Must Love Fangs (Midnight Liaisons) (27 page)

But I didn’t know where Josh lived. “His wallet. It’s probably in his pants.”

Lily and I both turned to look back at the wine cellar, and dread piled up in my stomach. I didn’t want to go back there, and I guessed Lily felt the same.

I looked to my father. “It’s in the cellar. I can’t . . . I don’t . . . ” I gestured at the chain around my neck helplessly. “Can you . . . ”

My dad patted my shoulder. “I’ll go get it. You girls wait here.”

I moved back to Josh’s side, stroking his face and fur as we waited. Dad came back a couple of minutes later with car keys, a wallet, and Josh’s clothes piled on his arm. “His car must be out front. One of you should probably drive it wherever we’re going.”

“I’ll do it,” I told him, staring down at Josh. He was so quiet and still. “Let’s just hurry.”

• • •

We pulled up to an enormous house out in the country about an hour later. The big, looming two-story house had several lights on, and by the time we made it down the gravel driveway, me in Josh’s sedan and Lily and Dad in the truck with Josh, a few men had stepped out onto the porch.

I recognized Everett, Ellis, and Austin. This wouldn’t go over well. Not only did I have their unconscious brother with me but I also had two humans who now knew about the Paranormal Alliance.

I put Josh’s car in park and hauled myself out of the driver’s side. I immediately staggered, feeling that awful lethargy coming over me again.

“Marie?” Austin moved to my side, propping up my elbow. “What are you doing here? Something wrong at the agency?”

“Josh is in the truck,” I told him. “We have to get a doctor. He’s unconscious.”

• • •

The Alliance doctor was there in a matter of minutes, with Beau not far behind him. Both looked grim as they entered Josh’s room, where the cougar was stretched out on the bed. The other Russells paced nearby, watching us.

I wanted to be in there, but Austin was hovering outside the door protectively, and I was willing
to bet that he had instructions to let no one pass—including me. I was okay with that, as long as they made Josh all better. I clasped my hands against my chest to keep them from trembling. He’d been so still and quiet when they’d hauled his limp body out of the truck.

If he died . . . I felt a sick lurch. I thought of Josh’s cocky smile, his eyes shining with merriment as he teased me. His long lashes. His big shoulders. His big arms holding me tight. The kind way he always gave Carol a ride home at night. Tears pricked my eyes. Why had it taken me so long to realize what a great guy he was?

I should have trusted him.

If I had to die, I could accept that. But Josh? Vibrant, sexy, gorgeous, funny Josh? He needed to live, and I clenched every muscle in my body, as if thinking it hard enough could will it into being.

Everett and Ellis hovered over Lily and my father and me. It made Lily terrified, and she huddled in a corner of the room, ignoring the offers of food and drink. She hugged her legs to herself, ignored everyone’s attempts to calm her, and stared around her with wide eyes, trembling.

My father calmly sat at my side and rubbed my shoulder. And even though Everett and Ellis glared, I explained to my father why Josh was a cougar, and who the dead man was.

The harder part was telling him why I’d been seeing a vampire in the first place. I couldn’t bring myself to explain that I was dying. There’d be time enough for that later.

To my relief, my father didn’t ask questions. He only nodded thoughtfully. “And this is secret? All this?”

I nodded. “No one’s supposed to know. At all. It endangers everyone.”

“But everyone at your job knows?”

I winced. I’d tell him some other time that I was fired. “They do. Everyone at the agency had to sign a hush order before we could get accepted into the Alliance as auxiliary members.”

He nodded, then looked at Ellis and Everett, who were still frowning at us. “You got one of those hush orders for me?”

Everett and Ellis exchanged a glance. “I’ll get Beau,” Ellis said, disappearing into Josh’s room.

“Dad,” I began.

He patted my hand. “Now listen, Marie. You’re tired. We’re all tired. There’s a lot going on right now. Posey’s expecting me home, and I don’t want to worry her. So let me sign one of those hush orders and then we can all get some sleep.”

“You don’t have more questions?”

He chuckled and tousled my hair, just like I was a child. “I have a lot of them. But I’m guessing that the less I know, the better.”

I nodded, blinking hard. “That’s probably best.”

Dad smiled at me. “I like Josh. And you trust him. I know you don’t trust easily, so when you do, I trust your judgment.”

