“I’ll come right home. Stay with me.” Padding back upstairs, I shut off the hall light and slowly open the master bedroom door. I conjure a small blue string of energy that twists and floats to the center of the room, lighting it enough for me to see.
Lucas has moved and kicked the covers off himself. Blue light bathes his naked body, and a rush of heat goes through me, right to my core. I bite my lip and shake my head.
Right.
Demons.
“Lucas?” I whisper, hoping that since he moved around a bit, he’s not as dead asleep as he was before. I hold my hand out and sense Binx’s presence at my side. There’s still a chance Lucas will wake up on the defense, attacking anything in front of him.
“Callie,” he breathes, sitting up without flinching. “What’s wrong?” He lowers his gaze. “Is that your familiar?”
“Yeah. He came here to tell me something was at my house last night.”
Lucas moves to the foot of the bed, taking my hand and pulling me to him. “What kind of thing?”
“He’s not sure, but whatever it was turned one of my clear quartz crystals red. What could do that?”
He shakes his head. “I have no idea. Do you have to go?”
“Yes. I need to check it out. If something was around the house, there’s a chance it’s hiding out the daylight in the woods.”
“I don’t like the idea of you going after something like that alone.” He brings me into his lap, nuzzling his face between my breasts.
“I won’t be alone. I have my familiars. Besides, I’m good at what I do.”
“Yes…yes you are.” He draws his fangs, gently pressing them into my neck. “My shirt looks good on you, by the way.”
“But better off, right?”
“Of course. Everything about you is beautiful. Your powers…your body…all of you.”
My heart lurches and I bring my arms around his muscular shoulders. “I should go,” I whisper, knowing if I don’t leave now, we’re going to fall back into bed together. Having sex with Lucas is so much better than looking for a dark stalker in the woods.
“Thank you for the coffee and donuts. That was really thoughtful.”
“Anything for you.” He kisses my neck, fangs digging a little deeper into my skin. Should I offer him my blood before I go? Now that I’m his, he’s free to drink from me whenever he wants. It’s part of the whole deal.
But I don’t think it will be that way with Lucas. He said it himself: my powers rival his own. He could crush the life out of me in the blink of an eye, but I can burn him from the inside out just as fast.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, arching my back and bringing one hand up to the back of his head.
“I’m not. Your blood is…it’s very filling.”
“Is that weird?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never experienced it before. Maybe it’s because you’re a witch.”
“Does it at least taste good?” I ask apprehensively.
“Yes,” he groans. “Very good. Good enough to make me want to taste you again even though I’m not hungry.”
“Okay,” I say, voice a little breathy.
“Nervous?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can hear your heart beating and know it’s beating faster.”
“It is beating faster.” I close my eyes. “But it’s not from nerves. You’re turning me on.”
With that, Lucas picks me up and throws me down on the mattress, moving between my legs.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” he replies. “Anything.”
“How do you pick where to bite me?”
His lips go to my neck. “It depends on what I want.”
“What does that mean?” My eyes flutter shut.
“If I wanted to kill you, I’d go for an artery. If I bite you here,” he says and moves his mouth to the front of my neck, teeth on either side of my trachea.
“The carotid artery,” I breathe.
“Yes. The aorta is another option.”
“But that’s under the sternum.”
“They’re not so hard to crack.”
I feel my heart speed up again as I try not to think about Lucas basically pulling someone’s heart out and sucking their blood right out of it.
“Here’s another good place,” he says, moving his mouth to the side of my neck. “Your jugular vein.”
“Will a bite there kill me?”
“From me? No. From a younger vampire with less control? Yes.”
“So,” I start. “Veins are good, and arteries are bad? In terms of living and dying, I mean.”
“Yes.” He moves off me, sitting up and pulling me into his lap. He takes my wrist in his hand and puts two fingers against it, moving them right over the vein close to the surface. “If I were to bite you here, I’d be able to drink a lot of your blood rather quickly.” He slides his fingers up about half an inch. “Here, you have plenty of capillaries that will still bleed nicely without losing too much blood. Though you have rather slender wrists and I don’t want to damage your tendons.” He moves his fingers up my arm another inch or so. “This is where I’m going to bite you.”
He brings my wrist to his mouth and sinks his fangs in without any warning. I let out a whimper, and Binx growls, reacting to my pain. Lucas takes his mouth off me, looking down at the bite wound. He waits until large beads of blood pool at the surface and then licks it off. He puts his mouth over the wounds, sucks hard, and pulls away, pressing his fingers over the bite marks.
“I think I need to take a human anatomy class,” I muse, and Lucas laughs.
“Don’t worry, Callie. I will not hurt you. I will not drain you.”
“So last night…you drank from my femoral artery?”
He shakes his head. “The femoral vein.”
“How…how can you tell the difference?”
He shrugs. “I just do. It took a while to learn. Centuries…and through a lot of trial and error.”
He’s again confessing how he’s killed people, but like I told him last night…I know who he is. I know what he is. He is a vampire.
“You should go.” He lifts his fingers, checking my wounds, and licks the blood from his fingertips.
“Come to my house tonight?”
