Vampires and Vixens (Psy-Vamp) (6 page)

They were both so hungry that they made
it halfway through their meal without uttering another word.

Hannah was the one to break the silence.
“What has Nathaniel said about me, aside from telling you that I’m a student?”

“I can’t remember all of it,” Noah
replied. “I can tell you that my brother is really excited about seeing you
this weekend.”

That made her smile. “I wish he would
call me.”

“Nathaniel hasn’t dated in quite some
time. He’s a little out of practice.” Noah started to say something else, but
stopped.

“I have to admit that I’m a little
jealous of you,” she said.

“Why are you jealous?”

“It must be nice having a brother,” she
said wistfully.

“It is,” Noah said without hesitation. “You
don’t have any siblings?”

Hannah shook her head. “I’m not even
sure why my parents had me. My mother was thrilled when I was old enough for
her to send me away to school. Sadly, she couldn’t get me into a year-round
boarding school so she had to see me during the summer.”

Noah gave her a sympathetic look.

Hannah suddenly felt guilty about
complaining. “You just told me that you lost your mother as a child, and here I
am complaining about my mother. That’s pretty insensitive.”

“It sounds like you have good reason to
complain. What about your father? You mentioned that he was detached.”

“He’s been busy as long as I can remember.
He runs a large corporation, and he just doesn’t have time for anything else.”

Noah reached out and squeezed her hand.
“You seem pretty close to your cousin.”

Hannah smiled. “Lyd is great. My mom
can’t stand her.”

“Why?”

“Apparently Lydia is a very bad
influence on me. She even got blamed for my worst rebellion, despite that fact
that she wasn’t even in the same state at the time.”

Noah leaned closer. “What did you do?”

“I was fifteen, and my mother had come
to visit me at school. She was hoping to run into another mom that she wanted
to network with. My mother is big on expanding her social circle with the right
people. When she realized that my closest friend was there on scholarship, and
came from a very poor family, she lost it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my
mother show that much emotion, and it was all over how bad I was making her
look with my poor friend. She assured me that we gave plenty of money to those
people, and we didn’t need to socialize with them. She actually slapped me.”

Noah’s eyes widened. “Wow!”

“So,” Hannah continued with an innocent
smile, “I figured that since charity was my mother’s big thing I would make her
happy.”

“What exactly did you do?”

“I emptied my accounts, and took out
cash advances on my credit cards. Then I took a cab to the nearest homeless
shelter and gave it to the people there.”

“How much money was that?”

She shrugged. “I think I managed to get
around twenty-thousand dollars.”

Noah had just taken a drink, and he
choked on it. “You walked around with twenty-thousand dollars?”

She nodded.

“You‘re lucky that you weren’t robbed,
or killed, or worse.”

“I’m not sure that there’s much worse
than being killed, but I get your point. I was young and stupid. I told myself
I was doing it to get back at my mother, but I think part of it was a cry for
attention.”

“Well, I’m sure you got some attention
after that.” He just kept shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe she would
do something like that.

Her shoulders slumped. “Not really. My
mother called to tell me how embarrassed she was. I got to spend what seemed
like hours listening to her complain about what her friends would think if they
heard about it. I’m not even sure my father knows about it.”

Noah wasn’t sure what to say. He
would’ve guessed that Hannah had a very warm and loving family. She just seemed
so sweet and down to Earth.

The alarm on Hannah’s phone startled her.
“Oh my God, I'm going to be late for class. How much is my share of lunch?” She
started digging in her purse.

His hand went up immediately. “Oh, no
you don’t, I invited you which makes it my treat.”

She hesitated, but decided not to argue.
“Thank you, but next time we do something together I'm paying.”

“We'll see about that,” he mumbled under
his breath.

She stood, and slung her purse over her
shoulder. “I'm glad that we had a chance to talk, I really enjoyed it.”

“I enjoyed myself too. What class are
you off to?”

“Biology 101. Actually, it's not my
class, but I told Lydia that I’d take notes for her,” she explained. “She's
been sick all week. It doesn't help that she's going out every night with her
new boyfriend.”

Noah looked down at the table. There was
an edge of controlled anger in his voice. “Her new boyfriend isn't Dominic, is
it?”

“Yeah, it is.” She gave him a puzzled
look. “They've been practically joined at the hip since last weekend. Why do
you ask?”

He stood quickly, and dropped some money
on the table. “I just didn't realize they were seeing each other.” He was
suddenly in a big hurry. “Let’s get you back to the campus before you miss that
class.”

As soon as Noah dropped Hannah off, he
called Nathaniel.

“Hello.” Nathaniel’s cousin Isaiah
answered the phone.

