chapter Ten
FEELINGS FOR YOUR FRIEND . . . OR YOUR DOM
STELLA wasn’t sure where the lump in her throat had come from. Or exactly how her hands had wound up on Wyatt’s butt, though that part she liked. The lump she wasn’t digging so much. Blame it on being emotional from Johnny’s death, but she was perfectly content to stand in Wyatt’s arms and have him tell her that he was a nice guy. She knew he was a nice guy. She’d seen it for years.
Yet she appreciated the care he took with her. The intentional and subtle reassurance that he wouldn’t dick around with her. It made warm things happen to her insides that weren’t just the result of kneading his naked butt beneath her fingers. It was such a nice ass though. Mmm. She gave it one last squeeze.
At the same time, she couldn’t stop herself from stepping back. Relying on Wyatt wasn’t a good plan. She had always relied on herself and it wasn’t fair to him to take advantage of his kindness.
“I’m not looking for a bad boy.” She debated adding that she wasn’t looking for anything, but that just sounded bitchy. “But I guess right now we need to go looking for the guys and see if they found anything out.”
It was not a smooth subject change, but Stella knew if she stayed in the intimacy of Wyatt’s apartment she’d end up naked again. Which wasn’t a bad thing, obviously, but she was confused about what the hell was happening between them and she wasn’t sure it was wise.
Which was stupid, given that ten minutes earlier she’d been sprawled across his lap getting a playful spanking.
She needed medication. She was losing her mind.
“Just call Cort,” Wyatt said.
Stella pulled her phone out of her purse. “I can’t. My phone is dead.” Of course. She had to charge it every three seconds or it didn’t work. “Can I borrow yours?”
“Sure.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Stella scrolled through his contacts and found Cort, then hit the Call button. She waited impatiently as it rang, feeling an odd sense of urgency to find out what had happened the night before.
“Hello? Hello?”
Caught off guard, Stella paused. That squawking whiny voice didn’t exactly sound like Cort. She wasn’t sure it even sounded human, actually. “Um, Cort? It’s Stella.”
There was rustling and then mumbling that she didn’t understand. “What did you say? I can’t hear you, Cort.”
“Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?”
There was no way in hell that was the lead singer. Nor did she think it was Katie, who had left the apartment earlier with Cort. It sounded like . . .
“Is this the parrot?” she asked, suspicious. The weird just kept coming.
“Slap the fat. Ride the wave.”
Stella’s mouth dropped open. “What?” She had no idea what that even meant, but it sounded totally rude. And she didn’t like that parrot. He’d been a complete asshole, chasing her when she was in bat form. There was no denying it.
Wyatt was staring at her with his eyebrows raised, clearly wondering what the hell was going on. That was two of them.
“Slap the fat. Ride the wave.”
It just sounded so wrong. Did this nasty parrot have a fetish? This was getting her nowhere fast and creeping her out. “Put Cort on the phone. Please.” She had no idea why she even bothered. Parrots could talk, but they couldn’t follow directions. She didn’t think.
There was a crash, more rustling, and voices murmuring in the background, but clearly the parrot had decided she wasn’t worth his time and had wandered away. “Are you kidding me?” Stella ended the call and handed Wyatt his phone. “That was the parrot. He wasn’t much help.”
“The parrot answered Cort’s phone? Oh my God.”
Stella suddenly had the urge to laugh. It was all just too ridiculous. “Polly want a cell phone?”
Wyatt snorted. “Girl, you’re losing it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’ll try Drake instead.” Wyatt touched his phone screen then put it to his ear. “Hey, it’s Wyatt. Where are you?”
Stella took the two wineglasses into Wyatt’s kitchen and washed them while Wyatt nodded and said, “Uh-huh. Yeah. See you in twenty.”
“What’s going on?” she asked. Though maybe she didn’t really want to know.
“Drake hasn’t exactly been on the hunt for information. He tracked down an emergency dentist and just had a fang implant put in. I’m not sure why that had to happen right this freaking minute, but apparently it did.”
