Lost Angeles (55 page)

“Figure out how to do what?”

“Fit the puzzle bacl together, maybe?” Although Jax seems far more in tune with everything that’s happening, it’s abundantly obvious that we’re all muddling about in the soup. “Your best bet right now? Use the fame. It’s harder to make America’s Sweetheart disappear.”

The look Xaine shoots at Jax is miles beyond irritated. “That guy already stabbed her, in public, on a runway full of celebrities.”

“Yeah, he did.” Jax nods. “Won’t be dumb enough to do it a second time, I guarantee it. If they try to kill Lore again, they’re gonna have to make it look like an accident. Last thing this group wants is to draw undue attention to itself. Whatever they’re doing, they’re pretty pissed that someone else knows about it.” His hand is on the door, already twisting the knob. “Oh, and I wouldn’t try to contact Asher. He’s a little, uh,
detained
at the moment.”

Then Jax is gone, slipping from the room with a parting salute, leaving me alone with Xaine for the first time in I don’t even know how long. Seems like forever.

The door barely clicks shut before Xaine gets out, “I’m sorry I was an asshole.”

Turning my head, I glare at him as best I can. “You’d better be.”

“Hey, where’s my apology?”

“That
was
your apology.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute.” The words are flippant, but his expression is anything but. He sets the guitar down and is out of the chair before I can answer. With gentle but insistent repositioning, Xaine manages to slide under the tubing and wires of a thousand monitors, wedging himself between the pillows and my body so that I’m resting back against him instead of the bed. When I turn my face to the side, his head dips down to my neck, pressing a soft kiss against the first place he ever bit me. His arms snake around me, too, so I’m more aware of him than anything else in the room.

“I wasn’t kidding. You want snipers on the roof, I can make that happen. I want you to feel safe. You shouldn’t have to always be looking over your shoulder.” A pause, and a slow exhalation that stirs my hair. “I’m usually the scariest monster in the room. This is really disconcerting.”

I lean back against him because as much as I hurt, as awful as this has been, whatever is waiting for us outside, he’s here right now. The anger and the misunderstandings are gone as suddenly as they came into existence. “We’re going to need better conflict resolution next time we fight.”

Xaine’s arms tighten down infinitesimally. “I already ordered those giant American Gladiator-style batons. We are going to whack the crap about of each other, helmets optional. Clothing optional, too, because you’d look adorable with pink stripes all over your bod.”

“That sounds like the perfect way to end up with a naked concussion.” I must be really cold, because Xaine’s skin against mine almost feels warm. Barely awake from a week-long coma, I got hit with too much information in too short a period of time. Tired. So tired, and yet I don’t want to fall asleep just yet. I need a few more minutes of him and us and words that don’t have anything to do with Virtues and heaven and wayward keepers of golden coins. And then, because there are too many words and not enough time to say them all, I just murmur, “Have you really been here for a week?”

“You’ve been here for a week, so I’ve been here for a week.”

Makes perfect sense, I guess, when he puts it that way. “I really don’t want you to leave, like… ever.”

His soft rumble of laughter vibrates through both of us. “Don’t hurt yourself, working up to an ‘I love you,’ okay?”

Already drifting off, I reach up and find his face with my hand, palm settling against his cheek. “You’re pretty full of yourself. Expressing my adoration would only make it worse.” But I smile when I add, “It could take a while for me to work up to something like that. A lifetime, maybe, give or take a few decades.”

“Sounds like a plan. And just to save the trouble of growling at everyone who comes near you for the next half-century, I’m going to put this back on your finger.”

There’s a flash-and-sparkle of pink and platinum. It’s ridiculous and impractical and
insane
and so very Xaine for him to want that stone on my hand in the midst of all this, but if love isn’t wearing a billion dollar diamond in a vampire medcenter after almost dying, I don’t know what is. So I nod, and feel it slide over my knuckle not even half a second later. He raises that hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to it, and I start to drift off, absolutely surrounded by his presence: reassuring and fierce and wanting…

And mine.

I’m backed up against him like a kitten parked in his lap, so I’m not surprised when he starts to pet me like one. The leather cuff keeps snagging my hair until Xaine makes an impatient noise and goes to unbutton it. It’s only when he hesitates that I raise an eyebrow at him. With a huff of breath, like a guilty little kid, he wraps my fingers over it and indicates that I should take it off for him.

“Go ahead. I’ll show you mine and then you…” There’s the tiniest nudge in the direction of my inner thigh, “can show me yours.”

Now I have a pretty good damn idea what’s under there, but it’s still a surprise to pop open the snap and see the words encircling his wrist, spelled out in old-school calligraphy:

Before I can say anything, he speaks softly in a tone that I’ve barely heard him use, and only ever with me. “That’s everything you are and that I want. And it’s still not enough, love. I want every word you’ve written and will write, scrawled across my skin.”

I don’t know what to say, so I just curl into Xaine’s lap, my thumb brushing idly over the black marks. I imagine they’ll fade over time, bleeding out of his vampire skin like his blood bleeds out of me. It’s a little daunting, that he has every intention of carrying a piece of me into eternity. Twining my fingers with his, I lift his hand to my face and place a soft kiss on the slightly-upraised script. “I might love you… maybe just a little.”

“There it is.” He buries his face in the curve of my neck. “Give or take a few decades, huh?”

I turn my head just enough so that I can grin into his idiot face. “You’re growing on me.”

After that, silence settles in between us, comfortable and comforting. It’s that quiet lack of action that lulls me into a half-sleep, slowly easing me away from the waking world. Xaine rocks me gently, humming just a little.

“Hey,” he says abruptly, not quite ready to let me drop off into sleep again, “what do you think about honeymooning in Italy?”

