“You’re not going out tonight?” Abby asked him as he took her hand, surprised to see him still here. She thought only Luc was staying behind tonight.
“No. I didn’t get much rest this afternoon and thought I’d keep Luc company. Besides, I’ve got some work to get caught up on that I’ve neglected lately. I’ll walk you up, though, and you can tell me what you’re in a snit about.”
“You know what I’m in a snit about,” she returned just as coolly as he as she let him lead her upstairs. “We didn’t need a chaperone earlier.”
Damien turned his head and looked down at her, a dark brow raised in mockery. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t get off having an audience? Because I distinctly remember…”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she snapped, embarrassed that he could read her body so well during sex and knew she found being watched added to her arousal. “You were holding back and you know I wouldn’t mind if you took my blood. It’s not natural for one of your kind to deny yourself that way.”
Damien was regretting telling Jacob to give her the Book of the Crescent Creed. She had enough ideas of her own without giving her every intimate detail about their needs. “I’m not used to explaining myself, mon amour, and there are things in my past that shame me enough that I never want to risk losing your high regard by telling you about them. You’ll just have to trust me on this issue, and settle for what I can give you.” They reached his bedroom and he opened the door before turning back to her only to be brought up short by the stunned, surprised look on her face. “What?”
“Did you just call me your love? Did you mean it?” Abby had learned a good deal of French over the years, and she was still reeling from hearing him call her an endearment he had never voiced before.
Damien didn’t realize he had let that slip, but admitted the lapse was bound to be inevitable now. “Yes, I meant it.” Framing her face, he bent his head and took her mouth in a hard, demanding kiss, giving her no choice but to kiss him back. When she melted against him, he pulled back slightly, saying, “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give in to you on this. Be happy with what we have, Abby, and don’t push me on this.”
Abby stared at his retreating back, his thick black hair gleaming in the meager hall lighting, his strides long and purposeful, his back ramrod straight. Smiling, she shut the door and prepared for bed thinking she had her work cut out for her, but confident she would win in this, especially now that she knew he reciprocated her feelings.
Chapter Nine
Other than to ask her if she needed anything yesterday morning, Grace hadn’t seen Jacob at all on Sunday. She had spent the day hanging around the plantation with Abby, exploring the multi-winged mansion with its rich history and historic charm depicted in the furnishings and artwork that filled each room. Abby skipped leading her down a very narrow hall off the second floor that used to be the servants quarters, explaining that was where Damien, Jacob, Jon and Luc were retiring to during the day now that both of them were in residence. Under normal circumstances, Grace would feel guilty for putting them out of their rooms, but the reason she was here in the first place was because of circumstances that were anything but normal.
They dealt with the sultry afternoon heat by spending a few hours in the pool, and as Abby drove her into work this morning, she was still adjusting to her close contact with Damien’s tigers. Abby hadn’t thought anything of it when the two animals slithered out of the bayou and joined them in the pool, but once Grace saw how gentle they were with Abby, she had been able to relax and enjoy their presence even if she never did get up the nerve to get anywhere near them herself. Coping with living within close proximity to such wild animals wasn’t the only thing that occupied her mind this morning when her irrational disappointment over not seeing Jacob again last night returned when he didn’t make an appeara
nce before they left. It didn’t help her mood to witness the heated farewell between Abby and Damien nor did the urge to ask Damien about Jacob sit well with her.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Abby said as she neared the city limits and hadn’t heard a word from her passenger since they left the estate twenty minutes ago. “You know, if you want to talk about what happened with Mason, I’m here. I won’t insult you by saying I understand, but I can lend a sympathetic ear or offer a shoulder to cry on.”
“Tears won’t change anything and to be honest, I’d like to just put those days behind me.” She had cried enough during the two weeks she was held prisoner in Mason’s house to last her a lifetime and now all Grace wanted was her life back. She may not have an exciting career or an active sex life, or even anyone special in her life, but what she had had been enough for her before her abduction and she was determined it would be again. She ruthlessly ignored the way her mind kept flashing back to the scene between Abby and Damien she had witnessed, a little voice taunting her that she could have that with Jacob if the look in his eyes and the erotic pulse from her mark when he was near was any indication. It was just gratitude, she repeatedly told herself, gratitude and a desire for something she had never had. She refused to believe it could be the man she was drawn to because, not only was he a vampire, but he had ‘bad boy’ written all over him, the very type her grandmother had always warned her to stay clear of.
“I’ll bet that’s easier said than done, but if there’s anything I can do to help you do that, please don’t hesitate to ask.” Pulling up in front of the library, Abby surprised her by saying, “Jacob’s planning on being here at six. To be safe, stay inside until he comes in to get you, okay?”