“I need to talk to my brother.” He felt
a little bad about being short with Isaiah. As a rule, Noah avoided the rest of
the Draksel family, but Isaiah was mostly likable.

“He’s driving, but I’m really glad you
called,” Isaiah said with a child’s enthusiasm. “I was going to come over to
your place tonight.”

“That’s fine, but I really need to talk
to Nathaniel.” Noah's patience was wearing thin, but he tried to keep his voice
calm.

He heard his brother’s voice over the
rumble of the engine.

“It’s Noah, and he wants to talk to
you,” Isaiah said to Nathaniel. He then continued his conversation with Noah. “I
designed a new program that I think will really help you out with the books.”

Isaiah didn’t acknowledge Noah’s
annoyance, and possibly didn’t even notice it. Isaiah had always been quiet and
introverted. Until the invention of computers Isaiah had mostly closed himself
off from the world, lost in books. Now, he did his best to fit the image of a
computer geek, including wearing glasses that he didn’t need.

“Put Nathaniel on the phone now, please.
Tell him it’s urgent.”

The next voice he heard was Nathaniel's.
“Talk fast. I'm driving through the canyon.”

“Are you aware that Dominic is still
seeing Lydia?”

“Who?” Nathaniel sounded confused and
distracted.

“Hannah's cousin, and the girl isn’t
doing well physically.”

The string of profanity coming from
Nathaniel proved that he hadn’t known about this. It was also an indicator of
how angry he was. Control was very important to Nathaniel and profanity
indicated a loss of control. He heard the sound of the car coming to a stop by
the side of the road, and then Nathaniel was back on the line.

“How did you find out about this? Did
you see them together?”

“I had lunch with Hannah today,” Noah
explained.

“Really?” Nathaniel sounded surprised so
Noah assumed he hadn’t asked what school Hannah attended. “How is she? Did she
ask about me?”

“Yes, I really had lunch with her. She’s
fine. Yes, she asked about you. Apparently her cousin has been so sick that
she’s been sleeping most of the time, but still managing to go out with Dominic
every night.”

Nathaniel started to curse again.
Finally, he calmed down and said, “Saturday will be the last time that he sees
her, and he won’t see her until then.”

Hannah’s fingers tapped impatiently on
the steering wheel as she waited for Lydia to finish grooming herself. “I
thought you did your hair and makeup before we left. We're going horseback
riding. Do you really think that you need to spend several hours preparing for
it?”

Lydia looked at her and rolled her eyes.
“Speak for yourself, nature girl. You know I hate horses.”

“Then why did you agree to go riding
with us today?” Hannah asked through her teeth. She was trying her hardest to
be patient, but she really wanted to see Nathaniel. After spending the last ten
minutes sitting in the car, Hannah’s patience was just about gone.

Lydia sighed and rested her head on the
back of the car seat. “It seemed like a great excuse to spend more time with
Dominic, although I'm beginning to wonder if he even wants to see me.” She let
out a pitiful moan.

Hannah squeezed her shoulder. “I’m sure
he wants to see you.” She hated to see her normally confident cousin looking so
dejected. On the flip side, it was nice to see her healthy again and Hannah was
certain that spending a couple of nights at home had helped with that.

Lydia blinked her pouty blue eyes, crossed
her arms over her chest, and pushed out her lower lip. No one could pout quite
like Lydia. “He hasn't called me in three days.” She held up three fingers just
in case Hannah didn’t know how many days she meant. “We spent four days in a
row together. One night, I even had sex with him in the college courtyard in
honor of the place we met.”

Hannah put her hand up. “I really didn't
want to know that.” Still, she heard herself ask, “Weren’t you afraid of being
caught?”

“Of course I was,” Lydia said matter-of-factly.
“That’s part of what made it so exciting.”

Hannah shook her head, and tried to give
her most disapproving stare. It wasn’t easy when she was on the verge of
laughing. “I love you, Lyd, but you scare me.”

“You know you wanna try it,” Lydia teased
with a wicked grin. “Don’t tell me that you never thought about doing it in
public when you were with Mr. CEO in training.”

It felt strange to talk about her ex-fiancé.
“CFO, and the sex was scheduled and sedate at best. He never would have risked
any impropriety.”

“Well, we may as well get this over
with,” Lydia muttered pitifully.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Lyd.
If he doesn’t want you, then you’ll just find someone else, someone better,”
Hannah said with conviction. “Now, get out of the car and show that loser what
he’s missing.”

Lydia gave one last miserable sigh. “I
wish it was that easy. I don’t know what it is about him, but I just can’t get
him out of my head. I feel like some sort of addict. I will admit that the sex
is out of this world, but it’s more than that. You would not believe the stuff
he does.”

