Belonging (30 page)

She couldn’t help but laugh as he reached for his phone. A few clicks later and a new song from one of her favorite bands started playing. She had no idea Damian even listened to Adelita’s Way. The gravelly voice of Rick DeJesus began singing one of her favorite tracks, “Undivided”. They were lost in each other and she listened to the words with all new meaning. She felt like she might burst at the seams when Damian began singing softly to her, his deep voice cradling her tenderly in his love.

By the time the song ended, happy tears flowed freely down her face. He leaned in and lightly took her lips between his, their eyes never leaving each other. All too soon he pulled back.

“We’re undivided, kitten. I will never run. I will remain by your side, always. It’s you and me through thick and thin, no matter what.” After several beats, he crooked his eyebrows slightly, waiting for her response. It was not that she didn’t want to respond, she couldn’t.

“No matter what,” she finally managed to choke through the golf ball-sized lump in her throat. They lay in silence, bodies wound tightly around each other.

“Go to sleep, my mate. You can tell me about your dream with your mother in the morning.” Damian knew. Of course, he knew. Sudden lethargy overtook her and her eyes fell shut of their own accord.

As she drifted off, as happy as she was, the premonition of peril had latched on like a leech in the pit of her stomach. Thick and slimy, she felt it ever so slowly draining the happiness from her body, much like a real leech would suck your lifeblood in order to sustain itself. Except unlike a leech, which detached itself when full, her metaphorical leech wouldn’t stop until she was decimated. Until every drop of contentment and joy and serenity was dried up and gone.

And since she had a psychotic vampire after her, the parallel of her analogy was a pretty freaking apt one.

C
hapter
42

Mike

He’d just hung up the phone with Lord Damian, who’d given him a task that, for once, he was all too happy to fulfill. A dirty cop was the worst cop. Plus he was thrilled for the distraction since it meant he wouldn’t see Giselle today. He’d spent the last few days having to interact with her on this missing person’s case and his nerves were starting to fray, and like exposed wires, someone was bound to get electrocuted any second. He needed to unplug himself. Call it self-fucking-preservation, because the one bound to get hurt here was sure to be him.

Their face-to-face interactions had been brief, but during each one Giselle said they’d needed to talk and he’d told her to piss off. Nicely, of course, but piss off nonetheless. He just couldn’t bear her excuses, not because he didn’t want to hear them, but because he
did
. Desperately. He wanted her to tell him she wanted him as much as he wanted her. That he actually meant something more to her than just a chew toy you’d throw to your dog. He wanted…hell, he didn’t even
know
what he wanted and that right there was part of the problem.

Every day she clouded his mind a little more, crowding out any female before her. Including Jamie.
Especially
Jamie. And it pissed him the fuck off. How he’d let her get under his skin in such a short period of time when no other woman had come close, he just couldn’t comprehend.

Some may call it Fate. He called it Misfortune. Giselle was the epitome of everything he detested, especially in a woman. She was cocky and bullheaded and a femme fatale. But most importantly, she was a bloodsucker. So the fact that he was inexplicably drawn to each and every one of the characteristics he so despised in her was a conundrum indeed. If he could solve that puzzle, perhaps he could eliminate this near fatal attraction he had for her. And he had no doubt it would end up fatal…for him. Either physically or emotionally. Maybe both.

Christ, she made his heart beat a little faster, his blood pump a little quicker, and his dick harder than fucking titanium. Oh, his dick worked just fine and he’d been with plenty of women since Jamie, but they were all empty, faceless shells. He’d used them to fulfill a physical need, plain and simple. He was the quintessential wham, bam, thank you ma’am kind of asshole that no respectable girl would take home to meet her parents.

He’d tried to make himself believe that’s what he’d wanted from Giselle too. In the infamous words of his favorite eighties hair band, Poison, ‘don’t need nothing but a good time.’ For the last eleven years, that had been his mission statement with women. Hell, he’d even thought about having cards printed with his motto so he could hand them out before he fucked a girl, but that seemed too crass, even for him.

But his mission statement rang hollow in Giselle’s case. For the first time in a very long time, he wanted more. And that scared the living crap out of him.

