Destined (Vampire Awakenings) (12 page)
Read Destined (Vampire Awakenings) Online
Authors: Brenda K. Davies
The looks on all their faces told Stefan that they thought it was anything but awful. They thought it was downright hilarious, and he agreed. “It took over a month for them to grow back, and my skin was burnt for two of those weeks,” Ethan said happily, his smile fond, and his eyes distant.
“We have some good pictures of that too,” Doug said happily. “Of both of them actually.”
“Needless to say, for about a week, no one slept, and we had to buy new bottles of shampoo every
day just to make sure that they were sealed tight. Finally, Ian and I cornered her, held her down, and chopped her hair off. It had been down to her waist, we chopped it to just beneath her ears.”
“I kind of regretted that one,” Ian said sadly. “She cried for a week.”
“Yeah, that one wasn’t as funny,” Ethan said ruefully. “But she declared a truce.”
“Our mistake was that we actually believed her. We should have known that wasn’t going to be the end of it. Two weeks later, when we were certain that she really wasn’t going to do anything else, she got us. She went out and hunted up dozens of snakes,” Ian continued.
“It took her the entire two weeks to get them all. She went out every night, and caught a few more. She waited till we were sleeping, tied our hands to the headboards, and put them in our beds.”
“That’s awful!” Jess gasped.
They were all smiling now, and Stefan actually found himself chuckling. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed, but the picture in his mind was vastly amusing. He could only imagine the victorious gleam in her eyes when they had awoken the next morning. “It was horrendous,” Ethan said with a shudder. “We hate snakes! I woke up to them
slithering
all over me. I’ve never screamed so loud in my life!”
“Isabelle got good pictures of that too,” Jack said happily.
“It was hilarious!”
“Mom freaked out,” Ian continued. “No one would come close enough to untie us, and Isabelle refused too. It took a whole lot of threats from our father before she finally relented and took the snakes away. For months afterward we wouldn’t go to sleep without making sure that there weren’t any still
in
our room.”
“
We
called the truce after that. The only one in our family that can stand snakes is Isabelle, and there isn’t anything worse than the tho
ught of waking up to them again,
”
Ethan said with a shudder.
“Needless to say, we
declared Isabelle the queen of the wars and
didn’t
ever do anything to her again,
”
Ian said with a bright grin.
“Yeah, they focused their torment on me instead,” Aiden said laughingly. “Unfortunately, I hate snakes
too
.”
Stefan started to really laugh then. He could picture how awful, and wonderful, it must have been to grow up in such a large household. He had a feeling that he was only hearing about some of the tortures that they had put each other through. “That is the most horrendous thing I have ever heard!” Jess cried indignantly.
“That is disgusting and cruel!”
Suddenly they were all laughing. “What’s so funny?”
He looked up to find Isabelle standing in the doorway, her brow furrowed questioningly as she balanced a laundry basket against her hip. “We were telling Stefan and Jess about the snake war,” Mike answered
happily
.
Isabelle smiled brightly;
her vivi
d eyes twinkled
merrily as she glanced at them. For the first time since he had met her, she was actually smiling at him, and he found the effect amazing, and more than a little unnerving. His eyes lo
cked on hers, the smile slipped
from his face as he was rocked by a fierce wave of desire that hardened him painfully. Her smile quickly vanished as she ducked her head.
Stefan felt an odd sense of loss as the intimate contact was broken
.
The
breath rushed
back
into his lungs
as he inhaled sharply
. He shifted again, his erection suddenly becoming unbearabl
y painful
. “You named it the snake war?” Jess asked, her eyes darting toward Isabelle and narrowing angrily.
All his humor vanished as a fresh wave of anger washed through him. Isabelle met Jess’s gaze, before she turned her attention back to her family. Jess reached out to touch his leg
again;
he instantly batted her hand away. She glared angrily at him for a moment before plastering a smile to her face and turning away.
“
We
have
had
a few wars,” Ethan
answered
. “We started
to
nam
e
them when I was about twelve.”
“That way we could keep track,” Ian explained
happily
.
“What were some of the other ones?” Jess inquired sweetly. She looked exceedingly innocent, but Stefan could feel the resentment seething within her.
“Well, let
’
s see
.
” Mike leaned back in his seat as he thoughtfully tapped his chin. “There was the ice war, the water war, the fire war....”
“The paint war,” Ian chimed in. “Mom almost killed us over that one! I’ve never seen her as mad as she was that day!”
“What did you do?” Stefan inquired as he tried to divert his attention from
Isabelle
, and the aching pain in his loins.
“Our mom left out a bunch of paint
that she didn’t want,” Ian explained
.
“Red paint,” Ethan elaborated. “The color was too dark, and she didn’t like the way that it looked. Well, we found it, and decided to paint each other with it. I was eleven at the time, Isabelle was nine, Ian was seven, and Aiden was four.”
“I never stood a chance,” Aiden said with a bright grin. “These guys corrupted me!”
“Hey!” the other three protested. Stefan found himself grinning again in response to Isabelle’s exquisite smile, and gleaming violet eyes. When she smiled, she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. He found himself oddly captivated by her, and the realization was more than a little unnerving.
