Gracie held her breath for a moment, then slid her fingers up his arm until she could make the jump to him. She took him in her hand and started stroking him lightly. He thickened under her touch. His eyes fell to half-mast as he began to pleasure her again. His fingers were soon slippery with her, the scent driving him crazy.
The others were going to want to use the bathroom sooner or later. They didn't have time to make this as long as he’d have liked. With a growl, Daniel turned her, gently bending her over the sink. Gracie gripped the edges, her breathing even quicker as he pressed against her.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
At her nod, he eased himself into her. The fit was tighter than he expected; her thighs pressed so tightly together made it difficult for him to get inside her. She shuddered as he entered, though, squeezing down on him. Daniel stroked her back, feeling her muscles and letting out a sigh when she moaned. She felt so good he could spend the rest of his life inside of her. He closed his eyes as he rocked his hips, loving the sensations that flooded his body as he did.
Gracie moaned again, pressing her forehead to the top of the sink as her wetness increased, making his movements smoother. Soon, he was thrusting into her steadily. Her breasts bounced beneath her, and he gripped her ass with one hand, loving the feel of her skin, while the other reached beneath her to find her clit again. He ran his fingers over it, eliciting a loud cry from Gracie.
From there, it all happened very quickly. Her back arched, her legs trembled, and she clamped down so tight on him that he couldn’t move. He could almost feel her fluttering; the increased pressure sent him over the edge. He braced himself against the wall, unwilling to crush her to the sink, and thrust his hips another few times as pleasure burst through him. He emptied into her with a series of grunts, then was still.
Gracie’s back twitched as she lay over the sink, moaning and gasping. Daniel gently withdrew from her, then stumbled over to the toilet and sat before pulling her into his lap. Her face was flushed, her hair mussed, and she gave him a smile as she sank into his embrace.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Daniel buried his face into her hair and breathed in her scent. What was she thanking him for, when it was him that ought to be thanking her? He smiled as his arms tightened… he hadn’t realized until now how lonely he had been. But while she was here, he didn’t have to be lonely anymore.
Chapter Six
Gracie
Gracie blushed at the scrutiny she found herself under, with twelve sets of eyes staring at her. Shadow’s oldest girls were watching all the younger children, so that the adults could gather together and discuss what to do with her now. Daniel lounged beside her, seemingly unbothered by the looks that ranged from distrustful to so blank she couldn’t read them. She was glad to see some sympathy, but it wasn’t enough to hide the looks that clearly wondered if they ought to just kick her out and preserve themselves.
Eventually, Ava spoke. “Did you find anything unusual on your exam?”
The question was not directed at Gracie, but at Mia.
The tiger-shifter doctor shook her head. “She’s as ordinary as millions of women all over the planet. Nothing special about her bloodwork that I could find. Of course, I don’t have all my resources here. If there is something physically different about her, I’d need more equipment to find out.”
Gracie rubbed her hands together and glanced around at them all. “If I knew what Apep wanted from me, I’d tell you.”
“We know that,” Daniel answered in his deep rumble. He took her hand and squeezed it. The gesture did not go unnoticed, with Roxy, Twister, Polaris, Hurricane, and Cyclone all frowning while the others looked even more blank-faced, except for Ava and Melanie, both of whom grinned. Daniel gave no indication that he noticed the looks they were given, though. Which was just as well, because Gracie had heard quite enough of Twister and Roxy scolding him for sleeping with her already. “Don’t worry, we’re going to figure this out. Apep’s pulling out all the stops to get you back—”
“Or he sent Typhoon and Guinevere to take us out, like he’s been doing from the start,” Polaris gently chided. “It’s not necessarily about Gracie.”
Shadow moved up beside her mate, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Guinevere said Apep wants the girl alive and unharmed. So, he wants her for something… I don’t relish the idea of killing an innocent, but—”
Gracie shrank back from her as Daniel leapt to his feet and snarled blackly.
