Chapter Ten
Wyland loosened his necktie just slightly, then sipped at the glass of blood Lukas had pushed into his hand soon after he’d arrived at Sebastiani Security. No doubt he looked as exhausted to Lukas as Lukas did to him.
He hadn’t slept in nearly two days.
After leaving Tia sleeping on the chaise by the pool, he’d escaped to the privacy of his room, his thoughts circling the carcass of his self-control like buzzards. Unable to sleep, he’d showered, gotten fully dressed right down to his necktie and shoes, and worked at his desk for long, long hours—not that he’d gotten much work done, because his thoughts kept slipping back to how Tia had held out her arms, welcoming him. To her quim’s piquant taste, and its tight, slick heat. To how her cries of pleasure had bounced off the tiles.
Several hours ago, just before sunset, he’d finally admitted defeat. Analysis—creative thought—was beyond him, but he could go to the hospital. ER work was reactive, and his training was deeply ingrained. But when he’d reached the garage, he’d discovered Tia, and her car, were gone.
And he’d gotten worried, damn it.
As a doctor, he knew driving when the sun was low on the horizon wasn’t going to cause her any lasting harm. As a man, he knew she used her VampScreen religiously, because its distinctive scent still swirled in his head. She’d gone to visit Scarlett, Thane had informed him. So instead of going to the hospital, he’d driven to Sebastiani Security instead.
“How’s Scarlett doing?” he asked Lukas as Jack activated the huge, flat-panel monitor mounted on the conference room’s far wall.
There was a hiss as Lukas opened a can of Coke. “Fine.”
Chico looked up from his mini-comp. “When I brought Tia upstairs, it sounded like she was chilling out, listening to some music.”
“That was work,” Lukas said darkly. “Wyland, can’t you tell her she works too much? Put her on bed rest or something?”
Pot, meet kettle. Lukas looked about ready to drop. “She’s perfectly healthy.” Scarlett would go into labor within a week, or he’d eat his favorite tie. “Her work gives her something to focus on rather than how physically uncomfortable she feels.” Distracting Scarlett had likely been Tia’s motivation in coming here. He couldn’t fault her intention, but…damn, the woman was working his last remaining nerve.
Lukas scrubbed his hand against what looked like a three-day beard, muttering something about vasectomies before draining half the can of caffeinated, sugar-loaded soda. He was just about to advise Lukas to drink something else when Tia and Bailey entered the room.
They didn’t look happy with each other.
Lukas, Jack, and Chico rose from their chairs, and he belatedly did the same. Bailey, ignoring them all, walked around the table and took a seat at his right. Tia exchanged kisses of greeting with Lukas, Jack, and Chico, then approached him.
“Hello.”
“Hello.” He took in her appearance with a big, thirsty gulp. Her eyes sparkled with life, and her hair was swingy and loose, the green tips brushing shoulders left bare by a sleeveless T-shirt that said “Type O Negative” on the front. Her shorts were just that—short—exposing too much of her sleek, curvy thighs for his comfort. Her lush lips were bare, and her shoes had so little leather they hardly deserved the name. A delicate mixture of lilacs and VampScreen reached his nose, winding diabolical tendrils around his brainstem.
His fangs throbbed with each beat of his heart.
With a light touch of hands against his chest, she leaned closer, lifted her head, and brushed her lips against his cheek. As she moved to kiss the other, she grazed his skin with the tip of her incisor.
His cock hardened in a rush. It was all he could do to keep his hands resting so lightly and politely on bare upper arms. To not grab her, yank her against his body, and crush his lips against her unpainted mouth.
She backed away. He watched as the tempting little witch took a seat between him and Chico, as if her covert caress hadn’t left him hard as a spike at a business meeting. As if she hadn’t shut his common sense down cold.
“Why don’t we get started?” Lukas suggested.
He was the only one still standing. “Certainly.” He sat, picked up the glass of blood, and drained it.
Bailey looked at him strangely.
