Since I didn’t have any skips to trace until tomorrow and Kendra and Howard went out for a late dinner, flying the coop within seconds of Kendra inviting him out, I was free to do whatever. I decided to spend the evening with Jax. Only he didn’t know that yet.
I turned to Jax, who was hovering by my front door as if unsure if he should leave or not. Crossing the room to him, I asked. “Have you DVR’d anything good this week?”
A slow seductive smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “We could go to my place and check.”
I wasn’t home enough to justify paying for cable TV, and I spent a lot of time at his place, so I watched his TV.
I nodded and his smile widened while his hand settled on the small of my back. Instead of resisting, I let him spin me into his arms, against his chest. Not that I didn’t want to be there. Part of me wondered why I resisted at all. The mating bond. The lust. The desire to spend hours looking into this man’s eyes. Seemed kind of silly to fight it. Watching Kendra and Howard meet, then run off on a date night within a few hours made me think about—really think about—Jax and me.
Another part of my brain reminded me that I wasn’t aware of all the aspects of the mating bond. I didn’t know if he would suddenly be the boss of me. This was a lifetime deal. If he thought for one damned minute that I was going to let him tell me what to do, except during sexy times when sometimes I might like being told what to do, then he had a whole other shock coming for him.
However, the latter part succumbed to the one that loved holding his hand, sleeping in his bed, wearing his shirts. That part of me was bad ass enough to take out any wayward parts that were rebelling. He’d already told me once he wouldn’t become my master or anything like that. I’d ask him to clarify, just to be sure, before we went through with it, but for now, I pushed all the hesitation out of my mind as we walked across the street to his house. I was still in control when he turned on some island challenge show that I happily ignored to make out with him like a teenager on the sofa.
He was halfway around second base when his cell phone rang. Then, when he ignored it, it pinged three times in rapid succession. Whoever had called was now texting. That was when the kissing turned into a weird kind of staccato pecking before he finally pulled away.
I adjusted my shirt while he checked his messages as the phone rang again. “Hello…Okay.” I could only hear his side until I focused on the other voice with my vampire super hearing.
“The vampirism secret is out.” The panic made this person’s voice high-pitched. “I was in Wyndmoor, and I was hunting.” If this guy had a heartbeat, it would’ve been loud and proud right about now. “The old fashioned way.”
Jax groaned. “And?”
“I found a guy. It was fine. But a kid caught it all on video.”
“Video?” Jax stood and started pacing.
“Yeah. And then the kid got away. I followed him to his house, but he went inside and locked the door. I suck at compulsion, so I couldn’t get the owner to open the door, and I couldn’t figure out how to break in without causing a call to the cops.” Oh, no. If the secret got out…there would be no peace. No safety. My new life would be changed in ways from which I would never be able to recover.
Jax got the address then spoke firmly. “Stay where you are, and stay hidden.” He hung up and turned to me. He eyed my second base area, then sighed. “Come on. We have to go.”
I might’ve given my second base area a shimmy. Not because this wasn’t a big deal, but because my second base area didn’t get a lot of action these days, and I wanted to let him know it might be available later if he so decided.
“Isn’t this something you usually delegate?” I cocked my brow because if we could resume make-out activities, fine by me.
“Nash and Grim are at Catch and Release, Paige is with Cleo, and Ransom rushed over to Lukes about an hour ago.” He smiled. “Besides, we can handle this.” He looked me up and down. “You’re able bodied. And as my heir and mate, you should know how to deal with our people and situations like this.”
“You are able bodied.” I shot him a smoldering look of my own, and he grinned. I didn’t comment about being his heir and mate. That was who I was, for better or worse. Or would be if I ever stopped being a big baby.
“Finding out exactly how able bodied I am means completing the mating bond. You ready for that yet?” He didn’t ask often, but every once in a while he found a way to work it into conversation.
“We have a vampire rumor to stamp out. Then we can talk about bonding later.” I added a smile to my usual avoidance tactic, happy I had an actual reason the mating bond had to wait. When he didn’t move, I cocked my head. “Sooner we leave, sooner we get back.”
He smiled as we walked outside. I went for the car, but he froze and looked at the street. “It’s time you learn some of the perks of being a vampire.”
I already knew about the hearing, the keen ability to know the exact moment a pin dropped before it hit the ground. And yeah. Even if no one was around to hear the tree dropping in the woods, it still made a sound. I’d heard it.
Before I could reply, he took off, running out of the house and through the night. To show me the perk of super speed, I supposed. I followed though I couldn’t see him. He stayed just out of sight. But it was okay. I could sense him, and I was close enough that I smelled him. Another perk of being a vampire.
We were little more than a blur, and I doubted a human would be able to process what they were seeing if they happened to catch a glimpse of us. Not only were human bodies slower, human brains were, too. Pity.
We stopped at the entrance to a neighborhood divided into culs-de-sac and streets named after storybook characters—Pan Drive, Finn Avenue, Darcy Street.
