Reawakening

by K. L. Kreig

  He scoffed. “I can’t wait to see you try.”

  Romaric interrupted. “Christ, Damian. Set aside your ambivalence for once. Geoffrey’s still on the inside and is our best chance at tracking Xavier’s whereabouts. We need to be absolutely certain that he’s killed in this next raid, because I, for one, am tired of chasing his sick fucking ass all over the goddamn country and worrying about our mates.”

  Yes, Geoffrey had not missed the brand spanking new mating mark around Rom’s left thumb, and now that he’d found his own Moira and could do nothing about it, seeing Rom’s made him unreasonably jealous. And he didn’t like that feeling one goddamn bit.

  “We need a few days to pull together enough resources for the raid,” Devon said, looking at Geoffrey pointedly. “And to make sure we have all of the information necessary to kill this fucker once and for all.”

  Geoffrey nodded sharply. Once his suspicions were confirmed, he’d have no choice but to divulge the other compound, because of anything more critical than destroying Xavier, destroying this place was a close second. And the clock was ticking, because Xavier expected something concrete regarding the lords or his daughters within the next few days, so he was going to have to come up with something creative to buy himself more time.

  As they dispersed and he steeled himself to meet with Xavier next. He prayed to a God he didn’t believe in that they could end this once and for all.

  And he would finally be free.

  Chapter 46

  Mike

  “When are you coming back?” Jake asked. Same question, different day. Since he’d taken his “leave of absence” several months back, they’d met up regularly to shoot the shit and throw back a few beers. They’d hung out occasionally when they were partners, but hadn’t socialized too often, and he now had to wonder why he hadn’t let Jake in before now.

  But he knew. Mike had made a sport out of keeping people from getting too close to him. Jake always tried and Mike always pushed back. And no one had gotten past those roadblocks … until Giselle. She’d changed him in ways she didn’t even realize.

  He wanted to be a better man. For her.

  He wanted to get his shit together. For her.

  And he desperately wanted to unburden himself from this fucking boulder of revenge that had been weighing him down like a permanent set of cement shoes for the last eleven years. For both of them.

  He loved being a cop. It was in his blood, but he’d been doing it for all the wrong reasons.

  Danger.

  Revenge.

  Guilt.

  Mainly guilt. A feeble attempt to make up for his past transgressions with regards to Jamie. So he wasn’t sure he was ever going back.

  “I don’t know, man,” he finally responded.

  “What the fuck do you do all day? Eat bon bons and watch soap operas?”

  Jake didn’t know anything about vampires. There were days he longed for that ignorance again, but those days were now further apart, because had it not been for vamps, he never would have met the woman he was now head-over-heels in love with. Even if she didn’t feel the same way.

  Not for the first time he had to wonder if what had happened with Jamie had somehow led him to Giselle. And that guilt tore him apart inside because she’d suffered so much at the hands of the devil himself.

  “Pretty much. Young and the Restless is getting pretty good. Billy’s daughter got killed in a hit and run by none other than his wife’s brother, Adam. Now Adam’s gone missing, presumed dead, but he’s not. They never recovered the body. It’s some twisted shit, bro.”

  Jake gaped at him. “Wow … you’ve really gone and grown a pussy.”

  He laughed. “I’ve always had one. I’m just embracing it now.”

  “Waitress!” Jake yelled. When she sauntered over to their table, in her too low cut tiny white tee and almost indecent black skirt, Jake ordered. “Two shots, please. Wild Turkey. This guy’s dick clearly needs regrown. And keep ’em comin’ sweetheart.”

  He hated this dingy, dirty bar, which some stupid fuck with absolutely no creativity had named The Bar, but it was within three blocks of his house, so it was a quick walk home. Old habits die hard. Cop or not, he wasn’t about to get behind the wheel after having even a couple of beers. And definitely not after shooters. Plus, they did have decent live music, which was playing a little too loudly in the background.

