“Don’t say that. She loves you,” Devon rebukes.
“I know.”
“She was so smitten with you that first night she met you. I have never seen her that way,” he says, and Cole looks up in surprise.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah. She adores you. She was so nervous the night she wanted to tell you what she was. She was so scared that you wouldn’t understand and leave her,” Devon admits this on his sire’s behalf.
“Nervous?” Cole says. “I can’t say that I have even thought she knew the meaning of the word.”
“Tell me about it,” Devon agrees.
“I was so mad with her that night. Even though we had only just met, I knew she was keeping secrets. I just had no idea how huge it really was.”
“She told me how perceptive you were. She found it a bit scary that you could see into her essence,” Devon says.
“I almost didn’t go after her,” Cole admits, looking away, and he can feel Devon’s intense gaze on him.
“What changed your mind?” he asks after a minute or two.
Cole laughs nervously. “Initially, because I had the keys to her Veyron in my pocket. I’m a lot of things but I’m not a thief,” he says. “I had just intended to give them back to her and leave. But the second I saw her in the parking lot, kicking the tire as she realized I had the keys and how upset she was that she thought I had rejected her, I knew I couldn’t leave her. I was so in love with her. I had to hear more and to see if she was…” He trails off, not knowing if Devon will understand what he was going to say.
“She was what? Delusional?” he snickers.
Cole smiles weakly at him. “Still the woman I thought she was, the one I had been dreaming about, the one I fell in love with at first sight.”
“Ah, I see. You hear Vampire, you hear mass murderer. I get it.” He bobs his head in understanding and then adds with a quizzical look, “Dreaming about?”
Cole shrugs off his question. “Something like that. It sounds so hypocritical now. I’m the one who wants to Hunt and kill, and she is the moral one.”
“I know, it’s bloody ridiculous,” he says and sighs in frustration at the change in topic. “We can find you someone else. Someone just for you. You’re a good-looking guy, a famous actor to boot. You must be beating them off.”
“Yeah, I have hundreds of women throw themselves at me on a daily basis. I get underwear sent to me in the post, and naked pictures, and propositions about all the things they will do for me. But they are crazy, Devon. I don’t want a crazy stalker. If I can’t have my wife, I need someone nice and normal and, above all, discreet.”
“Underwear?” Devon asks with a raised eyebrow, but then says, “Well, yeah, I get the discreet part. You don’t want your business plastered all over Twitter.”
"Just leave it. I am fine. Liv will be back soon in our bed. Even if Constantine is down the hall and she goes to him, it doesn’t matter. She will sleep with me and that is what I need. I need the intimacy of that more than I need a quick fuck. He gets the short end of the stick with that.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Devon mutters, giving him a look that he wishes he could place.
“Ask your question,” Cole says eventually.
Devon’s eyes narrow. “Now isn’t the time,” he says. “I’ll wait until she gets back.”
“Why? Does it suck?”
Devon shrugs. “I love her, and I am tired of not being with her,” he says.
“Meaning?” Cole says, his anger getting the better of him.
He likes Devon. They have grown closer over the last few months. He can honestly say that Devon is his best friend. He likes it. He likes having someone he can talk to who knows about things and won’t think he is a complete idiot. But he has a funny feeling he knows what’s coming.
“Meaning, I want to take things further. I want to take our times together and make them more,” Devon says, staring him right in the eye.
“Are you saying you want to move into our bed with us?” Cole snaps at him. Man, he just can’t catch a break with this woman.
“That is what I am saying, and more,” Devon states. “Look, I don’t know how much of our history she has told you, but we had plans. Plans I fucked up royally after I was turned. Christ knows why it has taken me this long to realize it, maybe because of what she said to me after I had to sire Jess. Who knows? But the fact is, I want to be with her. Completely.”