He had not seen Bear Dawson again, until two years later when he had been dragged into the compound, his face bloody and his body hanging between two of Severo’s men. In the intervening years, though, he had constantly heard of Dawson’s business dealings, usually described amid his father’s cursing, for Dawson’s activities had frequently crimped Enrico Garcia’s plans.
“That dinner is the moment you were thinking of, that you were speaking of when you told Octavia about it this morning, isn’t it?” Ángel asked Remmy now.
“It is very rare to meet someone who knows themselves well enough to recognize such a moment,” Remmy said softly. “Especially here in this land of rampant masculinity and ego.”
“I have always known that about myself,” Ángel admitted. He smiled. “I have enjoyed the best of both worlds, more than once. It was the way I learned how different I was from any of my family.”
Remmy glanced at Octavia. “She is very beautiful…”
Ángel studied her peaceful face, the strongly arching brows and the pointed chin. There was a hint of a cleft in her chin that spoke of the real strength in her. In repose as she was now, her true beauty was undisguised by fury or impatience or frustration or any of the dozens of emotions that could cross her face inside a few minutes.
“Has the bonding always…been affecting me?”
“Why do you ask that?” Remmy said.
“Because it seems to me that all the bonding is doing is giving me exactly what I want, that I never had the courage to reach out for myself. Or has it been making me think that is what I want, all along?”
Remmy shook his head. “The Grimoré arrived upon this world only two years ago, Ángel. Even the dinner where we first saw each other happened before that. Octavia’s sister’s fall from grace was even farther in the past and that is what set her upon the path that led her here.”
Ángel let out a breath. “Good. Then it is not an omnipotent power pushing us around, as Octavia feared.”
“Indeed.” Remmy sat up, taking the weight off his hands and brushed the dirt from them. “Although I can understand your confusion.” He pressed his hand against Ángel’s face. His thumb brushed against his chin, then stroked with a featherweight touch over Ángel’s mouth.
Ángel grew still. His heart raced.
Remmy pressed his mouth against Ángel’s. It was almost as delicate a touch as his hand. Tentative, even.
Ángel gripped Remmy’s head and held him still. He kissed him properly, pouring his energy and his need into it.
That was all the encouragement Remmy seemed to require. His tongue slid inside, stroking Ángel’s.
Ángel’s entire body seemed to throb in reaction. He shifted his legs as the crotch of his jeans became uncomfortable. His cock was beating against his hip, as hard as the rock beneath him.
Remmy groaned and the deep, erotic sound squeezed Ángel’s heart and made his pulse leap.
He was quivering with the need to ram himself into…someone. Even in the depths of the kiss, he was aware of Octavia on the other side of the cave and the siren song she held for him and realized that Remmy was just one piece of what he needed.
Remmy pulled his mouth from Ángel’s. He was breathing deeply and Ángel realized it was the first time he had become aware of Remmy’s breathing. Did he breathe all the time? Why would vampires need breath at all?
They were secondary questions, easily dismissed in the face of the overwhelming need gripping him. Ángel closed his fist around Remmy’s shirt, stopping him from moving away.
Remmy sighed. “Octavia is the only one who does not know what she wants. I will not force her to it.”
“Nor I.”
“Then we are agreed on that, too.” Remmy seemed pleased.
Ángel pulled him close enough to kiss him again. If he could not kiss Octavia, Remmy was a more than adequate substitute.
* * * * *
Octavia thought she heard the moan in her dreams. The thick darkness in front of her, broken by a single narrow shaft of sunlight, told her the truth. She was awake. The moan had woken her.
She blinked. Sleep was still trying to pull her down. Then she heard the whispers and her name.
She focused, forcing herself to a higher level of alertness.
“…I will not force her to it.”
“Nor I.” That was Ángel’s voice.
“Then we are agreed on that, too.”
The two of them were darker shadows in the cave, which didn’t seem to be as dark as she had thought. Her eyes had adjusted to the low level of light while she had slept and now she could make out larger details in the dark.
They were sitting close together. Their mouths were together.
