Chapter Three
As Butch stood in the BDB mansion’s grand, colorful foyer, he frowned and looked at his phone. He’d checked the time on his Audemars Piguet watch about three minutes prior, but figured maybe his Samsung whatever-the-fuck-it-was might give him an answer he could live with better.
Negative.
And his seventh call to Marissa had just gone unanswered. As had the other six.
Off in the distance, the chatter and subtle clanking of Last Meal being consumed bubbled out of the dining room.
For no good reason, he thought about the first night he’d listened to sounds like that. It had been at what was now the audience house. He’d been a homicide detective back then, out of control and looking for a source of total destruction so that he could just be done with life.
And then came the rabbit hole.
Beth had gone down it first, her mixed heritage as half human, half vampire sucking her in. His entrée had been something else entirely.
If you’re going to bloody the human, would you be good enough to do it in the backyard?
“You got her yet?”
Butch closed his eyes at the familiar male voice. Even though it was not even partially true, sometimes he felt like Vishous’s acerbic mutter had been in his head for his entire life.
“No.”
As the Brother approached, the scent of Turkish tobacco preceded him and Butch breathed in deep. Maybe it was a contact high, maybe it was the nasty bastard’s presence, but the volume of screaming panic in his ears decreased a little.
“You call her office at the Place?” V asked on the exhale.
“Voice mail. And I dialed Mary, too. Nothing.”
“Motherfucker—”
The subtle binging of the security monitor ripped his head around. When he saw the image on the screen, he lunged for the vestibule’s door, nearly tearing the heavy weight off its hinges.
“Oh, God, where have you been—”
He was on his Marissa so fast and hard, the rest of whatever gibberish came out of his mouth was lost as he held her against him.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a muffled voice. “I was dealing with a case. I didn’t bother calling you because I had almost no time to get home.”
Pulling back, he put his palms on either side of her face and looked her over. “Are you okay?”
“Absolutely. And I’m so sorry—”
He kissed her, shuddering as her hands traveled up his back. “No, no. Not sorry. I only care that you’re okay.”
Fucking hell, that sun was a terrifying thing. A vampire caught out at dawn was nothing but a bonfire in their clothes—and although Marissa was well protected at Safe Place, shit could happen: humans were unpredicable idiots and the slayers were downright deadly.
As she separated them, she smiled. “I’m fine, just fine.”
Yeah, right, he thought as her eyes wouldn’t meet his.
He tugged her arm. “Come with me.”
“But Last Meal is on the table—”
“Who cares.”
Drawing her into the billiards room, he would have shut them in together if there had been doors to close.
“What happened,” he demanded.
She wandered around a little, her incredible body turning those simple clothes of hers into haute couture. “Nothing you haven’t heard before, sadly.”
Butch closed his eyes. Sometimes he hated her job; he really did. The harder it got, though, the more she fought—and though it pained him to see her worn-out, worn down, and discouraged sometimes, he respected the hell out of her for what she did for her race. And it wasn’t all bad. When people she had helped transitioned back into independent living, his shellan glowed like the sun.
Taking her hand, he backed up against one of the pool tables, and pulled her in between his thighs. “Tell me anyway.”
Her eyes traveled around the room, but he stayed focused on her. And Jesus, even after a long, hard night, she took his breath away. Her beauty was legendary in the race, something that had been spoken about for generations and was still revered, and it was obvious why. Her face was a compilation of perfect angles, her skin as smooth and luminous as a pearl, her blue eyes the color of a morning glory, those lips so pink and soft. And then there was the blond hair that was down past her shoulders, and yeah, that figure, which was the kind of thing that knocked males on their asses—and kept ’em down.
On a regular basis, he couldn’t believe she was with him. Him. A guy from Southie, with a chipped front tooth, a bad background, and a host of addictions he hadn’t been able to master until he’d met her.
Plus there was all the Omega shit.
Yet his shellan loved him, for some completely unknown reason.
“You’re not talking to me,” he whispered, sweeping her hair back and stroking her neck, her tight shoulders, her stiff arms. “You know I hate it when I don’t know what’s doing.”
As a chorus of laughter broke out across the way, Marissa nestled in close, her hips coming into contact with all kinds of party time.
And what do you know, his erection was instant, his cock thickening up and getting long behind the fly of his leathers.
Putting her arms around his neck, she leaned in and eased her breasts into his chest. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Growling deep in his throat, he reached around and cupped her rear assets. A palmful on either side, nothing more, firm as a gymnast’s—oh, God, he was starting to sweat.