Mike had spent the last few days trying to get his shit together. He’d cleaned his house and garage, top to bottom, purging old items he didn’t need or use anymore. He’d hauled two truckloads of shit to Goodwill. He’d connected with a couple of old buddies, meeting them for beers one night. During his search for Frankie’s parts, he worked his body relentlessly, his muscles more sore than he could ever remember.

He’d even called his mom, not remembering the last time he’d talked to her. She was so thrilled she spent the first five minutes of their conversation crying. He was the worst kind of son, and now that he had a little more time on his hands, he vowed to make it up to her by coming to visit her in Illinois some weekend soon. Hell, he could use a break from the hamster wheel he was running on. Stupid hamsters. He used to laugh at them in the pet shop when he was a kid, wondering why they would spend hours running, going nowhere. Who had the last laugh now? he wondered. The fucking hamsters, clearly.

Yep, off one wheel and onto another. Just a bigger, more dangerous wheel, with man-eating sharks swimming in the dark, choppy, unforgiving waters below, waiting ever so patiently until you tire and can’t stay on the wheel any longer. Then you’re shark bait…or in his case, vampire bait. Same end result. You’re not getting out of the murky waters alive.

He needed a distraction, at least for the next few hours. Had someone told him a year ago that he’d be one vampire’s bitch and half in love with another, he’d have had them committed. Hell…maybe he should voluntarily commit himself. Thirty days in a psych ward might do him some good.

“Enough introspection for the day, Thatcher,” he mumbled to himself. “Time to earn your keep.”

He picked up the phone and started to dial, trying to banish from his brain this goat-fucked situation he’d landed himself in. He didn’t know the cop Damian had asked him to find, but he did have an academy buddy in the Eau Claire PD. If this Greenbreier character had stayed in the area, Jimmy would know where to find him.

C
hapter
43

Damian

Analise was anxiously pacing the small space as he and Rom spoke to Dev on speakerphone. He’d wanted her to lounge by the pool while he had this conversation with Dev, but she’d insisted on being here. She wanted to hear every single word that was said, because as she’d so bluntly told him just minutes ago, “I am your mate now and what concerns you, concerns me. The only way you’ll keep me out of that room when you talk to him is to tie me up. But be warned, Damian, if you do that you’d better sleep with one eye open for a very long time.” Christ, by the time she’d gotten through her tirade, all he wanted to do was throw her up against the wall and fuck her senseless. But he didn’t have time since Rom was on his way down. Damn the luck.

“So you’re telling me that Xavier can only sire females and there are two more female offspring alive and your
mate,
who is also a dreamwalker, is one of them?” Dev asked unbelievingly. Yes, even he couldn’t believe this quick and bizarre turn of events. When they’d first started their conversation, relaxation oozed through the phone. Now he could feel tension building with every word.

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you,” Damian replied. He hated having to repeat himself, but it was almost too surreal to believe himself.

“And you haven’t found the third female?” Dev asked.

“No.” 

Dev sighed heavily on the other end of the line. “And there’s more, I’m afraid,” Damian continued. He spent the next five minutes getting both Dev and Rom up to speed about Frankie, the potential compromise of Dragonfly from Geoffrey, who was now after Analise, and revealed the fact that Maeve was Analise’s aunt. He left out the parts about Analise originally looking for Devon and the fact that her mother had been teaching her witchcraft in her dreams ever since she could remember.

“This is like
Days of Our Fucked Up Lives
,” Dev retorted. Damian heard Analise stifle a laugh and, had she been anyone else, he’d have shot her a shut-up-before-I-make-you look, but since she was his bonded mate, instead he shot her a
please-
shut-up-before-I-make-you look
.
She smirked, eyebrows high in the air, daring back an I’d-like-to-see-you-make-me-do-anything look. Jesus, she was simply glorious.

“… next?” He heard only the tail end of Dev’s question.

“What was that again?” he asked.

Rom piped up, his usually stony face now barely able to contain his smirk. “If you’d stop making googly eyes at your woman, you’d have heard the question the first time, D.”

