This was my new favorite time of day. Eight forty-five p.m., after the sun had set and night fell, was the hottest, at least in the vampire nest’s kitchen. Because that was when Jacek and Eddie stumbled in with bedhead, sexy, sleepy smiles, and with morning wood. All of it—the whole, ahem, package—drove the air form my lungs. That feeling should have dropped me to the ground with oxygen deprivation. Which would require mouth to mouth...

“Belle?” Jacek had his hands posted on the table near my biology homework. He leaned in, dressed in nothing but boxers, and peered at me with his amber-colored eyes, his customary grin firmly in place. His short, dark hair stuck up on either side like devil horns, which snapped me back to reality. I’d had enough devils to last me a lifetime, both the real and the unnamed ones.

“Where did you go just now?” he asked.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about”—morning wood—“how this is my favorite time of day. Right now when you guys wake up.”

“Mine too,” he said on his way to the refrigerator. “I could get used to seeing your pretty face right after I get up.”

I could get used to it too. It felt so right being here that I hadn’t even let myself feel guilty when I helped myself to the coffee pot and buttery waffles from the freezer when I’d awoken midafternoon completely refreshed from sleep. I hadn’t had to work today, which was lucky, so I could focus on recovering from last night, checking in with my online classes, and catching up on some homework.

Eddie wandered over from the refrigerator, sipping from a coffee mug that carried a coppery scent. His white button-up shirt only had one button done but was in the wrong hole, and his blond hair stuck out in all directions. I suspected he’d been reading while attempting to get ready. He hadn’t had a whole lot of time to read last night because the kinky black scarves had made an appearance a second and third time. The vamp was a stallion. Not that I minded. Not at all.

He leaned in to catch a quick kiss. “Sleep well?”

I nodded, suddenly struck with a powerful sense of home, not just in Eddie’s lips, but here, in this nest, with three vampires, one of whom I still hadn’t really talked to. The feeling expanded within my chest, growing so immense that the backs of my eyes burned. I hadn’t felt this way since I lived with Mom ten months ago. I looked away from Eddie and Jacek to hide this rush of feelings as footsteps sounded outside the kitchen.

Sawyer appeared, his deep, orange-yellow gaze powerful enough to touch my soul. His black hair curled around his ears, the color accentuating the golden tan of his skin. He stood a full head taller than Jacek and Eddie, and his wide shoulders almost touched the sides of the doorway. Intricate sun and moon tattoos swirled up his arms and across his pecs and even dipped down below the waistband of his jeans. He reminded me of a warrior, all except his kind expression.

Tears filled my eyes as I stared at him, because these feelings...this sense of home... It emanated from him.

“You’re a house,” I choked out, feeling like a fool because that wasn’t exactly what I’d meant. True, he was built like one, but... “You’re this house.”

I gave up speaking then, because even though it didn’t make sense, I knew it was true. He was what made this house a home, gave it a heartbeat for three undead vamps and a haunted slayer who really would live in just their bathroom if they let me. For now, I was fine with weeping silently at their kitchen table because I’d thought I wouldn’t ever feel that feeling of home again. Of having a family who actually cared about me.

Sawyer swept past me, but his silent domination of the room crowded out any thoughts that his wordlessness had anything to do with me. That was just how he was. No words needed to figure that out.

Jacek settled in next to me on a stool, his thigh flush with mine, and he squeezed my hand reassuringly on the tabletop. Eddie sat across from me, far enough away so I wouldn’t touch him but close enough that I could feel the caress of his concerned gaze on my tear-stained cheeks.

Sawyer came back to the table with the rest of the pot of coffee I’d made myself and topped off my mug, the nearness of his naked skin wrapping me in a pleasant chill. “Belle, you need to tell us what happened last night.” His voice was rough, yet soothing, full of demand, yet patient.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid their questioning looks any longer, but the truth about last night frightened me, made me feel weak, the exact opposite of how a slayer should feel, especially since I didn’t know the truth myself. Slayers didn’t typically stake themselves, after all.

Expectant silence blanketed down as they all gazed at me.

It took a moment to find my voice and then to be sure it would hold under the barrage of memories. “There was a...man named Paul in the cemetery last night. I know this because he wore a bowling shirt that said so, but he wasn’t a man. It was the dark something the demon spoke about. He just gave off a very unnatural vibe, and... He repeated something over and over, and when he did, it was like...the world blurred the two of us. It seemed like he was drawing closer to me, uncomfortably close, but standing at the exact same distance as he had been at the same time.” I sank back into my chair and stared imploringly at the ceiling at how insane that sounded. “He was moving toward me and he wasn’t. It was the strangest thing.”

