Unforgiven (The Forbidden Bond 2) (26 page)

“You don’t need to burn me anymore, Sparky. You’ve already branded yourself on a part of me that no one else will ever see.” He kissed her forehead and backed away.

“Where are you going? I thought you said it wasn’t safe out here?” She followed, challenging him, breathlessly. Derek looked over his shoulder. He let her see the fierce need for her that was riding him.

“You’re in far more danger if I don’t walk away. I’ll stick around until you’re gone.” He faded into the trees and watched, waiting patiently until Brandi gathered her things and climbed into her car.

On his way back to The Nest, Derek contemplated his life and cursed the course it had taken. Brandi was the best thing that would ever happen to him and he knew it. Something deep in his gut said she was the one that could change everything for him, but what could he offer her? Nothing. The Master would use her against Derek to control him. If the Master ever learned of her pyrokinetic ability it would become another tool in his arsenal of stolen power. In the end he would lose both his mother and Brandi. It was hopeless. He was hopeless.

****

The last couple of weeks had given Brandi the time she needed to evaluate the state of her life. The time she spent at home with JR had grounded her and helped her remember what it felt like to be in her own skin. She couldn’t bring herself to regret the transformation she put herself through in an effort to find her place in the world.

When she was younger her entire focus had been on education and sports, with a passing guy thrown in here and there for entertainment. Brandi had totally missed the experience of being young and careless while she pushed herself to continue her education. The pressure of completing her Master’s degree at eighteen made her mature beyond her years and unable to relate to others her own age, but she couldn’t regret that either.

Now that she had forced herself to slow down and live the life of a nearly twenty year old for a time, Brandi had a new outlook. The day New Brandi came into being, she had bagged up all her old clothes with the intention of donating them but she had never been able to actually let them go. She was very glad of that now. First, because she was sure some of her jerseys would fit JR and second, because the time had come for her to find a balance between being an educated wallflower that could run rings around anyone on the playing field, pretty much any playing field because she had tried every sport imaginable, and a trendy socialite. It was time to be comfortable in her skin again. Brandi dragged several large bags from the rear of her walk-in closet and started to dig around for the one that contained the sports gear.

“Do you really think I could play? I’m not very big, or coordinated.” JR asked from the doorway.

“Absolutely,” She smiled up at him from her seat on the carpet. “You’re plenty big enough and coordination is something that comes with practice and exercise. Maybe you should think about taking some kind of martial arts as well as football.”

JR smiled and warmed a place in her heart that had been cold for quite a while.

“I’d like that.” He came to his knees and helped her search.

After Samantha’s cry for help, Brandi came home to find a kid much changed from the sunny boy she knew and loved. JR was skittish and stressed out. Sam was all too happy to step back and let Brandi deal with their brother. He refused to sleep in his own room and his grades were looking like crap. So Brandi devised a plan. First she set up a schedule of daily chores, homework, bedtimes, stuff like that. She had taken a psych course in college and she learned that kids needed a routine and boundaries. It helped to keep them centered and on task. She had never had any chores but she had also learned that kids that had such tasks learned responsibility. She’d always been responsible so she didn’t feel bad about skipping that part of childhood.

The next item on her to-do list was to help him feel safe in his home again. She took JR around the property and introduced him to all the various warriors on duty. He didn’t seem to realize exactly how many guards were on the property at any given time. There were more than usual since his attack. The next task was figuring out how to get him back into his own bed.

It started out like an adventure. They went camping in the woods on the property one night. The next night they moved closer to the house so JR could see the patrolling warriors moving about the grounds. The night after that they camped in the kitchen. They spent two nights in the dining room before she could get him to go upstairs and sleep in her room. Then they camped in the hall outside of his bedroom door, much to their mother’s annoyance. Finally after a week of talking about what had happened the night he woke up in his bed surrounded by strangers and reassuring him that he was safe now, they camped together in his room. The next night he slept in his bed and she camped alone in the hall. He had come to the door several times in the night to check on her. Seeing her safe and alone in the hall seemed to reassure JR. The night after that she slept in her own bed, going to check on him several times but he slept through the night.

Now they were working on his confidence. He tried on various jerseys and kicked a soccer ball around her bedroom. Brandi thought he needed some self-confidence to feel like he could defend himself. He wanted to play football and take some Tae-Kwon-Do.  It was a perfect mix of self-defense training and a full contact team sport. JR was going to be fine and she felt confident that his experiences would make him a stronger person now that he had conquered his fears. Now that she had her baby brother straightened out, it was time to do the same thing for her.

****

Candice tossed her duffle into her truck and unobtrusively peered at Greyson and the other guys over the car parked next to her. They were all laughing and Greyson was looking kind of sheepish.

“You are so whipped, man. You can’t even take a victory lap with the team before you run off to the little woman?” Garrett teased Greyson.

“Don’t give him a hard time, Garrett. I’d hate to see little Greyson here get into trouble or anything,” Troy joined in.

“You’re right, Troy. We have Candice now anyway. At least she doesn’t have a curfew,” Garrett replied. Ray, Mitch, and Linc all made a show of searching for Greyson’s “man card” so they could revoke it.

They hadn’t yet invited her to go to The Tap, a local vamp owned bar frequented by off duty warriors and thirty humans, but now that her name had been mentioned, it was less awkward for her to join the conversation.

“I heard my name. What did I do now?”

She smiled at the team and did her best not to look directly at Greyson. It had been that way the whole three weeks they were deployed. She listened to Derek’s advice and included the whole team in most every conversation they had so that Greyson wouldn’t feel she was stalking him or continuing to pursue a personal relationship. It had been pure hell bedding down near him every night. She had used the sleep aid Derek gave her almost every night but she had to use more than he suggested. Just one drop made her feel high instead of sleepy. After the first time she used it, the guys had made fun of her because instead of going to sleep she had talked and talked about God only knew what because she couldn’t remember a thing.

