Justin started out pacing in the parking lot. However, after twenty minutes of that he was bored and impatient enough to get in the car to wait there. He started the engine, put some tunes on loud, and watched the entrance of the restaurant, waiting for someone to come tell him they were done. Probably Holly, and then she’d kiss him and whisper that she wanted to experience the incredible, mind--blowing life mate sex, and they’d do it right there in the car like a -couple of animals, uncaring who heard or saw.
That was the first fantasy. More lurid ones followed. Sex on the car rather than in it, right on the hood while Decker and Anders had to control the minds of anyone passing to prevent their remembering seeing it. Then they passed out and Decker and Anders had to pile them in the car. But they regained consciousness halfway back to Jackie and Vincent’s and did it in the backseat, screaming their heads off down the freeway until they collapsed again.
Justin then began imagining all the places they could do it at Jackie and Vincent’s house. His room, her room, the kitchen, the living room, the office, the pool . . . The options were endless and the positions more and more impossible, well for mortals they would be, not for them. But eventually even that began to bore him, and he began to wonder what the hell was taking so long?
“So Justin is the only one of you who can’t read or control me and that is usually the sign of a life mate?” Holly said slowly, frowning at this news. She was a married woman and she loved James. Had grown up loving him. She wasn’t interested in being anyone’s life mate, she was already a wife.
“It is one sign of a possible life mate, yes,” Anders said calmly. “It does not always work that way though.”
“Sometimes it is just a symptom of someone who has spent a great deal of time around immortals,” Decker put in. “The mortal may have built up a natural resistance to being read and younger immortals can have trouble overcoming that subconscious barrier.”
“Yes, well, you guys are the first immortals I’ve met so that doesn’t—-”
“You may not have known they were immortal,” Anders interrupted quietly. “We do not go about announcing ourselves to others. Had Justin not turned you to save your life, we would never have admitted what we are to you.”
“Oh, of course,” Holly murmured.
“The inability to be read can also be a result of madness or damage done to the mortal’s brain by injuries,” Decker added, filling the silence that had fallen. He then added pointedly, “Such as the blow you took to the head.”
Holly reached instinctively toward her head despite not having a clue where it had even been injured. Had she hit the front, the back, the side . . . ? She didn’t know, and there wasn’t even a faded bruise to tell her.
“There may have been some damage done that the nanos have yet to repair,” Decker said gently. “I understand you have some memory issues about the incident that led to your turning.”
“I did,” Holly agreed. “But I remember now.”
“However, you didn’t at first,” he pointed out.
“No, I didn’t,” Holly agreed with a frown and supposed if Justin had tried to read her then that she might have been harder to read and he might have thought he couldn’t read her and then not tried again.
“It’s sad really,” Decker said on a small sigh.
“What is?” Holly asked with uncertainty.
“Well, Bricker is desperate to find a life mate,” Decker told her with a little moue.
Anders nodded. “He’s seen so many of us find our life mates recently he’s suffering terrible envy.”
“We’ve pointed out that the rest of us have waited more than two hundred years for our mates. Some as many as two thousand or more and that he’s still young, but I imagine it’s hard to watch everyone else finding their life mate while he is alone.”
“So he’s desperate to believe you are his life mate,” Anders said with another sad shake of the head.
“But I’m married,” Holly pointed out. It was the only response she had to their suggestion that Justin might be crushing on her because he hoped she was his life mate. To her, it said everything. Life mate or not—-which she highly doubted—-she was married and therefore unavailable.
“Yes,” Decker nodded. “Still, he’s positive that you are his life mate, and that you won’t be able to resist him.”
“Is that why he keeps calling me honey and babe and stuff like that?” she asked with a scowl. She’d noted it, but had mostly ignored it because the circumstances were all so bizarre. Also because she’d assumed he was seeing her as a protégé to his mentor and the terms were meant with a sort of avuncular affection. Apparently not.
“Exactly,” he assured her. “He’s fixated on you, and he’s quite sure that you will . . .”
“Will what?” Holly asked when he hesitated.
“Basically, that you will respond to his amorous attentions,” Anders finished with an apologetic expression.
“But I’m married,” Holly repeated. Justin was a good--looking man, and yes she had noticed that amongst the madness that had taken over her life, but she had a husband, a man she had loved since she was a child. She would never break her vows, and she would never hurt James.