Hearing that she would be seeing Jacob this evening for sure sent her pulse to beating an unwelcome, completely irrational rhythm of excitement, one she diligently tamped down then ignored. “Don’t worry; I’m more afraid of a repeat of the other night than I am of anything Jacob might do.”
“Jacob won’t do anything you don’t want him to, Grace. I’ve known that man for twenty years and he’s as honorable as Damien.”
“You don’t mention those other two, the brothers.”
“Jon and Luc?” With a rueful smile, Abby admitted, “They’re honorable, but if you were their mate, you can bet they wouldn’t be giving you breathing room the way Jacob is. They’d be pursuing you with everything they have, and just looking at them, you’ve got to admit, they have a lot!”
The brothers were big, muscular men, their sandy, sun streaked hair worn long and shaggy around their cragged faces, the only discernible difference in their looks being their eyes. She had met Jon last night for the first time and the only way she knew he wasn’t Luc was that his eyes were hazel, the brown tinted with a touch of green, instead of the golden brown Luc’s were.
“Yeah, they’d catch any sane woman’s eye, but I still wouldn’t want to come across them alone in a dark alley.”
Shrugging, Abby replied simply, “Better them than the drugged up gang members that you’d probably encounter.” She knew Grace would have to eventually decide for herself if any of the men were trustworthy enough for her to let her guard down with.
“True. Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you tonight.”
No matter how hard she tried, Grace couldn’t stop thinking about Jacob, couldn’t stop picturing herself with him in the same position as she had seen Abby with Damien. Maybe it was just a matter of wanting to replace bad memories with better ones; she tried convincing herself as she led a group of pre-school children through story time. Or maybe she just wanted to prove to herself that the pleasure she saw between the other couple couldn’t be as good as it looked etched on Abby’s face and hinted at by her body’s response as she convulsed over Damien’s lap, she tried to reason as she cataloged a new shipment of books into the computer.
Grace reached up and rubbed at the small red mark on her neck, the light touch making her shiver with a jolt of arousal. How intense would her reaction be if it was Jacob rubbing that spot, Jacob licking her neck, Jacob biting the tender flesh as she lay naked under him? That thought jolted her out of her reverie, her shiver this time one of complete revulsion and fear. There was no way she could, or would succumb to this abomination, this unnatural desire to be with a vampire, especially after what she had endured at the hands of one of his ‘friends’. Maybe learning more about Jacob and his past would enable her to put the damn man out of her mind, especially if she discovered something that belied what Abby had told her.
Since she was due for a break, she shut down her cataloging and ran a search on Jacob Carter, adding mid eighteen hundreds to narrow it down. Carter was a common last name and as the list popped up, she saw she had a challenge narrowing it down. Taking a guess he was living, and possibly involved in the Civil War, she narrowed her search again. After fifteen minutes of going through the parish documents from that time, she found a Jacob Carter born in 1830 in Avoyelles Parish who was listed as missing in action and presumed dead after the Battle of Yellow Bayou on May 18, 1864. Though the one picture she found of the family was grainy, the Jacob in that picture bore a striking resemblance to the one picking her up in an hour. Which meant she’d be accepting a ride with a man who was a hundred and fifty years old.
Funny, she mused an hour later when he walked into the library and sought her out with that vivid green look, he didn’t look a day over thirty-four. And if she was making jokes about what he was, she was either teetering on a hysterical breakdown or starting to come to terms with what, and who she was temporarily stuck with. If the way her neck was warming, an erotic pulsing heat that was instantly reciprocated in her nipples and pussy was any indication, she was going to be hard pressed keeping to her resolve not to give in to these urges. It’s just sex, she repeated over and over as she gathered her purse, told Clare good-bye and made her way to the front doors where he hadn’t moved from since entering. And she had survived without sex, or without pleasurable sex, for years. She could continue to do so now.
Jacob suppressed his disappointment as Grace approached him with the same wary look tinged with fear she gave him every time he was near. He had purposefully stayed away from her yesterday, his intent to give her room and time to deal with her ordeal. But obviously that reprieve, even coupled with Abby’s reassurances, hadn’t done anything to set her mind at ease. His body was feeling the effects of his battle with the rogues the other night, his weakness minor, but noticeable to him and it looked like he wasn’t going to be renewing his lost strength through his mate any time soon.
His palm and his cock reacted to her nearness in typical fashion, lust heating his blood and sending it pooling to his groin, making his erection a stiff, painful reminder of who he wanted, and needed. Her short, round body appealed to him as much as her cornflower blue eyes and blonde, nearly white, shoulder length hair that framed her attractive face did. He ached to feel all that lush softness underneath him, craved the feel of her hot, slick pussy clamping spasmodically around his rigid length. But even more than the physical pleasures he was dying to experience with her, he craved the close intimacy that he knew he would only feel again with his mate, with Grace.