Authors: Sierra Dean
“My island nation sends greetings. Would you prefer the luck o’ the Irish or the kick in the teeth of Scotland?”
I walked to the small counter that divided his kitchen from the main living space. “Don’t kid a kidder, Chancery. We both know you’re English.”
“Aye.” Holden had no discernible English accent in spite of spending his entire human life there. Turns out when someone spends damn near two hundred years in America, they tend to lose their accent over time. But he could switch it on as easily as twisting a faucet, and sometimes he let a Britishism slip into his speech. Right now he was doing it intentionally. “And all those damned Scots and Irish are good for is booze, so take your pick.” He jostled the bottles at me again.
“And what if I was craving some love from Mother Russia?”
He snorted. “Does it look like I have a freezer?”
I pointed to the scotch. Recently I’d tried to drown myself under my own weight in Jameson, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stomach the stuff for a while. Better to be safe than sorry. He pulled out two lowball glasses and plunked them on the counter, filling each with two fingers of scotch. I didn’t bother asking for ice given his recent proclamation of having no icebox. This felt like a straight-up scotch kind of night, anyway.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m just getting you drunk so I can take advantage of you.”
“How do you know I’m not a weepy drunk? Wouldn’t
that
throw a wrench in your seduction plans.”
He made a face, distorting his handsome features in an ugly and comical way.
“Besides,” I continued. “I came here offering myself to you on a silver platter and you got all high and mighty.
You
refused
me
. That’s a first. My ego is feeling a little bruised.” I swallowed the scotch in two big gulps and slammed the glass down on the counter.
“I stand by that move. Do I look like sloppy seconds to you?” He indicated his toned abs and the generally unbearable hotness of himself.
The unbearable hotness of himself?
I stared into the empty glass. “Did you roofie me?”
Holden rolled his eyes. “Again, I draw your attention to exhibit A.” He pointed to his face. “Do I
look
like I need date-rape drugs to get women?”
“No, you’re a vampire. The walking date-rape drug.” I clapped my hand over my mouth, my eyes widening with horror.
Holden looked dumbfounded for a moment before he cracked a smile. “Well, I’ll be damned. I know you told me before how much of a lightweight you are, but I thought you were exaggerating.”
Refusing to move my hand from my mouth for fear of what might come out next, I shook my head. I was sort of pathetic when it came to alcohol. I could take a beating like nobody’s business, but give me a little booze and that was all it took. My heightened metabolism took me from sober to drunk in record time, as I was currently demonstrating to Holden. I had hoped my week of post-Desmond-break-up wallowing might have given me some heightened resistance to alcohol.
No such luck.
Holden reached across the island and pulled my hand away from my mouth. “Now would be a pretty stupid time to start censoring yourself, Secret.”
“I might say something horrible.”
“That never stopped you from saying them when sober.” He winked.
Damn, he had a point. I had said some wildly cruel things to him while under no influence except my own stubborn bitchiness.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“No you’re not.” He topped off my drink and slid the refilled glass back towards me. “Now drink that and tell me why you really came.”
Chapter Three
I came for sex; I stayed for drunk therapy.
Nursing my second glass of scotch, I leaned against the counter and fixed Holden with a serious stare. “What do you think I came for?”
“Honestly?”
“Have you ever been anything but?”
He took a sip straight from the bottle and observed me with casual interest. “I think you did come to get laid. But I also think you would have felt bad about it when you woke up later.”
I rolled my eyes and took another sip of the drink, my head swimming. “Shows what you know.”
“Think about it for a second and
then
deny it.”
I did as I was told. Was I here to sleep with Holden because I wanted to sleep with him, or was I here because there was an empty space torn out where my heart used to be, and I was willing to fill it with anything if I could just make it stop hurting?
I finished off my drink and made no attempt to tell him he was wrong.
“Wanna do it anyway?” I asked.
“No.” Holden screwed the top back on the bottle and returned it to its place in the cupboard. “But you
are
spending the night here.”
Outside, the night was starting to fade into early dawn, and the yellow of the city lights was turning the color of a fading bruise. It was the purple-gold sign I needed to be far away from sunlight. I’d never make it home in time, and we both knew it.
“Normally I’d think this was an excuse for you to get me into bed.”
“Secret.” He took the glass out of my hand and cupped my chin. His gaze bore into mine with an intensity that made me shiver. “When I get you into my bed for real, we’re going to need a lot longer than ten minutes if I’m going to make love to you the way I’ve been planning to all these years. Understand?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. His words had the weight of a threat, but they had me wound tight and panting for him to follow through.
If the sunrise wasn’t a few minutes away from knocking me out completely, I was going to ask for a cold shower before going to his bedroom. As it was, I’d fall asleep next to him with my mind spinning.
I opened my eyes to find Lucas staring at me.
Oh good,
I thought.
I’m drinking and dreaming.
“This is why you’ve been too busy to answer my calls?”
Holden was still asleep, his arm wrapped around my waist a dead weight. I shoved him off me and sat up, my head clear. I rarely got hangovers in real life, so why should my dreams be any different?
The vampire’s bed was as basic as the rest of his apartment, just a mattress and box spring on a low maple bedframe with no head or footboard.
Continuing to ignore Lucas, I looked around on the rug for my socks. I was wearing the rest of my clothes from the night before, so dream-Lucas was up on his high horse for no good reason. Unless I’d started having sex fully clothed, I was innocent of whatever he was trying to imply.