“And you tried to stake him?” Sawyer asked.

I nodded. “I mean I must have...but I don’t remember making the conscious decision to do so. And I failed spectacularly by staking myself.”

Eddie held his mug in midair, forgotten. “What did he repeat over and over?”

I didn’t know how I was supposed to tell them that. Even now, that static noise started like a throb in my temples, threatening to consume me, and I was only thinking about the phrase, not the phrase itself.

I must’ve made a suffering sound, because Jacek threaded his fingers through mine into a tight, unbreakable ball. “It’s okay if you can’t remember.”

“No.” I swallowed hard. “I remember exactly. It’s just I can hear the static already, a warning, like what I imagine chewing on aluminum foil would be like.”

Jacek dipped his chin to look me in the eyes. “Okay, we need to get you a new imagination.”

“Stop joking around, Jacek,” Eddie snapped.

Jacek shot him a warning look. “I’m trying to help put her at ease, Smiley.”

Eddie grimaced. “I’ve never been smiley in my life.”

“Until today. After last night, you’re glowing instead of your usual sulking over your books.” Jacek grinned. “Be a big boy and just accept it.”

My face heated. So Jacek knew? Of course he did. This was his house, too. Still, Eddie didn’t seem to mind that Jacek was holding my hand. He knew I needed comfort. They all did.

Eddie shook his head, the corners of his lips turning up into a secret smile. “Go to hell, Jacek.”

“Pretty sure they don’t want us there, buddy.”

“Enough,” Sawyer told them, his voice ringing with finality, then turned back to me. “Do you think you could write it down?”

“I don’t know.” I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could magically make the words jump ship from my head out onto the table. “Even thinking about the words but not the words themselves is causing the static sound.” My eyes popped open again as I was struck with a horrifying thought. “What if I say them and they have the same effect on you?”

“I don’t see any stakes around here,” Jacek said.

“Then don’t say them.” Eddie reached across the table for one of my pens and a crumpled receipt that had fallen out of my backpack and handed them to me. “Write them.”

I took the pen and receipt, grateful to have the three of them by my side. Without them, I would be forced to figure this out on my own, which terrified me even more than Paul. Writing a letter saying just that would be easy, weaving in Paul’s words that made me want to crawl inside myself and hide for eternity. I clicked the pen and started writing on the back of the receipt:

Lovely was the night I met you three, for I didn’t realize how lonely a slayer’s life could be, just walking through the graveyard all the time. Isn’t it funny how one moment can affect you so completely that you end up blubbering at a kitchen table? Thank you.

The hidden message ratcheted up the static with each emphasized word, but the swell of warmth floating up through my chest helped to distract me from it until it softened to a dull whine. The words bared the truth on all counts, and I didn’t feel an ounce of doubt or embarrassment because I knew they wouldn’t be met with scorn. If I’d learned one thing about these vamps, it was that they were honest with others and themselves. They didn’t hide behind lies, and I was 99.9 percent sure they would appreciate the same from me.

“It’s not Pulitzer worthy, but here you go.” I angled it toward Sawyer, but it was Eddie who picked it up and read it aloud, adding emphasis to the highlighted words.

When he finished, the four of us stared at each other for a moment, as if expecting the apocalypse. Then finally, when nothing happened, we relaxed.

“You’re welcome,” Jacek whispered into the shell of my ear.

A pleasant tingle rolled up my spine as I glanced at Eddie. Maybe it was just me, but Jacek was being pretty brazen holding my hand and whispering in my ear when he knew Eddie and I had slept together last night. Yet Eddie didn’t seem bothered by it. None of this should’ve been important at the moment, but my brain. It goes where it wants.

Sawyer leaned toward Eddie. “Read just the emphasized words.”

I crushed Jacek’s hand even tighter and gaped at Sawyer, my breath hanging somewhere near my throat, but he only nodded at Eddie.

“Lovely night for a stroll, isn’t it?” he read.

I stilled, watching all of them closely for any signs of distress. Seconds ticked by. But nothing happened. Not even a shrill bit of static or blurry vision inside my own head. They were just words coming out of Eddie. Nothing more.

I sat back in my chair, somewhat relieved by this even though it didn’t really change anything. “This is some kind of mind control directly from Paul, then, and it’s linked with me. He wants me to kill myself, preferably before I take the devil up on his marriage proposal, and definitely before my twenty-first birthday.”

“But...” Jacek shook his head. “Why go to all the trouble of making you kill yourself when there are a hundred easier ways to kill a slayer.” He glanced past me at Sawyer on my other side. “So I’m told.”