“I’ll leave as soon as the sun starts to sink in the sky.”
“I’ll miss you,” I blurt, not thinking clearly.
“I’ll dream of you.” He sits us up, cocky grin taking over his face. “And I’ll be fucking you in my dreams, of course. So in between tracking and fighting demons, find time to rest. I don’t plan on letting you get much sleep tonight. I’m going to fuck you as soon as I see you tonight.”
How is it possible for someone to turn me on and infuriate me so much at the same time?
“I’ll do what I can.”
He kisses me, and this time I taste my own blood on his lips. He gets up with me, walking me downstairs and into the kitchen, where I left my clothes. Binx paces around, eager to get back to the house and kill something.
I unbutton Lucas’s shirt, letting it slip from my shoulders and onto the ground. Lucas watches, not even trying to hide the reaction I’m causing him. There’s something so freeing about the way he’s so unapologetic about his body…about the way he enjoys pleasuring it.
I pull my underwear on and then slip my dress over my head. Lucas speeds forward, zipping my dress up for me.
“Thanks.” I swallow hard, working hard on keeping my mind away from how good his body feels against mine. I bend over to pick up the white shirt, and my ass rubs over his cock.
Fuck, why is he still naked?
“Please, Callie,” he presses as I pull his shirt back on to keep my arms warm. “Be careful.”
“You do care about me, don’t you?” I arch my eyebrows.
“Only because I know how it feels to have my cock in your tight, wet, cunt.”
Rolling my eyes, I start toward the front doo
r. I know he does care but is having a hard time admitting it. I know because I feel the same way. “I’ll do Kegels on the way home for you then.”
He races forward, getting to the door first. “Fine,” he admits. “I do seem to have an…an attachment to you. So please don’t die.”
I smile, heart rate starting to speed up again. “That’s always my plan. Like literally, that’s all I have planned. Kill bad guys and don’t die.”
He smiles, dark blue eyes glimmering. After one more kiss, he disappears into another room, leaving me to put my shoes on and step into the bright sunlight. Blinking, I pause on the front porch for a few seconds as my eyes adjust to the light. Then I double-check that the door properly closed behind me. Binx starts forward, trotting down the pathway.
We get to the public sidewalk when a group of moms come at us, talking and laughing while pushing designer strollers. I’m about to cast my eyes down and avoid them entirely, but then Binx growls. I look up and see my sister.
“Oh shit.” I turn so fast I smack into the gate I’d just closed, the one that takes me back to Lucas’s property. I pull on the handle, but the gate doesn’t open. I panic, thinking it must be locked from the inside, and wave my hand over it to unlock it with magic. I pull again, still unable to get in.
My sister and her mommy friends are coming closer and closer. Why aren’t my powers working? I hold up my hand again and then I remember I have to push, not pull, the gate. I twist the handle, push, and step forward.
And crash right into the door because I locked it with magic instead of unlocking it.
“Oh, ow!” one of the moms says, seeing me smack my forehead against the door. Is it too late to blindly run across the street? I cast my eyes down and hunch my shoulders up. Maybe she won’t recognize me. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
“Callie?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Putting on a fake smile, I turn and come face to face with my sister…who’s pushing my niece in a sleek gray stroller. I’ve never laid eyes on this baby before and my heart is suddenly all in knots and I don’t know what to do.
Part of me wants to throw on a glamour spell and pretend to be Natasha, the Russian call-girl leaving her boss’s house. Another wants to melt into a puddle on the sidewalk, dying on the inside.
But another part rules over the rest, and my damn heart wins every time.
“Abby. Hi.” I look from my sister to the stroller. The visor is up, and a white blanket has been draped over top, shielding Penny from the sun. She’s quiet, leaving me to believe she fell asleep.
“What are you doing here?” my sister asks, eyes wide.
“I know what she’s doing,” one of her mom-friends says with a laugh. “I know the look of the walk of shame. Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve executed it, but damn, girl. You just left that house?” She points to Lucas’s place and I nod. “Do you know what that place sold for three years ago? I do.” She laughs again, slowly rocking her stroller back and forth. “My husband is the real estate agent who sold it!”
“I, um, I…” I close my eyes in a long blink. “It’s not a walk of shame. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Yasss, girl!” another mom says, earning a glare from the conservative one in the group. “I’ve seen the guy who lives here a few times. He’s totally GQ material but so mysterious.” She shifts her gaze to Abby. “How do you guys know each other?”
“She’s my sister,” Abby and I say at the same time.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” Mrs. Real Estate says, playfully nudging Abby in the shoulder. “What a small world! Well, welcome to the neighborhood! Will we be seeing more of you?”
“Um, probably,” I say, words coming up like vomit. I ramble when I’m nervous, and it gets worse when I’m nervous and trying to desperately act like I’m casually leaving my human boyfriend’s house to go home and watch reruns of Friends, not hunt the demon my familiar came and warned me about.
“It’s a great neighborhood! We just love having your sister here, and Abby loves it, right Abby?”
“Yeah.” Abby widens her fake smile. “I do. It is a great place to raise a family.”