“Please don’t go into details again.”

Lydia stuck out her tongue.

Hannah stepped out of the car. “C’mon.
Let’s just go have some fun. I don’t know what his problem is, but you’re too
good for him anyway. Want me to kick his rich ass for you?”

Lydia laughed so hard that she
accidentally slammed her head on the dashboard. “Ouch!” She rubbed her forehead
and continued to laugh until she was almost in tears. “I just love it when you
try to use profanity. Your voice gets all high like a little girl.”

“I’m so glad that I amuse you.” Hannah
feigned annoyance.

Lydia finally got out of the car, and
they walked to the house. Before they could ring the bell, the front door
opened. Dominic lifted Lydia off of the ground and kissed her. Hannah felt a
little uncomfortable just standing there. She studied the potted plants to
avoid gawking at them.

Dominic finally set Lydia down, letting
her body slowly slide across his. “I am very happy that you are here.”

Lydia pushed him away and placed her
hands on her hips. She tried to look mad, but her eyes gave her away. Still she
scolded him. “Then why haven't you called me? You canceled Wednesday by text
message, and then you don’t even return my calls. Now, I show up here and
you're all over me like nothing has changed. What's the deal, Dominic? One day
I don't even get a kiss my ass, and the next you're glad to see me?”

“Don’t be angry with me, sweet Lydia.”
He massaged her arms. “I would never hurt you. I have spent our time apart
fantasizing about you. When you return from your ride, I will show you how much
I have missed you.”

Hannah nearly gagged. While Lydia seemed
to find Dominic’s strange way of speaking exotic and endearing, Hannah felt
like he was overplaying his struggle with the English language. There was just
something fake about him.

Lydia was eating it up. She smiled and
leaned her entire body against his. “That's so sweet, but aren't you going
riding with me?”

With Dominic’s powerful arms wrapped around
her, Lydia looked even thinner than usual. “I don’t like horses very much.”

Lydia heaved a sigh of relief. “Good,
then we can do something else. I hate horseback riding. Horses are smelly and
they bite.”

He leaned down so that he could nuzzle
her neck. “Then we will have to find a more appealing way to spend our time,”
he murmured against her neck.

This was getting old. Hannah cleared her
throat loudly to get their attention. She wasn’t trying for subtlety. It
occurred to her that she had been feeling much less inclined to do what was
expected of her lately. That was an empowering realization. “Now that we've
settled your plans for the day, and you've examined each other's bodies
thoroughly, would you mind telling me where Nathaniel is?”

Dominic stopped nibbling on Lydia's ear.
“Nathaniel is preparing the horses for your ride. I can show you the way. It’s
just around the side of the house.”

“I’m sure I can find it,” Hannah
insisted.

Dominic didn’t argue, most likely
because he didn’t really want to walk her to the stables.

Hannah found Nathaniel tightening the
saddle on a white Arabian in a semi-enclosed tack area. The sun was
behind the structure, so it seemed a little dark to Hannah. The darkness didn’t
hinder her view of him. She’d found men attractive before, but Nathaniel
Draksel was in his own class of sexy. The muscles on his arms and chest
strained the material of shirt, and his faded blue jeans were sinfully tight.

The white Arabian was full of energy and
continued to move her feet as he tightened the girth. A second horse, a bay Thoroughbred,
was already tacked.

Nathaniel noticed her watching him and
grinned. When she walked over to join him, he took one of her hands then leaned
down to kiss her on the cheek. “I'm glad you’re here.” His voice was a sexy
rumble. “I just need to prepare a horse for your cousin and then we’ll be on
our way. I wasn’t sure how much she’s ridden.”

“Actually, Lydia doesn’t really like
horses so she decided to stay at the house with Dominic.”

Nathaniel’s composure slipped, but he
quickly recovered.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Of course,” he replied casually. “I was
just under the impression that they weren’t getting along, but I guess I was
mistaken.” He gestured to the white mare. “I told you I had a white horse.”

She got the impression that he didn’t
really want to discuss their cousins, which worked out well, because neither
did she. “I can't believe that you tack your own horses.”

He raised one brow. “Do I look too weak
for manual labor?”

That was laughable. “Weak is not a word
I associate with you. For some reason, I just assumed that you would hire
someone to do this sort of thing. I guess that was a silly assumption.”

“I prefer to take care of my own
horses.” He put his hand on the Arabian. “I took the liberty of selecting a
horse for you.”

“She's beautiful. What's her name?”
Hannah asked as she stroked the mare’s neck.

