“I see— Shit,” Zanipolo finished with dismay.
Raffaele turned on him sharply. They were just approaching the embassy and he had been scanning the people they were passing when Zani spoke. Eyeing his dismay with concern, he asked, “What?”
“She just got into that taxi,” Zani said, his voice grim, and Raffaele followed his pointing finger to see the taxi in question. His eyes widened with alarm when he saw Cristo lean out to pull the door closed.
“They’ve got her,” Santo growled with displeasure.
Not responding, Raffaele glanced sharply around until he spotted a taxi disgorging its riders nearby. Spying the driver through the front windshield, he slipped into the man’s mind and took control, making him remain where he was and wait for their arrival.
“Follow that taxi,” he instructed as he slid into the front seat a moment later. Zani and Santo barely managed to jump in the back before the car started to move.
“She never should have come alone,” Zani said fretfully as the taxi moved into traffic behind the one holding Jess and Cristo, and it looked like a third person, although Raffaele couldn’t tell who the third person was. They looked too small to be Vasco, he thought as Zani added, “I hope she didn’t look in the refrigerator before she went.”
Raffaele frowned at the possibility, and glanced back at the other man to ask, “What time did it finally come?”
They’d ordered the blood before leaving the resort. It was supposed to have been delivered at 4 a.m. when they’d been sure Jess would be asleep but Zanipolo and Santo would be awake to accept the delivery.
“What do you mean what time did it come? Didn’t you accept it?” Zani asked now with surprise.
“No,” he said sharply, and then glanced to Santo, who shook his head solemnly. When Raffaele cursed, Zanipolo pulled out his phone.
“I’ll call and see what happened. I’m sure everything’s fine. Even if it was Jess who answered the door, the courier would have taken control of her and put it in her mind not to look in it after he left. The couriers are usually pretty good about that kind of thing.”
“Sì,” Raffaele agreed, and then took a moment to reinforce his control of their taxi driver to be sure he wasn’t catching any of this conversation before adding, “They are in Canada and Italy. But this is the Dominican. Who can say how professional the couriers are here.”
Zanipolo frowned at the comment, but then turned his attention to the phone and began to speak in swift Spanish, asking about their delivery. Who had brought it around? Who had accepted it? What had happened?
Raffaele listened silently to Zanipolo’s side of the conversation as he watched the taxi ahead of them in traffic, so wasn’t surprised when the other man hung up and explained worriedly, “Our courier was in an accident. He was okay, but it put him way behind on his deliveries and he was in a rush. When Jess answered the door and said yes when he asked if she was a Notte, he didn’t bother to read her mind—he just made the delivery and left.”
“Not good,” Santo rumbled.
“Maybe we got lucky and she didn’t look inside the fridge,” Zanipolo said hopefully.
Raffaele snorted at the suggestion. He doubted they’d be that lucky.
“She didn’t look inside,” Santo announced, and Raffaele glanced to his cousin to see that he was sitting forward in the back seat, watching the taxi ahead of them with a concentrated expression. He was reading Jess, Raffaele realized. As long as he could see her, he could read her.
“See, it’s all right. She doesn’t know what we are, then,” Zanipolo said with relief and slapped Raffaele’s shoulder encouragingly.
“Yes, she does,” Santo countered, his words slow and almost lumbering as he struggled to keep a connection with Jess in the car in front of them. “She read that the delivery was blood on the slip and came back in to look and saw us feeding. She then slipped away before we could catch her.”
“Oh, damn,” Zanipolo muttered.
Raffaele felt his shoulders sag briefly, but then shook his head. Okay. So, she knew they fed on blood. That was a problem, but not the main one here, he reminded himself. The real problem now was that she was back in the hands of the pirates. They had to get her away from them. Mouth tightening, he growled, “If he hurts her . . .”
“He will not hurt her,” Zanipolo said soothingly. “She is a possible life mate for him. Every immortal would rather kill themselves than harm their life mate.”
“Maybe normal immortals, but he is rogue,” Raffaele pointed out, and then ground his teeth at the thought that Jess might be a life mate for this particular rogue. The idea infuriated him. She was his, not Vasco’s. The pirate couldn’t have her, he thought, but knew the choice wasn’t his. It was up to Jess. And he was very aware that as a possible life mate for the man, Jess would be as attracted to the pirate as she was to him. That Vasco’s touch would inspire the same mad passion as his own. A passion that was almost impossible to fight, he knew.