Octavia drew in a startled breath, her drowsiness vanishing.
They were kissing
.
She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the pair of them as the kiss went on and on. One of them groaned again. She couldn’t tell which, although it was clear from every taut line of their bodies that they were both enjoying the kiss.
Octavia swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Every nerve in her body seemed to be tingling. Her breasts felt heavy and hot inside the lace cups. Her nipples were almost painfully erect and hard. She wanted to move her legs restlessly, only it would tell them she was awake and she didn’t want to disturb them. She didn’t want to intrude.
She was more than happy just to watch.
Octavia had seen men kissing before, although the moments had been rare because of her conservative upbringing and the even more conservative culture of average Mexicans. She had found it interesting to watch because it had been novel and different.
There was nothing novel or different about the way Ángel and Remmy were kissing. The heat they were generating was from raw, undiluted passion. More than that. There was
feeling
there. Emotion.
She knew what both of them would be experiencing. She had kissed both of them herself and knew what it was like. Ángel’s full lips and Remmy’s hard mouth…both good in different ways.
When had she started to think of Ángel in that way? Was it after he had kissed her or before? Remmy had always lingered in the back of her mind as Bear, her coordinator, who would never unbend enough to acknowledge she was a woman, let alone kiss her, as much as she might wish he would.
While Ángel had never entered her thoughts as anything other than the second son about whom she never seemed to be able to learn anything, except that he didn’t think like anyone else she knew.
Her education about Ángel and his thoughts had spiked hard in the last twelve hours.
He was leaning into the kiss, the tendons in his forearm flexing as he held Remmy in place. Then he let the other man go and sat back, breathing hard.
“You stopped.” Remmy was just as breathless.
“It’s good, but it isn’t perfect. Not without Octavia being part of it.” Ángel shrugged. “Sorry.”
Remmy nodded. “I think she might already be awake. Her heartbeat increased.”
Ángel turned his head sharply to look at her. “Octavia?”
Octavia considered closing her eyes, only Remmy had heard her pulse leap. It would make her a liar if she pretended she was asleep now.
“I was watching,” she said quietly. “You’re wrong, Remmy. I do know what I want.”
Remmy got to his feet. “What either of you want is irrelevant right now. You both
need
sleep. I do not, so I will watch.”
Ángel laughed.
“I mean it,” Remmy said firmly.
“You think I can sleep now?” Ángel said.
“I think if you let your body speak for itself you’ll be asleep faster than you ever thought possible. You’re both very tired. Your body temperatures had dropped before…well, before.”
Watching them kiss had raised her body temperature. She could feel it in the heat between her legs. She was almost glowing with it. Remmy could sense that.
“Lie down and close your eyes,” Remmy said, his voice low. “Sleep will come.”
“What if
they
come instead?” Ángel asked.
“You’re both working with higher senses now. You’ll wake if they do. And I am not going anywhere.”
Octavia wanted to protest, except that the heaviness of her body said that sleep was still waiting for her. She laid down, cushioning her head on her arm. She settled into the most comfortable position possible on raw rock. She wished they’d had room for one of the blankets that Ángel had spoken of.
That was her last thought before waking with the last light of day beaming almost directly into the mouth of the cave, dazzling her with the red and orange display, while Remmy stood silhouetted in the blazing light, looking out upon the desert.
“They have been on the move,” he said.
“Who?” Ángel asked, yawning.
“Everyone and everything,” Remmy replied.
They started walking again even before the sun was fully set. The bluffs and knolls sent long shadows over the dry land, as the sky drifted from blue to indigo to deepest black. The stars came out overhead and Octavia found herself studying them with growing wonder. “There are so many,” she said.
“It’s very dark here, with no cities nearby,” Remmy said. “You can see more. Even the planets themselves, if you have a keen eye.”
Ángel started to look up every now and again, instead of constantly turning his head. He was restless, too. “I can
feel
them,” he said. “They’re all around. Why aren’t they attacking?”
“They like enclosed spaces and dark corners. It is too open here.”