I smelled another vampire. Close. When he stepped out of the shadows, he was nothing like Jax or Nash or Grim. He was more like a younger version of Howard with glasses and a pocket protector tucked inside his cardigan.
“Jax, I broke my glasses,” he whimpered.
Jax shook his head. “Peter, I told you that you don’t need them.” He took the wire rimmed eyeglasses and straightened the frame for the boy, but one of the lenses had already popped out.
This guy was nothing more than a kid. Old enough for high school, too young to drink or vote. And he was the vision of what the teenage girls were all dreaming of. A dark-haired Bieber. His hair fell over his eyes and he pushed it back, removed the glasses and tucked them into his pocket. “Chicks like them.” Then he turned and presented his butt. “Between the glasses and this thing, I get all kinds of action.”
I burst into laughter, but Jax rolled his eyes. “You’d be a great vampire if you could figure out how to stop getting yourself into all this trouble.”
The confidence fell from the kid’s face. “I’m sorry. But I was just taking a little sip from that chick”—he pointed to one of the houses—“when her boyfriend came out. He videoed it.” He sighed. “I tried to scare him into giving it to me, but he wouldn’t give it up.” He looked at Jax and there was no disguising the hero worship in his eyes, the sadness that he’d let Jax down. “Now they’re both inside, and I can’t get in.”
Jax shook his head. He glanced at Peter. “Stay here.” To me, he said, “Watch him. He seems to have a special talent for finding trouble.” He kissed my cheek then turned and made his way toward the house. The kid and I watched from the side of the porch.
“Police!” Jax rapped his knuckles against the door and a second later a light flipped on and the door swung open.
“What’s going on?” The guy stood framed in the doorway and Jax smiled.
“Got a call about a disturbance. I was in the neighborhood. Just got off shift.” Clever. To explain the lack of uniform. The guy who’d answered the door was a greasy, second rate version of Johnny Depp and the woman was small, with long blonde hair piled on her head. I could easily see the teeth marks on her throat. The kid hadn’t even healed her. Then again, he had said he was interrupted.
Jax was mesmerizing to watch. Every flex of muscle, every tick of his jaw as he spoke. “You will let me in and show me the video you took of the vampire.” He was gorgeous, and if he’d spoken to me that way, I would do whatever he wanted.
Jax walked inside and Peter and I followed. And by that I meant, Peter followed Jax, and I followed Peter. So much for staying where we were.
The guy led Jax to the living room and flipped on the television. He screen-mirrored the video from his phone and there was Peter, live and in full living color, blood dripping down his chin, eyes rolled back in ecstasy. I wondered if that was what I looked like when I fed from a human. There was a certain euphoria to it.
Jax smiled and held out his hand for the phone. The guy passed it over and Jax tapped the screen a few times. “There we go now it’s gone. Did you email it or send it by any other means to anyone or save it to any other device?”
The guy shook his head. “No, sir, not yet.”
Jax looked up and smiled at me. “Peter already ate. Do you want to…” He nodded to the guy. Then looked him in the eye. “Offer her your wrist.” He turned back to me. “A crying shame to waste all this compulsion.”
I moved in, took the guy’s arm. There was a moment of indecision, a couple of seconds of guilt for not knowing if this guy would mind, then the smell of his blood was so strong that I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t let this moment pass without tasting him.
Jax brushed my hair aside and kissed the back of my neck as I fed, then he fed near where I’d bitten the guy. And this was the new most erotic moment of my life. Feeding together was arousing in ways no simple touch could compete with.
When I looked up, he was finished feeding, watching me with his lip pulled between his teeth.
Free will.
Turned out, I didn’t have to make a decision because the wail of a police siren—these folks had obviously called the cops before we arrived—shattered the silence.
Jax healed the wound on the guy’s arm, and then looked at him. “You will tell the police you were having an argument and that you thought you saw someone skulking outside. You will forget about the video and us. Vampires don’t exist.”
The guy nodded, and Jax repeated the words to the girl. Peter must’ve healed her neck while we tasted her boyfriend. I moved with Peter to the doorway, Jax right behind us. We left, running for the next street over as the cops turned into the neighborhood. Once we were safely away, Jax stopped, grabbed little Peter by the shirt and held him off the ground with nothing more than a couple of fists full of shirt and leather jacket.
“Listen to me. If you do this again, I might not be able to save you.” Despite holding Peter up off the ground, Jax sounded fatherly. Kind. Then his face darkened, and he jerked at the kid’s shirt. “And I will kill you myself if you compromise the safety of the vampires under my care.” The moon caught the point of his fang and it made a bright, little starburst in the darkness. And seeing Jax so fierce, so ferocious was hot. H-O-T.
The chant of free will ringing in my head silenced. Suddenly, I didn’t care.
Jax was the sort of leader his people came to, knew it was safe to turn to when they made mistakes. “They all come to you when they mess up?” I whispered as Peter disappeared into the night.
He nodded. “Yeah. The first couple of times I can let it go. After that…” He shrugged. “It’s another story.”
I didn’t have to ask the ending of that particular story.