“Secret…”
“Fuck off.”
Dream-Lucas crossed his arms and sighed. He was a high-and-mighty asshole even in my dreams. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign before I’d agreed to marry him.
“Look, I came here—”
“No, Lucas, you don’t get to tell me what to do. This is my dream, and you’re not welcome here.”
He skirted the bed so he was standing in front of me. I ignored him the best I could and continued to search the floor for my missing socks. Dream or no dream, my boots would be uncomfortable without them, and I needed any excuse to not look at the werewolf king.
“This isn’t a dream.”
“Then it’s a nightmare because you won’t
fuck off
.”
He grabbed my arm, and for the first time I started doubting my dream theory. His grip was hard and painful and very, very real. I’d had lucid dreams before, but this had none of the strange, hazy quality of one of those.
This was happening.
I recoiled from his touch, clambering up on the bed and stumbling over Holden’s body. This finally roused the sleeping vampire who caught me just before I fell off the mattress. My attention was all for Lucas. Real, living, breathing Lucas.
“
What are you doing here
?” I shouted, trying to keep my voice full of anger and not hysteria.
“I need your help.”
Holden set me on the floor and got to his feet, standing between me and my ex-fiancé. “Before I unleash the hellcat to give you a well-deserved shit-kicking, do you mind explaining why you’re in my apartment?”
“I need her help,” Lucas repeated.
“How did you know she was here?”
“We’re married. I can find her anywhere.”
“We are
not
married,” I screamed, a bit of the hysteria I’d hoped to avoid creeping up on me. “You made damned sure of that.”
“Like it or not, Secret, you completed the ceremony. We’re married.”
Holden caught me before I could dive across the mattress at Lucas. God knows what I would have done if I’d been allowed to get my hands on him. The vampire clamped me against his chest and held me tightly as I struggled to get at the werewolf.
“I think she’s choosing the
or not
option,” Holden said smoothly, as if he weren’t holding my writhing body prisoner.
“
Fuck you
,” I snarled and kicked out, making contact with Lucas’s stomach.
The attack somehow caught him by surprise, in spite of my obvious intention to do him harm. He doubled over, bracing himself against the bed while he caught his breath. I tried to kick him in the head, but Holden saw my plan before I could follow through and tugged me backwards, keeping me out of assault distance.
“Not to question your methods, but perhaps you might want to stop insisting you’re married to the woman you stood up at the altar.” Holden set me down but pushed me behind him, his body tensed to catch me should I attempt another attack.
“The human ceremony was inconsequential.” Lucas righted himself. “Secret, I’ve tried to apologize for the unfortunate—”
“You
humiliated
me. Not to mention leaving me exposed to Morgan. Desmond almost died because of you.”
Lucas glared at me, the darkness of his expression evident from across the pitch-black room, which was kept safe from light by thick velvet curtains and the surprisingly dense Japanese screens. “Desmond. It’s always about Desmond. Well, before you fall off your high horse, you should acknowledge that Desmond was only there for
you
.”
“Don’t try to blame this on me. He came to tell me you weren’t coming. Your
best friend
almost died, and his blood is all on your hands.”
“Let’s get real, here. He hasn’t been my best friend in a long time. Not since we met you.”
A cold chill rocked me. “Get out,” I demanded, clinging to Holden’s arm to keep my composure. “You have no right coming here.”
“You shouldn’t be here either,” he said coolly.
“Why? It’s not like I have anyone else in my life anymore.”
Lucas moved suddenly, grabbing Holden’s nightstand and flinging it across the room where it shattered against the brick wall. “You are my
wife
. Don’t you forget that.”
Holden stiffened, waiting for my reaction. I sucked in a breath through my nose and looked at the person I’d once loved. I tried to feel something, tried to remember what he’d meant to me. But all I saw was a villain who’d broken my heart and taken away the man I loved.
In spite of the connection through our mate bond, the one that told me he was blind with rage and desperate for me to listen to him, I felt no love. There was no sense of hatred either, though, in spite of how much I tried to will the hot, bitter taste of it up. I wanted to hate him almost as badly as I’d once wanted to truly love him.
All I felt was contempt and sadness.
“What do you want?” I asked, choosing not to quibble with him about our marital status. I’d have time later to find out the finer points of getting a werewolf divorce. We couldn’t be unbonded metaphysically—one of the less-fun aspects of a supernatural love match—but I’d be damned if I was going to stay his were-wife forever.
“Can we speak alone?”
To answer his question, I parked my ass on the rumpled sheets of Holden’s bed and pulled the vampire down next to me. “He’d hear us anyway. Not to mention it’s
his
apartment you broke into. He gets to stay.”
The typical Lucas response would have been to insist we speak alone, but what he had to say must have been pretty important if he’d barged into a vampire’s loft at nightfall to haul me out of bed. He pretended as if Holden weren’t in the room with us.
“It’s Kellen.”
My blood ran cold. It was as if my whole body had been submerged in ice water, and all the sarcasm and loathing seeped out of me, replaced with sharp, urgent fear.
“Did someone hurt her?”
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know.” The three words sounded heavy and defeated coming from his mouth. This was a man who didn’t understand what it meant to fail, and he was talking about his younger sister like he’d already lost her. My fear ratcheted up ten notches.
Obviously able to sense my discomfort, or just showing a rare sign of being a gentleman, Holden slid his hand over mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. I didn’t push him away, accepting the kindness without a word.
Looked like we were all going to pretend to be grownups for once.