“She’s experienced it with you now,” Zanipolo said soothingly. “That will help her fight the attraction.”
Raffaele merely grunted, but he was silently worrying that rather than helping her fight the attraction, it might hinder her ability to do so. The first time she’d experienced life mate passion, it had probably scared her silly. It was rather overwhelming, and thinking herself on a ship full of vampires would have doubled her fear. But now she’d experienced that passion in full with him. That would have made it less scary. And she now knew she’d slept with one vampire without being harmed. Maybe she’d think they were all the same. Maybe she’d even prefer Vasco to him because Vasco had been honest with her from the start, while he’d hidden what he was from her.
“We’re immortals not vampires,” Zani reminded him quietly, apparently reading his thoughts.
Raffaele merely grunted at that. He normally detested the name vampires, and didn’t think of himself as one. But he was quite sure Jess probably saw him as one now and that was what was important. He should have told her what he was and explained to her about immortals after the first time they’d slept together. God, he’d really fucked this up. Glancing around, he noted where they were headed and closed his eyes briefly. They were heading to port. If Vasco’s ship was waiting there and they took her on board and set sail—
“Conference call Julius and Lucian and let them know what’s going on,” he barked furiously. “Tell them that Vasco has kidnapped my life mate and we’re in pursuit . . . And that I will not hesitate to kill the man to get her back,” he growled coldly, and then scowled as he noticed that traffic was getting worse the closer they got to the harbor. Cars were darting out of the side streets and cutting in front of the vehicles in front of them, forcing them to hit the brakes. The distance between their taxi and the one Jess was in was growing.
Concerned they’d lose her, Raffaele looked for a way to make the driver maneuver the taxi closer to hers, but there was nowhere to maneuver to. Traffic was already pretty much bumper to bumper. The cars that were cutting in were nosing into the slowly moving lane and basically forcing drivers to stop and let them in. His only option was to take control of the other drivers and make them pull out of the way. Raffaele was about to do that when Santo spoke.
“There’s the ship,” the big man rumbled behind him, and Raffaele glanced to where he was pointing. He spotted the pirate ship at the far end of the harbor almost at once. It had laid anchor next to a huge cruise ship that completely dwarfed the sloop. It cast the ship in shade and prevented the sun from reaching its occupants.
Handy for an immortal, he thought grimly. But it meant they must have taken rowboats ashore to search the mainland for Jess. He began searching for where they could have put ashore as Zanipolo spoke into the phone.
“Sì, but he will not like it . . . Fine. I will tell him.” Zanipolo’s stressed voice drew Raffaele’s attention as the man covered his phone and said, “Lucian and Julius said we are to wait for the local hunters. They will meet us at the docks and join us to deal with Vasco.”
Raffaele snorted at the very suggestion. “The local hunters had their chance to deal with him when we first reported him. They did nothing. I’m not risking Jess and letting—” He paused and scowled when Zani suddenly held his phone out. He glared at it briefly like it was a snake about to strike, but then straightened his shoulders and took the phone.
The moment Lucian started talking with Julius murmuring agreement in the background, Raffaele knew taking the phone had been the mistake he’d feared.
“I’ll stay with her until Vasco arrives and make sure she doesn’t escape again.”
Jess stopped walking in the middle of the captain’s cabin and turned to see Cristo nodding in response to Ildaria’s words as he headed out of the room. She watched him pull the door closed behind him, and then shifted her gaze to Ildaria, watching with disinterest as the woman’s relaxed pose disappeared and she suddenly moved to the desk in the corner. When the vampire retrieved a bottle of whiskey from a drawer and began to pour it into a glass, she turned away and glanced around the room. Jess wasn’t really seeing it. She was just . . .
Well, frankly, she didn’t know what she was doing. It was as if her mind was full of cobwebs just then, sticky, clingy cobwebs that were making it hard to think and obscuring everything around her. Really, it had felt like that since she’d fled the hotel suite. It was why she’d been slow to understand the guard at the embassy. Why she hadn’t reacted more swiftly to finding herself trapped in the taxi with Ildaria and Cristo. Why she didn’t now know what to do.