  He enjoyed his guys’ night with Jake, but he was also here avoiding one pissed off female. Giselle had called and texted him several times in the last day, but he’d not returned any of them. And he’d kept conveniently away from his house because he had no doubt she would probably stalk him there. And if he ran into her tonight, he hoped to be too drunk to care if she rebutted him again.

  A pussy move? Perhaps. But she’d seriously pissed him off when he’d woken up the other day to find her gone. After he’d laid his soul bare, making himself more vulnerable than he’d ever been in his entire life. And he wanted her to suffer a little, like she’d made him suffer.

  Yes, he was a vindictive asshole. Or a fucking fraidy cat. Take your pick.

  “To our dicks,” Jake toasted, holding up his shot glass.

  “May they grow,” he cheerfully replied before throwing the burning whiskey back.

  Half an hour and four shots later, all heads turned toward the entrance when a simply stunning curvy blonde walked in wearing clothes that were a man’s wet dream. And his fuzzy brain was immediately on alert. This beautiful, and deadly, creature with the arresting green eyes and porcelain skin was clearly vampire.

  A sharp slap to his pec by his former partner’s hand had him wincing. “Holy fuck. Who the hell is that, bro?”

  Someone who’s looking for a tasty liquid meal.

  “How the hell should I know? This isn’t fucking Cheers where everybody knows your name.” Although Charlie, the bartender, and two of the waitresses knew his pretty goddamned well.

  “Dude, she’s coming over here,” Jake whispered excitedly.

  Great.

  She-vamp sat at their table without invitation. Christ, the gall of vampires irritated the fuck out of him. She may come wrapped in pretty packaging, but she was venomous and deadly as a rattlesnake hiding in the brush, waiting to strike and kill its unsuspecting, innocent victim.

  “Buy me a drink,” her silken voice purred to Jake. A demand. Not a question.

  Before Mike could tell her to pound sand, Jake piped up. Clearly his dick was enjoying the potent whiskey. “What’s your poison, doll?”

  Mike could hardly contain the eye roll. There were so many things wrong with that question he couldn’t even begin to count.

  Her gaze flicked to the more than a half dozen empty small glasses sitting in front of them and back to Jake. “Looks like I need to catch up. I’ll have what you’re having.”

  Jake tried flagging down the waitress, but she was clearly enjoying the ass fondling currently being given to her by the tatted, wife-beater wearing biker dude two tables over, so Jake went to the bar himself to retrieve the shots.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Mike snapped, “You should look elsewhere for dinner, sweetheart.”

  He didn’t know what to expect for a response, but a broad, shit-eating grin was not it. She-vamp leaned back in her chair, rhythmically tapping her fingers against the worn, sticky table. “Are you offering instead, human?”

  Shit … should he deny his friend the intense pleasure a vampire bite could bring? Just thinking of how hard he’d orgasmed with Giselle’s mouth on him made him uncomfortably hard.

  Yes. Yes, he was cockblocking his friend. He didn’t know this female and while Mike may be more accepting that not all vamps have evil intentions, he was far from blindly trusting them.

  “Fuck no. There are plenty of unsuspecting humans—and maybe some suspecting ones—you can find. But my friend isn’t one of them.”

  Her nose wrinkled a bit when she answered. “He’s a big boy. I think we’ll let him d
ecide for himself.”

  “I— ”

  He was cut short when Jake returned with a tray of amber-filled glasses, precious liquid sloshing over the sides in his haste to return to the dangerous beauty he thought he would bed tonight.

  Shit. Now what?

  Just then he felt a charge in the air. It was electric and every hair follicle he had stood on end. His cock hardened painfully and his blood sang. Slowly he turned his head toward the entrance and standing just inside, sights set firmly on him, was the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about. In the flesh. Everything and everyone else faded away.

  How did she find him here?

  He almost didn’t care. She’d tracked him down and that’s all that really mattered. She was here and she was a fucking glorious sight, looking all pissed and shit. He felt fury radiating from her across the twenty-five feet that separated them. Her gaze flicked to the yet unnamed female sitting at their table and he couldn’t help the slow smile that turned his lips. Green jealousy swirled with the icy blue of her eyes, making them a mesmerizing jade color that he could clearly see from here.

