by Anya Bast
Her adrenalin flared with a burst of pure, unadulterated annoyance. She glanced at the sculpture and her chest constricted. “I’m not lonely,” she ground out. “In fact, until yesterday morning, I was perfect in every way.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.” Michael didn’t seem perturbed at all by her sudden flash of anger. He remained the same stoic man of few words she’d always known him to be. “But the council is never wrong.”
She made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat and pointed out the double doors of the barn to his bike. She almost stomped her foot. “Out! I didn’t invite you here and I want you to go.”
He just stood there, looking at her.
Suddenly she wished that old myth about inviting and uninviting vampires was actually true. “Michael, please.”
He gave her a slow blink and then closed the distance between them so fast her eyes couldn’t register the movement. His arms came around her and his mouth descended on hers.
She stiffened in shock for a moment, then punched him in the side as hard as she could, right in the kidney—it had no effect. His lips slid slowly over hers, tasting her. She tried to keep her anger, but the more he kissed her, the less anger she had. Little by little it was replaced by lust.
Goddamn him to hell and back.
Her arms went around his shoulders as he slanted his mouth over hers and parted her lips with his tongue, spearing in to mate with hers. He didn’t have his fangs out, which was a good thing. If she felt his fangs, it would break this odd magical spell. She heard a low, hungry sound and was mortified to realize it was her.
Well, it had been a long time since she’d been with a man and Michael was a very potent man.
His arms tightened around her and he moved her back toward a table, pushing her against it. For a crazy moment, she wanted him to take this even farther. She wanted him to strip off her clothes, lift her up onto this table and take her right here, right now, damn the consequences.
But he didn’t take it farther. Instead, he broke the kiss, set his forehead to hers and murmured, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”
Her breathing was fast and heavy. “Sorry?” She let out a short laugh. Putting a hand to his chest, she pushed—hard. It was like trying to move a boulder, but he staggered back anyway. “Look, this is all a little bit too much for me right now, understand? Yesterday morning I woke to a day just like any other day. Then, the council made a proclamation about me they had no right to make and now I have two men pursuing me when I don’t want even one. Can you see that I might need a little space?”
No matter that those two men were a couple of the finest she’d ever set eyes on. Most women would think her insane for denying them—and maybe she was.
Michael met her eyes. “I see it, but I’m not a patient man. I don’t think Christian is either.”
“Well, then I’m about to teach you how to be. Maybe I’m exactly what you both need.”
Michael gave her a crooked smile. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Her jaw locked involuntarily. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s a truth you’ll come to accept.”
Damn that stupid council to hell and back. She did not need this right now. Dawn blazed brilliantly behind him. She gazed out at the bright horizon. “Shouldn’t you be getting home now?” Please?
He nodded. “I’ll leave because that’s obviously your preference.” He studied her for a moment. “But I will see you tonight.”
“I can hardly wait.” Her voice trembled a little.
He turned, donning his helmet before the early morning sunlight touched his skin, and walked to his cycle. It started with a roar that settled into a kittenish purr. Michael was well off and could apparently burn all the fuel he wanted. With one long, last look at her through the dark visor, he took off, sending up clouds of dust as he traveled down the winding driveway of her farm, protected head to toe by leather.
Once he was gone, she stalked up the steps of her house and slammed through the screen door into her kitchen. Her father had left this house to her after he died. She missed him every day, but more so today. She could use his advice.
Scrubbing her hands over her face, she leaned over the sink and stared out at the still-settling clouds of dust that Michael had raised in his wake. The phone rang and she jerked. The phone service was spotty and the shrill ring got her every time. She turned to lift it from the receiver, hoping like hell it wasn’t Christian. That was the worst part of this. Vampires were nocturnal, but werewolves weren’t. That meant she would be plagued by one of them all hours of the day and night. Maybe double time during twilight and dawn?
Stifling an absurd laugh brought on by stress and fatigue, she barked, “Hello?” into the phone, ready to hang up on Christian if he’d dared call her.
“Kylie?”
She let out a relieved breath and sagged against a nearby kitchen chair. “Carolyn, I’m so glad you called. You’ve heard, I guess?”
Carolyn was her closest friend in Sweet Rock, the daughter of the local alpha. They’d been inseparable since childhood. Since her father’s death and her purchase of the Twisted Kiss, the only time she got to see her was in the morning before Kylie went to bed, since she now kept a vampire’s schedule to correspond with her clientele’s.
“Heard? Are you kidding me? My father told me over my morning coffee and I spewed it all over the table. Christian Phillips and Michael Sanborn? A human, vampire and werewolf triad? It’s…”
“Unbelievable, Carolyn. Seriously. There’s been a mistake.”
“The council doesn’t make mistakes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, they know all, see all. So I’ve heard about twenty-five times today.”
Silence dominated the other end of the line for several long moments. Finally Carolyn said, “What will you do?”
Carolyn alone was privy to all her secrets. She understood why Kylie didn’t want any romantic entanglements, not even with two gorgeous men.