“Here. Drink this.”
Jess stared blankly at the glass of amber liquid suddenly in front of her face, and simply turned away, muttering, “I’m not thirsty.”
“This isn’t for thirst. It’s for shock,” Ildaria said in a voice that was oddly dry and gentle at the same time. Moving in front of her, Ildaria took her arm to keep her from moving away and raised the glass to her lips. “Drink it, or I’ll make you drink it. You know I can.”
Jess met the woman’s gaze briefly, but then shrugged and opened her mouth as Ildaria tipped the glass. Fire immediately poured into her mouth, searing her tongue and gums so that she swallowed just to get relief from it. The moment the liquid hit the back of her throat, though, it stole her breath. Eyes widening, Jess drew in a wheezing gasp, struggling to breathe, and the next moment found herself bent over, coughing violently while Ildaria patted her back and said with satisfaction, “Good! There we are. That’ll clear out the cobwebs.”
By the time the coughing fit ended and she was able to breathe again, Jess found herself sitting on the foot of the bed. Ildaria sat beside her, eyeing her closely.
“How do you feel now?” she asked once Jess’s breathing returned to normal. “Better?”
Jess nodded and then shook her head. She could breathe again, and the whiskey had indeed helped to clear the cobwebs from her mind, but that left her having to think. Of course, the first thing her mind chose to consider was Raffaele, and the fact that she’d slept with him, and even maybe fallen a little bit in love with him, when he was a horrible, dead vampire just like Vasco and the soulless vampire bitch beside her.
“Okay, enough with the whole soulless vampire bitch thing,” Ildaria snapped suddenly. “I’m neither soulless nor a vampire.” She paused, and tilted her head thoughtfully before admitting, “I can be a bitch, though.”
Jess blinked at the confession, but the woman quickly continued.
“However, that’s got nothing to do with what I am, and I am not a vampire.” Shifting impatiently, she added, “They don’t even exist. Vampires are just so much paranormal nonsense. They aren’t real,” she assured her, and then said firmly, “I’m immortal. As are Vasco, and this Raffaele fellow who keeps floating naked through your thoughts.”
Jess opened her mouth on a denial, but then closed it again. She couldn’t deny it. She kept thinking of Raffaele . . . naked . . . laughing . . . making love to her. It didn’t seem to matter to at least one part of her mind that he was a vampire. That part was just shrugging and spouting platitudes like, Well, no one’s perfect and That explains how he managed to hold you up against the wall in the shower while the two of you were getting busy. The guy is superstrong. Think of all the new positions you can try with him.
Groaning, Jess closed her eyes and lowered her head, muttering, “What am I going to do?”
“Try those new positions with Vasco instead?” Ildaria suggested with amusement, drawing a scowl from Jess.
“This is serious!” she snapped, turning her fear and frustration on the female vampirate. “You may be fine being a soulless vampire bitch, but I—” Jess’s rant died on a shocked gasp when Ildaria slapped her across the face.
“That was my inner bitch coming out,” Ildaria said with a shrug when Jess gaped at her, and then added, “Besides, you seemed to be getting hysterical.”
“I was not getting hyster—” Jess began between her teeth, only to be interrupted again.
“You must have been, because you called me a soulless vampire bitch again, when I know I’ve already explained to you that I’m not a vampire,” she said dryly, and then clucked with exasperation. “Come on! You seem like a smart enough girl. Surely you realize that none of the monsters you read about as a kid are real?”
“You have fangs and drink blood,” Jess pointed out with some exasperation of her own. “That sounds like one of those monsters from my childhood.”
“But we’re not soulless,” Ildaria assured her. “We don’t crawl out of graves and feed off the living. Well, I suppose we do feed a bit, but that’s just—I mean, not all of us do. Some stick to bagged blood like your friends were consuming in your memory, and . . .” She paused and frowned briefly, and then said, “It might help for you to think of us as hemophiliacs with fangs.”
“Hemophiliacs?” Jess asked with surprise.
“Yeah. Only instead of our blood not coagulating and there being the risk of our bleeding out, our bodies simply don’t produce enough blood for us to survive healthily, so we have to get it elsewhere.”
“Is it a disease?” she asked with a frown.
“No. Science,” Ildaria answered at once.