“I’m not saying that we kill her right now,” Shadow snapped. “But if it comes to it, we kill her rather than let her fall in Apep’s hands. Or would you rather be his prisoner, with whatever he has planned for you?” Shadow glowered at Gracie here, as though daring her to say she’d rather go to Apep than die.
Gracie stared back at her, not about to answer. Of course, she didn’t want to be Apep’s prisoner! But she didn’t want to give Shadow permission to kill her. The leopard shifter seemed like the kind of person who would do hard things and live with the guilt of it, rather than risk even worse things happening. If they’d discussed this before, would she have killed Gracie at the bank, rather than try to rescue her and risk capture?
“We’re not killing anybody,” Mia spat, her voice harsher and stronger than Gracie had heard it before. She glared at Shadow for a moment before sweeping her gaze over all of them. “So Guinevere said that Apep wanted her alive. The last time I saw Rob—Typhoon—he said that he only put up with Jasper because he liked fucking me. You all know how much he loves our son. Apep can make them say things they don’t mean. For all we know, Apep wants her dead and had Guinevere say that to get us to kill her for him.”
Everyone was silent for a moment. Daniel returned to sit beside Gracie, taking her hand once more. Somehow it felt even more intimate than when they had slept together. Not that there was any sleeping involved… They’d only had the one round before Twister came pounding on the door and started to scold Daniel for getting involved with her when they knew nothing about her.
Twister scowled at her now, but there was clear worry in his eyes. He was rather overprotective, Gracie thought, considering that he couldn’t be that much older than Daniel.
“Speaking of Typhoon.” It was Tornado who spoke this time. His jaw clenched as his gaze swept to Mia, and then Twister. “We’ve danced around the subject long enough. How long did you know that he was half vampire?”
Mia’s eyes hardened as she glared back at Tornado. “Since he told me,” she replied bluntly. “And he told Twister because Guinevere was pregnant, and they needed to know what to expect with Storm.”
Gracie straightened. What? Twister was Guinevere’s mate? Her brow furrowed as her gaze flashed between them. But he was far too young to be Daniel’s father… but what Mia had just said made it sound like he was… Shifters must age differently than humans, she thought. Twister must be older than he looks.
She was going to have to ask Daniel about this…
“You’ve had three months to bitch about this and quite frankly I’m tired of listening to you.”
Tornado exposed a canine. “It’s just that if I’d known he was half bloodsucker, I never would have followed him. And I can’t help but wonder why you would fuck him still… not that Twister’s motives are any surprise, what with fucking a bloodsucking queen himself.”
Gracie flinched back as Mia leapt at Twister, black and orange fur sprouting from her body. Twister let out a snarl and was held back by Cyclone and Polaris. To Gracie’s surprise, it was Daniel that grabbed Mia and held her sharp claws back from slicing open Tornado’s face as Shadow prepared to spring, Blizzard beside her. Roxy and Hurricane both placed themselves in front of Melanie and Ava, shielding them as they both shied back.
“That’s enough,” Daniel snapped, his hold tight around Mia. “Who are you helping with that Tornado?”
“I don’t think a half vamp has any right to—”
“WHO ARE YOU HELPING?” Daniel roared, l
oud enough to make Gracie flinch again. Her heart started pounding faster and she jumped to her feet, ready to run if she needed to. Her hands were cold, her entire focus on Daniel and Tornado now; he still held onto Mia, but it was almost as though he was holding himself back by holding her.
Tornado’s nostrils flared, and he opened his mouth, but Ava skirted around the room and put a hand on his chest. “Apep.”
Tornado gave her a startled glance. “What?”
“When you talk like that, you’re only helping Apep. Typhoon isn’t the one who summoned him back. And when you go around calling him a bloodsucker and saying such crude and cruel things to your allies about people they love…” Ava put her hands on her hips and glowered at her mate. “Can you blame him for not telling you? Now I want you to apologize or you’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”
Tornado had the decency to look ashamed. He squeezed the back of his neck before glancing up at Daniel, Twister, and Mia. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. My mouth runs off with my head sometimes.”
