Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kate shut the front door and leaned against it.
Roman was sitting halfway up the curved staircase, his hands gripped together again. “That was a very touching scene,” he said dryly. “Two hankies at least.”
“I owed him an apology. I wasn’t going to let him leave without one.”
“I saw it. The ‘apology’. A doozie.”
She just looked at him.
Roman dropped his gaze.
Kate relented. She climbed to the step two below where Roman was sitting and rested her back against the wall. “You and Garrett know each other. You told me that before, but you had to imply it was just a few years. How long have you really known each other?”
Roman looked at her. In the building dark, his dark eyes were black orbs. “Do you truly want to know this?”
“I wasn’t ready for the reality of it, before. Now, I really do want to know. I’m…curious.”
He hesitated. She could understand his caution. So she reached out and plucked one of his hands away from the other and held it. “Please,” she said simply.
Roman moved over to the wall and leaned against it like she was. His lower leg rested on the step beneath her higher knee. “I grew restless at the end of the sixteenth century. Constantinople grew too small, which was a mild understatement as it was the biggest city in the world for fourteen centuries. But I got restless and itchy and I started to wander. And I ended up in Scotland, in the middle of their endless bloody squabbles with the English. I met a Scotsman with flaming red hair, eyes snapping fire and passion for his clan, swinging a broadsword at anything that defied his cause.”
“Garrett,” Kate breathed.
“Mmm. He was a breath of fresh air and I was a jaded Byzantine civil servant. When the bloody English ambushed him and stabbed him in the back with their long staves one night, I killed them all. Then I turned him.”
She shuddered at the picture his simple words painted. “You’re Garrett’s…maker? Is that what you call it?”
“Yes. That’s one name for it.”
“What are the others?”
“We use lots of different words. It depends on where we come from. Who trained us. There’s one word you will know, though.” He gave her hand a little squeeze for emphasis. “Lovers.”
Her stomach gave a little drop. Her heart lurched. But at the same time, her brain was mentally nodding, going ‘of course’. Because it seemed…right. “It’s like I should have been able to see that for myself if I could have focused an extra half an inch closer,” she told him. “You gave yourselves away so many times. The details were there to be seen. I just didn’t see them.”
“Most people don’t. It’s not a failure. We – the blood – count on that to be able to pass as human on a daily basis.” He hesitated again. “You’re not running away in horror, Kate.”
“Because you were lovers? God, why should I? I just wish I’d known sooner. It explains so much about the pair of you that I couldn’t answer. But it does complicate things, doesn’t it?” She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. “I haven’t made life easy for either of you.”
“It has been…interesting,” he agreed.
“Chinese curse interesting,” she amended. She shifted her hips. “Jesus, these stairs are killing my backside. Couldn’t you have found somewhere more comfortable for a human ass?”
He chuckled. “My ass is growing numb, too.”
She pushed herself up off the step and turned and straddled his hips. He steadied her, his thumbs stroking over her midriff in light semi-circles, making her stomach muscles twitch and quiver.
“I do a good massage,” she offered.
“Oh, you do, do you?” He yanked her top off in one blindingly fast movement that made her gasp.
“Now you’re just showing off,” she complained.
“Absolutely.” He kissed her, his hands swooping up her torso to cup her breasts and squeeze the nipples, tweaking them to taut silvery sensitive peaks. His lips trailed down her throat and paused over her frantic heartbeat. He licked the pulse and moved on, down to her breast and sucked in the tip.
As she moaned and became lost in the pleasure of it, he picked her up, his arm around her waist, lifted her up two more steps and propped her against them.
Then he tore her jeans from her. He shredded them, barely without effort. He didn’t even look strained.
Kate shivered at the demonstration of physical strength. He plucked away her panties with no effort at all.
Then he stood between her thighs and stripped, watching her face the entire time.
“I can barely see you,” she whispered.
“I can see every inch of you perfectly.”
He slid his hand under her ass, lifting her hips to meet his. His other hand gripped the stairs above her head for leverage as he drove into her. It was hard and powerful and Kate moaned with satisfaction at being taken so masterfully. He was grinding his hips as he thrust so his cock stroked along the sides of her pussy in ways that it normally didn’t and she could feel every inch of him touching her.
Her climax didn’t build at all. It arrived fully formed and exploded over her like a fireworks display, a surprise that sparkled and dazzled, and left aftershocks glowing on her retinas.
Roman thrust even deeper in a series of swift little strokes and dropped his head to press it against hers. He came, his body tightening and growing still and he muttered something in a language she didn’t know, his lips brushing the nape of her neck.
