“Not a cover, exactly. I’m just talking about agreeing on a tack, that’s all. Those people know me Alex, they’ll take one look at you and they’ll know—”
“That you’re fucking me,” she spat out. “Well, they would be wrong and I’ll tell them that. You’re not fucking me.”
“Alex, sweetheart, I think you’re splitting hairs, we’ve been—”
“Whatever we’ve been doing, Dell, sweetheart, doesn’t really matter. Does it? Because it didn’t mean anything. Did it?” Tears started to spill out of the corners of her eyes.
I reached up and brushed them away with the pads of my thumbs. “It meant something, you know it did.”
“Just not enough,” she whispered.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “That’s not true. It meant more to me than… What do you want me to say, Alex? I’m twenty-five years old. I’m immortal. I’ve only known you a few days. I’m not ready for a committment.”
Alex looked surprised. “I’m not asking for a commitment.”
“You’re not?”
Alex laughed. “Good Lord, no! Can’t we just be honest with them?”
I nodded. “Tell them the truth?”
“Exactly.”
“We started as partners—” I began.
“Became friends…”
“…with benefits,” I added pulling her onto my lap.
Her arms wound around my neck and she leaned down to nuzzle my ear. “And soon we’ll be lovers,” she whispered into it.
“I think I’ll let you tell them.”
She laughed. “Okay, how about we say—”
“I think I’m falling in love with you, Alex,” I declared, interrupting her.
“Really?” she asked pulling away from me, a smile lighting up her face.
“Yeah.”
For a second I thought she was going to say it back, but she didn’t. My stomach dropped to the floor.
“When you know for sure, promise you’ll tell me?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” I assured her, hoping, waiting. The moment began to feel awkward, silence stretched between us until I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“We’ll be landing soon,” I told her. “You should…” I tilted my head back towards her seat.
Alex slid from my lap and into her own chair. I closed my eyes and began to wonder whether I should have kept my trap shut. I don’t know what the hell I expected, but the moment was so…
“Dell?” She snapped the seat buckle into place.
“Yeah?”
“I think I love you, too,” she confessed.
…perfect.
Chapter Fourteen
I had expected to be mobbed the minute we set foot on the island, and the fact that we weren’t set me on edge. Something didn’t feel right. Just as I was about to tell Antoine to take us back to the mainland I heard my mother’s voice calling down to me.
“Dell!”
The house is located at the top of a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean with a steep path leading up to it. Mom had just stepped out onto the front porch and was waving cheerfully. Her fiery red hair blowing about her head, the edges of her long sweater fluttering like a cape as she began to run down the path towards us.
“Come on,” I said to Rita and Alex.
“I know the way,” cried out Rita, sprinting up the path and shouting, “Violet!”
I placed my hand at the small of Alex’s back and began to guide her up the incline.
“That’s your mother?” she whispered.
I smiled. “Yup.”
“She looks so young.”
I reached for Alex’s hand. “She’s in her fifties. It’s a side effect from the mating, Alex. It slows the human aging process. My mother’s likely to live three centuries or more. I thought you understood that.”
Alex stopped dead in her tracks. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah.”
“And your father?”
“He’s four hundred and five. I’m betting he sees seven,” I replied, tugging gently on her. “Come on.”
“Seven centuries?”
“Why are you so surprised? Surely some of the vampires you’ve met have been—”
“It’s not like there’s been a parade of them, Dell. It’s only been a few and…wow.”
We had resumed our ascent and by the time we reached my mother and Rita the two of them had unwrapped themselves from a joyous embrace and were both wiping tears from their eyes.
I saw my mother glance down furtively towards my hand, which was still joined with Alex’s before opening her arms wide and pulling Alex into a warm hug.
“Welcome home,” she said to Alex. Then she turned to me. “You look tired, dear. Are you working too hard?” She stepped back, releasing Alex and asked her, “He’s working too hard, isn’t he?”
“I—I don’t—” stuttered a nervous Alex.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked as I resumed the climb.
“Interviewing a prospective candidate for the Academy, a young man from Texas that he’s been trying to recruit without much luck. Your father almost cancelled the interview, but I managed to talk him out of it. He’s so looking forward to meeting you, Alex. I swear if he hadn’t been working today he would have paced a hole in the floor of the living room.”
“You’ve extended the front porch and screened it in I see,” observed Rita.
Mom climbed the stairs to the porch, pausing to hold the door open for the rest of us. “We did it right after Lily was born. Charms were cast ages ago that keeps everyone but Byron essentially invisible to outsiders and the perimeter is closely guarded. Ren and I just love to sit out here in the evening and watch the sunset together.”