Daniel relaxed and released Mia. He nodded. “We know that. But can we all just try not to be so hot-headed? We can’t allow ourselves to be torn apart, not when we’re all we have against Apep. We can’t rely on anybody else. We need to get on the same page here.”
Nobody responded to that, although Gracie thought it had been a rather good little speech. She stepped up next to Daniel and blurted out the only thing she could think to say. “He’s still afraid of you, you know. You’re on the news all the time. The Savage Brotherhood, talking about what horrible things you do and how you’re out to enslave humanity and how he’s trying to protect us from you guys. He wouldn’t be making such an effort to demonize you if he wasn’t afraid.”
Shadow smirked at that, though it was short lived. “Thank God it’s not us that are scared, then.”
Thunder, who until now had been silent and still, stood and nodded in Daniel’s direction. “The kid is right. We are too divided. What we need is a real leader here. The more we vie for the position, the most splintered we become. The problem is that we all think we ought to be the alpha, and our mates will naturally vote for us.”
“I don’t think I should be alpha,” Cyclone said mildly.
Thunder rolled his eyes but smirked. “Right. So, we should all put the name of the one we think will be the best alpha in a hat. Winner becomes alpha and we follow his lead.”
“So sure it’d be a him?” Melanie interrupted.
Thunder opened his mouth, but he’d already lost them. Gracie’s eyebrows rose as they fell to squabbling about semantics and how fair a vote actually would be, whether they should include the children or at least the teens. She leaned back, shaking her head. It was obvious that they did need a leader… and she knew who she thought would be best at it. But would she even be allowed a vote?
Shadow was the first to leave the room, with a snarl over her shoulder while Blizzard followed after her, glaring at the rest of them as though they might attack. “If we don’t keep our heads, we’re going to lose them.”
Snorts answered the statement. Gracie took Daniel’s hand, seeing the tension in his neck and shoulders, and gently tugged him from the room. It was so crowded in there she could hardly breathe, and the tension wasn’t helping it any. She and Daniel headed up for the attic, the only open space where they could get any sort of privacy. It was far too cold to think about doing anything besides just sitting and talking though, and even that couldn’t last long.
“I think I’m going to sleep up here tonight,” Daniel grumbled as he stretched out on the thick two-by-fours. “Maybe that way I can get some actual rest. It won’t be too cold if I’m in my wolf form.”
“If you roll over, you’ll fall through the ceiling.”
“I can find some plywood to throw down, give myself a bit of a bed.”
Gracie smiled briefly, but it didn’t last long. “Thunder’s right. There needs to be a clear leader here.”
Daniel shrugged, staring at the underside of the roof. Bits of snow drifted in through it. A couple of flakes landed on her nose and Gracie scrubbed them off. She wrapped her arms around herself as she considered him.
“Do you think—”
“We’ve tried to decide on a leader before,” Daniel interrupted. “We even voted. Eliminating those with the fewest votes and revolting. It ended up in a tie and nobody even listened to the person they voted for. We shifters aren’t built like that. We need someone to take leadership, to dominate the others. The problem is that we just have too many strong alphas here already.”
His tone made it clear that the discussion was over. Gracie bit her tongue, wanting to press the issue but knowing it would do no good. Instead, she turned her mind to something else.
“What do we know about Apep?”
Daniel gave her a surprised look.
“He can control the vampires,” something she didn’t know until she came here, “and he’s an Egyptian god. But what else?”
He didn’t answer.
“I take that to mean nothing?”
He shrugged, a blush creeping into his cheeks.
Gracie sighed. “Well, at least that’s something I can do. If you can get me internet access, I’ll start researching. Maybe we can find out something that will be useful. And I won’t have to sit around listening to people talking about the benefits of killing me outright.”