“Tia, thanks so much for visiting Scarlett,” Lukas said. “She’s so uncomfortable right now. Every distraction helps.”
“My pleasure,” Tia responded. “It’ll be over soon.”
A wisp of panic crossed Lukas’s face before he schooled his expression. “Right.” He turned toward Jack, who was standing near the flat-screen at the end of the table. “Jack, why don’t you get us started?”
As Jack pressed a couple of buttons on his laptop, Lukas surreptitiously withdrew a sleeve of antacids from his pants pocket, and slipped two tablets into his mouth. Scarlett was as healthy as a horse, but if she didn’t have this baby soon, Lukas wouldn’t have any stomach lining left.
Jack dimmed the lights. “Tia, Wyland, I’m glad you were both able to meet with us in person today. We have some new information on the case.”
Tia drew herself upright—just an inch or so, but the movement took her posture from comfortable slouch to hyper-alert in a millisecond.
“Today, five more people reported receiving letters similar to the one sent to Lukas and Scarlett.”
Tia’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell…?”
What the hell, indeed. “Civilians?” he asked.
“If you can call people who work here at Sebastiani Security civilians,” Jack answered. He gestured to the screen, where a document that looked a lot like the one Lukas had shown them was displayed. “Similar paper, same font, delivered to our front door by the U.S. Postal Service. The latest letters demand that the receivers voluntarily sterilize themselves so their infirmity—being of mixed race—doesn’t further weaken the species.”
“Are you serious? Cross-breeding introduces robustness. Hell, look what inbreeding has done to the wolves.” She glanced at Chico. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” Chico’s tone was desert-dry. “That’s my letter we’re looking at.”
“See? See how ignorant this person is? Chico’s strong, smart, steady. Why wouldn’t we want these attributes represented in our cultural gene pool?”
Jealousy slithered, but he pushed it aside. Something wasn’t adding up. “You have Valkyrie roots in your family tree, correct?” Wyland asked Chico.
“Many generations back.”
“So where is this person—” he gestured to the letter— “getting his or her information?”
“Good question.” Jack flipped the lights back on, turning off the flat-screen and taking his seat. “None of the newer letters makes an overt threat—not like the one Lukas and Scarlett received, or like the comments made at In Like Quinn.”
Tia tapped a turquoise-tipped finger against her lower lip. “Coco is healthy, and of mixed species heritage. Jacoby Woolf is a purebred werewolf, but chronically ill.” She looked at Lukas, Jack, and finally at him. “This reeks of the GPL to me. It’s no secret that Krispin Woolf brought the latest GPL-backed petition before the Council—”
“And we promptly voted it down,” Wyland said. The proposal to require registration of bond relationships with the Council had been unacceptable. “Why would Krispin Woolf threaten his own son?”
“It’s no secret that Jacoby Woolf has been voting with the majority, against his father, much more frequently these days. The Alpha might see his son’s actions as disloyal.” She glanced down at her tattoo, then back at him. “Would the Alpha eliminate his own son to further the goals of the pack?”
He and Krispin Woolf didn’t agree with each other, but the possibility of the father killing the son had never crossed his mind.
It should have.
“The Alpha also has a massive hard-on against everything and anything Sebastiani,” Tia continued. “He holds Lukas personally responsible for letting Stephen, the man who assaulted his daughter, escape from prison.”
Lukas acknowledged the point. “And we have protective measures in place, but…sending letters? Scaring you with harmless snakes?” He shook his head. “Krispin’s threats are usually much more blunt.”
Lukas was right. Something wasn’t adding up.
“Krispin Woolf can’t be our only avenue of investigation,” Jack said. “We’re analyzing the letters that Chico, Winnie, and others have received—”
“Winnie got a letter?” Bailey asked.
Winnie Otsego, a Sebastiani Security lieutenant, had helped apprehend the hacker who’d threatened both Bailey and Sebastiani Labs’ computer systems earlier that year.
“Yeah. She’s fine.” Chico straightened from his relaxed slouch. “Wyland asked what I think is the key question. Where the hell is this person getting their information?”