“Minnie Mouse,” he said sounding a
little embarrassed.

She giggled. “You named your horse
Minnie Mouse.”

“No,” he replied a little awkwardly. “I
let one of my much younger cousins name her. He had just come back from Disney
World.”

“Well, Minnie Mouse,” she spoke gently
to the mare, as she continued to stroke her neck, “you are a beautiful baby.”
Hannah had always had a way with animals. Minnie Mouse nickered softy, and
leaned into her. The bay danced to get closer to her. “I’m sorry, you sweet
boy, I didn’t mean to ignore you,” she said as she walked over to the gelding.

“That’s Beast,” Nathaniel said. “Be
careful with him, he doesn’t like most people.”

Hannah reached out a tentative hand, and
Beast whinnied in excitement as he pushed his nose into her hand. She laughed.
“You’re just a big old softy, aren’t you, Beast?”

“Amazing,” Nathaniel murmured. “You have
a way with horses.”

“I’ve always felt like I could almost
understand what the animals around me were saying, and they just sort of like
me. Lydia teases me about it all of the time because I have animals that follow
me home every day. Usually it’s just cats and the occasional escaped hamster.”
Hannah looked away, hoping that he wouldn’t make a Dr. Doolittle joke.

Nathaniel obviously sensed her
discomfort and changed the subject. “Are your classes going well?”

She hesitated. “I guess so. I’m having a
little trouble with Statistics.”

“Noah can tutor you,” he offered.

“I’m sure Noah has much better things to
do with his time.”

Nathaniel waved a dismissive hand. “I’m
sure he’ll want to do it.’ He obviously considered the discussion over. “I
wasn’t sure if you preferred a Western or English saddle,” he said, pointing to
the western saddles on the horses.

“Actually, I only ride in an Australian
saddle,” she said with a playful grin.

The joke seemed to go over his head. He
looked worried. “I didn’t even consider that possibility,” he muttered to
himself. “I think I have two, but I’m not sure either would be a good fit for
Minnie. I’ll get another horse ready.”

She laughed, and he seemed to relax. “You’re
teasing me?” he asked.

She nodded. “Western saddles are fine.”

She was still smiling when he leaned in
to kiss her. To her disappointment, it was another quick peck on the cheek.

“I’ll help you mount,” he said as he
reached for her.

She pushed his hands away. “I’ve been
riding as long as I can remember. Trust me; I can handle this on my own.”

He looked impressed as she quickly swung
onto the back of the white mare. He slipped his dark glasses on, mounted his
horse, and they were off.

They started off slow, but quickly
picked up the pace. They rode in silence. It had been months since she’d been
on a horse and she had missed it. She was glad that he was letting her simply
enjoy the ride.

Hannah was a little disappointed when
they got back. She decided to let Nathaniel help her down. Not because she
needed help, but because she liked the way his hands felt on her waist. The
adrenaline from the ride made her feel bold. When he set her on the ground, she
placed her hands on the sides of his head and pulled him toward her. He leaned
in and kissed her. This was not a chaste peck on the cheek, his mouth pressed against
hers. His hands remained on her waist, pulling her closer to his body until she
could feel every inch of him. She allowed herself to sink into him. When she
moaned, he slid his tongue between her lips. She met his tongue with her own,
circling it. This time he moaned.

Much to her dismay, he pulled back. “We
need to stop,” he said breathlessly.

“Why?” she murmured as she stroked his
cheek.

He pulled back from her and took a few
deep breaths. “It’s been a long time, Hannah.” He turned away to take care of
the horses. After he removed their bridles he gave them both pats and murmured
softly to them. Then he quickly removed the saddles, and began to brush the
horses.

“Thank you for the flowers,” she said.

He looked over his shoulder. “You liked
them?”

“They were very pretty,” she replied. “No
one else has ever sent me flowers. It was a nice surprise.”

He gave a satisfied nod, and continued
to groom the horses before returning them to their stalls.

When he came back he removed his gloves
and draped them over a rail. His gaze drifted to her lips, and she knew he was
going to kiss her again. Hannah’s breath came faster and her heart pounded.

“Ew! It stinks in here,” Lydia whined,
and put a hand over her nose.

The spell was broken by Lydia’s
entrance.

“I want to go home now.” Lydia sounded
angry.

“I thought you wanted to spend the day
with Dominic?” Hannah was surprised, and disappointed, to hear that Lydia
wanted to leave.

“Well,” Lydia glared at Nathaniel as she
spoke, “apparently, that’s just not going to happen.” With that, she stormed
out of the stables. Her dramatic exit was ruined when she forgot to watch where
she was walking. “Holy crap!” she shouted.