. Once they were done there, they were supposed to head to their New York apartment to make sure it was safe. The plan was for everyone to meet back up there.
Veronica moved to pull herself from her brother’s grasp, but he was reluctant to let go. Veronica’s nerves felt frayed as Tessa looked to her. Tessa put an hand on Kristian’s arm, silently willing him to pull back. He looked between the two women, realization dawning in his eyes. He quickly stepped back, there one second and gone the next.
“Are you sure that this is a good idea?” Kristian asked, glancing to Ally. Kristian and Veronica hadn’t been apart for too long in the two hundred years they’d been creatures of the night. It wasn’t just the maker and made bond that held them together. It was the sibling blood they shared, the trials they’d faced in life, that had kept them together. They were stronger together. But, now there was a third person thrown into the mix.
“The witches will be upon us soon. They’re coming in numbers that we cannot handle. If we each run in a different direction, then maybe we can throw them off for a little while,” Ally said over her mug, trying to convince both vampires that it was the right thing to do. Two hundred years of habit was hard to break.
It hurt both of them to have to do this. Veronica reached out, grasping her brother’s hand in her own. They had been through far worse together. This was nothing in comparison.
“I will miss you, sister.”
Veronica shook her head, playing it off like this didn’t hurt. “No offense, but I need my head to be my own space for a little while. If that means we are safer as well, then so be it. I will not argue with that.”
“What she means,” Tessa said behind him, “is that she wants to bone Morgan in peace.”
Ally choked on her mug of blood in the background. Charley howled, slapping her leg in laughter. Kristian ignored their reactions, his brows knitting together.
“I apologize if her presence bothers you. I wish you could learn to get along, but I do understand if your privacy feels...violated. We are working on uncovering hints as to how she may have come across such gifts so we can better help her control it.”
“Do not worry so much, big brother,” Veronica moved to smooth out the lines between his brows with her thumb. “Tessa has spoken more truth than I have in this situation. While her gifts do make me uncomfortable from time to time, I do also wish to pursue my own happiness. I don’t know if that does exist, but I wish to reach for it until I am convinced that it does not exist.”
“Then I wish you the best,” Kristian kissed his sister’s brow before stepping back. His eyes raked over Morgan, sizing him up, deciding if he is fit to touch his sister. “Once this is all over we shall meet again.”
Outside, Morgan had his car pulled up to the entrance. It was nothing like the sleek European cars that her brother liked to drive. This was all American muscle that mirrored the driver. The black body was accented with dangerous red lines like fangs had been drawn across a body. It also looked like it had the capacity to impale either of them should they get into an accident.
She went around to the trunk and hefted her suitcase into it. The dull gleam of something caught her eye as she set the fabric case down. There were several lengths of iron chain coiled in a corner of the trunk. Veronica wondered why they would be a necessity. Normally, people kept jumper cables and flares in their trunks. Not, iron chains.
Maybe it was for snow travel, she told herself. He could have taken them off after passing through the mountains in Wyoming and Colorado.
“Where the hell did you find a Shelby?” Veronica asked as she opened the passenger door. She was grateful that he hadn’t jumped out of the car and ran to open her door. It was the kind of thing men would have done in her human life, but it wasn’t the kind of thing she wanted from them. She watched Morgan’s fingers graze the steering wheel, feeling those hands graze her skin.
“Came across it in a junkyard hunting a demon. She needed a hell of a lot of paint and elbow grease, but it was a labor of love.” Morgan was in everything for the long haul. This car would run longer than he would live with the proper attention. That was saying something.
Once they were out of Los Angeles, Morgan could put the pedal to the floor. Veronica closed her eyes, letting the thrum of the engine buzz through her. Morgan reached over, placing a hand on her thigh. She cracked an eye to peer at the man in the driver seat. His mahogany colored hair was cut short at the sides. She reached over, running her fingers through the thick waves on the top of his head. They had a tendency to fall in front of his eyes when he was trying to look intimidating. Veronica loved it.
His hand clutched the gear shift, thick, corded arms begging for her to run her hands down them. How could she not keep her hands off him? It was easy to reach past his arm and give the button of his pants a sharp tug. The fabric was no match for her vampire strength. The button sprang free and clicked against his window.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Morgan asked, humor brightening his voice.
Veronica’s lips pressed together in a mischievous smile. “Am I not allowed to touch you?”
She walked her fingers down to the inside of his thigh, lightly tracing the tip of her nail along the length of him beneath the fabric of his pants. He growled, low and rumbling. It took a millisecond for him to reach into his pants and pull his cock out. Once free it sprang to attention.