Silence.
Jack looked at Tia. “Any more creeped-out feelings since moving to Vamp Central?”
She hesitated, glancing at him. “I had a funny feeling in my stomach the last time Wyland and I went to the Archives.” She shrugged. “Or maybe it was that burrito. I didn’t see anything, but—”
“Why didn’t you say something?” he snapped.
“I didn’t see anything, so I didn’t want to bother you about it.”
“It’s not a bother.” He hadn’t seen anything, either. He’d been too busy staring at her like a cock-addled fool. “Don’t you think I can protect you?”
“I had my hand on my stun gun the whole time.”
And he hadn’t even noticed.
“Wyland, I’m better prepared than you give me credit for,” she said. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
After last night, there was a lot he did know—like her natural hair color, the shape of the birthmark on her left hip, and the precise shade of pink that suffused her skin when she came.
And now Lukas was watching him again, damn it.
“Change of subject.” Tia shifted in her chair. “Antonia said something interesting about the Genetic Purity League when we were visiting Scarlett upstairs just now.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like this.
Tia explained that the GPL’s younger members met at a different venue every month, with the location being passed by word of mouth. “I want to—”
“Try to infiltrate?” he guessed. “No.”
“I—”
“No.” One small woman, going up against the GPL? Against Krispin Woolf? The little fool was going to get herself killed. “I forbid it.”
As Tia straightened in her chair, the leather creaked a warning. “I’m certain I didn’t hear you correctly.”
“I’m certain you did.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission.”
Fear clawed at him. She had no earthly clue how many heinous acts Krispin Woolf was suspected of committing, or of ordering others to commit on his behalf. He took a deep breath, holding on to his control by the skin of his teeth. “Tia, any interaction with Krispin Woolf—with the GPL—is dangerous beyond your ken.”
“I ‘ken’ just fine. If you’d let me finish a damn sentence—”
“Tia—”
She shot to her feet. “Wyland, let’s get something straight right now.” Glaring down at him, hands on hips, she looked like a pissed-off royal. “We might have slept together, but you need to throw this Cro-Magnon shit out the freaking window. ”
Had she really just…said that? At a business meeting?
Yes. Yes, she had—and now everyone was looking at them, their gazes bouncing back and forth as if they were watching a tennis match at Wimbledon. Chico was trying to hide a grin. Jack looked mildly amused, and mildly sympathetic. At his other side, Bailey diplomatically cleared her throat. Lukas simply…watched.
Clearing his own throat, he slowly rose and faced her. Their gazes clashed like swords. “Tia, now is not the time to discuss our private business.”
“Private? Please. Everyone in this room knows we hooked up. We didn’t have to say a thing.”
Hooked up? What a disgusting phrase, but she was probably right about others knowing they’d slept together. Chico, with his werewolf nose, likely smelled them. Lukas’s ability to interpret emotional energy signatures was unrivaled. Bailey, with her newly-discovered smidge of succubus blood, could probably read him—them—like a book. Even Jack, the sole human, didn’t seem surprised.
He felt hideously exposed.
“As I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted—” Tia shot him a hard glance “—I’d love to attend a GPL meeting myself, but I don’t think I’m anonymous enough.”
“Or young enough,” Bailey added.
“Bitch,” Tia said without heat, taking her seat again. “But you’re right.”
Chico looked at Lukas. “We have a couple of young-looking operatives who might be able to make progress on that front.”
Lukas nodded.
“The most recent gathering occurred last week, in one of the smaller ballrooms at The Ivy.”
Chico whistled. “That doesn’t come cheap.”
“Money doesn’t seem to be a problem. Makes one wonder who’s picking up the tab.” With that, Tia stood again. “Do we have anything else to discuss? Lukas needs to get upstairs, and I’m going to the Archives.” She glanced at him. “And you can’t stop me.”
What did she expect him to do, deny her permission? Tell her she couldn’t go? Turn her over his knee and give her the spanking she so dearly deserved? His pulse bumped at the thought. “I’ll meet you there.” He’d given her a garage door opener, but—
“I can handle it myself.”
