She fanned herself, and shared a look with Eden, the only other person at the party she was certain was a mortal. Eden’s cheeks sported spots of color, and her eyes were bright. She grinned knowingly at Dee.
“Where’s Laurent?” Dee asked as she noticed Eden’s bondmate was missing.
“He went to find his girlfriend,” Eden answered.
“But—”
“Champagne for the ladies,” Carlos announced, coming up with a pair of crystal flutes full of bubbling gold wine. He made sure their fingers brushed as he handed Dee her glass. “This is Ted,” he added grudgingly as another Prime came up beside him.
Ted wore his hair in a long auburn braid. His eyes were emerald green. He had sharp cheekbones and a wide sensual mouth.
Nice.
“And I am Xander Wolf,” another new arrival said. This one was blond. He resembled Laurent.
He kissed her hand. There was a brush of the tooth edge against her skin, but with no fang. It was still enough to send a surprised shiver of pleasure through her.
Dee snatched her hand back. “Hey!” She didn’t want anybody making her feel like that but—
“The Princess arrives!” Laurent announced, returning to the group.
There was applause and someone said, “Huzzah!”
Dee saw that Laurent was carrying a golden-curled toddler in a black velvet party dress. She was an adorable little kid, but it seemed a little late for the child to be up to Dee. Of course at a vampire party—
“Mamma blood!” the little girl cried, holding her arms out to Eden.
“I know just how she feels,” Laurent said, handing the girl over to Eden. “This is our daughter Toni,” he added to Dee. “She’s going to be a vampire when she grows up.”
“Hence, the completely spoiled royal treatment we accord her,” Eden said. She sounded more amused than anything else, though she smiled proudly at her offspring. Toni was currently suckling on one of Eden’s fingers.
A couple of adolescent girls now joined the growing group. Dee saw them as teenagers, but since vampires aged differently than mortals, it was hard to tell.
“Ariadne and Celeste of Clan Wolf, Toni’s babysitters,” Laurent said.
The pretty young females smiled temptingly at the unattached Primes. The Primes avoided looking at the younger girls. Jail bait, Dee concluded, real teenagers rather the equivalent thereof.
Xander concentrated on Dee. “We haven’t been introduced to you, yet.”
“No, we haven’t,” Ted added.
“Dee McCoy,” Laurent told them. “Dark Angel and witch.”
“Wow,” said one of the girls. “Dark Angel!” She looked at Dee in awe.
Dee was pleased at the vampire girl’s reaction. Not for herself. It was kind of embarrassing to encounter hero worship. She was pleased for the sake of the next generation of Clan and Family females. Vampire chicks definitely needed to get out more.
“Are you related to Sid Wolf?” she asked the girls. “She’s the first female vam—”
“We know,” one of the girl’s said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
The mood in the group changed abruptly. Tension rose. Antagonistic looks were exchanged between the Primes. Laurent smiled, in a way that threatened pain and death to the other males. The teenagers crossed their arms, lifted their chins defiantly.
Eden murmured warningly, “Boys….”
It was obviously something she’d said. Dee looked to Laurent.
“My sister Sid’s life choices are a bit polarizing. It’s best not to mention Sid around here at the moment.”
“Especially in great-grandmother’s hearing,” one of the teenagers added.
Dee saw she’d put her foot into a family feud. Searching for a way out, she glanced toward the dancers on the patio. She looked at the trio of unattached Primes surrounding her.
“Isn’t anyone going to ask me to dance?” she asked.
They all moved fast. Xander put his arm around her waist first. He led her forward. “Can you tango?”
“Nope.”
His lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you.”
Dee managed not to laugh. Comparing Xander with gruff, sarcastic Jake Piper didn’t come out in Xander’s favor.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Delilah had mentioned that her dress was blue. Jake did not mean to be searching the crowd for any spot of color among the sea of black, but his attention was caught by color just the same. One mortal female wearing orange—perhaps females would call it tangerine—mistook his brief study of her as something different and came up to introduce herself.
