Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (20 page)

“They’d do all that?” Colleen asked. “Since when are vampires homeowners?”

“Since they need to maintain their privacy,” Jeremy told her. “Especially if they’ve got humans on the premises. My family kept all the legal i’s dotted and the tax t’s crossed. Vampires are more scared of the IRS than they are of sunlight.”

“Kiddo, you’re brilliant,” Gus said. “What the hell are you doing with Wally?”

“He’s cute when he keeps his mouth shut.”

“I’ve never seen him keep his mouth shut, so I’ll have to take your word for it. My buddy Theo on city council knows people who know people. I’ll see if he still owes me any favors.”

“Suppose it works, and we find them,” Colleen said. “What happens then?”

“Then it’s my turn,” Wallace said. The snarl in his voice scotched any chance of argument.

“Y’know,” Gus said before the subsequent silence reached an awkward length, “there might be someone else with intel on this. There’s another slayer upstate who makes it his business to track vamp attacks. Maybe he’s been nice enough to keep computer records. I’ll see if I can get hold of him.”

“You do that,” Wallace said. He added in a kinder tone, “Thanks, you two.”

“This is what teammates are for,” Annie said. “You three take care of each other. We’ll call you when we know something. Now, anybody want anything to take home?”

Jeremy accepted a helping of leftover roast beef for sandwiches. Wallace asked for a slice of cheesecake to go. Colleen was just grateful for the help and returned Annie’s friendly good-bye hug with sincerity.

“It’ll all work out,” Annie assured her. “You couldn’t be in better hands.”

Work out, right. Her legacy was to serve as a cow to creatures that shouldn’t exist. Things were supposed to work out after that? Somebody please tell her how.

Chapter 11

Jeremy drove home at a moderate pace, with a careful eye out both for traffic and any possible tails. Colleen huddled at shotgun. Wallace’s brooding presence loomed at her back like the threat of a violent storm seconds away from erupting. He hadn’t said a word since they’d left the Stantons’. No one really had anything to say.

Back at the house Wallace saw them inside then made for the door again. Jeremy set himself in the vampire’s path. “No.”

Wallace’s eyes flashed red. “No what?”

“No, you’re not going out there. I know you. You’ll go looking for trouble, and you’re too good at finding it. You don’t need blood, and I don’t need grief. You’re staying in tonight.”

Wallace bared his fangs. Jeremy neither moved nor flinched. For one crazy moment Colleen believed Wallace would strike him. Then the vampire moved in a blur up the stairs. The bedroom door slammed shut.

Jeremy loosed the breath he’d been holding. “So far, so good. If we can get him through tonight, he might be okay.” He gathered her to him. “What about you?”

“I’ll make it.” She leaned against him gratefully. “I’ve denied my childhood for so long, it’s almost a relief to face the truth. I wish…I just wish I could talk to Mom. I blocked her out, too.” She hid her face against his chest. “I want them stopped. For good. This has to end right now.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Jeremy promised her. “Annie and Gus will track them down, and Wallace will take it from there.”

“Wallace doesn’t think I’m human.”

“Of course you’re human. What else would you be?” He kissed her softly. “You just had an unusual upbringing. So did I. No big deal.”

His comfort eased her fears somewhat. “Did you know?”

“About his girlfriend? Yeah. I didn’t know her name. I know what happened to…well, I know why he’s the way he is.” His gaze left her face to travel up the stairs. “I should—” He broke off to look back at her, clearly conflicted.

Colleen made herself smile. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine. I need a little time to process anyway.”

“Come with me.”

She knew exactly what he meant and what he was asking of her. Dangerous Colleen found the idea appealing. More cautious Miss Colly shook her head.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet. Maybe next time, okay?”

“Okay.” He kissed her again, this time on the forehead. “If you change your mind…” He left her with the offer hanging and quietly mounted the stairs.

Colleen sank onto the nearest chair, the overstuffed recliner. Determinedly, she made herself review all she could remember. She couldn’t recall any instances of outright abuse, beyond what she now recognized as captivity. The vampires had never struck or beaten any of the girls, or even used harsh words. She and her friends had been allowed to run wild as long as they didn’t try to leave the compound.

If anything, the vampires had treated them kindly, almost with reverence. They might even have loved the girls, in their chilly way. Yeah, Colleen thought bitterly, in the way Farmer Brown loves Elsie and Bessie. If anything happened to their stock, they’d have to go out and find others.

She tried to recall if she’d ever seen a vampire feeding on the mommies. No such incident came to mind. It must have happened, and frequently—wasn’t that why they were kept in the first place?—but not within sight of the girls. No deaths had occurred at the Woods and the Waters until the slayers came. Maybe Mom did wear scarves and high collars a lot, but it got clammy out there in the woods. The men had been kind and polite to them, and the women had seemed content.

Content, right. Try “drugged.” Her mother had never complained. About anything. When Colleen pictured her mother’s face, she saw a vague little smile and empty eyes. The craziness and the violent outbursts only started after she’d been rescued.

A smart vampire treats his servants like gold
.

Stolen and locked away, to be taken out and greedily fondled and, when the need arose, spent.

She cried then, a brief but torrential storm, for her mother and all the things she could and should have done for her had her own insistent denial not blinded her. The vampires had stolen Mom’s life and her blood and gotten her to bear a daughter as her own eventual replacement. Was it any wonder she’d gone insane and insisted her child was a monster?