That was rather...weird. I ticked my gaze between the two of them. “Maybe you’ll fill me in on those hundreds of ways.”

“Why not just kill you, Sunshine?” Eddie cupped his jaw and frowned down at the receipt. “According to that ancient Sumerian book I translated, the darkness kills slayers before their twenty-first birthday. It didn’t say anything about them killing themselves.”

“Because he wants inside my head,” I said simply. “I mean that literally. He wants to see what I’m made of, how far he can push me, what my weaknesses are.” There was quite a selection to choose from.

If I didn’t die by my own hand before I turned down the devil’s marriage proposal, I would spend the next year of my life running from Paul, attempting to turn all those weaknesses into strengths, surviving. Did I have it in me to do that when only one brush with Paul had nearly been it for me?

Once again, someone wanted to control me, to steer my life in a direction I didn’t want to go, especially if it meant death. That had happened too many times—when I’d become the world’s only slayer at the tender age of nine, when cancer had ripped my mom away from me, when the devil insisted I marry him, and now this. How about someone ask me my thoughts and feelings about what I wanted to do instead of taking advantage? Did everyone think I was an empty-headed blonde who couldn’t think for herself? Better not, because I liked to get stabby. Just not, you know, with myself.

“You could be right,” Sawyer said. “He wants inside your head. Or he’s not at full strength and wants to see if you can do his work for him before he gains in power.”

Not exactly what I wanted to hear. If that was Paul not at full strength, then I had a lot of work to do at surviving this next year. Would I be able to deal? After last night, I wasn’t so sure.

“How did you three find me?” I blurted, desperate to end the maddening whirl of my thoughts.

“Uh, well...” Jacek started. “It wasn’t hard since you’re sitting at our kitchen table.”

A chuckle tripped out of my mouth, surprising me with how light and happy it sounded under the heavy circumstances. “No, I mean here. In Podunk City. It seems like an awfully big coincidence you moved to the same place the slayer lives. Did you smell me or...?”

“No.” Sawyer leaned his elbow on the table, studying me closely like a riddle, his size blocking out everything behind him. “I go where I’m needed, and I picked these two up along the way.”

“Oh.” There was a lot to unpack in that statement, especially in the subtext, and in the uncomfortable silence that fell afterward. “So...why?”

Jacek released my hand, the absence of his cool touch filling me with unease, like everyone might be better off not hearing the answer to my question. Clearing his throat, he sat back and hid the fact that he wasn’t smiling by rubbing his hand over his mouth. Meanwhile, Eddie stood and paced the length of the table, an animal caught in a cage, his fingers squeezing my note in his fist as he frowned down at it.

“I’m almost nine hundred years old,” Sawyer said, the low rumble of his voice drawing my attention back to him.

He looked damn good for his age.

“I was sold into slavery in Brazil, chained up and tortured by my masters, until the Necron Brotherhood found me,” he continued. “They were a different sort of master, a group of vampire warriors trained to destroy our enemies.”

I swallowed hard. “Slayers?”

He fisted his hands on top of the table and glared down at them as if they still held shackles. “One right after the other. The Brotherhood was brutal in their ruthlessness to rule without threat, to slay the slayer time and time again when a new one was chosen. It was horrifying, really, in the ways they accomplished this. I’ll spare you the details.”

“Thanks,” I said feebly.

“And then one day it was my turn. My kill.” He turned to me, his beautiful face agonized. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?” I asked, even though I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know.

A low growl rumbled out of him as he glared down at his wrists, his tattooed shoulders suffering under a weight I couldn’t see. “That’s not who I wanted to be. So I was cast out by the Necron Brotherhood shortly before they disbanded, but I felt the need to atone for all those deaths anyway. They weighed heavily, because even though I didn’t cause them, I didn’t stop them either. So over the years, I went where I was needed.” His gaze skated over to Eddie, still locked inside his head as he paced the length of the table, and Jacek, who stood to cross to the microwave, the scars on his back in full view. “And now I’m here...”

“Because I need you,” I finished for him, and then it hit me. The brutal slashes on Jacek’s back and Eddie’s inability to be touched were what they’d needed Sawyer for, to get them out of whatever nightmarish situations they’d been in. Not so different than the situation I was currently in, except I needed all three of them, each for differing reasons. Did that make me selfish that I needed all of them? A bad slayer? Maybe, but I wasn’t about to turn my back on them, either, and not just because they’d been invaluable to me these last few days. I wanted to believe I could help them, too.

I wormed my hand between Sawyer’s, who crushed the holy shit out of it between his man paws. With a pained smile, I held my other out to Jacek, who strode back to the table with a copper-scented mug that curled steam. He threaded his fingers through mine again and squeezed.