“I don’t know.” She glanced out the window, her jaw tense. “I need to go see the council and find out what went wrong. Why didn’t they match you with them?”
Carolyn snorted. “I wish. I have to admit, I’m pretty jealous right now.” She paused. “I don’t know Michael, but I know Christian. He’s had his eye on you for a long time. I’m not really all that surprised at the matching.”
“I’m sure he’s a great guy—”
“He is.”
“I just don’t want—”
“I get it. We don’t have to discuss it if you don’t want. I know it’s not your favorite topic.” She paused again. “Good luck with the council. I’ll come in to the bar tonight, okay? We can talk.”
“That sounds great.”
Once she’d hung up the phone, she spent a little time tending her vegetable garden. In post-doomsyear, most everyone grew their own food, canning for the winter months. Some people raised their own livestock too, but Kylie was lucky enough to be part of a co-op for her meat.
Necessary chores done, she grabbed her purse, locked up the house and barn, then took off for the council. It was time she got this straightened out.
Chapter Three
She approached the blue house on the far end of town where the Council of the Wise, aka the Supe Council, was located. The viruses that had shot through the world’s populace during doomsyear, creating genetic mutations like vamps and werewolves, had also created a very small number of superpsychics…and a few monsters, but no one liked to think about those, especially Kylie.
Out of all the supernaturals, the psychics were by far the oddest. They existed in pockets around the world, usually near high concentrations of supes, gathering together to live and to give out proclamations to their various communities from time to time. Their greatest gift to post-doomsyear society was their apparent ability to see into the hearts and minds of those around them and make romantic matches.
Those matches were often
two males to one female, since the waves of viruses had left women scarce in the world. Two males to one female cut down on things like wars, kidnapping with the intent of sex slaving and such—the things that tended to happen when there was an imbalance of testosterone in a society.
Kylie had been five during doomsyear. The earliest years had been toughest, of course. She’d been young, but she remembered extreme hunger and being cold in the winter. She remembered her father defending their home from marauders with a shotgun.
The world economy had been decimated, of course. Money had been useless for years. She’d grown up learning how to provide for herself, bartering for the things they couldn’t grow, make, or scavenge for themselves. It had only been in the last ten years that money had started to be used again.
The virus had killed Kylie’s mother. She and her father had been immune, as were all the remaining humans. Those who weren’t immune had either died or been turned into a supe. She lived in a world of monsters now and normal was something of a novelty.
And all seemed guided and governed by the psychics.
A bent, white-haired old woman opened the screen door of the blue house and stared at Kylie as she walked up the steps. “We knew you would come.”
Well, of course, they had. They were psychic, after all.
“There’s been a mis—”
The old woman—her name was Margaret—held up a hand to stop her words. “Now you come on in here, sit down and have a cup of coffee. Then we’ll talk.”
Kylie pursed her lips into a thin line, hesitating on the steps. Figuring this was her only way to bring her issue in front of the council, she nodded and continued into the house.
The other three psychics were already in the living room, steaming carafe of coffee on the wood-and-glass table in front of them, along with five cups. They’d been expecting her.
Kylie nodded at the other three—an older black man named Tony, a middle-aged brunette woman named Charlotte and a skinny man in his early twenties named Brian. Brian was a second-generation psychic, born of a mother who had been virus-affected during doomsyear.
She sank down onto the edge of an overstuffed floral chair. The three psychics were all watching her with various pleasant expressions on their faces.
Creepy.
Glancing around, she quickly found the source of the tick-tocking in the far corner—a great-grandfather clock with a heavy brass pendulum. The house was small and crammed with various pieces of antique furniture. The floor was polished wood and scattered with thick but worn throw rugs.
Margaret entered the room and poured them all cups of coffee. She even knew that Kylie took hers black. Then, with a grandmotherly smile, she sank onto the couch next to Tony. “We know why you’re here, Kylie, and we don’t need our particular skills to understand why.”
Her coffee cup trembled in her hand. “I’m not a supernatural, Margaret. With all due respect, please leave me out of your proclamations. I have no desire to be matched with Christian or Michael, let alone both of them together.”
Tony looked down into his coffee cup, lips pursed. “Desires. They’re a funny thing, you know. Sometimes what we think we want isn’t really what we want…or need.”
“I don’t need psychoanalysis. I need my life back the way it was yesterday.”
“Was your life really all that great yesterday?” Brian asked.
She looked at him in shock. “What a rude question.”
“Remember,” said Charlotte gently, “we see more than most.”
“Well, whatever you see for me, I want to remain the same. I don’t want to be with a man. I just want to run my bar, make my art and be left alone.”
“Alone is what you are and alone is what you’ll always be if you don’t take a risk on these two men,” answered Margaret. She raised her white eyebrows at Kylie as she took a sip of her coffee.
“They are your soul mates,” said Charlotte. “If you pass up this opportunity, it will be a great tragedy for not only you, but for Christian and Michael. Give them a chance, Kylie.”
Soul mates?