Colleen let her tears dry slowly, her cheek resting against the fabric of the chair. The rough twill had Wallace’s sea-breeze scent clinging to it. In a flash her memories thrust her into his arms again, with his mouth on hers and his fangs bruising her lips. The man she’d kissed was not the man who kept sniping at her. He couldn’t be more different from Jeremy, yet the feelings he roused in her were strikingly similar.

Because he was a vampire, she told herself. The only kind of man she’d known in her formative years. She shivered violently.

Her gaze drifted toward the ceiling, and the bedroom. It had grown awfully quiet up there.

Colleen swallowed hard. She couldn’t stop her brain from throwing out pictures of Wallace with his fangs buried in Jeremy’s neck. She refused to accept the notion of Jeremy as Wallace’s slave. If vampires treated their slaves like gold, she imagined Wallace as a hoarder. She wanted a future with Jeremy. Suppose Wallace wouldn’t let go? Was she—were either of them—big enough to share?

It had to be late, and she’d had a long day, and she was done dealing for now. She’d just curl up right here in this chair, doze off, and forget about everything. Sweep it under the rug for a couple of hours. She’d become so adept at rug sweeping over the years, she figured she should have her own reality show on HGTV. Even though reality hadn’t been kind to her, especially in recent weeks.

It was a sensible plan, like all her decisions, and would have worked if not for Mother Nature. That urgent call could not be ignored, and the house’s only bathroom lay upstairs. Darn. Shielding her eyes in advance, Colleen crept up the steps.

Fortunately, the bedroom door had been firmly closed. Colleen darted into the bathroom. After attending to business, she dealt with tooth brushing and makeup removal. If the linen closet held an extra blanket, she could wrap herself in it and sleep in her undies downstairs and not have to bother her hosts.

The first thing she saw when she stepped outside was the bedroom door, now standing slightly ajar. Hadn’t it been all the way shut before?

No. Don’t look. Don’t even peek.
Still smarting from her invasion of Wallace’s den, Colleen vowed this time to resist temptation. Forget about those gasps and hisses she could hear from within. Just walk right on by.

Crap and a half. She cracked the door wider and glanced inside, hating her every move because it proved Wallace was right. Just one more nosy chick.

It’s for Jeremy, she justified.
If he’s lying in there bloodless, I need to know.

No such awful tableau greeted her. The two men stood beside the window, washed in fluorescence and moonlight. Jeremy’s shirt hung open. Not a speck of blood marred his skin, neither on his neck nor anywhere else that her eyes could discern. Wallace was shirtless. Colleen’s stare was drawn to his naked chest, devouring every sculpted muscle, every ragged scar. His build both contrasted with and complemented Jeremy’s unmarred slenderness. Two complete opposites, yet somehow compatible.

Her imagination had gotten the pose right, just not the players. It was Jeremy’s lips pressed to Wallace’s neck, not the other way around. His hands danced over Wallace’s torso in a visitation of well-known and well-loved territory. Every now and then he hit a spot that made Wallace hiss. The vampire’s fangs showed, and he tightened the arm curved around Jeremy’s waist.

Colleen’s skin tingled in hungry sympathy with every touch Jeremy delivered to Wallace’s body, recalling similar heated caresses bestowed on her own. Her back arched along with Wallace’s when Jeremy trailed his fingers down the vampire’s spine. Her thighs quivered from the remembered pressure of Jeremy’s legs against them. Her nipples tightened when Jeremy lowered his head to suck along Wallace’s chest. Did Wallace shiver as she did when Jeremy’s scanty stubble scraped the sensitive skin over his ribs? Yes, she could see that he did.

Heat suffused her face, and an alarming fire flowered in her groin. Okay, now she’d gone too far. She should do the decent thing, back off and run, not walk, down the stairs. The trouble was her feet just would not cooperate. She couldn’t tear herself away from the sight of them together. They were so tender with each other, so obviously deeply in love, and Lordy, was it ever
hot.

Her hand had gone to her breast to pinch her rock-hard nipple. Wallace didn’t have a woman’s breasts. He had a thick rod of a penis, as she’d seen for herself. It formed a massive bulge in his jeans as it strained at the leash to get to Jeremy’s. Colleen’s other hand crept to her own throbbing crotch. She bit her lower lip to keep from pressing down. Dangerous Colleen wanted in on the action. She hungered to feel lips claim her mouth, her throat. Jeremy’s, Wallace’s both at once. At this point she didn’t care.

Oh God, she could
smell
them. Wallace smelled like the ocean at midnight, currently an ocean in storm. Jeremy had a spicier aroma, steaming coffee with cinnamon. A bracing cup of hot coffee on an unruly sea, that was the two of them together. She was convinced she could hear Jeremy’s blood blasting through his veins like lava. That had to be her imagination. She definitely heard his heartbeat clear across the room. It pounded in sync with her own, just as it did when he had entered her.

Now Wallace made his move, a slow nuzzle along Jeremy’s jaw down to his neck and the mark he had placed there. His tongue stole out to wash across the mark. Colleen whimpered in concert with Jeremy. She remembered the sandpapery texture of Wallace’s tongue on her lips and longed to feel its roughness on her breasts and neck.

Then Wallace growled, a low, ragged animal sound, and Colleen lost it completely.

Both men looked over at her cry. Jeremy appeared startled, but pleased. Wallace didn’t look at all surprised. His wide grin bordered on smirky. Too late, Colleen remembered his vampire senses and the fact he never dropped his guard. He would have heard her heartbeat or smelled her blood or something. He would have known the second she’d paused by the door and how long she’d been standing there, watching them.