  In a blink, she was standing at their table, hands on her luscious, curvy hips. She looked absolutely ravishing in the skintight, barely-there black dress and leopard print heels she wore. Christ, she was simply amazing. Every cell in his body screamed mine when he looked at her. And the possessive vibe and sharp daggers shooting from her eyes echoed the same feeling in her.

  “Who the fuck is this?” she fumed. Every ripple of toned muscle she held in check mesmerized him. His cock strained, aching to get to the woman who owned every part of him.

  “She’s nobody.” His eyes never left hers. He was done with this shit. She was coming home with him and she would be his. At the first sight of her standing across the room, his patience snapped. He was done waiting for her to make a decision. It was being made for her.

  “Why haven’t you returned my calls or messages?” Her words were filled with venom, but hurt visibly strained her beautiful pixie features and all of a sudden he felt like a bastard.

  Throwing sixty bucks on the table to more than cover his drinks, he stood, grabbed her by the hand and began dragging her protesting ass to the exit. Screw Jake. He was a big boy and could handle himself just fine. Hopefully, Mike didn’t find his body in the sparse trees outside this shithole tomorrow, but he wasn’t about to waste another minute letting Giselle flounder in the wind.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled as they left the shabby building.

  Taking her around the corner, where it was dark and private, he pushed her up against the paint chipped wood, trapping her in place with his body. Taking her face in his hands, he pushed his throbbing erection against her perfectly aligned core.

  “I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago.” Feathering kisses along her jaw, he took her mouth in a bruising kiss. “I’m going to take you home and fuck you stupid until you scream for me, Giselle. I’m going to fuck every other man out of your head and replace every single bad memory with nothing but pleasure. With nothing but love. With nothing but me.”

  Reaching his hands under her short hem, he pushed aside her panties and found her soaking pussy. Without waiting for invitation, he pushed two fingers in, circling his thumb on her swollen clit. He swallowed her moan with his mouth, whispering against her lips, “And don’t tell me you don’t want this or you’re not ready. Your pussy is weeping for me.” Not stopping the movement of his fingers, he continued, “You’re mine, and tonight I’m going to prove to you that I’m yours. You can trust me with both your body and your heart, Giselle.”

  His assault was brutal and the clenching of her walls indicated she was close to tipping. Nipping her earlobe hard, she exploded around his fingers, digging her nails into his shoulders so hard, he was sure she’d leave bloody crescent-shaped marks. But he didn’t care. Bring it, babe. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. She was scared and scarred, but she trusted him or she wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t have sought him out. She wouldn’t keep coming back.

  Feathering kisses along her neck, he pulled back and looked into her heavy, sated eyes, once again laying his heart at her feet for the crushing. “God knows I tried to fight this, but I’m done. I’m a complete and total goner and you own me, Giselle. All of me. You’ve wrecked me for anyone else. I fucking love you. It will ruin me if you walk away from me again.” Pausing, he murmured, “You are mine. Come home with me.” He wanted to say forever but stopped short. He’d already said enough to drink himself into a coma for a month should she turn and abandon him again.

  After several tense moments, just when he thought she’d reject him yet again, she grabbed and clung to him instead, and finally whispered the one little word he’d longed to hear for months.

  “Okay.”

  Chapter 47

  Sarah

  They’d been back in Milwaukee on and off for two days now. Rom had been gone much of the time in strategy meetings with Dev, Damian and others. Things were ramping up and everyone felt the thick, oppressive tension in the air, weighing down on them like an anvil waiting to drop.

  And Sarah was scared shitless. Rom would go to Romania later tonight, even though the meeting with his brother wasn’t for another two days and she’d been on the edge of a panic attack all morning. Kate and Analise had tried taking her mind off things with a workout, but it was no use. All she could think of was never seeing Rom again and that flat out terrified her. They’d just found each other and it felt very unfair that the universe was endlessly throwing these life altering and threatening situations at them.