She stood next to Jake now, with the Prime she was attached to next to him, as well. The other Prime radiated a proper amount of jealous tension although Jake was doing no more than answering “Yes” or “No” to the female’s eager questions. The antagonism being specifically directed at him wrapped a dulling cloud of emotion around Jake, adding to his already messed-up senses. His long drive had done nothing to aid his confusion. He had returned calm enough to face the prospect of this party with a calm demeanor.
He supposed the Prime wanted to provoke a fight to impress the girl. Jake had seen this behavior among the Piper family and the Dark Angels. It was part of the party atmosphere, entertainment rather than serious sparring for mating rights.
“Excuse me,” he said to the talkative young woman when he could take the tension no longer. He turned to the Prime. “Go away or I will kill you.”
The Prime met and held Jake’s gaze. Conversation gradually ceased around them. While others watched them, the two Primes gauged each other. The other Prime’s eyes were ice-chip blue. His gaze was steady, at first. Not arrogant, but full of courage. Jake liked this dangerous fellow. Ripping his throat out would be a shame. He let this thought filter into the other Prime’s head. Blue eyes understood Jake wasn’t joking.
I’ve had a bad week. Let me take it out on you.
I may let you try, the other Prime thought back.
“Kiril,” the female in orange said anxiously.
The mortal’s word went unheeded. No vampire spoke, or felt or thought if they could help it. They recognized this was no game to Jake, and Kiril was going to have to deal with it himself.
Kiril looked away first. His muscles relaxed. The hostility in his emotions dissipated. He said, “I didn’t mean to irritate you.”
It was close enough to a surrender for Jake to accept, in this time and place. He nodded.
This would have been the end of the incident as far as Jake, Kiril, and the watching Primes were concerned. But vampire females made things far more complicated than Primes did. Since this was a Solstice Celebration, an important turning point in the year, everyone should be fond of each other, or at least friendly. Kiril would have taken his lady in orange and left, but two vampire females moved up to block their exit. One was short, brown haired and extremely curvaceous. The other was a leggy blond wearing a long turtleneck dress which completely covered her body, and left nothing to the imagination.
“How do you do that?” Jake asked after he’d looked her up and down.
She cocked a perfectly arched eyebrow at him, and ran a finger along his jaw. He felt nothing. Perhaps a bit of embarrassment.
Her voice was silken. “You like the look, but aren’t attracted to me. How sad.”
“I agree,” Jake said. It was sad, and thoroughly nerve-wracking. Another part of that bad week he’d been having. He wished he’d never set eyes on McCoy—only he didn’t.
Where vampire females were, Primes were. Within seconds, Jake found himself surrounded by a dozen people.
“Pipers are from Michigan, yes?” the dark one asked.
“Detroit, mostly,” Jake said.
“How do you like the desert climate?” the blond asked.
“I haven’t paid much attention to it. Except to the earthquakes.”
“What we’ve been getting around here is nothing c
ompared to where I was last week,” the dark one said.
“How was the conference in Arizona?” the blond asked the dark one. “Was the spa as advertised?”
“Gorgeous. It’s at the bottom of this deep, red canyon….”
And the pair of females were off on a conversation which made no sense to Jake, but at least took their attention away from him. The other Primes gathered closer around the females, hanging on their words. Or at least the males were so fascinated by the females’ beauty and sensual auras the Primes didn’t care what the females talked about.
This gave Jake a chance to find an escape route. He could sneak away without appearing rude to the Clan females. His nerves were about to break.
He needed to go somewhere nowhere near the dance floor.
He took a sideways step, then another, and turned.
And a child came running toward him, tiny legs pumping, curls bouncing. She dodged around legs and reaching hands.
“You!” she yelled at Jake. She grabbed him by the pants leg. “I know you! I smell you!”
Jake looked down at the child in utter consternation. “Uh….”