Maybe ten seconds passed in silence. Then Roman picked her up, his cock still inside her, and climbed the stairs.
“Where now?” she asked.
“I want that massage,” he told her. “But first, I want to hear you scream.”
On her third orgasm, with the butt plug and Roman’s cock inside her, she did. But even as Roman tucked her into bed to sleep, she found her drowsy mind drifting back to Garrett. He followed her down into her sleep.
* * * * *
Moving through the darkened house, his ears tuned to the sound of Kate’s gentle breathing as she slept, Roman picked up the trail of clothing and garment fragments they’d cast about the stairs.
He was feeling light. Hollowed out. There was an enormous sense of relief and release in having Kate know it all, to have her know the worst and still have her in his bed and his arms. Somehow, a miracle had occurred.
He was feeling very lucky.
As he picked up the section of her jeans with the pockets sewn in, something fell out. He moved quickly to catch it and held it up. A chain. He let the pendant dangle so he could examine it.
He recognized it with a sick, sinking feeling.
When had Garrett given this to her? Had he told her what it really meant? Surely, Kate would have mentioned it if he had. She wouldn’t have casually stuffed such a thing in her pocket.
He stood on the stairs, debating with himself what to do. He could put the chain back in the scrap of denim and let it be thrown out with the rest of the garbage. Plead ignorance if Kate remembered the pendant and went looking for it.
The smell. He could still remember the smell. May as a month was his least favourite time of year. He tended to avoid Britain and most of Europe in May.
He climbed the stairs again, the sick feeling evolving, growing into a railing hatred for doing this to himself, for helping Garrett, but knowing it was the right thing to do, anyway. He laid the pendant on the side table next to Kate’s pillow, where she would find it in the morning.
Then he left the house.
* * * * *
It still early in the evening, so Garrett only fed enough to keep the fever silent. He would have to hunt and feed properly in another day or two, but he would be able to pick the time and location better. After tonight’s trauma and the emotional upheavals around it, his hunger had arrived early and with a vengeance.
He was still quartering his feeding area, cleaning it of traces, when Roman stole into the lane like a mist and a rumour. One minute Garrett was alone. Next, Roman was by his side.
Garrett nodded and finished his fine filtered scan of the pavement for blood and other bodily fluids before he straightened up.
“Figured you’d be out tonight,” Roman murmured.
“Not a hard one to call, considering,” Garrett replied, just as quietly. He moved off, heading for the street, light and human-ness.
Roman caught up with him. “Hey.”
Garrett didn’t answer.
“You’re pissed with me?”
He kept walking.
Roman caught at his arm. “Wait.”
Garrett waited. He simply looked at him.
“What don’t I get?” Roman asked.
“You so did not want to tell Kate. Having her find out about me, first, put nearly all the pressure on me. Then you just had to step up and say ‘me, too’ and your bit was over.”
Roman’s eyes widened almost comically. “You motherfucker. You think I set you up for that? That I would drop the bomb on Kate like that? Some anonymous tip off that screwed with her head so much she’d pig-stick you to test it?”
“Is that how she found out?” Garrett started walking again.
“I don’t know. We didn’t get that far. It has to be something like that for her to suddenly be certain enough to ram a knife in your innards and figure you wouldn’t die.”
“She’s got guts,” Garrett told him. “What if she had been wrong?”
“Guts or good information? I figured…”
Garrett glanced at him. “Who?”
Roman shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced at Garrett from under his brow. “I though Nial might be trying to push the chess pieces around a little faster.”
Garrett considered it. “It would be a good strategic move under certain circumstances, but Nial isn’t that heartless. He wouldn’t do it without warning us.”
“Would his wife?” Roman asked. “A woman looking out for another woman?”
“Her name is Winter,” Garrett told him, irritated.
Roman gave a semi grin. “I know that. I’m surprised you do. You can barely remember your secretary’s name…or that they’re not called secretaries anymore.”
“Keep telling you. I’m not that man anymore.”
Both of them could move silently when they needed to, so their footsteps barely sounded in the pre-dawn air as they passed silently along the street. Finally, Roman sighed. “I’m starting to understand that,” he acknowledged softly. “I guess the world can change if Calum Garrett can.”
* * * * *
Garrett was just out of the shower when the tap came on his trailer door. It was still pre-human hours, so Garrett answered it, tying his robe hastily, fully expecting Sebastian or perhaps Nial.