This time Analise full-on laughed and he couldn’t help but smile. Her laugh was angelic, like her singing, and when she made that glorious noise, he felt beams of light from heaven shining down upon him. Who knew he could be so goddamned poetic? If only Rom could hear him now…he’d never live that shit down for the rest of eternity.

“Fuck off, Rom,” he replied. “Come again, Dev.”

“Jesus, I leave for a few short days and Damian gets bonded to a female vampire slash witch slash dreamwalker sired by Xavier, who also happens to be my new witch’s niece and Kate’s sister, and is also is being hunted by daddy dearest; while my new club is compromised by Xavier’s sick fuck of a lieutenant who’s also likely chopped my club manager into fish food. Is that about right?”

This time Damian had to stifle a laugh. This did sound like
Days of Our Fucked Up Lives
. “Yup, that about covers it.”

“Jesus H. Christ. What’s next?”

Damian chuckled. “What’s next? What’s next is we find Xavier’s third daughter and kill Geoffrey before he gets his hands on Analise. Then we find Xavier and wipe his sorry ass off the face of the earth after we rescue the remaining missing girls and children. That’s what’s next, my friend.”

That effectively cut the tension that had built to volcanic proportions.

Dev sighed. “We’ll be home in a couple of days.”

“There’s no need for you to cut your honeymoon short, Dev.” If it were Damian, he’d be torn. Stay away and keep his mate safe, or safer as it were, or jump back into the fray. It was a tough call. It certainly wasn’t in a lord’s nature to stay away from the battle, but both he and Dev had other more important things to think about now. They each had an Achilles heel and that was a very bad thing to have in their positions.

“The second Kate heard the word ‘sister’, she started packing. Since I haven’t had nearly enough time alone with her, I’m going to try convincing her twenty-four more hours won’t mean the end of the world. We’ll see you in a couple days and I’ll let you know if we have a change of plans.” Dev disconnected the call.

“Well, I’d say that went well,” Rom flatly stated. “We headed to Dragonfly tonight?”

“Yes. Analise will stay here with Sebastian and Devlin. I don’t want her anywhere near that sick bastard because I’m quite sure he’s hanging around waiting for my mate.” Damian held his hand out to Analise and she quickly came, throwing her arms around his waist, burying her head in his chest.

“You okay, kitten?” he whispered. She nodded. The movement caused her face to rub against his pecs and his cock immediately swelled. He would never get enough of this woman.

Rom regarded their little exchange with amusement. “We need him alive, D.”

Damian agreed. “Unfortunate. I’ll meet you here at eleven p.m.” Rom nodded sharply and departed, leaving them alone once again.

“He’s very scary,” Analise said the moment Rom had closed the door. She’d disengaged herself from him and he didn’t like it. At all.

“I suppose, but that’s part of his undeniable charm,” he retorted. To a human and hell, to most vampires, Rom was incredibly intimidating. His physical appearance—bald head, goatee and crystal clear blue eyes—only added to his dangerous façade. Damian reached for her again, but she evaded. He frowned.

“I thought we were going to the shelter this morning?” she countered. “If I let you get your hands on me, we’ll never make it there.” There was no denying that, but so what?

“Damian,” she cooed, “let’s get the shelter out of the way and then we can spend the rest of the day in bed. Deal?”

“Are you trying to get back at me for last night? Because I wanted to talk instead of fuck?”

She considered him for a few moments, her playful mood replaced instead with annoyance.

“Crass is not a good look on you, Damian.” She walked toward the door, throwing over her shoulder, “Are you coming with me or are you going to stay here and pout like a toddler whose sucker just fell in the dirt?”

Well…shit. Point: kitten. He’d met his match with her.

“Coming,” he mumbled under his breath. He’d finally met the one person in the world who could make him come running with the simple crick of her finger. He used to laugh at guys like that, who were led around by their women like they had an invisible leash tied around their little necks.

And now he was one of them. He shook his head and followed his mate, thinking of ways he could punish her when they finally made it to the bedroom. For fuck’s sake, he had to maintain the upper hand somewhere…
right
?