Veronica wrapped her hand around it, gently stroking up and down. A soft moan escaped Morgan’s lips and his head began to tilt back.
“Keep your eyes on the road, pretty boy.”
He tossed her an angry glare before shaking his head. “It’s hard to do when you’re distracting me like that.”
“I can stop if you want me to,” she began to pull back.
“Don’t you fucking dare.” He gripped her wrist to keep her from pulling back. “Tempestuous vixen.”
Veronica gripped his shaft in her hand, running her thumb over the bead of moisture on the tip. His manhood felt like velvet over steel. She adored the feel of it beneath her hand. It was just him and her in the darkness of the Mustang. She stroked long, luxurious strokes between hard and fast strokes. Morgan moaned in pleasure, reaching to direct her force.
“I’m…” Was the only word that spilled out of him before he came.
She bent down to the tip of his shaft, licking away the product. He looked down at her and felt his world turn upside down. The car began to rumble. He jerked his attention back to the road. They had swerved into gravel. He jerked the
wheel to get back onto the road.
Veronica laughed in the passenger seat. “Easily distracted?”
Morgan was ready to grumble something in response when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He fidgeted to reach the device. The screen was almost too bright inside the darkness of the car, but the message on it was clear. Morgan turned the screen off and tucked it back into his pocket.
When he turned back to Veronica, the playful smile was gone off her face.
“What did I do now?”
“Was that Ally or my brother?” She looked out the window, not meeting his eyes.
Morgan let out a sigh of frustration. “Why does it matter?”
“One wants you to work and the other wants you to keep tabs on me. I... “ she shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s not important.”
Morgan didn’t say anything. They rode in silence for a long while after that. Beyond the window, Veronica watched the landscape pass her by.
“Where are we going anyway?”
“Just a little north of Los Angeles. I have my own place up this way.”
“Since when have you owned property near LA?”
Morgan shrugged. “I bought it a year after I worked the first job for your brother. A Calder witch had gotten too close to your home..”
“I remember that,” Veronica said. “The fire between us was demanding from the first moment we laid eyes on one another.”
“It never burnt out, either. It felt like an eternal flame at the time. Then… well we both know what happened.”
She didn’t know what to say to his words. What was the right thing to say when someone called your love an eternal flame? Veronica turned her attention back to the window, putting an end to the conversation until her brain worked over his words. “You bought the house up here when we first started to see one another.”
Morgan scratched his head. “Um…”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“What do you want me to say?” Morgan’s voice was low. “Yes, I did. I wanted to be close to you. I wanted… I wanted a lot back then. I haven’t lived in it since. Last night, I had a cleaning crew come through.”
The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. That was meant to be their house. And when she had dumped him, the house sat empty. It was a promise made of brick and mortar that he’d never gotten to give her. She chewed on her lower lip.
What was she supposed to say? Sorry? He had been working so much when they first started to see one another that she really didn’t see all that much of him. Ally would call him out to missions overseas and when he would return they would fall into the bed, setting each other ablaze. But, as soon as he returned, he would leave again for work. It was an exhausting life. One that he didn’t let her into.
The house felt like an empty promise. It wasn’t meant to be back then. Would it...would it become their house now? No, because the Calder were forever hunting her and her brother for what they did. As long as the Flock were hunting them, they would forever have to move from place to place. Veronica always feared that the Calder would be one step ahead of them one day.
She was afraid they would arrive at one of their homes only to find the witches already there. Veronica pressed her thumbs into her eyes, frustrated that her mind would not stop spinning.
The car slowed. Morgan turned onto a side road, the landscape sparse, but greener. The house that the pulled up to was an imitation of a Victorian home. A circle of stained glass gleamed at them as the headlights passed over it. Veronica pushed her door open once the car came to a halt. Morgan moved around the car to grab their bags. In the valley below them, Veronica could see the lights of a nearby city. Here, in the mountain side, they felt completely alone.
She doubted that even the Calder would find them here. She turned and smiled at Morgan. Elation filled her as the sense of doom finally lifted from her chest. Her smile dazzled him so much so that he dropped their bags to move over to her. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, nose nuzzling her ear.
“I thought that you might like it here,” he whispered into her ear.
“Are we playing house?” She turned in his arms, hands grabbing at the waist of his pants. “Or do you want to play doctor?”
He laughed. It was rich and rumbled through her, shaking her core.
“As your doctor,” he said, “I do believe that I should prescribe you several orgasms.”