“Leviathans are famous for their sense of smell,” Laurent Wolf said, coming up to pluck the child away from Jake. He held her in his arms while the girl stared at Jake. “Why is that Leviathan sense so strong, do you know?”
Jake was too busy being dumbstruck at the sight of the little girl to answer.
The child put her arms out toward Jake.
He put his hands behind his back. “Oh, no.”
The child’s eyes widened in surprise. She looked at Wolf—her sire, Jake presumed.
Laurent looked at him. “She’s used to getting everything she wants. It’s good for her to be told no once in a while. Or so her mother says. I’d never dare to do it. This is Antonia Wolf. Toni. Descendant of mortal vampire hunters and Tribe Leviathan on her mother’s side. Your great-great-niece.”
“Want to bite him,” Toni announced to her sire.
“No, honey. You can’t bite boys yet.”
“He wants biting!”
“I know, Princess, but not by you.”
Jake didn’t appreciate this conversation about his needs and wants, but he could hardly challenge a female child or the sire explaining things to her. Pity.
“You are assaulting me with cute, Wolf. That isn’t fair.”
“Fighting fair is for Clan Boys,” Laurent answered. “Something you and I will never be no matter how they dress us up. Clan or Family, I should say, Piper.”
“But at least they let us come to their parties.”
“It’s a nice party,” Laurent said. “Nice is nice, occasionally.”
Jake looked at the sight of a Prime lovingly holding a spoiled child. He looked at the knots of people, chatting, sipping drinks, laughing and flirting. Music was in the air, as well as the scent of flowers, food, and sex. And McCoy. Her hot, cinnamon spicy scent permeated everything else.
“All this is so banal. So very—”
“Bourgeois was the term used in my youth.” Laurent paused until the child kissed his cheek and he kissed her back. “I’ve never minded bourgeois. What’s wrong with being comfortable?”
“We aren’t meant to be comfortable,” Jake said. “We’re vampires.”
“Who told you that?”
“That we’re vampires? I figured it out for myself when I discovered this need to drink blood and sleep in the daytime.”
Laurent ignored Jake’s comment. “We can’t have adventures all the time—not even you Dark Angels always live on the blood and adrenaline high.”
“Are you saying you Clan Boys aren’t always out playing knights and heroes?”
“Goddess, I hope not. The point is, everybody needs to have a mundane side to their life. We need lovers and friends, a place to live.” He touched the tip of the girl’s button nose. “Children to raise. The adventures happen, but it’s the life we return to that makes the adventures important.”
“We grow too much like mortals.”
“Maybe. But we had domestic lives before the daylight drugs came along. We took mortal bondmates, too.”
Jake had wondered when Wolf would hit him with this. He didn’t answer.
“Your woman is dancing with a Prime at the moment.”
“I know that.”
How could he not know? Awareness thrummed through him, perfume in his nostrils, fire in his blood. Ached for her. Called to her. He fought to keep her from consuming him with every word he spoke and gesture he made. He’d known she was coming, when she’d arrived, when she’d walked through the house and into the garden. When the Primes had surrounded her—
“She hasn’t tasted you,” Laurent pointed out. “She’s fair game for anyone who can seduce her.”
“I know that!”
“Then why aren’t you doing something about it?”
“Because—” Jake turned his back on Laurent. He wasn’t going to be pulled into the trap Wolf set for him with all this show of the wonders of domesticity.
Why not?
He didn’t know. But —
“Messed up!” the little girl said. “Needs biting.”
“Come along, Princess,” Laurent said.
He was talking to the child, but Jake found himself moving blindly through the crowd. Jake suddenly couldn’t fight himself a moment longer.
He had to be with Delilah McCoy.
Chapter Thirty
Xander taught Dee to tango with a simple telepathic touch. A finger traced across her forehead, and she suddenly knew every step and nuance of the sensual dance. She was used to tutorials like this when information needed to be passed quickly among the Dark Angels. That was all right, but the touch from Xander was disturbing and unwelcome.