“I think we were playing cowboys and Indians,” Ethan said laughingly. “And we wanted to paint the Indians, or at least that’s the way it started. By the time we were done, we were completely covered with it.”
“It was in my hair for a week,” Isabelle said brightly.
“At least you
r hair was already darker by then
;
I looked like Opie for a month!” Ian cried.
They all laughed loudly as their faces, and eyes, took on fond looks of remembrance. Stefan found himself becoming enchanted with the entire group. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up in such a warm, loving environment. Especially since his own childhood had been a cruel time that he
’
d spent his entire existence trying to right.
“There was also the dare war, whoever did the dumbest thing, and survived, won. Ethan won it by throwing himself off of a forty foot cliff,” Aiden continued
.
“We quit after that move,” Isabelle
said
laugh
ingly
.
“You’re lucky you weren’t killed!” Jess gasped
in horror
.
They all exchanged secret smiles as Ethan shrugged. “Broke a few ribs, but I heal quick,” he added
with a wink
, causing all of them to chuckle
.
“There was the fish war, the parakeet war...”
“That was the least funny,” Isabelle interrupted Ian. “Vicky and Abby cried for a week.”
They all looked pointedly
at Aiden
who threw his hands up defensively
. “Hey, it’s not my fault! They thought that they were old enough to get involved with the wars! Besides, they started it by p
utting itching powder in my bed.
”
“He retaliated by turning their ten parakeets lose in December. We found five of them frozen in the front yard, the others disappeared,” Mike said
, shaking his head disapprovingly
.
“Vicky and Abby never got
involved in anything after that,
”
Aiden said with a bright grin.
“Yeah, and we’ve gotten too old to continuously torture each other,” Ian said. “But Willow, Julian, Kyle, and Cassidy have taken
up where we left off
with a vengeance.”
“Except they’re more likely to get themselves killed,” Isabelle muttered. “I think they’re crazier than we were.”
“You’re forgetting about the time that you climbed to the top of that same sycamore tree, and threw yourself out of it in the hope that I would catch you,” Ethan
reminded her
.
“Which you did,” she said with a grin.
“You broke my damn ankle!”
“Stop complaining, mom babied you for a week, and I got stuck on diaper duty with Kyle and Cassidy. I definitely got the raw end of that deal.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, smiling fondly. “That was a good week.”
Isabelle grinned at him. Stefan watched the exchange with a small amount of wonder, and awe. It was becoming increasingly clear that Ethan and Isabelle were exceptionally close as they smiled at each other, their eyes twinkling merrily. A small bolt of jealousy ripped through him and he stiffened in surprise. His
eye
brows drew together as he forced himself to relax.
H
e was acting like a
n
idiot. He didn’t even know the girl, yet he was fully aroused by her, and suddenly jealous of the fact that she had a close relationship with her brother.
He shoved the thought forcefully aside as he forced his gaze away from her. David stood up and leaned his hands on the table. “I think we’d better get going.”
Aiden, Ian, and Jack climbed swiftly to their feet. “You got that list?” David asked.
“Oh
,
yeah.” Isabelle chewed on her lip as she shifted the laundry basket, pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, and handed it to him.
David glanced at it and nodded. “No problem.”
“Thanks.” Isabelle smiled at him and left the room, the other four fil
ed
out behind her.
Stefan sat silently for awhile, contemplating his strange thoughts, and behavior. The room was oddly quiet without the laughter that had filled it. Without Isabelle. That realization
did nothing to ease his darkening mood. He folded his hands behind his head and pretended to listen as Ethan, Mike, Doug, and Jess exchanged pleasant conversation, and more stories. He didn’t hear a word they said, and he found his gaze drawn to the door every few moments. It wasn’t until about the fiftieth time he looked that he realized he was hoping for Isabelle to reappear.
When she didn’t, and Jess placed her hand on his thigh again, he decided that it was time to go to bed.
CHAPTER 7
It was some time later that Stefan left his room. Jess was wide awake, still yelling at him when he slammed the door in her face. He was edgy, restless, and aggravated as hell. He sure as
shit
wasn’t going to waste his time, or energy, fighting with her. She wasn’t worth the bother. The thing that bothered him was what had started the fight. For the first time, in his exceptionally long life, he had been unable to keep himself aroused.
It was only when he’d had a flash of violet eyes that he had responded in any
way to Jess’s attempts at seduction. It hadn’t lasted long. When Jess had crawled on top of him, a feeling of disgust had instantly flooded him. He had shoved her off,
suddenly
unable to stomach the feel of her any longer.
Now he felt like a caged animal, desperate to escape, as he made his way quickly down the hall. He didn’t know what the hell was the matter with him, but he didn’t like the feeling at all. He sighed with disgust as he made his way swiftly down the stairs.
The light in the dining room was still on. He was drawn there by soft laughter, and voices. He walked into the room, pausing as his eyes landed on Isabelle. She looked up at him, her eyes widening in surprise as they met his. For a moment he simply held her gaze, his loins instantly puls
ed and throbbed
to life as his body tensed with the fierce sexual urge that ripped through him. Fear darted quickly through her bright
eyes
as she looked quickly away. Stefan remained where he was, stunned by the she
e
r force of the physical reaction that rocked through him.