“I love him,” I said softly, burrowing into his arms for a hug.

“I know you do, Marie,” he said softly. “But
there’s nothing you can do for him right now. Let’s go home and we’ll come back tomorrow.”

I shook my head, pulling out of his arms. “I want to stay. I want to see Josh when he wakes up.”

He nodded. “If you want. Your little friend can come home with me, though—”

“She stays,” Everett said in a flat voice. “Everyone stays until Beau says so.”

Beau emerged a short time later and had a private discussion with my father. I sat on the floor next to Lily, feeling the need to comfort her with my presence even if she didn’t want me there. Nondisclosure contracts were produced, and my dad signed one willingly. Even if Posey asked, he’d never say a thing.

And suddenly, I realized . . . it was all right to tell him. I was dying, and that was okay. My dad would be terribly sad, but he would be by my side until the bitter end. Just like he had with my mother. Tears brimmed in my eyes.

Life wasn’t about being alone so that no one would get hurt.

It was about loving the ones you had, while you had them. My dad loved me. I loved him, too. It would devastate him when I died, but more so if I hid it from him until the bitter end.

Once the papers were signed, my father gave me another fierce, warm hug. I declined his offer of going home again, determined to see Josh as soon as they’d let me. When I was out, I’d call him, I promised.

We’d go to breakfast and then I’d let him know everything. A strange feeling of relief swept through me. I didn’t have to go through this alone, after all. I gave him a hug and he left.

To my surprise, Beau didn’t like the idea of Lily leaving. “She stays until we figure out what to do with her. In the meantime, you and you,” he said, pointing at the twins, “need to go to that address and clean things up. Austin’s going to contact the vampire liaison and let them know what happened. She’ll meet you there. I suspect there’s going to be a lot of explaining over the next few days, and we need to make sure everything is in order.”

I struggled to my feet. “Can I see him?”

“You,” Beau said firmly, “need to rest. You’re so tired you can’t even stand up straight. We’ll talk in the morning.”

• • •

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of Lily and Josh. She’d been terrified at the thought of being dragged into a strange room and had fought Beau, kicking and screaming. They’d had to call in the doctor to sedate her.

I didn’t know what was going to happen with her. She was pretty messed up. What did you do with a human girl as damaged as that? They couldn’t turn her loose, like they had my father.

Even though my father had signed the nondisclosure, I knew they’d be watching him carefully for the next while, just in case.

I drifted in and out of a light doze, my body so exhausted that the room was hazy. Hallucinations flashed back and forth, as they always did when I was exhausted. The walls wavered, then shifted to my own room. Then they changed to blood. Then spiders. Then back to blood, the plain white walls streaming crimson as I stared at them.

My mother had been institutionalized a few months before the end, and I was heading toward that.

I hoped I had enough time to tell Josh that I was sorry and that I loved him.

• • •

My hallucinations turned again, and I whimpered when the walls of the guest room changed to Andre’s cellar. In the dark, it was suffocatingly real. I still had the collar around my neck, too, since we’d had to put off going to a locksmith until the morning. It wasn’t a good feeling, and it was clearly feeding my dreams.

“Marie!” Josh called.

I squeezed my eyes shut, my mind clearly replaying my rescue from the cellar.

“Marie! Where is she, damn it?”

I heard an unfamiliar feline snarl, then footsteps pounding through the hallway.

“Now, Josh—” began a calm male voice, only to be cut off by another angry snarl.

I sat up, rubbing my eyes, trying desperately to piece my confused mind back together. Was this a
hallucination? Or was that really Josh? Desperate with hope, I started to get up to see for myself.

Then the door was flung open, and a tall, broad silhouette stood in the light.

And oh, God, he looked so good that I didn’t trust my eyes. I rubbed them again. “Josh?”

“Marie,” he growled, the sound fiercely possessive. He stalked into the room and moved to the bed.

Relief hit me so hard that I began to tremble, tears spilling from my eyes. “Oh, Josh—”

He tangled his hand in my hair, tugging me forward and pulling me against him. My arms went around him as he sat on the edge of the bed.

“Marie,” he half-growled, half-whispered. “Baby. You okay?”