“I said, I’ll meet you there.”
“You know what? I’ve lost count of the fucks I do not give. Kiss my entire ass.”
He lifted a brow. “If memory serves, I did. Twice.”
Her eyes widened. With an audible growl, she grabbed her purse, whirled, then stalked from the room.
Silence in her wake. His skin prickled, as if he’d foolishly taken cover under a tall tree with lightning threatening overhead.
“Now that,” Chico said, “is one pissed-off woman.” His admiring tone suggested he didn’t necessarily think this was a problem, but Lukas and Jack wore expressions of knowing commiseration.
“You should probably go after her,” Lukas advised.
Jack nodded. “Make sure she safely reaches her destination.”
Bailey looked at them like they’d all sprouted second heads. “Seriously? We’re done here because Wyland wants to get laid?”
His face heated.
“I don’t have anything else to discuss tonight.” Lukas looked at Jack. “Do you have anything else to discuss tonight?”
“Nope. Chico?”
“Nothing that can’t wait. And getting laid is very serious business.”
Wyland opened his mouth—to deny he wanted to go after Tia because he wanted to get laid; to tell them to mind their own business—but then closed it again. He did want to get laid—he felt like an addict overdue for his next fix—but even more importantly, he needed to apologize. His sexual comment, in this setting, was inexcusable. He’d acted exactly like the Cro-Magnon she’d accused him of being.
Lukas hitched a thumb toward the door. “Go.”
He rose and headed for the exit.
“Make sure you apologize,” Bailey called after him.
He raised a hand in acknowledgment.
There was an odd energy in his step as he left the building and walked to the car. Yes, he definitely owed Tia an apology, but what would he say? He couldn’t possibly describe his primal, clenching fear with words.
Folding his frame behind the wheel, he closed the door and strapped in. With a chirp of wheels, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed east.
He had forty miles to figure it out.
Across the room, another shelving unit moved with a muffled mechanical hum—the only clue Tia had about Wyland’s location, because the dratted man had disappeared the minute they’d arrived at the Archives. With white-gloved hands, she very carefully turned the manuscript’s brittle page. If he could concentrate on work with this…this…tension seething between them, then so could she.
But as she looked for references to Sigurd or The Old Ways, the words blurred on the page.
The long drive to Marine on St. Croix hadn’t helped matters any. After she’d left Sebastiani Security, Wyland had quickly caught up with her, his car’s sexy silhouette unmistakable in her rear view mirror. When it became clear he didn’t intend to pass, she’d taken perverse satisfaction in slowing to the posted speed limit, making him throttle back all that power. He’d followed at a polite distance, headlights boring into her back for miles, finally passing when they’d turned onto the remote county road leading to the Archives. He’d opened the garage door, pulling in first, and stood skimming the tree line as she entered, quickly closing the door behind them—and thank the freaking universe, because her headlights had illuminated a set of eyes peering at them through the long grass.
A deer? A dog? Her overactive imagination? “Damn.” She pushed back from the table. Working with centuries-old books required a delicacy she wasn’t capable of at the moment. Banging on a keyboard sounded a lot more satisfying. Pulling off the gloves and dropping them on the table, she went to the kitchenette, made a bloody Diet Dew, and carried it back to the workstation Bailey said she could use.
She sat down, logged on, pulled up Valerian’s bio, and then hesitated. Maybe she should check with Bailey before updating such critical files.
Nah. If Bailey didn’t like her updates, Bailey could damn well change them.
She scrolled down, down, down, skimming, assessing the material with an eye to structure. Given Valerian’s near-millennia of life and service, his file was immense, spanning so many historical eras and containing so many footnotes and cross-references that her eyes nearly crossed just looking at it. Other areas of the bio were woefully incomplete, with section headers present but saying nothing but “TBD” or “information not available” underneath. She added a new section header—Interviews—and went to work.