Daniel rolled to a sitting position. He reached for her hand and clasped it tightly. “No one is going to kill you. I promise.”
Chapter Seven
Storm
They needed more money. Since none of them could go out and get a job without inviting Apep’s forces down on their heads while flipping burgers, robbery was the only option. And it was one that they had all taken part in before Apep’s attack—well, Daniel had had everything provided for him, but he had been planning on joining the Brotherhood before Apep’s attack—and so it was an easy choice for them.
This time, they needed it to go smoothly. So, they had scoured all the banks, picked one that would be the least likely for Apep to be watching, and made a plan to rob it. It wasn’t easy, since everybody had their own ideas on how to go about it. One thing that all of them, Daniel included, agreed on, however, was that Gracie was not coming with them.
The morning that they were going to head out, he headed up to the attic. He’d gotten some boards and nails to patch it up, and a heater plus extension cord made it bearable to be in. So far it was his and Gracie’s private place, but it was only a matter of time before the others expanded into the territory as well.
He found her there, sitting close to the heater, bundled up in a thick coat as she poured over the books he’d managed to steal from Guinevere’s library, before he was chased off when Apep first made his appearance. Beside her was a stack of books he’d stolen from a library. She was a dedicated researcher, it seemed, and a smile tugged up his lips.
“Hey.”
She jumped, then blushed as she smiled up at him. “Didn’t hear you come up.”
“I was quiet.” He winked at her. “So, we’re headed off here soon. Anything you need before we leave?”
Gracie placed her bookmark and crooked her finger toward him. “A goodbye kiss?”
A grin crossed his face as he bent over her. The hot air from the space heater brushed over his skin as he laid her down on the platform he’d built, pressing himself against her. The wood was cold, the air chilly, but her warm body against his made it worth it.
“When are you leaving?” she moaned once their lips parted.
“About an hour.”
Gracie wrapped her arms around his neck and toyed with the hairs on the back of his neck. “That’s long enough.”
Daniel’s eyes darkened with lust as he considered her. Yes, it was long enough for what he wanted. To get her sopping wet, to find his place inside of her and mark her as his own. It was the situation, he knew, that was drawing them so close together. Only Mia and
Andy were without their mates, and it got lonely watching the others cuddling next to each other. It wasn’t like Gracie was his forever girl, but when they could be killed at any time… why not wrap up in each other and take what comfort they could?
Several layers were between them, but Daniel made quick work of them. He draped one of the blankets over their hips to give a bit more warmth, and from there it was quick. He made sure she finished before him, and then they lay with their arms around each other. It had only taken half an hour, and they could probably have another round, but Daniel found himself satisfied at the moment—he just wanted to hold her.
“Can I ask you something?” her lips were plump and swollen from their kisses as she licked them.
Daniel propped himself on an elbow and nodded.
“You’re Andy’s son?”
Hadn’t she known that already? They didn’t make it a secret. He arched a brow and nodded again.
“Oh.” Gracie glanced away. “I thought he was your brother. You two look so close age.”
A ball of dread started to build in his stomach. She was going to ask. And he was going to have to give her the answer. How was she going to react to learning that he was, chronologically, less than two years old? It didn’t change the fact that he was physically and mentally just as old as his father… but that was sometimes difficult for people to understand when they knew his age.
Luckily, she didn’t go there—not right away, at least.
“So, Typhoon was the former alpha of the Brotherhood? And since he’s half vampire, Apep was able to take control of him?”
“Yeah.”
Gracie hesitated a moment. “He was the one that attacked you at the bank.”
“Yeah.” Why was she asking about Typhoon?
“Why was he controlled… but not you?”
Daniel let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. I wish I did. Maybe then we’d be able to figure out a way to end Apep’s control over all of them. But the truth is… I don’t know if I am immune. Or if Apep is just waiting for the right moment to take me, too. Or maybe I’m just not strong enough to be of use to him.”
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