Except he shook his head. “This isn’t going to work. You’re not going to distract me—”
Next thing he knew, Marissa parted her mouth and exposed her fangs. Getting close, she ran one of the canines across his lower lip, the sensation of the sharp point moving over his flesh causing him to moan.
“You sound like you need something,” she whispered against his mouth. “Do you want to tell me what it is?” Her tongue extended and licked her way into him. “What is it, Butch. Tell me what you need…”
“You,” he groaned. “I need you.”
After his transition, when his body had bulked up and become this hulking thing of power, he’d gotten used to feats of physical strength—and also this resonant weakness when it came to his female and sex. He’d needed women from time to time back when he’d been strictly human, but that was nothing compared to the roaring lust Marissa could bring out of him at the drop of a hat. One look, one touch … a sentence or two … sometimes it was just the clean ocean scent of her …
Boom! Like someone blew up his brain.
“Marissa …”
Her pelvis rotated against his arousal and then she was stepping away from him. “Come here.”
She could have commanded him to do any number of things—“Stand on your head, shave your eyebrows, pull your own arm off”—and he would have done any of it in a heartbeat. Follow her? With the possibility of giving her an orgasm—or six?
Yes, please, thank you, ma’am, how may I be of service.
Marissa led him behind the bar and pushed him against the shelves of liquor bottles. With fast hands, she went for his fly, and God help him, he gripped the edge of the granite countertop and watched her undo the buttons one by one, the ridge of his erection pushing things open as she went down.
And then she gripped him.
“Fuuuuck…” His head wanted to fall back, but he needed to see her—
His whole body swayed as her hand stroked his shaft.
“Do you like to see me do this to you?” She worked him nice and slow, up and down. “Do you, Butch.”
“Yes,” he whispered, drawing out the word. “I like … to see … your hands on me…”
“What about my mouth?”
His balls tightened, and an orgasm shot into the head of his cock, ready to explode—and that was before she got on her knees in front of him, disappearing behind the cover of the bar’s front section.
He wasn’t going to last long, but fuck him, he wanted that sensation, that warm, wet pull, even if for just a second—no watching, though. He had to squeeze his eyes shut. If he saw what she looked like, her mouth stretched wide, her beautiful hair splaying over his leather-clad thighs, that blue stare of hers looking up at him as if she liked the taste of him …
Which, of course, couldn’t possibly be true. But that was one lie he wasn’t going to argue with—
As her name reverberated up his throat, that suction was exactly what he was after, so slick and smooth, so hot that his eyes flared open. With his head on the level, he got a brief hi-how’re-ya of the leather couches, the pool tables, the archway into the foyer. If anybody happened to come in—which was unlikely, given Last Meal—they were just going to see him with his porn face on. Marissa was hidden behind the screen of the bar’s long, high countertop piece. And more good news? His bonding scent was waaaaaay out there, the dark spices so thick, it would serve as a warning that shit was going down in here, and people needed to give them a little privacy.
Marissa rode his head and shaft with her mouth, working him out like he liked it, and he closed his lids again—thinking of the Patriots playing the Giants … what was being served in that dining room … whether Lassiter was going to make them watch The Bachelor or if it was going to be Rachael frickin’ Ray and her EVOO shit.
The image of that bossy little chef was the filter that worked best, blocking some of the sensation—or at least enough so he didn’t come all over his shellan.
Actually, his fear of that outcome worked even better.
Fucking hell, the horror he’d feel if he ever climaxed in her mouth or, God, on her face …
Nope, nope, not gonna happen.
Unhinging his clawed hands from the back countertop, he reached down and gently pushed at her shoulders. “Stop…” he choked out. “You need to stop now.”
The sensations below his waist were getting loud as a detonation—until even with the distractions and the worry, they were about to take him over, submerging him under great waves of high-octane ecstasy.
Gritting his teeth, he grimaced. “Time to stop—time to—”
At the last possible moment, he forced her head away, jerked his hips to the side, and ejaculated all over the cabinets where the big boxes of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish were kept. As he came, she fought against his hold, like she wanted back at his erection, but he didn’t let her go until his hips had stopped kicking and his body was going into a sag.
“You should let me finish,” she said quietly. “You never let me finish you.”
Refocusing on his mate, he drew her up his body, his still-hard cock bumping against her breasts, her stomach, her thighs—
The sound of the vestibule’s door chime brought their heads around—and Butch swallowed a curse. Jesus, how’d he let this happen in such a public damn room? It had seemed like a perfectly acceptable idea when he’d been lust-blind, but this was no place for a lady like her to blow some scrub like him, even if they were mated.
Butch quickly smoothed Marissa’s hair and then started doing up his fly. “We need to take this back home.”
“It was kind of fun.”
“No.”
