Love Bites

“You do realize I know that’s a BB gun, right?” he asked in a low voice, his ears pricking at the sound of Emily’s boots clomping down the sidewalk. Each step she took away from him felt like ten miles.

“It’ll still hurt.”

“Yeah, sure.” His eyes narrowed upon the woman he’d grown fond of and he shook his head. “How could you allow him to sire her? Do you want to share him, Syd? Do you have any idea what that means?”

“First of all, I’m not sharing him. She’s not interested in Kellan sexually.”

Lucas scoffed under his breath. “Oh yeah? Then what was that scene I saw last night?”

“She watched. She was newly turned, and surely you remember the appetites that arouses. If she wasn’t so incredibly strong, she would’ve given in to more, but she resisted.”

He recalled waking to the sensation of Emily’s mouth on his cock, sucking him into ecstasy, and breathed through his nose until the mental image dissolved. Other parts of him didn’t forget as easily. “You let him turn her.”

“He had no choice. And if anyone is to blame for turning Emily, it’s her.” Sydney didn’t blink when he fastened his gaze hotly on hers. “She demanded I turn her when we were alone at the coffee shop two nights ago. Kellan wasn’t even there.”

“You?” He choked back a laugh. “You can’t turn anyone. You’re not even a full vamp yourself.”

Her cheeks reddened. “Maybe not, but when she slashed her own throat with a knife after I refused to try to change her, my not-even-a-full-vamp impulses definitely kicked in. I tried to keep a hold of myself, but it had been so long since I’d tasted real blood.”

“You drained her.”

“Damned close.” She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “If Kellan hadn’t come by and fixed it, she would have died. And yes, I bear some responsibility for that. I should have thrown her out of the coffee shop when she asked me, but she was so desperate that I couldn’t say no.”

“Oh yeah, he fixed it, all right. He sired my mate, which made him a hero in your eyes and indebted yet another naïve female to him. Canny bastard, isn’t he?”

“He lost much more than he gained.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m not a full vamp. You said it yourself. I have no true sire. Yet.” She stared at him. “Would you deny me if I asked?”

His mind reeled. Dear God, he hadn’t even thought about Sydney. If she wanted to embrace being a vampire, she’d need a sire that wasn’t Kellan.

Would he do that? Could he? Even if he took their betrayal out of the equation, was he prepared to accept what being Sydney’s sire would mean? For all of them?

Before he could answer, a deep voice came from the doorway. “Sydney, leave us. Lucas and I need to talk.”

Luke clenched his fists. Just who he wanted to talk to, although he would prefer another method of communication altogether. Preferably one that involved lots of spilled blood.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I am.” Kellan strode into the room and cupped Sydney’s shoulders. He kissed her forehead with a gentleness that made Lucas even more furious. The rift between them seemed to have magically healed in the twenty-four hours he’d been out of town. “We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t forget to give him your pathetic excuse of a gun,” Lucas called as she sailed out of the room.

Kellan shut the door with a firm click and faced the bed. “You look like hell.”

“As do you.” But it wasn’t true. So much for the beating and the fangplay they’d engaged in the night before. Kellan looked daisy fresh in his loose navy pajama bottoms. His hair was wet, as Sydney’s had been.

Nice to know they’d been washing away their troubles while he’d been bound and locked up. Amazing they hadn’t invited Emily to join in.

“I wouldn’t have changed her if I’d had any choice. Good God, Luke, don’t you know me enough by now to believe that?”

The quiet question slid through him and settled in the pit of his stomach like a lead weight. Now he was supposed to feel guilty? “What did you expect me to think? I’d been gone less than a day, and I come back to a goddamned orgy in my own bedroom. One I hadn’t been invited to, by the way.”

“Would that have made a difference?”

“I don’t know.”