A fake fang? Not surprising. Drake was a vain vampire.
“Where is Saxon?” Not that she thought Saxon would be of any help, but because she was worried about him wandering around solo. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and the last thing they needed was him falling off a balcony.
“Saxon said he was coming here to meet us, but since there’s no sign of him, we’ll just meet up with Drake instead. He’s done at the dentist and we’re meeting him at Fahy’s in twenty minutes.”
“Somehow I don’t think any of us need a drink. Why are we going to a bar?” The thought of alcohol kind of made Stella want to hurl just a little.
“It’s as good a place as any to meet Drake and start asking around about what happened last night. We go there a lot after work so maybe we did last night.”
He had a point. Stella felt anxious again and she wasn’t sure why. There wasn’t any real indication that something super terrible had happened the night before, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were about to open a big old can of worms.
Stepping outside, Stella almost fell over Saxon sitting on the front stoop. “Ack!” She lost her footing and tumbled down the crumbling brick steps past the keyboardist, who didn’t reach out to help stabilize her. He didn’t react much at all actually.
Wyatt’s arm shot past Saxon and tried to grab her, but by then Stella was down on the sidewalk and had managed to keep herself upright. She turned and glared at Saxon. “What are you doing?”
He glanced up at her, his chin resting on the palm of his hand. His hair was in his eyes and he looked forlorn. “I think I’m starting to have feelings for my dom.”
Wyatt let out a startled laugh.
Stella just wanted to slit her wrists. Except she wouldn’t die and be prevented from hearing whatever Saxon was about to say, so what would be the point? “You have a dom? Like as in, a dominatrix?” She didn’t think there was any other definition of a dom, but she wanted to make sure. She shouldn’t even ask, but it was her nature to be compassionate. It was a curse.
“Yeah. It’s the woman who owns the crystal shop. She’s got it going on and I think that maybe I’m in love with her.”
“Well, what’s wrong with having feelings for . . . her?” She couldn’t bring herself to say “dom” again because she did not want to picture Saxon crawling across the floor with a ball gag in his mouth. Damn. Too late.
His head snapped up and he looked astonished. “I don’t know. I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, really. Stella-roo, you’re brilliant.”
That was the end of that? “I’m glad I could help.”
Wyatt shook his head. “Well, now that that’s solved, can we start walking?”
“Sure.” Stella started down Burgundy, moving around a pothole in the sidewalk. It was a beautiful night, sixty degrees with lower humidity than normal, and the sounds of the Quarter were ramping up for the night. Her neighborhood uptown was much quieter, but she could see why Wyatt liked the convenience and energy of this location.
Walking next to Wyatt eased her anxiety. He strode with confidence, and he put his hand on the small of her back to guide her around some bags of garbage. She wasn’t used to that. She was always the caregiver, not the one being taken care of, and she had no clue how to react.
Fahy’s was a bar off Bourbon that had lots of dark wood and several pool tables. The bartender who worked the night shift was a vampire, and he knew them all by name.
“Hey, Nigel, what’s up?” Wyatt said as each of them pulled up a stool and sat.
The bartender was scrawny, a former pickpocket in Industrial Revolution London, who still had traces of his British accent. “I’m surprised to see you tonight. Feel like bollocks, do you? You were seriously pissed last night.”
“I’ve felt better,” Stella admitted. But she knew he couldn’t have seen her, unless she had somehow managed to morph in and out of bat form. “So . . . you saw us last night?”
Nigel gave a crack of laughter. “Oh, yeah, there was no missing these two. They came in with Drake, drunk out of their minds, and dumped a bunch of money in the jukebox on Barry White songs. I mean, Barry White? I was like, what the fuck.”
Stella laughed. Saxon didn’t look concerned but Wyatt looked puzzled and more than a little embarrassed.
“Barry’s a cool dude,” Saxon said with a shrug.
“I’m not drinking with you anymore,” Wyatt said. “I can’t believe I would agree to that.”
“Was anyone else with them?” Stella asked.