“Science?” Jess peered at her with surprise.
Ildaria hesitated, and then shook her head. “Look, we don’t have time for those kinds of explanations. Just keep in mind that we aren’t monsters. We’re just people with a few health issues. Okay?” She didn’t wait for Jess to agree or disagree, but continued. “Right now I’m more interested in helping you figure out your feelings about the captain and your naked-Raff.”
“I don’t have any feelings about—” Jess began, and then paused to stare at her wide-eyed. “You want to help me?” That was the last thing she would have expected from this woman. In fact, it made no sense at all to her. “You put your mind-whammy thing on me to get me into the taxi and drag me here against my will, but now expect me to believe you want to help me?”
“It was my job to find and bring you to my captain,” she said patiently. “I did that. But it won’t bring him any joy as long as you’re so confused about your feelings. You’re a possible life mate for both men, and while you obviously love naked-Raff, I’m thinking if you got to know Vasco—”
“I’m not in love with naked-R—” Jess caught herself halfway through using the woman’s nickname for Raffaele and scowled. “Stop calling him that.”
“It’s better than your nickname for him,” Ildaria assured her, and then arched an eyebrow. “Penisocchio?”
Groaning, Jess closed her eyes. Was that nickname still floating around in her head? Maybe. She thought of the name every time he got an erection, and he seemed to get them a lot.
“Yeah, that’s a life mate thing,” Ildaria informed her. “Life mates are insatiable for each other. It’s also why you fell so hard and fast for naked-Raff. Love comes fast for life mates. The—”
“I don’t love him,” Jess interrupted shortly, and not very honestly. “I hardly know him.”
“Hello?” Ildaria knocked on her forehead. “I can read your mind, remember? And if how you’re feeling and thinking isn’t love, I’m a man in drag.”
“Are you? How interesting,” Jess snapped, refusing to admit her feelings even to herself.
Ildaria just shook her head. “Look, kiddo, there’s no sense fighting your feelings. The nanos know what they’re doing and made the two of you life mates for a reason.”
“Nanos?” Jess asked, stiffening. “What nanos?”
Ildaria waved her question away. “Worry about that later. My point is, you love him, and not Vasco. But you’re a life mate to Vasco too and could also love him if you gave yourself half the chance, and . . .” Noting her expression, Ildaria let her voice trail away, and then asked, “What?”
Agitated, Jess stood abruptly and paced across the cabin before swinging back to point out, “You’re saying these nanos—whatever they are—know what they’re doing and made me a possible life mate for Raff, who I admit is smart, and funny, and whom I actually do have a lot in common with. But then in the next breath you say I’m a possible life mate for Vasco too, which is . . .” She wanted to say ridiculous, but just shook her head and said, “I have nothing in common with him. In fact, we’re polar opposites. First of all, he lives on the sea, and I get seasick, for heaven’s sake.”
“What?” Ildaria asked with surprise, and then narrowed her eyes and pointed out, “You didn’t seem seasick the last time you were here. And you seem fine now.”
“The boat isn’t moving yet,” she pointed out dryly. “And the last time I was on board I’d taken motion sickness pills because I was going on the Seaquarium trip.”
“Oh.” Ildaria frowned, but then rallied. “Well, he doesn’t actually live on the ship anymore anyway. We just use it for the tours. He has a house on land.”
Jess was shaking her head before she’d finished. “I don’t care if he has a mansion. The man is crude, rude, vulgar, and unwashed. You could fry chips in the grease from his hair,” she said coldly, and then, because she felt she had to be honest, reluctantly admitted, “Although I do like his taste in decorating,” as she glanced around the spacious room in earth tones.
“There!” Ildaria said, brightening. “That’s something. Maybe there are other things. Check out his bookshelf and see if you like the same books.”
Jess scowled, but did turn to look over the books on the shelf behind her. She started out just quickly scanning them, but then slowed, her eyes widening with surprise as she noted several classics, and many titles she had herself. “These are just decoration, aren’t they? Surely he doesn’t read these?”
“Space is too tight on a ship to waste it on decorations. Those are his favorite books,” Ildaria said with glee, the source of which Jess understood when the woman added, “And your favorites too.”