In no time at all, the transcript from her first interview with Valerian was added, and the audio file embedded. Her links worked, expand/condense functionality worked, and she hadn’t screwed up Bailey’s beloved HTML. Not wanting to tempt fate, she saved her changes, exited Edit mode, then kept reading.
Bailey had spoken truthfully—the rudiments of a biography were here—but someone really needed to take this material in hand. Valerian’s time as a warrior-priest, and his accomplishments as a political leader and diplomat, were well-documented, but his personal life? Bubkes. Other Council members’ bios contained up-to-the-minute information about their significant personal relationships, but Valerian’s? Nothing. No mention of lovers, bondmates, or offspring. Was the data simply missing? Lying somewhere in the Archives, uncatalogued? Had Valerian, responsible for keeping their culture’s written records for centuries, simply not considered his own personal information essential?
Had he never known these relationships?
Other than Valerian, who’d know?
Thane.
She issued a quick search on Thane’s name. “Bingo.” Not only did Thane have multiple mentions in Valerian’s bio, he had his own lengthy file, complete with a fourteenth century birth date. If the data was correct, Thane had served Val for nearly five hundred years, several centuries longer than Wyland had been alive. As she read, she shook her head in amazement. Thane’s bio read almost like a novel, full of heroic tales and derring-do, but…no mention of bondmates, lovers, partners or offspring. They’d been each other’s family for half a millennia… “Oh.” There were two toothbrushes in Valerian’s bathroom.
They were a family.
She’d lived in the same house for nearly a week, and she hadn’t noticed a thing. “Some investigative journalist I am,” she mumbled. Her thoughts whirled. Why in the world wasn’t such a significant, long-term relationship part of their biographies? Who else knew? Across the room, there was a whirring hum as Wyland moved yet another shelf.
Wyland surely must.
Her lips tightened. One more secret the Vampire Second kept.
She went back to her search results, then clicked on a cross-reference connecting Thane’s bio to Wyland’s. According to the bio, it had been Thane who’d brought the young Wyland to Valerian’s attention. “No interest in being the Vampire Second yourself, Thane? I don’t blame you.” She quickly scrolled past Wyland’s recent headshot, away from those piercing, loch-blue eyes, looking for the picture of him, Deirdre d’Amour, and Bram Stoker… Okay, where the hell was it? She paged up, paged down. Navigated to the top of the document and scrolled down, slowly and carefully. Issued a search.
Nothing. The picture was gone.
All references to Deirdre and Bram, gone.
She leaned back in the chair, tapping her index finger against her lower lip. The picture had been there a couple of days ago. Who’d deleted the information between then and now?
Why?
She was paging to modification records when she heard Wyland approach. “Crap.” She minimized his file, leaving Valerian’s visible on the screen.
“There you are.” His voice stroked like crushed velvet.
She turned her chair to face him. Somewhere along the way, he’d taken off his tie and unbuttoned his top two shirt buttons. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing muscular forearms and his antique Piaget watch. After last night, she knew exactly what kind of bodily terrain the fine fabric of his clothing covered. She’d mapped every inch of it with her eyes, her hands, her mouth.
He stopped about an arm’s length away. With her sitting and him standing, her eyes were level with his belt buckle. Yes, she knew every thick, glorious inch.
“Not working on the manuscript anymore?”
”No.” Clearing her throat, she gestured toward the bloody Dew sitting on the desk. “I wanted something to drink.”
“I fear for your teeth.” Leaning over, he peered at the screen. “What are you working on?”
He smelled…amazing. “I’ve started to record some interviews with Valerian—a day in the life—and I’m adding the information in his bio.” She paused. “Some Council members’ biographies seem to have significant gaps.”
He cleared his throat. “You’re interviewing Valerian?”
“Yes.” She knew damn well he’d deleted information from his own bio, but his expression gave nothing away. “Transcript, audio…I’d like to capture some video as well.” She explained her interest in doing the same for all Council members. “With today’s technology, there’s no reason future generations can’t know exactly what their representatives looked and sounded like.”
