“No problemo. Catch you later.”
Saxon was gone with a wave and Stella pointed Benny toward the door. “Time to go.”
“I’m going where you go.”
“Fine.” Only because she might need to use his phone again or get that streetcar money. Not that she could get into her apartment without her key. What a total disaster.
“Can I hold your hand?” Benny asked.
She’d rather go tanning and die. “No.” Stella pulled the door to Cort’s apartment shut behind them.
“Can we stop for a daiquiri? I feel dehydrated. I think you took too much blood.”
She’d taken like a thimble’s worth, but she wasn’t about to argue with him. It made her feel a little sheepish to be strolling around with her unwitting blood donor. Though Benny unconscious was a lot more desirable than Benny awake and gazing at her in total mortal devotion.
“Sure.”
As the sounds of Bourbon Street hit her when they stepped outside, Stella sighed.
It was going to be a long night.
* * *
WYATT WAS OFFICIALLY freaking out. Stella wasn’t anywhere. No one had seen her since the night before, when he had gone out on the deck with her. Granted, no one remembered a damn thing after the wake, which was weird in and of itself, but it seemed like someone should have noticed Stella at one point or another.
Stella was noticeable. Wyatt noticed her all the time. Like every second of every night when they were at work. He even knew when she went to the restroom, that’s how constantly aware of her he was. He could tell her what T-shirts she’d worn for the last five nights and if she’d worn her hair in a ponytail or not.
But he supposed not everyone was the same way. You know. Like in a totally unrequited, pathetic crush.
Pacing in his apartment, he gripped Stella’s purse and tried not to panic. He would go ask around and see if anyone had seen her the night before. According to his phone, it was midnight, around the time everything went fuzzy in his memory the night before. He knew a lot of the bartenders, sound guys, deejays, and band members on the street, and they all knew Stella. If she had been out and about, someone who knew her might have seen her.
So he took to the street, her phone and his in opposite pockets. Maybe she’d call him. Or herself. Because that made sense. Not. But it was his only plan.
He lived on Burgundy and Conti, and as he headed toward Bourbon, he popped his head into a few local bars on the way. No one had seen Stella.
Cutting the corner close at the daiquiri shop, Wyatt glanced in, annoyed as usual at its neon flashing lights and sparkly floor. Too much stimulation for a vampire, though he supposed that hadn’t been factored into their decorating.
But he forgot all about the floor when he saw a tan, built guy in nothing but a banana hammock. Which in and of itself wouldn’t have caught his attention, because it was a common enough sight on the street, but it was who the dude had his arm around that made him stop suddenly in his tracks.
It was Stella.
A guy bumped him from behind. Wyatt barely managed a mumbled apology as he stood rooted in the doorway, shocked. Speechless. Furious.
Stella was sipping from a giant cup and talking to the bartender. The musclehead next to her stood there, his hand possessively rubbing the small of her back, his taut butt cheeks flexing in his orange Speedo as he shifted.
Wyatt felt sick. Even worse, he felt jealous. He hadn’t felt jealous in about a hundred years, and he had certainly never felt jealous of a pinhead with a waxed chest. But he could still feel Stella’s mouth on his c**k and the thought of her with anyone else, especially this mortal show-off, made him see red. He needed to punch something.
He settled for taking a deep breath and calling, “Stella!”
She was already turning around, clearly sensing him. “Wyatt, oh my God, I’m so glad to see you.”
That soothed his battered ego a bit. He started toward her, eyeing the almost-naked guy as he turned around.
But then Stella followed up with, “Please tell me you have my purse and my phone.”
That was a little deflating. “Your purse is at my place. I have your phone in my pocket.”
Sighing in relief, she held her hand out. “Thanks.”
That was it? Thanks? Wyatt had been worried sick for the last three hours. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.
Instantly, she bristled. “I was in the room with you guys the whole time. You all thought I was Saxon’s friend Bob.”
“That was you?” He’d never known Stella to morph into bat form. “Why didn’t you just come back and tell us?” He spoke in code, very aware of the mortal standing next to her. The mortal who smelled like baby oil and dried blood.
Blood? Wyatt homed in on the man’s neck. There were bite marks on him. Bite f**king marks. She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have.
“I couldn’t,” Stella said tightly. “I was stuck.”
“How do you get stuck?” Wyatt asked. Stella just wasn’t the type to get stuck in bat form. “And who is this?” He thumbed a finger at her buff sidekick, who was just standing there sucking on his drink straw. With bite marks on his neck.
“I’m Benny.”
“He’s been helping me since you all left me without any means of communication or a way to get to my apartment or into my apartment!”
She was seriously going to cop attitude with him? Wyatt was floored. “I was worried about you! I wasn’t going to just leave your purse laying on a riverboat deck. You’re never more than an inch from your purse. I thought you were kidnapped or mugged or fell off the boat or something.”
Just the thought of any of those made his shoulders tense and his skin tight, even knowing that she was safe now.
“I did.”
“Did what?”
“Fall off the boat.”
It took him a second. “You fell off the boat?” Well, that explained her leaving her stuff on the deck. She hadn’t meant to. It also explained her morphing. It didn’t explain her getting stuck or who the hell Benny was and why she had bitten him.
“After that I have no idea what happened. The night is a total blank. Then when I woke up, Benny here was in the bathtub and he let me borrow his phone but I couldn’t remember your number and I didn’t have any money.”
Wyatt eyed Benny. “You’re the priest?” He could honestly say he would have never realized this was the same guy. This dude did not look like a priest to him now that his eyes were open and his robe was missing. Maybe he’d never really looked like a priest. Wyatt had been more focused on the fact that he’d had Stella’s purse than anything else