She was in her head again, Jess realized with irritation, and wondered if Raffaele had tiptoed through her thoughts too at any time. Jeez, he was a vampire too. He probably had wandered through her mind a couple times. Had he controlled her too? Whirling on Ildaria, she asked, “Is there any way for you to know if Raffaele has been controlling me?”
“What?” Ildaria blinked at her in surprise, and then shook her head and said, “Never mind. I can guarantee he hasn’t been controlling you.”
“Really?” she asked hopefully. “How can you guarantee it?”
“Because life mates can neither read, nor control, each other. It’s what makes them so special.”
“Oh,” Jess breathed, relaxing a little, and thinking that at least she hadn’t been made to do anything she hadn’t wanted. Her mistakes were her own. That was something anyway. Actually, it was more than something. She would have been completely crushed to learn that Raffaele had been controlling her and using her that way. Now she just had to deal with the fact that she’d been a willing participant in sex with a vampire, Jess thought, and sighed.
“Look, I know the captain seems to have a lot of rough edges, but most of that is just for show. Really, he’s a diamond in the rough,” Ildaria said quietly. When Jess met her gaze, she added, “He’s a good man. A fair man. He’s dragged every person on this ship from one scrape or another and takes care of us. He’s a fine man, worthy of being loved.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Jess asked with bewilderment.
“Because you need to know it to make an informed choice between the two men.”
“No, I don’t,” Jess growled, turning away from her.
“Yes, you do. Look, right now you think you love naked-Raff, but that’s just because you don’t know Vasco. I’m sure that if you’d spent some time with him, you would have seen past his bluster, and coarseness, to the gem beneath and fallen for him. But you didn’t get that chance. You jumped ship, and dropped right into naked-Raff’s arms and fell for him instead. But this is a big decision. I want to help you make the right one, and you need to get to know both men to choose between them.”
Jess stared at Ildaria silently, her thoughts actually on the woman rather than what she was saying. The first time she’d seen her—Jess shuddered at the memory of Tyler’s horror, and Ildaria with blood dripping down her face. Shaking her head to remove the memory, she asked, “Why do you want to help me?”
“I don’t. I want to help Vasco,” Ildaria said at once. “He’s old, and before you popped up he was showing signs of tiring of life. He needs a life mate.”
Jess raised her eyebrows at that. Vasco didn’t look old to her, but she simply said, “Maybe you are trying to help Vasco more than me, but I wouldn’t have even expected that much from you after what you did to Tyler.”
“Who?” Ildaria asked with confusion, and then her expression cleared and turned grim with recollection. Waving one hand impatiently, she said, “Oh, him. I didn’t do anything he didn’t deserve.”
Jess eyed her dubiously. “He deserved having his family jewels chewed on?”
“He deserved to have them chewed off,” Ildaria countered harshly. “As does any man who thinks to use them as a weapon against a woman.”
“Tyler did that?” Jess asked with disbelief. “But he seems such a nice, quiet type.”
Ildaria snorted at the words. “What’s that old saying? Still waters run deep?”
“Yeaahhhh.” She drew the word out, unsure what that had to do with anything.
“Well, those still deep waters also hide bottom feeders,” Ildaria assured her, and when Jess continued to stare at her blankly, she sighed and explained, “Certain sharks are bottom feeders too.”
“Really?” she asked with surprise.
“Oh, yeah, the saw shark, the horn shark, the zebra shark.” Ildaria shrugged. “They’re all bottom feeders.”
“Oh,” Jess said, and then grimaced. “It’s hard to see Tyler as a shark, though.”
“Well, he is,” Ildaria said firmly, her expression icing over and eyes going distant as if she were recalling the incident. “He seemed nice when he first got on board. Polite and friendly, but after we were under way, he asked me to show him where the bathroom was. I was a little distracted with my chores at the time. There’s a lot to do when we set sail, and I didn’t think to read his mind, but quickly finished what I was doing and then told him to follow me and headed below to show him where the bathroom was. I was still thinking about what I had to do before we hit international waters when he suddenly grabbed me from behind and pushed me up against the wall, then ground against me. He was gripping me so tight that if I’d been some poor mortal girl, I would have come away with terrible bruises. I also would not have been able to escape his attentions.”
“But you aren’t mortal,” Jess said solemnly.