“What she means is,” the uptight mom leans in. “There aren’t any vampires around. I mean, it’s not like they can afford one of these places.”
It’s all I can do to keep a straight face. “Well, you never know.” I shrug. “Maybe they saved up money over the years. Some have lived a long time.”
All the moms look at me with blank stares. And then Mrs. Real Estate laughs and the rest follow suit.
“You came to the right place,” she goes on, looking at Abby. “It was smart of you to move before she got any older. Growing up in that apartment…I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Wait,” I start and look at my sister. “You moved because of vampires?”
“Poor thing had two vampires living on the floor below.” Uptight Mom clucks her tongue and pats my sister on the back. “But you’re safe here.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Totally safe. There are definitely no really old or powerful vampires on this street.” Binx meows and winds around my ankles. The other moms look at him curiously.
“Is that a stray?” the conservative mom asks.
“No, he’s mine.” I cross my arms, nonchalantly tugging at one of the sleeves on Lucas’s button-up shirt to cover the bite marks on my wrist. Binx sits right in front of me, flicking his tail back and forth.
“I’m Ricci.” Mrs. Real Estate offers her hand to shake.
“Callie.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Callie. So tell me, what does your boyfriend do? He paid for this place in cash and all the paperwork was handled by a third party. We’ve never met him.”
“He, uh, works in finance.” No one knows what that actually means, but it’s satisfactory enough for the other moms to gush over, thinking I’m shacking up with some rich Wall Street asshole.
“You ladies keep going,” Abby tells her friends. “I’ll catch up.” They smile and nod like perfect Stepford wives and tell me how nice it was to meet me as they pass by.
“Callie,” Abby starts, shaking her head. “I went all the way to that weird little Thorne Hill town just to see you. You’re in the city to see some boyfriend you didn’t even mention, but you couldn’t even take the time to call me back? I’ve been waiting to hear from you…and now you’re…you’re here. What the hell?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s just been a rough couple of day. I got distracted and, uh, didn’t think to call.” Also, our asshole brother keeps telling me to bail. But she’s upset enough right now as it is, there’s no need to bring it up. There’s no changing Scott anyway. He’ll just lie, delete his texts, and say I’m using magic to make him look bad or something.
“Right. Your other life is more important,” she spits.
“Do you know how unfair that is to say? You have no idea what I’ve been dealing with. What I’ve stopped and prevented from happening. Maybe if you knew—”
“No. I don’t want to know.”
“You’re just like Mom.” I ball my fists, making sure I keep my powers in check.
“Now that is unfair.”
“Really? How so? Because Mom is the same way. Never wanting to know. Never questioning anything, just blindly following Dad with her head up his ass. I had higher expectations for you at least. You’re smart. You can think for yourself. But no…no…you still don’t want to know. You’d rather leave me alone to deal with everything.”
“Callie…I don’t want to fight.”
“You say that like you think I do. Trust me, fighting is the last thing I want right now. You have no idea how much fighting I’ve done lately. Well, I’ll clue you in. A lot.”
Abby lets out a breath, concern flickering over her face. As an ER doctor, she knows how to take charge. She’s not afraid of a challenge, and the gore and violence of life never gets to her. Yet sh
e’s still unable to accept me. “Who are you fighting with?”
“It changes daily. But most recently an army of the undead.”
“Is that a figure of speech?” she asks slowly.
“No. If you want to know more, I’ll gladly tell you, but I know you’d rather get back into your Porsche and drive to your fancy house and pretend like magic and demons don’t exist.”
“I’m not like Dad,” she says, shaking her head. “I voted against the Vampire Exclusion Act, you know.”
“I do know. Because you’re not a monster.”
“Neither is—”
“Don’t even say it,” I snarl, fists curling. “Don’t you dare defend him.” My anger causes the street light above us to start humming with electricity, which is something Abby is familiar with. It happened a lot growing up and was one of the first signs that showed I had powers. Sensing my anger, Binx comes paws at me, meowing.
“Oh my God.” Abby’s jaw drops. “That’s…that’s…Binx?”
“Yeah.” I exhale and feel the anger start to leave. I pick up Binx and calm down even more. “It is.”
“He looks exactly the same. That cat should be…he should be…”
“Dead?” I kiss the top of Binx’s head and set him down. “Yeah, he would be…if he were really a cat.”
“You said he’s a familiar, but I, um, I don’t know what that means.”
I swallow my pounding heart. “Maybe I can tell you someday.” Exhaling, I look into my sister’s eyes. “I’m sorry I haven’t RSVP’d yet. I want to come. I just don’t know if I can.”
“Because of all the…the fighting?”
“Partly. But also because I don’t know if I can face Dad or Scott.”
“It’s been so long, Callie.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I know. It’s been over ten years. But I still have nightmares, Abby. I still wake up screaming some nights.”
“Callie, you know I’m—”
“It’s okay.” I rapidly blink, refusing to let any tears run down my cheeks. “Can I see her? She’s sleeping, right? I’ll be quiet.”
“Of course.” Abby puts the brake on the stroller and comes around to the front, slowly removing the thin white blanket.