  Screw Rom’s sadistic father.

  Fuck her maniacal father.

  Give them both a one-way ticket to fire and brimstone.

  She just wanted all of this ugliness to go away. If Rom could magically poof them to another alternate plane where fluffy marshmallows were clouds and milk chocolate ran in shallow streams and never made you fat, she’d do it. Yes, it was childishly naïve, but who the hell cared at this point. Looked like sunshiny Rosie hadn’t strayed too far.

  She also couldn’t get the latest dream about Seraphina out of her head, although she tried to temper those thoughts around Rom, because she wasn’t quite ready to talk to him about it yet.

  Who exactly was she to Rom and why was Sarah so afraid to ask him? Seraphina hadn’t returned in a dream since the morning that they’d bonded and she had a feeling she wouldn’t. She’d delivered her message and she’d shown Sarah what she wanted her to know. Now it was up to Sarah to do what she would with that information.

  And that was the million-dollar question. Did she want to know who this girl was? Because Sarah knew that Seraphina had been very important to Rom and that knowledge sat like a hard twisted ball of angry jealousy in the pit of her stomach.

  Needing some time to herself, she sat alone in the library. She’d searched for a book to divert her attention and decided on the Gillian Flynn novel Gone Girl. Only two chapters in and already riveted, she felt someone staring at her. Looking up, Giselle stood in all her frozen ice-cold glory in the doorway.

  “What?” Sarah barked. She just couldn’t find it in herself today to be nice to anyone, least of all Giselle, the one person in the world who cared about only herself and what you could do for her. And she had enough of her own damn problems to worry about what Giselle wanted.

  “Jesus. What crawled up your ass and died?” Giselle spouted as she sauntered into the room, sitting across from her on the setae.

  Hmm … That was her line.

  She crossed her very long legs, of which Sarah was insanely jealous. “So you and Rom, huh?” Giselle hedged, picking imaginary lint off the arm of the fancy chair.

  Had she landed in an alternate universe? She looked around the room to make sure she wasn’t in Kansas or Oz or Hell because those are the only places this conversation would happen. Giselle didn’t converse. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t answer questions. She ce
rtainly didn’t give a damn about you, how your day was or your latest OPI nail polish color. She was the vampire version of the stupid childhood game, dizzy bat.

  Sarah narrowed her eyes, suspicion bubbling. “What do you want, Giselle?”

  Instead of answering, she gestured toward the book Sarah was reading. “Damn brilliant read. Can you believe that wife set up her husband to take the fall for her fake murder and then had the balls to turn back up? That’s a mind-fuck right there.”

  Sarah frowned, throwing the book to the side. She’d purposely avoided reviews and conversations about this book so the ending wouldn’t be spoiled.

  So … thanks for that, bitch.

  “Did you bring in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and bottle of wine too so we can gossip about the best sex toys and the couple of hotties that Thane is regularly banging at the club?” she asked sarcastically.

  Wow … her snarkiness had reached an all-time epic level. Rock on Nancy, you callous ho.

  Thinking that would surely send Giselle storming out of the room, imagine her surprise when she busted out laughing instead. Giselle could laugh? And the eighth wonder was just discovered.

  “I like you, Sarah,” she said, wiping a stray tear.

  She liked her? What the hell? “Will the real Giselle please stand up?” she muttered.

  Raising a brow, Giselle bit out, “Wow … she knows Eminem too.”

  “I’m confused at what’s going on here.”

  “Can’t a girl just want to talk?”

  “Yes … but …” She didn’t want to say it. It was too cruel, even for her. Even though she was sure a hurtful word or jibe couldn’t pierce skin as thick and tough as reinforced steel.

  “Yes, but I’m not a girl, right?”

  A wry smile curled Sarah’s lips. “You said it, not me.”

  Giselle watched her for a few very long moments before speaking softly; like she really had a heart beating in that freezing tundra she called a chest. “I have information about your mother. Your birth mother. I know her name.”