Kate bit her lip. “Roman took off,” she said. “Some time in the middle of the night. He’s not back.”
Garrett glanced around the hangar. There was no one within visual distance to see Kate at his door, so he drew her into the trailer quickly and shut the door. “He’s fine,” he assured her. “I’ve seen him.”
She stood by the armchair, her fingers digging into the leather. “I think he’s upset.”
“Why?”
She pulled open her shirt, which was, for a change, a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up. His pendant sat inside the shirt. “He found it last night and put it next to my bed. And he wasn’t around when I woke up. Does he know something about this, Micheil? Does the design mean something?”
Too intuitive. Too close to the mark. Garrett weighed up and discarded a dozen lies in the space of two heartbeats, then realized he’d hesitated too long.
“It does,” she confirmed. “That’s why you told me to be discreet about wearing it. Is it some sort of Scottish Claddagh thing, Micheil? Am I bonded or some shit like that because I took it from you?”
He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. The strident wariness of her voice, along with the hodgepodge of cultural references, all while she was standing there in jeans, shirt and boots, looking lovely, fresh and so very modern and independent, spilled over the top of his humour meter and he had to let loose.
Kate smiled. “Good,” she said, with a sigh, moving closer. “‘coz you don’t get to marry me without asking me first.” She halted and her eyes widened as she looked at him.
Garrett let the moment go deliberately. He kissed her cheek. “I get the feeling that if you marry anyone at all, Kate, you’re the one that’s going to do the asking.” He tugged her gently into the armchair. “Sit and relax.”
“Is Roman coming back?” she asked.
“Yes,” Garrett told her, although that was something he was going to have to make sure of, later.
She sank down onto the edge of the cushions. “Shit. I need a vacation,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t cope with my personal life blowing up while I’m doing a movie, too.”
“Is that what this feels like? Your personal life exploding?”
She pushed a hand through her hair, lifting it back from her face with an impatient motion. “Honestly, Micheil? I thought Roman would be a nice distraction while I was filming. You, I didn’t count on at all. I just wanted to kill you and roast your balls after the contract signing. It’s all so fucking complicated now.”
“What’s complicated?” he asked. “You’ve lost sight of the main priority. If we’re tripping you up and affecting the picture, you cut the cord. You know how it goes. It’s business 101.”
Her blue eyes met his. “That’s if it was business. I can’t cut the cord, Micheil. It’s more than business, now. And you know it.”
Garrett could hear his own heartbeat, matching Kate’s. That made it very easy for him to fill the silence. “I’ve loved only one woman in my life, before and she was human. I made a pendant for her just like the one I made for you.”
“What happened to her pendant?” Kate asked, her voice almost a whisper. Her eyes were very large and her heartbeat had accelerated.
“It was destroyed in the same fire she died in. Mary was burned at the stake as a witch, in Bristol, May 1654, for daring to speak of the things she knew to be the truth.”
“Vampires,” Kate whispered, her face white.
Garrett nodded. “She was in love and she confided in her mother and sister. Her sister told their priest. Mary died before sunset on the second day after her arrest, after a short trial. Roman and I were in London. Neither of us could ride back fast enough, although we killed two horses under us and I took Roman’s mount for the last five miles. The smell…” He couldn’t go on.
Kate’s arms wrapped around him and held tight and it was then he realized that he had closed his eyes. He had been reliving the awful last mile into Bristol, when the tang of low tide salt had mixed with the gut churning smell of burnt human flesh in the evening air, telling him that he was too late to save Mary from one of the most horrendous deaths it was possible to put a human through. He had not been there for her. And it was his fault this had happened to her.
“Micheil, let it go,” Kate whispered.
He shuddered and clung to her.
“You’re not alone, anymore,” she added.
No, he wasn’t. In the last year he had stumbled into a circle of friends that had profoundly influenced his life, to the point where he now stood with his arms about a human woman and could speak aloud the terrible truth about that day in May.
Peace settled over him.
He loosened his arms enough to draw his head back to look at her. He touched his lips to hers. “I would give anything to be able to say the words that go with the pendant, Kate. But I can’t. It’s complicated, like you say. Roman—”
Her breath caught.
Garrett shook his head. “I honestly don’t know how to resolve this. But I know that hurting someone to get what I want isn’t a solution, either.”
The door to the trailer flung open, giving them no chance to separate. Winter leapt inside, skipping both steps. She saw Kate and merely looked relieved. “Good,” she said flatly. She grabbed Kate’s wrist and shoved her into the armchair and pushed her iPad into her hand and turned it on. She grabbed Garrett’s wrist and pulled him over to the desk and turned on the desktop CPU under the desk. “You’ll have to wait until I pull up the URL,” she said. “Or I can give you the highlights verbally.”