Rita appeared to be completely at home. She walked across the expansive porch, then through the front door of the house.
“Honey, I’m home!” she cried out, walking inside.
I winced and my stomach clenched with a sense of foreboding. I managed to steal a quick glance at my mother who was smiling brightly before my thoughts were distracted by the sound of thundering feet running down the upstairs hallway towards the stairs.
“My sister, Lily,” I leaned over and told Alex. Only it wasn’t Lily, it was my father, flying down the stairs faster than I’d seen him move in ages. Within the blink of an eye he had Rita in his arms, he’d lifted her up and was swinging her around, her feet dangling in mid air as they laughed.
“Dad,” I said, stepping towards them. I don’t know what I was going to say, but I had to say something.
My father sat Rita down and as he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right,” she whispered to me. “They’re friends, Dell.”
I’ve never been particularly good at hiding my feelings from my mother and I expect that my concern and worry were evident. “Mom—” I began, but she interrupted.
“You don’t have to protect me. I know what your father’s relationship to Rita is. The three of us worked things out long ago, Dell. Your father and I have discussed this many times. I’m perfectly fine with it, really,” she said.
I felt a wave of nausea. This wasn’t right. Something seemed horribly wrong. “You’re going to let him fuck her?” I cried out, incredulous. My exclamation was much too loud, everyone in the room had heard and were now staring at my mother. I expected her to be embarrassed, but instead she broke into laughter.
“God, no!” she managed to choke out. “Whatever on earth… Dell!”
Now I was embarrassed. I felt my face becoming hotter by the second.
“Rita will be staying with us for a while,” announced my father, “that’s all.” Then looking back down at Rita he added, “You can stay for as long as you like or not at all. The choice is yours.” He reached into his suit coat pocked and pulled out an envelope. “You’re freedom,” he told her.
Rita reached out for the packet with a shaky hand. “Chadwick?” she asked. “You
don’t happen to know where my Chad is… If he’s still…?”
“Rita?”
It was Chadwick, my father’s secretary. The one I’d always thought of as asexual. Chadwick was buttoned up so tight I could never imagine him fucking anything. He’d been around as long as I could remember. Quiet, faithful, always dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and red tie. Always. I’d never seen him with a woman socially, nor a man for that matter. Never even heard him talk about anything personal.
Rita flew at him from across the room, knocking the slight, vampire clear off his feet and onto the hardwood floor.
A young man had been next to him, dressed in blue jeans, a denim shirt, and cowboy boots. He’d wisely moved out of the way. He wasn’t as fast as a vampire, but almost, a shifter of some kind, no doubt.
“Jacob, I’m terribly sorry for deserting you,” said my father, glancing down at Chadwick. “Family reunion.”
Rita was now straddling Chadwick, peppering his face with enthusiastic kisses.
Jacob smiled good naturedly, “Your reunions seem to put ours in east Texas to shame, sir,” he said. “I can see myself out.”
“Dell, walk Jacob to the door, will you?”
Anxious for a breather I began to lead the way.
“So, Jacob—”
“Call me Jake,” he said, extending his hand.
I accepted it. “You signing up?”
He shook his head, his sandy blonde hair falling into his eyes. “No, sir. I told Mr. Renfield straight out that I wasn’t going to change my mind. He insisted I turn him down in person.”
“My father’s a persistent man,” I replied. “I’m Dell.”
“My family’s been attending Baylor University for five generations. I’m gonna finish my degree,” he said as we walked onto the porch.
“How much longer do you have?” I asked, making idle conversation.
“Two more years, then hopefully law school.”
The sun had set and the moon shone brightly in the sky. It was close to full. I could feel the air stir around him, the power rising as he gazed up at it. He didn’t have the look or feel of someone that was used to possessing so much strength or controlling that much energy. He still had a lot to learn.
“You were infected recently? Where’s your pack?”
Most shapeshifters are born. The condition passed down from one generation to the next. Lycanthropy is one of the few that can be directly transmitted. When it happens, the new wolf almost always abandons their human life to go and live with the pack.
Jake shook his head. “The pack is in Yosemite. I was bitten last summer. It…it was an accident of sorts. I was hiking and slipped, sliding halfway down into a ravine. I dislocated a shoulder, got banged up pretty badly. It got dark and cold. I thought… Well, these wolves found me and dragged me to safety. I remember the wolf’s teeth gleaming in the moonlight as they bit down on the sleeve of my shirt and began to pull. It was just a graze on my forearm.”