“Perhaps we’re going exactly where they want us to go,” Octavia said, the unpleasant thought make her heart work even harder. She pulled the denim jacket in around her.
Neither of them responded to that. Perhaps it was as unsettling for them to consider as it was for her. Only, once she had established the idea of being herded, it wouldn’t go away.
“What lies ahead?” she asked Remmy. “A bluff and an arroyo, you said. What else? What would make them wait until we reached it?”
“The whole park is plateaus and rifts and canyons,” Ángel said.
“And very few people,” Remmy added thoughtfully.
Octavia came to a halt, her heart sinking. “Oh God, the people….”
They turned back to look at her.
She looked at Ángel. “The whole town. Manuel Benavides. They all headed into the park to get away from what they thought was your brother’s excesses. They’re walking right into the middle of the vampeen and they have no idea they’re there.”
“They will only go to the nearest canyon for shelter,” Ángel said slowly.
“Will they?” Octavia said. “If they think someone is trailing them, they’ll keep going to try to get away from them. They’ll think it’s someone human.”
Ángel shook his head. “We can’t go back,” he said flatly. “The townsfolk…they’re not who the vampeen want.”
“They’ll herd them to where they can deal with them!” Octavia cried.
“You don’t know that,” Remmy said softly.
“I
know
. I know it here!” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Humans are food to them, you said. Of course they’re going to round up a herd of food on foot!” As she spoke, she edged backward. The urge to flee back the way they had come, to sprint back toward the town and find everyone and warn them was almost overwhelming.
Ángel moved over to her and put his arms around her. “Shh…” he said. “Breathe.”
“They’ll kill them all!” she cried.
“You can’t help them if you go back,” Remmy said.
“They’re trying to draw you out,” Ángel added. “They
want
you to dash back there and save them. It separates you from us, where we can’t protect you.”
Octavia drew in a shuddering breath. “You don’t know that either.”
“It’s what I would do,” Ángel said. “The Grimoré, at least, seem to be able to think strategically and we’re their priority right now. Yes, Remmy?”
Remmy nodded. “If you don’t go back, the people will be safe enough. Once the Grimoré have you, their use as bait will be at an end and then they will all die. The Grimoré only have to kill one of us to break the trinity.”
Octavia kept breathing, trying to calm herself and think. There was good sense in what they were saying yet it battled her horror at what the villagers would be going through.
“We seal the trinity first,” Remmy said. “Then we’ll be stronger and less vulnerable. Then, my dear, you can kick all the butt you want.”
“Fine, then let’s do it now. Right here,” Octavia said, her temper simmering. She dropped the backpack to the ground and the water inside gurgled. “I’m sick of talking about it. We’re talking ourselves to death while those things are out there controlling everything. So let’s do it.”
Remmy looked amused.
Ángel brushed her hair out her eyes. “It’s sealed with sex, sweet one. You want I should drop you to the sand right now and take you? Here?”
Her breath, which had started to calm, suddenly shallowed. She was almost hyperventilating. The idea of Ángel lowering her to the ground and fucking her, right there, with Remmy watching, even participating, sent heat through her limbs. Every nerve seemed to come suddenly to the alert.
“It has appeal,” she said honestly. Her voice was husky with want.
She could almost
feel
Ángel’s reaction. His hard body was tight against hers and she could sense the tension in him. The sudden way he held his breath, his gaze wandering over her face.
So she kissed him. It seemed as though it was the only reasonable thing to do right then. It was action and she yearned to do
something
. If she couldn’t go blow out vampeen brains with the 500, then she could kiss the hell out of Ángel instead.
Her kiss infected him with the same urgency. She could feel it in the way his hands moved against her, restlessly exploring her back and her ass and holding the back of her head so he could drive himself deeper into her mouth.
Their bodies pushed together and she could feel the frantic quality in their movements. His hands were against her bare skin, up under her shirt. They were hot and restless, sliding over her flesh as if he couldn’t get enough of it.
Until he staggered backward, as though he was wrenching himself away from her. He stood with his chest heaving.