“Sounds nice,” I murmur, because it’s the Mediterranean and Tuscany and sunshine and pasta and any number of things that a girl would have to be crazy to pass up.

“Forever?”

“Whatever forever I have left, you get first dibs.” Turning my face just a bit more means I can press my cheek against his throat. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest… something something.”

Xaine’s lips are pressed to my hair, so the next words are like soft kisses. “When you wake up, love, just remember that there was not a single drop of alcohol involved in this decision.”

“Alcohol, no.” I can’t help but add, “Morphine maybe…”

The last thing I hear as I slip off is his tortured groan.

It takes another week before Cas’s team discharges Lore from the medcenter, giving her the all-clear to unhook from the monitors and head back to the Palisades house. After the whole sin-eater body dump in the bed thing, PFC had instructions to fortify security around the mansion. Facing the combined threat of Benicio and the Legacy, they’ve done everything short of rigging trip-wires down the canyon side of the drop-off and hell, for all I know, they did that, too. We’re down to a skeleton crew of staff, people I’ve known and employed for the better part of twenty years, impervious to bribery because there’s nothing someone else can offer them that I’m not already giving.

Trouble is, it really does end up feeling like a cage. The second the door closes behind us, everything echoes because the house is emptier than ever. Lore doesn’t notice, I don’t think. Even the drive here drained her waning reserves, and she leans against me with a yawn. There are purple-blue circles under her eyes. Her hair is scraped back in a braid that’s a tad on the greasy side, but it’s hard to grab a shower when you’ve had holes punched in your midsection. She complained about it until I promised to shampoo her in the sink, and then she’d subsided into silence. I’d twitched until she started humming softly along with the radio; didn’t realize or care that it was “Cry, Heaven” until she matched pitch with Noah Carmichael at the very end of it.

Normalcy. That’s all either of us want right now: ten seconds of absolutely nothing weird. And despite being able to make any porny fantasy come true with a few text messages,
normal
might be the one thing beyond my realm of influence.

Ass parked bedside next to Lore at the medcenter, I had a lot of time to think about what Cas said. He’s a smart man, the sort who doesn’t make a move until he’s worked through every possible outcome. He told me to call up Sebastian, to take the Legacy up on their ‘offer,’ and for the first twenty-four hours or so I couldn’t begin to fathom why. It wasn’t until I started thinking like
me
that I saw the bigger picture. Given his extensive acquaintance with my thought patterns, Cas knew that I’d take Lore and run, go somewhere safe, somewhere we couldn’t be found. That I’d start selling off real estate, piece by piece. That I’d liquidate everything I owned.

And he knew that I could take a few billion in Legacy dollars right along with it.

Matty inadvertently paved the way for the biggest setup of all time, because what man in his right mind would give up
all this
for—

A do-over.

Smart man, Cas. Too bad I still want to punch him in the face.

Rosa’s in the hall when we arrive, hands clasped in front of her, feet shifting on the marble. Lore doesn’t even lift her head, but the housekeeper looks disconcerted enough that it draws my eye, putting a wrinkle in my brow when her gaze keeps shifting pointedly toward the library.

“You have a visitor,” she says, with a pointed look that tells me, in no uncertain terms, that I should go in alone.

Placing an affectionate kiss on Lore’s temple, I slide her arms from around my waist. “Let Rosa take you up to bed.”

Her kind eyes look worried. “Who is it?”

“Probably just Roman.” When she flushes three shades of red, I tack on, “He loves to drop in unannounced, remember?”

The housekeeper takes Lore’s arm and leads her upstairs. Lore keeps an eye on me until she turns the corner and disappears into the bedroom. Worried that she might have Benicio-induced PTSD the moment she sets foot over the threshold, I listen for a second. When I don’t hear any panicked screaming, I gather my resolve and head for the library. Ten steps down the hall, and I’m breathing in the trademark
eau de douche
that I’ve come to know so well. I’d almost think it was lingering, except that the house has been mostly devoid of life for the last two weeks.

“Jesus Christ, Trace,” I start in, “you’re really—”

…
not who I was expecting.

“Good afternoon, Xaine.”

The satin-smooth cadence of that voice, that accent, stops me in my tracks. Then I’m staring at a ramrod straight back, the tailored tails of an expensive suit, the heels of perfectly shined shoes, and a crown of sandy hair that’s still the wrong length to be fashionable. When I don’t immediately answer, his head turns until I’m looking at him in profile, caught in the downturn of a sharply aristocratic nose, snared by the question in one golden iris.

“My presence can’t be that shocking,” Cas says. “Don’t I at least warrant the usual pleasantries?”

I snort and iron out the wrinkle in my brow, an exercise that doesn’t quite iron the wrinkle out of my brain. “Hello. Also, you need to spend far less time around Jax Trace. You’re wearing his stink.”

Cas’s nostrils flare and the corners of his lips turn slightly downward. He seems to dismiss it altogether, however, in favor of staring out the closed French doors leading to the pool. For a long moment he doesn’t speak, leaving me to look around, wondering what sort of ambush I’ve wandered into. When the silence extends beyond my comfort zone, I start searching for a distraction and find one in the stocked sideboard of vintage liquor. I only make it as far as the uncorking before my own PTSD kicks in, sending my stomach into a lurch that has me replacing the crystal stopper without taking so much as a single swig. When I turn around, I find Cas watching, his eyes fixed on the crystal decanter before they make the inevitable leap to my face.

“Take a picture,” I suggest. “It’ll last longer.”

A vague smile touches the corner of his lips. “The years and decades and centuries move along, and you, well, you move right along with them.”

“Is there a reason you’re here?” I ask. “Or did you come by to yank my chain?”

“I came to check on your little venture.”

“My venture?” I scoff. “Is that what we’re calling it?”