Relief was a fleeting experience. He’d learned long ago that he must always be on guard. His first instinct was to sweep his gaze around the kitchen to make sure it was empty. The chef, Emil, was likely up in his room with his boy, Jase. The other cook he’d caught sight of, Damien, was nowhere to be seen. Dafydd had made it his business to know everyone who lived or worked in the club, so he knew that Damien wasn’t likely to return until later when the club’s business picked up again. He had plenty of time to dish up a few meals so that he could stay in his room for the rest of the day and night. Emil was a scary-looking fucker, as were they all, but he’d kindly given Dafydd permission to take anything at all from the kitchen.
A quick scan of the refrigerator had him pulling out part of a ham and a salad made of potatoes. Roasted vegetables rounded out his choices. He didn’t need hot food. Living with Dracul had made him grateful for anything that filled his belly. Tastiness was a bonus, as were sweets. He pulled out a platter of pastries that made his mouth water. Even before he’d been abducted by the monster, treats had been a rare thing in his poor life. He was a little embarrassed at how much he craved them.
He grabbed all he needed to start constructing thick sandwiches. Bits of ham made their way into his mouth as he did so. His appetite had never been so strong and he felt wonderful. Fully healed from his latest delivery, he was experiencing a kind of good health that he’d never known before. To be free of hunger and pain was almost miraculous. Every day, his body became more robust. All of that was without a diet that included alien blood. Harry had offered, warning Dafydd that he didn’t know what foregoing it after some many centuries would do. If there was any ill effect, he’d yet to experience it. He hoped that all it would do was set him on a course to live and age in a natural fashion. It hardly mattered. Near immortality had never done anything positive for him anyway.
“Oh, I beg your pardon.”
Startled by the voice, Dafydd went into survival mode, clutching at the knife he held and whirling around to face the danger. He knew even before he saw the man that there was no threat. It was only Lucien. But such were the lessons of his miserable life. He couldn’t turn off his instinct to brace for a fight.
It wasn’t only Harry’s husband, though. In the man’s arms sat a gurgling baby. Idris. The name had stuck, and Dafydd had tried to work up some resentment about that. He couldn’t. Despite everything that he’d experienced at Dracul’s hands, he still couldn’t hate the child that had been cut out of him. He couldn’t bear to look at him, either.
He loosened his grip on the knife and turned back to the table of food. “No apologies necessary. This is your kitchen more than mine.”
There was a gentile snort and soft steps approached. “This is Emil’s domain, make no mistake.”
“He’s given me leave to come and take what I will, like.” He didn’t enjoy how defensive he sounded, but at least he was free to speak in his own fashion. Since living with these new creatures, he’d rediscovered his Welsh identity. No one seemed to mind his accent or idioms. It was surprisingly liberating. He hadn’t fully appreciated how much of himself he’d lost during the endless years with Dracul.
“Of course. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Lucien stopped on the other side of the table. Idris gave Dafydd a drooling grin.
The carefree and wholly human look caught him by surprise. He froze and stared at the baby for a few seconds, his heart beating rapidly. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with this creature of Dracul. His otherworldliness was on display, his size too big for the infant he was. Tufts of black hair stuck up all over his head and his eyes. God… That violet shade made Dafydd shiver. The knife slipped out of his hand, clattering on the table.
The baby made a squawking sound and screwed up his face as if getting ready to squall. Dafydd had to look away and put his hand against his chest. It was hard to breathe. He turned to leave.
Lucien stopped him. “I’m sorry. I don’t want our presence to chase you out. Please stay. I’ll only be a moment. Idris needs his breakfast and Emil said he left a bowl of porridge for him on the warming tray by the stove.”
Saying nothing, Dafydd returned to his task because he was hungry, and it was stupid being afraid of a baby. The child couldn’t hurt him, not physically anyway. Not yet. By the time he could, Dafydd would be long gone, although how and where was something he’d have to figure out eventually.
“Would you like to hold him while I fix his breakfast?”