She shivered in his arms. He tugged her close, his mouth falling upon hers. Slowly, he devoured her bit by bit. His tongue explored her fangs. She pushed back, but he pressed harder and bit her lower lip. When they pulled back, she looked into his eyes. She could live like this forever.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Inside the door was uneven and battered hardwood floors. On the far wall was a print of a painting that Veronica remembered from her past. Photography did not work well with vampirism, but the hand of a painter never failed. It was her and her brother, sitting together in a moon garden, white blossoms opening all around them. The painter had known what they were, of course. The artist types had a tendency to attract vampires and become thralls. This particular painter had not began as their thrall, but his life had ended well in their care.
Around the corner was a plush couch and a fabric covered ottoman. Vases of cream colored roses sat on every surface, one or two roses to a vase. The walls of the living room were lined with old photographs, dating from the invention of the photograph to rather recently. While the photos seemed to be different, the subject matter ranging from desert landscape to a tractor in a hay field, Veronica could see one thing they all had in common.
“You miss the sun,” she said as she took in the brilliant range of colors bursting over the horizon in each photo. Orange and red bled into cool pinks and lavender. In some there were still stars speckling the sky.
She glanced over her shoulder at Morgan. He stood in the foyer, hands in his pockets. “Every once in awhile I’ll indulge in the daylight drugs just to watch the sun rise. Makes me feel...alive again.”
The shift from day to night hadn’t bothered Veronica all that much. There hadn’t been much in her life that she’d missed, nothing that had whispered for her. Knowing what Morgan had suffered, she wondered whether it was a good thing or not.
“Do you miss her? Your wife?” The words tumbled out of Veronica’s mouth before she could think. She had no way of knowing what this mystery woman looked like, but she was jealous all the same. This woman had once captured his heart in a way that she couldn’t.
Morgan was suddenly behind her. The air between them was cold. “Three hundred years makes scars feel a little less painful. I think it will be her death that will haunt me more than anything.”
“You didn’t love her?”
“After a while I learned to love her. Marriage in my day was not for love. It was for survival.”
Veronica snorted. She knew the feeling, but she could never have learned to love her husband.
“Why are we indulging in such a sad conversation?” Morgan asked, softly. His fingers grazed the skin beneath her loose shirt, riding over the curve of her hips. “ There is no way to get those days back. We shouldn’t think back on them.”
Veronica turned in his arms. The look he gave her melted her. Those honey eyes devoured her, burning their way across her cold skin.
“How much do you like these jeans?” His voice was hoarse. She could feel the reason pressing into her thigh.
She shrugged. “They only cost a hundred dollars.”
He gripped the waistband and tugged. The fabric gave way, the tearing sound filling the room. “I couldn’t stand them anymore.”
Morgan dropped to his knees before her, hands working to remove the remnants of her jeans. His fingers hooked into the sides of her bikini panties before they tore in his hands. She was about to protest when his tongue parted the folds of her womanhood. The words died in her throat. She gripped a fistful of his thick, brown hair in her hand as his tongu
e worked away at her.
She leaned back against the sideboard table, vases rattling behind her. His tongue flicked her most sensitive spot and she threw her head back. A vase crashed to the floor beside him. Her knees wobbled. He reached up, holding her thighs, hands sliding to cup her ass.
“Morgan!” she screamed her pleasure.
Once the aftershock of her orgasm faded, she looked down at the man kneeling before her. He was a warrior on his knees before a queen. Her stomach fluttered. Had he not been holding her, she would have crumpled to the floor.
Distantly, they both recognized the sound of his phone vibrating. Veronica scowled until her phone joined the party. With wobbly knees she staggered over to the bag she had dropped near the door. Tessa’s number flashed across the screen.
Why would Tessa be calling her? Irritated, she slapped the button in response. Tessa was already talking before she could get a word out.
“The beach house is gone,” she said.
Veronica’s once fluttery stomach dropped through the floor.
“The...the witches found us. We were on our way out when they arrived. They burnt the house to the ground. There’s nothing left of it. Kristian…” Tessa made a choked sob.
“Is he okay?” Veronica shouted through the phone. Fear gnawed through her.
“He’s hurt. It’s going to take him a long time to recover. Ally and Jared have given him their blood and it’s healing him little by little. He’s on his feet again despite what we’ve told him.”
Veronica let loose a sigh of relief. Kristian was still alive. For a moment she had feared the worst. She had panicked, not even thinking to use the bond they shared between maker and made. It would have told her, in an instant, that Kristian was still alive.
“He’s going to… I’ve offered him some of my blood tonight. I know it isn’t all mighty vampire blood, but if it helps I’ll do whatever I have to.”
“It will. Vampire blood is just a quick bandaid. Fresh blood will sustain his actual healing.” Veronica whispered. With a shaking hand, she ended the call.