“I didn’t ask for you to do that,” she told him. He merely smiled and twirled her in among the dancers. The tango was a lustful dance. It was very much about the man being dominant, controlling every move. They turned, whirled, stepped, skin on skin at every moment. It was a very—primal—dance.
“You aren’t enjoying this,” Xander said after a while.
“Not a bit,” she agreed.
“You break my heart.”
“Not a bit.”
He chuckled. “But you could, if you like.” He leaned close to her. His lips brushed her throat and he took a deep breath. “Soft skin, rich blood. You are a free woman—a virgin is the mortal term, I think.”
Dee thought she was well past being shocked by anything a Prime said, but she was dumbstruck for a moment. She would have frozen in her tracks and stared at Xander, but the Prime kept her moving in the pattern of the dance.
“You are offended,” he said after a few silent moments.
“I am.” More silence. She gave a frustrated sigh. “But not by you.”
Xander’s lips parted in a smile that showed a touch of fang. His lips brushed her bare shoulder before he lifted his head to meet her gaze. “He doesn’t deserve to taste you if he won’t give his blood in return.”
“He has his reasons,” Dee said.
Though she didn’t know why she was defending Piper, something she certainly wouldn’t have done a week ago. Or even a couple days ago.
“Why should you defend him, do you think?” Xander questioned.
She supposed the Prime was more interested in seducing her than psychoanalyzing her, although she couldn’t help but consider his question.
“Because we’re—” she began
A Prime came up behind Xander. “May I?”
The next thing Dee knew she was dancing with another vampire. He wasn’t quite as graceful a partner as Xander, but there was nothing serious about the glint in his blue eyes and the charm in his smile. She couldn’t help but catch his infectious pleasure. There was no need to think for the moment.
“My name is Adam,” he told her. “You are the witch Dee. You are my first witch.”
She laughed. And they danced together until the so
ng ended. Adam kissed the inside of her wrist when they parted, leaving a promise of sharp fang against her skin. The gesture sent heat flushing through her, but it wasn’t a picture of Adam firing her imagination.
She’d been laughing. Now she wanted to cry.
An arm came around her waist. She was turned to face—green-eyed, auburn-haired Ted.
“Dance with me,” he said as the music began again. Another tango. Vampires liked the sexy dance, apparently.
“Any chance of a waltz? How about salsa?”
Ted pulled her close, hip to hip.
Dee pressed a hand against his chest. “I think I’ve had enough dancing for now.”
“Is it me?” He looked devastated.
“It’s the shoes. My feet are killing me.” Which was true. While her high heels were sexy as hell, they also hurt like hell.
“We can’t have you in pain, unless you want to be, of course.”
Ted swept her off her feet, into his arms. Everyone around them kept dancing, gracefully making room as he carried her off the dance floor. Dee was amused and pleased by this romantic gesture. Not embarrassed. It was silly to be embarrassed when Dee understood that vampires were a flamboyant lot. If she was disappointed, well, that wasn’t Ted’s fault.
He kept walking when he stepped off the patio.
“Where are we going?” Dee asked. She could see the tiled fountain at the center of the garden bubbling in the distance.
“Cool water to soak your feet.”
“I’m not going to soak my feet in Lady Juanita’s fountain! That would be rude.”
“Nonsense. You are her guest. You can do no wrong.”
“Oh, yes I—”
“Put her down,” Piper snarled from behind Ted.
Dee glared over Ted’s shoulder. “Just where the hell have you been?”
Ted lowered her to the ground. He would have stayed protectively in front of her, but Dee moved to confront Jake Piper. Piper’s eyes were glowing red coals of fury. His gaze burned past her at the other Prime. She wasn’t having any of that. She moved close to Piper, got in his face, absorbed the heat of his skin. Claws sprouted from his fingers, his fangs were out. Dee was assaulted by hot waves of fear and lust—she wasn’t even sure which was which. Her hurt and fury overrode both.
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