“No, I’m not,” she agreed. “So, I just asked what he thought he was doing. As I recall, he said, ‘Come on, bitch, don’t play hard to get. You know you want it. All you Dominican girls are little sluts, sucking every dick out there. Well, now you can suck mine.’”
“No way!” Jess cried with dismay. She never would have believed it of Tyler.
“Yes way,” Ildaria assured her, and then smiled grimly. “I said fine, but we’d have to move out of the hall in case someone came. He immediately grabbed my hand and dragged me down to the galley. I was reading his thoughts by then, and he was imagining what he’d do if I tried to run. He’s a pretty sadistic little prick under all that preppy clothing,” she added grimly.
Jess gave her head a slow shake, hardly able to credit it.
“His thoughts alone made me feel unclean,” Ildaria said with remembered disgust, and then sighed. “Anyway, I wasn’t running. I had my own plans for him. I wanted to make him sorry, and I wanted to scare him. When I got him to the galley, I immediately turned, caught him by the throat, and lifted him up against the wall. I wanted to choke him to death, but I just held him there and opened my mouth so he could see my fangs drop. He was so shocked and terrified at that point that I had to slip into his mind and control him to be sure he didn’t piss himself. That would have ruined everything. Then I . . . Well, you saw what I did. I gave him what he wanted. I went down on him . . . in my own way. But he didn’t get any pleasure from it. I made it as painful and horrifying for him as I could.” Her mouth compressed and then she added, “I don’t usually enjoy feeding off the hoof. But I surely did that time.”
“Off the hoof?” Jess asked uncertainly.
“Biting a mortal,” Ildaria explained. “I’d rather feed from bagged blood.”
“Then why don’t you?” she asked at once.
“Because blood doesn’t come cheap,” Ildaria said grimly. “The immortal blood banks here are run by a very corrupt family who has doubled and then tripled the price of blood just the last couple of years alone. Only the richest immortals can afford bagged blood now. Vasco can, and usually does, but a lot of us can’t. That’s why he started the shark feeding tours, to feed those of us who can’t afford to feed ourselves.”
Jess was listening wide-eyed. They had blood banks for vampires? Wow. Trying to understand, she asked, “But why would they charge so much if feeding . . . er . . . off the hoof is free? I mean, won’t it just ensure the poorer vampires have to feed that way?”
“Because most can’t feed off the hoof. It’s not allowed here,” Ildaria explained. “The only reason we get away with it is because Vasco takes us out into international waters before we feed. We aren’t bound by the laws of the South American Council there.”
“The South American . . .” Jess shook her head. First blood banks, now a council? How many of them were there, for God’s sake?
“The South American Council is like our government. At least here in South America. There are other Councils in the other areas too,” Ildaria said quietly. “They make our laws and have Enforcers or Hunters, like immortal police, to enforce those laws.”
“Oh,” Jess said faintly, and then frowned and pointed out, “But we weren’t in international waters yet when I saw you biting Tyler.”
“Yeah,” she said on a sigh. “And I got in trouble for that. I could have been executed for it if the Council had got wind, but fortunately Vasco heard me out and just gave me a warning. But there will be no more warnings after this one,” she said unhappily, and then raised her chin and shrugged. “Even so, I don’t regret it. He deserved it.”
Jess couldn’t disagree. If Tyler had acted that way, he’d deserved what she’d done to him. It was just a shame he didn’t remember it afterward, she thought. Instead, he’d come away thinking he’d had a great time.
Ildaria grimaced. “Unfortunately, Vasco wouldn’t let me leave him the memory of his lesson.” Shrugging, she added, “But I have some hope that maybe somewhere in a corner of his mind there is a little nugget of memory that will give him nightmares, or perhaps temper his behavior. If not, perhaps he will do the females of the world a favor and kill himself. I am hoping getting involved with your cousin will help push him in that direction. It is why I put it into their minds that they should like each other.”
Jess blinked in surprise at her claim, and then burst out laughing. “Oh, that explains their behavior when they got back from the ship,” she said with amusement. “And it’s priceless. I can’t think of two people who deserve each other more. She’s as horrible in her own way as he is.”
“Hmm.” Ildaria nodded. “I read her thoughts. The woman is pure venom. She hates herself and enjoys nothing more than making everyone around her as miserable as she is.”