“We were just going to give you Greyson’s man card because your balls are bigger than his.” Linc was looking back and forth from her crotch to Greyson’s and nodding as if he could verify the size of her nonexistent testicles through her pants.

“What did I miss?” she asked innocently. Greyson shook his head good-naturedly and tried to speak but couldn’t get a word in.

“Greyson has to check in with his Momma, I mean girlfriend, so he can’t go the bar with us tonight. You’re coming along aren’t you, little red?” Garrett asked.

“I’d love to go. A little bar food sounds great.”

They all laughed because they knew she didn’t mean wings and French fries but slightly intoxicated humans. A good buzz might do her some good. She could sleep in a guest room on the Enclave so she wouldn’t have to “drink and drive.”

“It’s too bad you can’t come, Greyson. I guess I’ll see you around.”

Candice did her best not to pout but didn’t think she had succeeded. After spending so much time with him, it was hard to walk away not knowing when she would see him again. Her training was over so she had no real reason to be on the Enclave until they allowed her to tag along again.

Greyson took a deep breath.

“Fine, I’ll go, but only for a few drinks. I need to feed anyway. I’m exhausted. I must be getting old because I can’t keep up with you whippersnappers.”

The guys laughed at the self-deprecating remark about his age. He was at least twenty years older than the rest of them but he didn’t look a day over thirty and he ran circles around them all most days.

****

As soon as they walked into The Tap, one of the local bar flies Candice had seen the guys with before approached them. She immediately singled Greyson out and steer him toward the dance floor. The woman was intoxicated and looking for love in all the wrong places. Greyson danced with her for a bit. She pressed her value-sized breasts into his chest and groped his ass. Greyson made eye contact with the bartender, who nodded and smiled his approval.

They had a few hidden spots in the bar meant solely for the use of vamp clientele to discreetly feed, but you had to have the approval of the bartender on duty to partake in the bar. The owner of the bar cared for his human patrons as well as the vamps. So, if the person was too intoxicated or had already been fed on recently the bartender would deny the request to use their secluded areas.

Greyson left a healthy tip on the bar in thanks as if he’d actually just purchased a meal and led the busty blond away from the crowd. It was a while before he returned looking disheveled and noticeably more relaxed. The blond made her way to the door. It was typical of Grayson to compel the women he fed from to go home afterward for their own safety. Over imbibing after blood loss could be harmful and Greyson would feel responsible for the human’s welfare after their gift of blood.

Garrett was ordering their second round by the time Greyson pulled up the only open stool at the bar, which just happened to be next to Candice’s. She had already found a meal of her own and made her way back to the guys in half the time it took Greyson and she wondered if he had screwed the woman while he fed at her neck. Candice hated the uncomfortable feeling of jealousy Greyson was so easily able to inspire in her.

Conversation flew freely around Candice, but she was lost in her own thoughts. The longer she sat next to him, the more she remembered he didn’t want to be there. He wanted be at home in bed with his fledgling. He smiled at her and lifted his glass to hers.

“To bar food,” he toasted and swallowed a mouthful of amber liquid.

No longer in the mood to hang out with the guys, Candice decided to walk the several blocks back to the Enclave instead of waiting for one of the guys to leave. She knew she had a long night of tossing and turning ahead of her while she imagined Greyson’s reunion with his girlfriend. Candice swore to herself that she was done with pining after the man. He was off limits and that was that. So many men had hit on her during her time at the Enclave and she could have her pick. Why in the world was she torturing herself over the only one who wasn’t interested?

Candice pulled the sleep aid out of her pocket and put several drops into her drink. It may have been a bit much but she didn’t want to think anymore. Candice figured she had just enough of time to make it back to the Enclave before it kicked in and put her down for the night. The bartender cleared the empty glasses and gave her a disapproving look. She missed her pocket and dropped the bottle. It rolled away and she was forced to chase it across the floor. She returned to the bar just in time to see a tipsy Greyson reach back, without looking away from his animated conversation with Garrett, and empty her glass, instead of his own.

FIFTEEN

Greyson was so damn tired he collapsed onto his bed. The California king embraced him like a long lost friend. He realized with a shrug that he was drunk. Really drunk and really tired. He knew he should have gone straight home when he got off duty, but the team had so much to celebrate. It had been a grueling three week deployment, but they made a huge dent in the southern uprising. The team had raided two strongholds and both had fallen before the enemy even saw them coming. Without forewarning of the coming siege, the primarily untrained vamps were easy picking. Finding the nests and keeping it quiet had been far more challenging than taking them down. With the help of the area Enclaves, the team wiped the minds of the enslaved humans they found, leaving them with happier more reasonable explanations for their lost time, and they detained the perps with minimal bloodshed.

He planned to go see Brandi as soon as he was off duty but the team teased him about being whipped and Candice pouted when he refused to go to The Tap, a local vamp owned bar a lot of the warriors frequented. It was a great place to unwind and grab a bite, so to speak, after a hard day. He agreed to a drink or two only because he needed to feed. With that out of the way he could focus on reuniting with his Pixie. That was hours ago and now he was too polluted to go anywhere. How in the hell had he even gotten home?

It had been weeks since he’d seen Brandi last, weeks since their first big fight, and he hadn’t been able to contact her in all that time. They parted with harsh words and hurt feeling on both sides. Greyson would correct that injustice, just as soon as he could stand again. First he needed to sleep, because when he got his hands on his little Nymph, he was going to teach her to recognize his need for her. She would never again question his motives where she was concerned. Not after he used every trick he’d learned in his long life to brand her, mark her as his, so that she and everyone else would know who she belonged to.