Her brain tripped over the term. In the back of her mind, she’d always understood that the council’s proclamations did, indeed, bring soul mates together—or make extremely compatible matches at any rate. Since she’d first learned of the proclamation, Kylie had thought of it as little more than a pain in the ass. The possibility that she might be shunning her best chance at lasting romantic happiness had never really occurred to her.
Still, she wanted to resist it. “I’m…human,” she insisted. “Christian is a werewolf and Michael—”
“Is a vampire,” answered Margaret. “Yes, we’re aware it’s an unusual match. I think you’re a little too concerned with it, however. We were all one race before doomsyear. Despite our surface differences, we are still one race.” She paused and smiled kindly. “And all of us are worthy of love, Kylie.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “Even you.”
All four of the council members watched her carefully as those words seemed to echo in the room. Suddenly Kylie felt naked, like they could see right into the center of her—all her insecurities, all her anxieties.
All her guilt.
She shifted in the chair, placing her barely touched coffee onto the table in front of her. She should have known that coming here would be a mistake. Of course, the council wouldn’t admit to mismatching people. She was stuck with the proclamation.
Kylie stood. “I would say thank you, but you’ve turned my life upside down.”
Margaret seemed unperturbed by the tense set of her body and the clipped tone of her voice. “One day, you’ll thank us for turning your life upside down.”
Yeah, right.
Without another word, she turned and left the house.
Deep in thought, her hands white on her steering wheel, she drove back home. Maybe what was so scary about this situation was that she was bad—no, terrible—at forming relationships. She’d had her father and she had Carolyn, but that was pretty much it as far as close relationships went. She guessed it was because she’d experienced so much loss.
And it wasn’t only her father she’d lost.
Grief, a dark, old friend, wended its way up from the depths of her and curled its tendrils around her gut and throat. Not a day went by that she didn’t think about her dad and miss him.
Deep down, maybe she thought Christian and Michael could never possibly want her. After all, look at what she’d done to the other men in her life. Maybe she was preempting things before someone got hurt.
Wow, it would be awesome if she had a shrink. Unfortunately, the nearest psychologist was at least five hundred miles away. In Sweet Rock, sadly, it was Alec, the bartender at the Twisted Kiss, who usually played that role, and he wasn’t very qualified.
She would have to deal with this on her own, as she dealt with everything on her own.
Christian watched Kylie and Carolyn as they talked over the bar, heads together—one light and one dark. His gaze skated over Kylie’s slender body as she leaned in, whispering furiously. He could imagine what the topic of conversation was.
She wore her thick, dark-brown hair loose over her shoulders tonight. Usually, she kept it in a ponytail when she worked at the Twisted Kiss and he wondered why she’d done it differently tonight. Perhaps because she’d agreed to go out to dinner with him? He could hope. Whatever the reason, it tempted him. He wanted to tangle his fingers through it and use it to tug her face close to his for a kiss. He’d been waiting long before the proclamation to do that.
Maybe soon he’d get his chance.
It was almost eight and he shifted at his place at the bar, conscious of the vamp eyes on him. Weres didn’t usually frequent the Twisted Kiss. They had their own establishment on the other end of town—the werewolf end of town—called the Beautiful Bite. Vampires and werewolves in Sweet Rock tolerated each other, but there was a tension in their relations that came from being two highly alpha races forced
to live alongside one another.
Kylie stepped away from Carolyn and looked up, laughing, her dark eyes crinkling at the edges and her wide mouth open. His heart arrested in his chest for a moment and he took a long drink of his beer to calm the sudden hunger the sight of her ignited in him. He’d wanted her for so long, and now that she was close to being his, it was killing him.
He knew Michael felt the same way and that killed him too.
He and Michael had grown up in Sweet Rock and knew each other as well as any two people from opposite ends of town could. Christian wasn’t into the whole vampire-hating thing, and luckily Michael wasn’t an extreme were-hater either. Still, having to share Kylie with him rankled.
Every man knew there was a high chance of having to share his mate once one was proclaimed by the council. It wasn’t any easy thing for alphas to do under any circumstance, even though it was a fact of post-doomsyear life that they’d had to come to terms with. The tri-pairings served a very important purpose. History had shown that in cultures with too few females, the males became overly aggressive and warlike. Two men matched with one woman in mutual compatibility was a very good thing
Proclamations weren’t made every day, but they were always perfect. The council was never wrong. All three of them—even if Kylie didn’t know it yet—were lucky to have found their family.
Christian would do his best to remember that the next time he saw Michael. Maybe it would keep him from punching him.
He glanced at his watch—eight o’clock. Kylie was his.
She glanced at him, then at the clock above the bar. A look of resignation came over her face, and Christian vowed to turn it to lust the first moment she let him. She said her good-byes to Carolyn and picked her way through the thronged bar to his side.
“Glad to see you’re so excited about having dinner with me.” He kept his tone dry.
“As I told you before—”
“You’re not interested in a relationship right now. Yes, all of Sweet Rock knows that by now.” He accompanied that small bit of criticism with a cocky smile.