“Oh, fuck,” Kate sighed.
Garrett raised his brow. “Verbal headlines. I’ll scan the pad after Kate is done.”
“The paparazzi were outside Kate’s place last night. Long, long telephoto lens. They got all three of you in the shot. You’ve got no shirt, Kate is kissing you goodbye, and Roman is watching it all from the front door and it looks like he’s part of it. There are other photos, from the desert shoot. You and Roman talking together. Very intimate looking stuff. And Roman and Kate in Kate’s trailer. And Kate and you on the set. They’re the worst. They’re very definitely sexual.” Winter licked her lips. “You know what they’re saying?”
“Ménage,” Kate said, her voice stiff.
“Who are saying?” Garrett demanded. “Can we buy them off?”
“Not every major outlet,” Kate replied. “And they’re all saying it.” She handed the pad to Garrett and got to her feet. “Time to talk to Mary-Ann’s people. See what can be done.” She sighed, digging her cellphone out of her pocket. “Another day of filming off to a late start.” She spun to face Garrett. “Roman could walk right into a wall of media out there if he arrives late.”
Garrett held up his hand. “I’ll warn him.”
“Thanks.” She strode out of the trailer, jumped down the steps much the same way that Winter had skipped up them and was gone. The door slowly closed behind her.
“Roman?” Winter queried, with a raised brow.
Garrett grimaced. “Well, you didn’t tell her, then.”
Winter looked genuinely shocked. “Someone told her? Kate confronted you?”
“You could describe it that way.” Garrett hefted the iPad. “I’m wondering if these are connected.”
Winter shook her head. “Whoever told her was trying to drive a wedge between you. The media thing is feeding off you being together. The last thing the media want is you to separate.”
Garrett nodded. “Good analysis. That narrows the list down to the handful of people who knew we were involved…before this morning, anyway.” He turned on the iPad. “How bad is it?”
Winter grimaced. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“The truth and if you don’t mind it being shouted around the globe.” She turned away. “I’ll let you read it in private.”
“No, stay.” He sank down onto the sofa. “You’d better whistle up everyone else. Nial will have read my email by now and Patrick will be in make-up, so Nial will be here as soon as Patrick settles in his chair.”
He started reading. Winter had bookmarked and left open a dozen tabbed and starred items from different news sites. They all started with the same basic set of photos taken last night at Kate’s house. The guy who had taken the set must have spent the night selling it to the newswire for a small fortune, for everyone had bought it. Everyone had a slightly different spin on the same general theory –– Kathrine Lindenstream was openly involved with two men at the same time, apparently with their cooperation and collusion.
Depending on the supporting file photos the publication had to hand and the degree of sensationalism the publication was comfortable with, they took the theory a step further. Were Adrian Xerus and Calum Garrett closing the loop on the ménage? Were they also intimate with each other? Several had grainy night exposure photos of Roman and him standing and talking on the dessert location. True, they were standing closer together than usual and their expressions were tense and could be described as emotional. But they could hardly be called intimate.
Winter had already braced him for the photos of him and Kate, so it wasn’t the shock it might have been. Someone had taken photos of them having sex the first time on the set that night. Probably, they had more graphic photos they couldn’t publish, but the ones that had been released were explicit enough. Kate in just her bra and jeans. Garrett with his shirt and jeans open and Kate’s hands inside his jeans. There was no mistaking what they were doing, or the powerful lust in their expressions.
He sighed and flipped back to the photos of Kate and Roman and studied them – not the voyeur shots through the trailer windows, but the more public ones of Kate and Roman together, Roman’s arm was draped casually over her shoulder and while it had been a candid shot, he had looked surprisingly happy.
Happiness was a factor that had been long missing from Roman’s life.
Garrett tossed the iPad onto the seat beside him, guilt churning in his gut.
Winter picked it up. “Sorry,” she said. “The media can be bastards with your private life.”
He shook his head. “I got used to being dissected by the media a long time ago.”
“But Roman isn’t.”
Garrett shook his head in agreement. Fear had taken his voice.
Winter flipped through the tabs quickly, scanning them. “Roman is particularly sensitive about revealing himself to humans. Being exposed like this may test him in ways the average human doesn’t have to consider.” She looked up at Garrett. “You’re afraid he’ll hate you for this.”