“Practicing?” he asked uncertainly.
“Si. At least until the pizza places closed,” she added, and then merely smiled at his confused expression, and said, “Buona notte, bello.”
“It’s morning now, not night,” Justin muttered, but she’d already slipped into her room and was closing the door.
Shaking his head, Justin turned and continued downstairs. He needed a drink. His mouth was as dry as a desert. Then he’d go back to bed and sleep and have those shared dreams with Holly that he’d expected to have when he’d lain down to nap. It was why he’d told her to rest. After an entire afternoon at the mall with her, feeling the heat of her body next to his, her delicate vanilla scent filling his head, but being unable to touch her or behave as he wanted to around her, all Justin had been able to think of was getting her back to the house. He’d planned for both of them to lie down for a nap so that they could have shared dreams. There at least, he could do all the things he’d been imagining as he’d sat across from her at the mall pointing out -people for her to read.
Instead, she’d apparently stayed up with Gia while he’d actually slept. Some -people might have been happy to get such a long and deep sleep after a week of exhausting dreams. He wasn’t. He’d looked forward to those dreams. They were the only thing that had kept him sane during the three days of not seeing her while she worked with Dante and Tomasso.
Now she was going to sleep and he was up. But not for long, Justin decided as he reached the bottom of the stairs and started up the hall toward the kitchen. He’d grab a drink and then head right back upstairs to bed and force himself to go to sleep. He’d kept imagining making love to her in the middle of the food court on the table, and he could do that in their dreams . . . and Justin fully intended to—-
His thoughts died abruptly as he stepped into the kitchen and took in the state of it. There were pizza boxes and take--out bags on every surface in the room. Some of them were actually open, their contents wholly or half eaten, but most were not.
“What the hell?” Justin muttered with bewilderment, and then gave his head a shake and hurried to the refrigerator to grab and slap a bag of blood to his fangs as he fetched himself a glass of water. He could ask about the fast food--a--thon later, when everyone was up. Right now his main interest was getting back to sleep and ravishing Holly.
That thought made him hesitate and then move to the refrigerator again. This time to retrieve the last IV of sedative mixed with saline that sat on the top shelf. It was a leftover from what Lucian had had brought in to keep Holly under until he could leave on the day they’d brought her here.
Grabbing the bag, he started to let the refrigerator door close, then the bottled water inside caught his eye. Justin eyed it briefly, then set down his glass of water and turned to move to the garbage as he ripped the now empty blood bag from his mouth. Once he’d disposed of the bag, he then returned to the fridge to grab the bottled water.
“Easier to carry,” he muttered to himself as he turned away, and that was important since his next stop was the broom closet to grab the IV stand they’d stored there. After sleeping more than twelve hours, Justin was quite sure he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep without a little aid, but he was also desperate to sleep now that he knew Holly would be sleeping as well.
“Man, what I’ll do to get laid,” Justin muttered to himself with a shake of the head as he tucked the IV bag under his arm, leaving his hands free for the bottled water and the IV stand.
He headed back to his room then, hands full of his bootie. Much to his relief, Justin didn’t encounter anyone on the return journey. He really didn’t want to have to explain himself. Fortunately, everyone was apparently abed and sleeping. Once in his room with the door safely closed, he set the bottled water on the bedside table, then quickly set up the IV stand next to the bed and hung the saline bag from it. After that, he nipped into the bathroom to take care of personal matters.
Once back in the room, he approached the IV, only to realize that he hadn’t thought to grab the IV needle, tape and tubing. Clucking under his tongue with irritation, Justin jogged back downstairs for the items, then returned to attach the tubing and primed the chamber, then sat down on the side of the bed.
He had just finished inserting the IV needle in the crook of his elbow and taping it in place when his cell phone began to chirp. One look told him it was Mortimer. While Lucian was the big boss, Mortimer was now the head of the Enforcers, basically his supervisor. It was a call he had to take.
Muttering to himself, he snatched up his phone with the hand not hooked up to the IV and pressed the button to answer the call as he placed the phone at his ear.