Damn the man. The alien doctor’s husband was surprisingly tough-minded for all his gentle demeanor. He’d been trying to get Dafydd interested in the baby since they’d arrived here in America. Seeing the earnestness in the man, not any kind of cruel baiting, Dafydd had worked hard at keeping his temper in check.
“What for?” Now the bitterness came out without his even caring. “He’s none of my concern and yours for all that.”
“I’m sorry again. I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable.”
“Aren’t you, then?” he shot back and immediately regretted his fit of temper. It never got him anywhere being stroppy, and again, he understood Lucien wasn’t trying to be mean.
Dafydd slammed the top piece of bread on his sandwich. “My apologies. I’m being ill-mannered given that I am your guest.”
“Not mine, Alex’s,” came the mild correction.
“And he dictates how you behave, no doubt, like Dracul did in his domain.”
Lucien’s mild expression turned flinty. “Not like that at all. I expect that’s hard for you to accept, yet it is the truth nevertheless.”
Dafydd shrugged and continued making his meal. “I expect it is, given that I’m standing here unfettered. Not sure it matters, like. I have nowhere to go and no way to take care of myself at the moment.” He flicked his gaze up. “If he thinks I’ll take the boy off his hands eventually, he’s fooling himself and so are you. I don’t want him.”
He nearly bit his tongue saying those words out loud in front of the baby, then chastised himself for his own silliness. Not even Dracul’s spawn could understand what was being said at such a young age. Soon, though, he would, and he’d grow strong enough to hurt his father with little effort. His fingers tightened their grip on the bread he held as he remembered how Dracul laughed delightedly the first time one of the twins had left marks on Dafydd’s body. No, I won’t think of that. It’s over.
“I understand your emotions are still running high, given your ordeal for hundreds of years. No one expects you to recover from that within weeks. We don’t want to pressure you to take Idris, either.”
The human smiled down at the baby and let him grab hold of his finger. “For my own selfish purposes, I’m delighted to care for him. My own son is essentially grown now.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “I’m not ready to let go of him, but in less than a week’s time, he will have passed into adulthood according to my husband’s culture. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”
Dafydd could see how sad the man was. He had gone through this process with the twins, although he’d been and still was happy to have them out of his sight. Being treated with contempt from afar at least left him without bruises and pain. He could see Lucien’s feelings on the matter were entirely different.
Maybe it is about of how they are raised.
No, he wasn’t going to go down that path. Paternity was at the root of it all, anyway. Dracul had been viciously evil, so his sons had that blood coursing through their veins. Alex and his loyal crew had always been different, apparently. He’d never known for sure because from what he’d seen, it had been some kind of internecine war. Perhaps they’d simply resented Dracul’s competition. Everything he’d experienced since fleeing Wales told him differently, but he didn’t trust anyone—not now, perhaps not ever. Regardless, Lucien had raised Harry’s son and now he was raising Dracul’s. If he thought the child would turn out as kind as Demi, Dafydd feared he was in for a rude awakening.
He hurried to
fill his plate. “Well then, you’re welcome to him. Raise him if you want. Toss him in the river. I don’t care.”
Again, he wanted to take back his harsh words. Lucien stared at him with a look of more pity than rebuke. Shoving everything back in its place, Dafydd grabbed his meal and fled the kitchen. He craved the quiet solitude of the sanctuary he’d been given. He vowed in the future to pick his time for foraging more carefully. He still lacked the fortitude to deal with anyone. Or even his own life.
* * * *
“Hey, Sergeant Duncan!” Dr. Ric Paz hurried to catch the cop and his partner.
The two men stopped and turned, then waited for him. They both looked bleary-eyed, and given what he knew about the latest morgue delivery, he could bet he knew why. “Paz, what are you doing down here?” Duncan asked.
He shrugged as he stopped. “I’ve started a pathology residency. I like emergency medicine, but I want to see it from this end, too. I’m a bit of a lab rat, actually.”