He leaned closer, skimming the transcript. “You’ve accomplished this since you’ve been our guest?”
“Val and I spend a lot of time together while you’re at the hospital.” She gave an uncomfortable shrug. “I ask him a kickoff question, and then let the recorder roll. He’s quite the raconteur.”
When he straightened, the summer-weight wool covering his thigh brushed against her bare arm. “Alka Schlessinger started doing something similar before she went on sabbatical last year. She and Valerian had these long dinners together, and she’d record their conversations. I don’t think she’s had a chance to do anything with the materials yet. You might contact her, and tell her about your project.”
“I have a project?”
He gestured to the screen, as if the answer was obvious. “Please focus on Valerian first.” A wisp of sadness crossed his face, but quickly disappeared. “Recording him, and embedding the materials in the Archive, is an excellent idea. I should have thought of it myself.”
“You can’t think of everything. There’s not enough time in the day.” And you spend too much of it working as it is. “Are you done for the evening?”
“There’s one last thing,” he said.
More work? “Wyland—”
“We really have to stop interrupting each other.”
She snickered; she couldn’t help it.
“What’s so funny?”
“You interrupted me to tell me we shouldn’t interrupt each other.”
He took a deep breath. “You’re going to drive me to the madhouse.” Taking her hands, he drew her to her feet. “I must apologize for my behavior earlier this evening.”
His voice was clipped and controlled, with that wisp of upper crust England, but the edgy frustration seething in his eyes made her melt. Somewhere along the way, she’d learned how to read him, noticed how precise gradations of tone conveyed his moods. Did he really think she wouldn’t accept his apology? That she wouldn’t offer one of her own? Because, yeah—her own behavior at the meeting had been less-than-professional. She touched his crisp shirt, resting her palm over his thumping heart. He felt so warm, so alive—and so, so tense.
His forehead was suddenly against hers, his gaze boring down. “I’m sorry.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Me, too.”
He was hard against her stomach. As his mouth descended, his fangs flashed in the fluorescent light.
He was magnificent, and he wanted her.
She could taste his apology on his lips and tongue, could feel it in his rough, roving hands. Such edgy, pounding need—a need she shared. She tugged at the band holding his hair in its disciplined queue, then plunged her fingers through the silky drift. “Something about your loose hair makes me want to drag you to the floor.”
Wyland glanced at the white tiles, as if he was actually considering it. “I’m supposed to be apologizing.”
“You are.” She tilted her head to the side. “Very nicely, I might add.”
He dropped his hands to her waist. “Tia, the thought of you investigating the GPL, or the house where that poor human was killed, chills my blood, but…‘I forbid it’?” He shook his head. “I was out of line. I should have been more diplomatic with my phrasing. The fact that we’re having a sexual relationship is now common knowledge, and I apologize for violating your privacy.”
Having a sexual relationship? She hadn’t dared think of last night, or of any future nights, as anything beyond a casual hook-up, but Wyland used language precisely, and wasn’t a casual man. “I was the one who revealed the nature of our…relationship...to your work colleagues.” The word ‘relationship’ tasted odd on her tongue. Maybe she’d get used to it if she said it more often. “Why did you leave me alone in the pool room last night?”
“I needed to think,” he admitted. “There are political ramifications to any relationship I engage in, no matter how superficial or serious.” He sighed. “And you’re so damn young.”
She swept a glance over his frame. “You’re not exactly decrepit. As soon as word gets out that you’ve taken a lover, I’m going to have to watch my back.”
“I want you to watch your back regardless,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you felt like you were being watched the last time we were here? The security cameras haven’t picked up anything unusual, if that reassures you at all.”
Were the eyes she’d seen gleaming in the grass usual or unusual? Who the hell knew?
“Shall we go home?” Wyland murmured against the corner of her mouth. “Find a more comfortable place to continue this conversation?”
Such heat, such anticipation.
“Let’s go.” Nothing long-term could possibly come of this, but that was okay. She’d make sure the short-term rocked.