As Fritz let Xhex and Trez in, Butch yanked himself back to reality.
“…owes me one,” Xhex was saying as she strode in.
“I so do!” Butch called out to her. “Call the chit whenever you want.”
Xhex shot him a wave, then pegged him with a finger point. “I’m holding you to that.”
“You better.”
Butch had to smile, but then he refocused on his shellan. “Let me feed you. And then get you naked in our bed.”
“Good.” She kissed him and then turned around to clean up what he had—
“No.” Butch stopped her hands on the paper towels. “That’s for me to do.”
As he eased her out of the way, he could feel her staring at him, but he ignored it. Where he came from, there were two kinds of women, and his mate was in the worship category.
He should know. He’d had more than his quota of skanks.
The last thing he would ever do was disrespect his Marissa. It would be like burning down a church, taking a knife to the Mona Lisa, and driving a 918 off a cliff for no reason at all.
So, no, she wasn’t going to clean up the nasty he’d left behind.
Marissa had other fish to fry.
As Butch insisted on paper toweling on his own, she got out of his way and shook her head. She had never understood his quirks about sex, but she accepted them. What else could she do? He wouldn’t talk to her about it—whenever she brought up the subject of him pushing her mouth away anytime he was close to climaxing, he shut her down.
Besides, right now that long-running stuff between the two of them was on her back burner.
That horrifically injured female was barely alive after having been operated on—and Marissa had come home only because there was nothing to do but sit outside that ICU room and wait for word that her organs had failed. Or had started to work on their own. God, the surgery had seemed so complicated when the nurse had explained it to her, but fixing her internal injuries and removing her spleen hadn’t taken more than an hour.
Unfortunately, she had lost too much blood, and even after Havers giving her his vein, her vitals were jumping all around.
When her brother had emerged from the OR, he had looked Marissa right in the eye and told her that he’d done the best he could.
And their own personal issues aside, she believed him.
The sad part to all of it, and indeed, there was almost too much tragedy to bear with this case, was that they still didn’t have a name for the female, and no one had called looking for her—Abalone, the King’s First Adviser, had checked the open e-mail box and audience house’s voice mail at Marissa’s request. There had also been no inquiries at the clinic or Safe Place.
The girl was a figurative ghost … on her way to possibly becoming a literal one.
“Shall we?” Butch drawled as he offered her his arm.
Marissa shook herself back into focus and smiled at her mate. “Yes, please.”
Taking hold of him, she walked by his side out into the foyer and entered the formal dining room. After the privacy they’d just had, all the chatter, laughter and bustling was a different social time zone, and she found herself feeling a little overwhelmed. Talk about filled to capacity. Even though the muraled ceiling was high as a kite, and the floor space bigger than a bowling alley, with the forty-foot-long table down the center crammed with the Brothers, their shellans, and the other fighters and members of the household, there was a joyful congestion ot it all.
Two seats were empty on the far side, and they went around to them, Butch settling her in her chair.
As he sat down next to her, he leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. “Eat fast.”
“You’d better believe it,” she said—even though she wasn’t hungry.
And, she was sad to admit, she wasn’t necessarily in a big hurry to get back to the Pit, either. The truth was, she’d seduced him because she’d known it was the only way to get her mate to move on from worrying about her.
When a plate of filet mignon was set in front of her by a doggen, Marissa moved things around, cutting up meat that she didn’t try, messing the mashed potatoes, scattering bright green peas. And then she took her glass of cabernet sauvignon and sat back, watching the people, listening to the stories.
“…gonna want me to do?”
Focusing in on her mate as he spoke, she watched as he leaned around John Matthew to put the question to Xhex.
The female fighter laughed. “You should fear me.”
“Anyone who doesn’t is an asshat.”
“You say the sweetest things. And I’m in no hurry to call my chit in. It’s a good thing to have a male like you in my debt.”
For no particular reason, Marissa took note of how powerful Xhex’s body was, her shoulders and torso cut with muscle that was set off by the skintight Under Armour shirt she wore tucked into her black leathers. Between her dark hair that was cut short and her gunmetal gray eyes, she was definitely someone to take seriously.
Meanwhile, Marissa was rocking her office-appropriate slacks and English school marm blouse routine.
As Butch offered his palm for a high five, Xhex laid one on him and the clap was loud in the room even with all the background noise.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Butch said as he sat back in his chair. “Unbelievable.”
“What is?” Marissa asked.
“Xhex was … well, actually, first, I was in an alley … Ah, lemme back up…” He swiped his hand through the air. “Actually, it’s too much to explain. Bottom line, I was cornered with my pants down with two lessers, and Xhex had J.M.’s phone on her when I texted for backup. She came in a flash and—” Butch stopped short and shook his head. “Anyway.”