Jess had no problem believing Ildaria’s assessment. It was something she’d suspected herself for some time. But her thoughts now turned to the woman before her. Her first impression of Ildaria had been a very bad one, and misleading. The woman wasn’t at all the monster Jess had believed she was. And yet that first impression of the woman had colored her impressions of everything else that had followed on this ship. It made her wonder if Ildaria wasn’t right, if perhaps, had she not been so horrified by what she’d seen Ildaria doing, and frightened into escaping, she might have seen things differently.
Jess suspected she certainly would have ended up in bed with Vasco had she not seen Ildaria’s fangs and realized everyone on board ship was a vampire. Well, if the man had managed to keep his mouth shut long enough for it to happen. Really, the attraction between her and Vasco had been off the charts crazy hot, just as it was with Raffaele. Even knowing he was a vampire, she hadn’t been able to resist Vasco’s kisses and caresses. Jess doubted she would have been able to avoid sleeping with him if she’d stayed on board. And she certainly wouldn’t have jumped ship to swim miles to shore through shark infested waters if she hadn’t been desperate to escape a ship full of vampires. So . . . would she have come to see under Vasco’s roughness to the diamond Ildaria claimed lay beneath?
“I was afraid of that,” Ildaria said wearily.
“Of what?” Jess asked uncertainly.
“That I was the reason you jumped ship,” Ildaria explained on a sigh. “I gave the game away, and scared you enough that you jumped ship and fled right into the arms of naked-Raff.” She shook her head unhappily. “If not for me, you might have stayed on board and fallen for Vasco instead.” Regret covering her face, she breathed, “I messed up Vasco’s getting his life mate.”
“No,” Jess said at once.
“Sí,” Ildaria insisted. “And after all he’s done for me too. God, I should be flogged.”
“No,” Jess said firmly. “If you want to blame someone, blame Tyler. If he hadn’t attacked you, you wouldn’t have set out to teach him a lesson, and so on. But none of that matters anyway,” she added, and then hesitated, trying to think of a way to say it without being insulting. “Ildaria, I’m starting to kind of like you. I mean, at least I’m not scared of you anymore, and I understand why you did what you did to Tyler. And I even think your tough exterior hides a really nice person. But that doesn’t mean I want to be—or even engage in a relationship with—a vampire.”
“An immortal,” Ildaria insisted.
Jess sighed with exasperation. “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
Ildaria scowled at her with irritation. “But we don’t walk and quack like ducks. We aren’t soulless. We can go out in sunlight, and into churches. Garlic has no effect on us at all except to give us bad breath like everyone else. We are just humans with a medical issue who need extra blood because our bodies don’t produce enough. And many of us get that blood through donors and blood banks. I and the others under Vasco are only doing it this way because we can’t afford to do it the legal way and we don’t want to lose it and attack some poor mortal because we are starving. We are not vampires.”
Jess considered her for a minute, and then asked abruptly, “Where did the fangs come from?”
Ildaria waved one hand impatiently. “Apparently, they evolved millennia ago to allow us to get the blood we needed before blood banks existed. And that is another way we differ from these mythological vampires,” she added firmly. “We do not kill or turn everyone we bite. In fact, we never kill our hosts. That would be foolish, like killing a cow you want milk from. And we are only allowed to turn one mortal into an immortal in our life. That is so that we may turn our life mate. We aren’t the monsters you think we are,” she finished.
Jess stared at her silently, her words running through her mind. Ildaria was actually making her think that her kind, these immortals, truly weren’t the horrors she’d first thought. Maybe they were different than the mythological vampires she’d been thinking them.
Except they drank blood, and could read minds and control humans, some part of her brain reminded her grimly. That still sounded like a vampire.
“We are human too,” Ildaria said firmly, still reading her mind. “And we—” She paused and snapped her mouth closed when the cabin door opened.
Turning, Jess watched warily as Vasco entered the cabin. His gaze found Ildaria first, before moving around the room and settling on her. A smile immediately began to bloom on his face.
“There ye are, me lovely! Finally decided to stop playing hard to get, did ye? Well, I’m a happy man to hear it, I can tell ye,” he said, starting toward her. “I’ve done nothing but dream about yer tuzzy-muzzy and jugs since last I enjoyed them. Come give me a kiss, lass.”