Duncan scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard that about you.”
Of course, he had. Keeping the aliens’ secret had meant being given access to information about how they ticked. While he hadn’t had much time to do so, Harry had issued an open invitation to visit his awesome set-up in the basement of the club.
Speaking of which…
“I take it you two went to the grand reopening at Lux,” Ric said. He pitched his voice low so that no one who might enter the hallway would hear. “I had to decline because of my early shift starting this morning. I guess you cops are better at burning the candle at both ends.”
He tried not to envy them. It had been hard not to attend the opening. Not that he cared much for the club scene, but part of him had hoped he could at least ask about Dafydd. He had no illusions that the poor abused guy would be whooping it up. Recovery from his C-section notwithstanding, Dafydd had a long road ahead of him, given his years of horrific abuse. It wouldn’t be surprising if he never overcame it.
And Ric had no business thinking about the not-quite-human anyway. He didn’t have to take a psychiatric residency to know that his interest in Dafydd was inappropriate. The man had been his patient for one thing, and for another, he wasn’t even necessarily interested in forming any kind of relationship with a man. Being Dracul’s sex-slave didn’t mean Dafydd was gay. And if he were and managed to overcome the psychological trauma of constant rape and battering, the last man he’d be interested in would be someone who would remind him of that time.
“Actually,” Duncan’s partner chimed in, “we got called into a case unexpectedly.”
Duncan grimaced. “Yeah, Demi, Jase and Damien, Emil’s sous chef, discovered a body. The case should have gone to someone else, but I snagged it because we were first on scene.”
He nodded. “You mean Father Ted.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Did you work on his autopsy?”
Ric shook his head. “No, but I saw the name and double-checked that it was the same man as I remember from the ED a few weeks back.”
That caught the men’s attention. Duncan furrowed his brow. “You mean he was admitted to the emergency department recently?”
“Not him. No, he brought in a boy that I treated.” Even now, the memory of it infuriated him. “An older teen, badly beaten and raped. He didn’t want to be at the hospital, but the priest insisted. He practically sat on the kid until I was able to examine and treat him.”
“Who hurt him?”
Ric rolled his eyes. “He wouldn’t say.”
“Of course not,” Anderson muttered.
“But, Father Ted told me on the side at one point that some new pimp was corralling the street boys and putting them to work for him.”
“Just the boys?”
“Apparently, although I don’t know why he’d stop there.”
Anderson scoffed. “Easy… They don’t get pregnant.”
“I guess.”
The whole topic made Ric’s stomach roil. The way that poor boy had been bloodied had nearly brought Ric to tears, and he’d drunk himself stupid that night when he’d gotten home. It wouldn’t have taken much in his life to have been different for his path to have turned in that direction. He was grateful for the chances he’d been given.
“Anyway,” Duncan continued, too hardened to the way of the world to bat an eye at what Ric had told him, “what did the priest tell you about this pimp?”
“Nothing really. I gather he’s been preying on quite a bit of what Father Ted thought of as his flock. The priest was trying to track him down, or so he said. I did warn him that it was a police matter. He assured me he wasn’t intending to confront him, just learn enough to take something to a cop he knew in vice.”
Anderson nudged Duncan with his elbow. “Hey, maybe he meant Craig.”
Duncan’s eyes flashed. “Really, Karl? There’s how many detectives in vice and you immediately think of him?”
Anderson held up his hands. “I was only suggesting…”
“Well don’t.” Duncan’s tone brooked no argument. Obviously there was a story there, although Ric didn’t have time to suss it out.
“Look… If I think of anything else that might help, I’ll let you know.”
“Got a name for the kid?”
“He said Mateo Smith. No insurance of course. Came in and was treated as indigent. Sorry.”
Duncan nodded. “It’s okay. Thanks for letting us know.”
“Sure.” When they turned to leave, his discipline cracked. “Hey, um, if you went to the club last night, did you see Dafydd by any chance?” He looked away. “Or, you know, heard anything about him and the baby?” The memory of that infant with the strange violet eyes still haunted his dreams.