Marissa waited for him to go on. “Anyway…? What happened?”
Butch cleared his throat and took a sip from the Lagavulin in his glass. “It’s not important. It’s just, you know, stuff.”
“You were in trouble, weren’t you.”
He drew again from his rim. “It all worked out.”
“Thanks to Xhex.”
“You haven’t eaten anything.”
She glanced down at her plate. “Oh, yeah. No, I had a meal before I left Safe Place.”
Both of them fell silent.
As the ribbing surged among the Brothers, Marissa felt herself receding, stepping behind an invisible screen that dimmed the sounds and the senses.
“You ready to go?” Butch asked a little later as people started to get up from the table.
“Sure. Yes. Thank you.”
On the way to the archway, Butch stopped to talk to V, the pair of them putting their heads together and murmuring. Meanwhile, Xhex walked off from the table with her mate, John’s hand traveling down onto the tight ass in those pants, squeezing, pulling her toward him. He had eyes only for his mate, his warrior’s body clearly needing to blow off steam.
The response?
Xhex let out a growl, the female’s eyes locking on John Matthew’s as she bared her fangs—like a lioness setting the stage for what was going to be a marathon sex session.
Clearly, she had an edge she intended to file off with her hellren as well.
“We’re set for tomorrow, then, true?” V said as he offered his palm to Butch.
“It’s a go.” Butch clapped hands with the Brother, their two heads getting close once more, their voices dropping so she heard only parts of the conversation: “Yeah. That’s right. Uh-huh. See you back at the Pit?”
“You got it.”
Butch gave Vishous’s enormous shoulder a squeeze before turning to Marissa. “You good?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said.
When Marissa went to walk along with him, she realized she still had her wineglass in her hand. “Let me put this back, hold on.”
Going against the tide, she smiled at Autumn and Tohr, nodded to Payne and Manny—waved across the way at Bella and Nalla. Leaning over her still-full but completely disorganized plate, she put the glass back and wished Fritz and the staff would let anyone help them clear the table.
When she turned back around, she paused.
Butch was standing in the archway, legs braced in his leathers, brows down tight. None of that was unusual. But he’d taken the enormous gold cross he always wore out from under his shirt and was playing with it, winding the heavy weight in and out of his fingertips.
An odd sense of foreboding came over her.
“Marissa?” a female voice said.
Jumping to attention, she smiled at Bella. “Hey. I was watching you two across the table. Are you a cutie?” She gave Nalla’s cheek a little stroke. “I think you are, yes, I do.”
“She’s too much to carry now.” Bella bent down and put the young on her now-steady legs. “And I’m investing in running shoes.”
“For you or her?”
Nalla took off at a dead run, but across the way, her father was on her, striding tight on those little heels. Even though he looked like a looming monster with his scarred face, skull-trimmed hair and slave tattoos, Nalla giggled in delight, glancing back and smiling up at her daddy as she ran, ran, ran around the table and dodged in and out of the doggen who were clearing.
“I need Nikes for the both of us.” Bella smiled. “Listen, I wanted to ask you. I heard a rumor you’re going to be chairing the Twelfth Month Festival Ball—”
“What?”
Bella frowned. “Wait, I thought … did I get this wrong?”
“No, it’s okay.” Great. “What were you going to say?”
“I just wanted to tell you that I’d like to help in any way I can. I was surprised to hear that you took it on, but I get why you would. We need … I don’t know, I think it’s time for the race to reestablish the traditions that worked. There was a lot that didn’t, but the festivals are important—”
An unhappy wail lit off in the now-empty room as Nalla lurched and was caught by her father just in time.
“Crap, I gotta go,” Bella said. “She’s having growing pains. It’s been a long couple of days, I’ll tell you. Just remember I’m here for you, okay?”
Bella hightailed off for her family, reaching out for Nalla, who in turn put out one arm for her mahmen. The other stayed with Dad … so that the three of them were united.
Yes, Marissa, thought. Growing pains were a hard time, at least from what she had heard. For some reason, vampire young struggled with spurts of intense growth, as opposed to the long, slow, steady route to adult height that humans enjoyed.
Just one more fun part to the species.
Like their festivals.
Marissa rubbed her temples as she went back over to Butch. “God, my head is pounding.”
“Is it?” he said. “Let’s get you into bed.”
“Good idea. I think I need some sleep.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you look tired.”
“I am.”
Annnnnnd that was pretty much the end of her night: Ten minutes later she was in bed, eyes closing, images of the last few hours flashing like strobe lights through her head.
While Butch headed back out to sit in the Pit’s living room.
Alone.