“You all may have noticed that slayers aren’t given any direction when they’re chosen,” I said, gazing at the three of them. “I have nobody to train me, very few books or resources to teach me, and no one who really cares about what I do.”

Jacek eyed me over the rim of his mug. “We actually did notice that, yes.”  

Eddie stopped pacing and waved my crumpled note in the air. “Until now. Until us three. We’re helping you no matter what.”

The sincerity in his voice flooded my heart with gratitude. Without them, I only stood a chance at survival. But with their continued support, my chances multiplied considerably. It felt damn good to have someone at my back.

“I just wish we knew more about this Paul.” Sawyer unwound his hands from mine and sat back, settling one of them casually on my thigh instead. Strength and comfort emanated from his fingertips, his palm seeming to dwarf my entire leg. “When the driving force behind the Necron Brotherhood fell apart, slayers still fell, though no one knew exactly how.”

“So how do I defeat him if he’s this unknown thing?” I asked.

Eddie posted his arms on the table across from me, his blond hair tumbling across his forehead in a sexy mess, his eyes bright as if he’d just come to a conclusion. “By making a series of choices.”

I stared at him since he’d just said the magic words. Me? Make my own choices? I could’ve kissed him, threw him down on the table and had my way with him a fourth time.

The corner of his mouth quirked as if he’d read my intent. “Choice one—do you want to marry the devil and be done with all of this?”

“Fuck no,” I said. Despite the mountain in front of me, I’d been tasked to climb it for a reason.

Jacek nodded, dazzling the whole kitchen with a grin. “So you’ll stay and fight. My god, that’s hot.”

His gaze flicked to my lips, and between their slow, heated crawl back up my face and Sawyer’s hand on my thigh now rubbing little circles into my yoga pants, delicious tingles spread over my lap. My blood hummed through my body, heating every inch of my skin and igniting my awareness of the three of them even more.

As if sensing my arousal, Eddie leaned back and licked his lips, showing a hint of fang.

Sawyer’s hand crept infinitesimally higher up my thigh, closer to Eddie’s bite, and traced his circles a little harder, a little faster. “Spoken like a true slayer.”

I fought the urge to squirm in my chair, to crush my lips to Jacek’s, to drag Sawyer’s hand to the pulsing ache mere inches from his fingertips, to make Eddie trust me enough so I could stroke his cock. All at once. I wanted them all at once. And separately. And all the damn time.

Was I really that selfish to want all three of them? All signs pointed to yes. That would sure complicate things, and complicated was a bad, bad thing. No need to make it the Word of the Week.

I cleared my throat. “The demon didn’t really seem to care what I wanted, though, so I still need to find a way to drive that point home. Like, literally. Through his forehead.”

Eddie started up his pacing again, running his hand through his hair. “You’re tainted.”

I blinked. “Umm, fuck you?”

He shook his head, the slightest smile on his face. “I meant in the demon’s eyes. I found a book last night before our...”

“Sexploits?” Jacek offered. “Is that the word you’re looking for, Smiley?”

Eddie glanced at me and I chuckled.

“Is this the same book you showed us last night, Eddie?” Sawyer asked.

He nodded. “I’ve been standing here thinking about what it means since my Sanskrit is a tad rusty and the passage was so vague, but I think I have it. There was another slayer who was being stalked by demons, but then it came out that she was associating with several different vampires. It was the associating part that wasn’t all that clear, but the demons left her alone after that.” He stopped and looked at me head-on. “I bit you, Sunshine. You’re marked by me, and you have my blood inside you. Whether or not that’s enough to drag you down to our level on the supernatural totem pole, I don’t know, but...”

I frowned down at my biology homework on the table, considering. “So...is that something the demon will sense or...? I mean your bite is so faint, not at all like a hickey, so even if I stripped to my underwear in the middle of the cemetery, would he be able to see that?” No question I would do whatever it took for the demon to take my big fat no back to hell with him.

“Or...choice three,” Eddie said, rubbing his chin.

“What happened to the second choice?” Yes, I was keeping strict count since this whole choosing thing was so new to me.

The three vamps shared a look.

Sawyer took his hand from my thigh, slowly and with great care. “Eddie’s book said this slayer was associating with several different vampires, though it could already be enough that you’ve...associated with Eddie.”

“So you and Jacek can’t just bite me?” I asked.

Eddie smirked. “There is no just. Biting another always involves sex or death as a precursor to vampirism. But since you can’t easily be changed into a vampire...”

“So basically, the third choice is”—Jacek leaned in and pressed his lips to my neck with a hint of fang grazing my skin—“let the associating continue.”