“I didn’t see him. Sorry.” Duncan looked at Anderson, who also shook his head. “I’ve heard that both of them are doing well, though. They’re in good hands, if you’re worried about them.”
“Oh, no,” he was quick to reply. “I’m sure they are. I was only asking as a doctor. You know, following up on a patient’s recovery.” He flashed a quick grin and could tell by the looks on the other men’s faces that they weren’t buying that explanation.
“I’m sure it would be fine for you to go and see for yourself,” Duncan offered. “Didn’t Alex give you a membership card? And I know Harry is happy to have you visit.”
Ric backed up a step, already uncomfortable with how he’d steered a professional conversation into a personal one. “Right… Yes, of course, Alex did and Harry is. But, you know…work.
“I’ll see you around,” he added before turning on his heel and taking off. He was halfway down the hall before he remembered that he’d been heading in the opposite direction when he’d run into the cops. Still, he kept going, because apparently the mere thought of Dafydd and his baby boy was enough to turn Ric into a blithering idiot.
Chapter Four
“I don’t know, Demi. I still think the Canali or the Boss classic black shawl jacket is the way to go.”
Demi eyed Quinn’s reflection in the mirror. “Boring. Epically so.” He twisted and turned to assess his current choice. “I love this Hickey Freeman. It’s a classic look but with a bit of pizazz.”
Mackie leaned into his view. “Yeah, but it’s blue and paisley. A little outside the lines for this kind of affair.”
Demi tossed that concern away with a flick of his head. “As if there’s a standard for what I’m doing.” He dropped his voice so that the hovering attendant couldn’t hear. “Papa says I would traditionally be presented naked.”
A shiver ran up his spine. The idea of being handed off to Trey with nothing on but his skin was titillating—like a virgin sacrifice to the vengeful god, not that Trey was anything like that. Still, how sexy would it be to saunter up to him, proudly sporting his desire for the man? He could even picture tying a bright red bow around his dick then had to stifle a giggle.
“Dad said ‘no’ with that rare tone of his, which me
ant he wasn’t going to submit to Papa’s will on it.” He sighed. “Wearing something pretty, but not stuffy, is the next best thing. I want to make Trey’s eyes pop when he sees me.”
Mackie grunted. “Jeez, Demi, he’s already like a cartoon wolf every time he does. I don’t think what you’re wearing will register much.”
“So, if it doesn’t matter to him, I should pick what makes me feel sexy and desirable.” With another turn to check the way the jacket fell from his shoulders, he gestured to the clerk. “I’ll take this.”
He peeled off the jacket and handed it over to the man before hopping off the fitting platform. Fortunately, given the time crunch, he’d managed to find clothing that didn’t need altering. He really did have a great physique for clothing. And, thanks to the Amex black card Papa had given him in his own name, he could afford to shop independently—or with his friends. It was fun trying on clothes with the boys instead of a bored parent. He only wished Jase had been free to come with them.
He hurried into the changing room and removed the rest. Mackie and Quinn ambled over to take each piece to bring to the clerk. “You guys should really buy something to wear yourselves. My treat,” he added, pleased to be able to pay for stuff.
“Thanks, but Alex has force-fed me a ton of clothing lately. My problem is going to be choosing which outfit I want to wear. There are so many choices now in my wardrobe that it’s freaking me out, actually.”
“I’m all set, too,” Mackie added. “Although, unlike our frugal midwestern boy here, I can never have enough stuff. Good thing I married a generous man.”
Demi flashed him a smile, disappointed that he couldn’t shop some more. He also knew that, unlike Mackie, he wasn’t going to have a rich husband. He’d have to learn to live on a budget, whatever that meant. Money had always been something that was magically there for him. But he didn’t want Trey to feel like he couldn’t provide for his family, so frugality was going to have to be something Demi mastered.
Mating Dance Page 6