Jake looked away from the moon then and back towards me. “Guess that’s all it takes,” he finished.
“Guess so,” I replied, wishing that I could think of something comforting to say. I’d always known that I wasn’t part of the human world, that there was something about me that would always keep me separate and apart from it. Jake had been a part of that world, and now he wasn’t. I didn’t know which of us had it worse.
“Let me turn the lights on, “ I offered. “So you can see your way down the path and back to the boat. It looks like Antoine’s waiting to take you back.”
Jake waved me off then he placed his cowboy hat back on his head. “Nah, don’t bother. I can see just fine in the dark. Nice to meet you, Dell.”
“Same here,” I said. Then I watched him as he quickly made his way down the steep path. Moving effortlessly through the darkness, back to the life that he’d always planned for himself, the one he’d never really be able to have.
Chapter Fifteen
“Where is everyone?” I asked, stepping into the living room. My mother and Alex were sitting on the sofa. Everyone else seemed to have disappeared. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” replied Alex, a little too quickly.
“Your father went to check on dinner,” explained Mother. “Rita and Chadwick have…disappeared. I, for one, am not going to look for them and I recommend you don’t either. Chadwick hasn’t taken a day off in…ever. I expect that by the time he resurfaces he’ll have a great big smile on his face.”
“That’s…”
“Sweet?” Mom offered, climbing to her feet. “I better go check on your father. He’s been gone far too long, you know how he loses track of time when he’s cooking. Hey, are you two planning on sleeping together?”
“W—what?” asked Alex nervously.
“Mom!” I gasped, stunned.
She held up her hand. “I’m only asking because we’re short on bedrooms and it would be ridiculous to put Alex in with Lily if she’s just going to be sneaking down the hall to your room anyway. Don’t you agree?”
I let my head fall onto the back of the sofa and sighed. “Why can’t I have normal parents?”
Mom walked around to the back of the couch, leaned down, and kissed me on the cheek. “No one has normal parents, dear,” she murmured.
I smiled, then reached for Alex’s hand. “Alex can stay in my room.”
“Good. Why don’t you take her upstairs? Dinner will be ready in about an hour. That will give you enough time to unpack and settle in.” Then she was off, heading towards the kitchen.
“Oh my God!” hissed Alex before folding over on herself so that her forehead rested in her lap, her arms covering her head.
“Are you all right? I know my family can be a bit much, you haven’t even met Chase and Lily yet—”
“They think we’re having sex!” she moaned.
“We are having sex,” I pointed out.
Alex raised up, her mouth open in protest. “We are not!”
“Yes,” I said slowly, “we are. And, I’ll tell you something else, it’s been the best sex I’ve ever had.”
“You really think so?”
“Christ, you make me crazy,” I growled, reaching for her and pulling her onto my lap so that she straddled me, one knee on either side of my hips.
“Your parents…”
“…are busy in the kitchen,” I finished.
“Ahem!”
The noise came from the entry to the living room. Alex winced and closed her eyes. I peered around her shoulder to have my suspicions confirmed. It was Lily. She let her backpack drop on the floor with a thud, then she walked into the room.
“Don’t stop on my account. Just because the more you screw up…the harder things are for me. What do you care? It doesn’t matter to you that Dad’s been holding me prisoner here ever since you left home,” she said, flopping down in the chair across from the sofa.
Lily was the perfect blend of my mother and father. She had by father’s dark hair and my mother’s fair skin and green eyes. Thin and willowy she moved with a natural grace. And her pout? Well, it could even melt me.
“Lily, this is Alex,” I said as I shifted Alex off of my lap and settled her once again beside me. “And Alex, this is my melodramatic sister, Lily.”
“I’m not being melodramatic,” she said. “You have to talk to him Dell. I’m eighteen and he never lets me go anywhere alone! I can’t date. He’s insisting that if I go away to college it’s got to be to an all girl school. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has someone making a chastity belt for me right now! I swear I’m going to be the oldest virgin ever. And you? You can get away with having sex right here on the couch! Hi Alex.”
“Hi,” replied Alex. Then to my astonishment she added, “And you’re not the oldest virgin ever. I’m seven years older than you.”
“What?” gasped Lily. “No way!”
“Way!” she laughed.
“Why?” Lily asked. “I mean, I can understand you
not wanting to do it with Raaandy here, that would be…ew!’
I picked up one of the throw pillows next to me and lobbed it at my sister’s head. To my disappointment, she managed to dodge it. Although I did get a satisfying squeal out of her.
“You are such a butt!” she growled.
Samantha Sommersby Page 11