I nodded jerkily, unable to stop running my hands over his body, reassuring myself that he was okay. My Josh. I’d nearly lost him. The tears kept spilling forth and I couldn’t seem to stop them. A muffled, choked gasp escaped my throat. “I thought . . . I thought you . . . ”

“I’m here, baby,” he said, pressing a kiss to my temple. “I wouldn’t leave you.”

I clung to him, needing to hear him right now. To touch him. “I love you,” I whispered.

A figure loomed in the doorway, blotting out the light again. “Josh, we need to talk,” Beau began. “This situation—”

“Leave us!” Josh said, leaping from the bed and snarling protectively, standing over me.

I flinched backward, staring at him in surprise.
That fierce, furious response was so unlike him.

Beau raised his hands in a peacemaking gesture. “Before you do anything crazy—”

“I said leave us,” Josh said in a dangerous voice. “Now.” He took a menacing step toward the door.

Bewildered, I stared at them. What was going on? Josh was acting like Beau had trespassed or something. As I sat frozen in the bed, Beau nodded and walked away. He called something too low for me to hear, and then it was lost as Josh slammed the door shut.

He turned back to me, his eyes gleaming green with his cat.

“Are you okay?” I whispered, wiping at my cheeks.

He moved back to me in the bed, his gaze possessive as he looked over me. “Did he hurt you? Tell me.”

I shook my head slowly.

Josh exhaled sharply, and his big shoulders sagged with relief. He tugged me close, and I went gladly into his arms again.

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to keep from crying. “I should have listened to you. I should have waited. I just—”

“It’s okay, baby. You’re just scared.” He stroked my hair, holding me.

Scared? I was terrified of dying. But now there was something that frightened me even more—the thought of losing Josh. “I shouldn’t have gone.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But I understand it.”

Fresh tears brimmed. Of course he did. He’d been with me, every step of the way.

“I was just so close,” I said softly. “I . . . was afraid to wait. The hallucinations are getting worse. It’s like right before my mother had to go into the hospital—”

He pressed a kiss to my forehead, his fingers wiping away my tears. “You should have told me.”

“I didn’t want to acknowledge it,” I confessed. “Because if I do, that means I accept that the end is inevitable. But . . . ” My breath shuddered. “I need to face it. I’m going to die.”

There. I’d said it.

“No,” he growled low in his throat. “You’re not.”

I shook my head. “It’s too late, Josh. And it wasn’t even a good idea. I don’t want to be with any vampire.” I laid my cheek against his shoulder, feeling exhausted with the weight of it all. “I just want you.”

“You’re not going to die,” he stated, his voice rough with emotion. He tilted my chin back and stared into my eyes, his green-glinting ones inhuman in the moonlight. “Do you trust me?”

There was a feral growl in his voice.

Goose bumps raised on my skin. “Josh, what do you—”

“Do you trust me?” The question was harder, flatter.

And I realized what he was asking.

I thought of the tiger girl. I thought of Greenland.
I thought of Josh and his big family, and the way he laughed and joked with his brothers. He would lose all of that if he went into exile with me.

“I can’t ask that of you,” I whispered. “Josh, I can’t ask you to give up your life—”

His fingers went under my chin, held my gaze to his. “The first thing any relationship needs is trust.”

If I said yes, there would be no turning back. I ran a hand down his arm, caressing his skin. “Just promise me that you won’t regret this a few weeks from now, when we’re exiled.”

He growled low in his throat. “Marie—”

“I trust you,” I said softly.

“Good,” he replied, just as softly. Josh leaned in and kissed the tip of my nose, oh so gently. “I love you.”

I smiled, closing my eyes at his tender touch.

So I missed it when he grew fangs and sank them into my neck.

I gasped, jerking in surprise at the bolt of pain.

He held me close as his teeth pulled out of my skin, then he began to lick slowly, sensually. “I’m sorry. I can’t turn you without it hurting a little.” He tugged at the collar of the pajama top I was wearing, exposing the shoulder closest to him for his attention. “The first bite usually doesn’t take.”

A little twinge of anxiety flared through me. “Oh . . . ?”

He continued to lap at my neck, and his tongue felt oddly . . . rough? That was a little strange. Not in a bad way, just strange. He continued to stroke my
skin with his tongue, and in between lapping, delicious swipes of his tongue, he commented, “Sometimes it takes a lot of bites. Sometimes it doesn’t take at all.”