“Just the priest. He was right handy with his smartphone. Didn’t know men of the cloth took video of their nights out partying.” Nigel vigorously shook the martini shaker in his hands and poured it off into three drinks. “I suspect he wasn’t really a priest.”
Stella sat up straighter. Benny had been with them? “He took pictures and video?”
“Yep.”
“Fabulous,” Wyatt said. “Now there’s proof that I acted like an ass.”
“Well, you did try on Trudy’s corset. And for the record, red is not your color.”
Huh. Stella had a hard time picturing that.
“You’re making that up,” Wyatt accused.
Stella grinned at him. “You were pretty damn concerned about your hair getting messed up this morning when I was bat-diving you. I didn’t realize you were so in touch with your feminine side.”
“I’ll touch your feminine side,” he muttered, taking a sip of the drink Nigel had put in front of him.
“So, Johnny’s girl was in here earlier,” Nigel said.
The smile fell from Stella’s face and she leaned forward so quickly, she almost fell off the cracked black vinyl of the stool. “Johnny’s girl? Who is that?” She hadn’t been aware that her brother had been seeing anyone.
Nigel looked surprised. “You haven’t met Bambi? She and Johnny were in here like two, three times a week.”
Bambi? That couldn’t be anyone’s real name. No mother was that cruel. “I’ve never heard of her.” Which was painful to admit. There was obviously a lot her brother had kept from her, and that was hurtful. Why hadn’t he felt like he could trust her? “She never came to see him at work when the band was playing.”
“That’s odd.”
Definitely.
“He never said anything to me either,” Wyatt said. “And I never saw anyone at the bar who could have been a girlfriend.”
They both looked at Saxon, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me. Nobody tells me anything.”
Stella couldn’t imagine why that would be.
“I guess a man is entitled to his secrets.” Nigel moved on down the bar. “But I’m sorry to see Johnny leave us, and Bambi seemed pretty irritated about the whole thing.”
Stella didn’t give a crap what Bambi felt. She wasn’t the one who had spent over a century with Johnny as her constant companion.
“So do you think we should see if Benny has anything relevant on his camera?” Stella asked Wyatt.
“Yeah. And we should try to find this Bambi. Maybe she knows something.”
She supposed that was rational, yet she found herself resisting the idea. She didn’t want to know that some random woman might have had greater insight into her brother’s feelings than she’d had. It took gritting her teeth to manage an, “Okay. Sounds good.”
Another chat with Nigel revealed that Bambi was a dancer at a gentlemen’s club. Just where Stella wanted to spend her night.
“I guess we can go there first,” Wyatt said. “Then on to find Benny. Where does he work again?”
“Bounce.” The idea of the band guys in a gay strip club was highly entertaining to Stella. Just imagining their level of discomfort made her smile.
“For Christ’s sake.” Wyatt shook his head. “We have to go to two strip clubs tonight?”
“I’m down with that,” Saxon said.
Stella could think of better ways to spend a night, but they were seeking information, not stimulation, so she could live with it. “Maybe we should split up. I’ll go to Bounce, you go to Ecstasy.”
Wyatt shook his head. “No way. I don’t want you wandering around alone until we know what’s going on. We’ll go together, but man, I hate those places. There’s a sad quality to them that I don’t like. Mortals wasting their short lives.”
That made Stella like Wyatt even more. It was exactly how she’d always felt about the many strip clubs on Bourbon Street. “We’ll make quick work out of it. You guys aren’t going to embarrass me in Bounce, are you?”
“Why would we do that? And I’m secure enough in my sexuality that it’s not a big deal to me.”
“I’m not,” Saxon said. “Maybe I should stay here.”
Stella smacked his leg. “You’re just saying that because you don’t want to walk five blocks.”
“Bingo.”
“Tough tamales, you’re going with us.” If they left Saxon at Fahy’s, they might never find him again, the way things were going.
The door opened and Drake walked in. “Wassup?” he said, slurring his words as he saluted with one hand.
If Drake was drunk, Stella was going to hogtie him to a chair. “Have you been drinking?”
“No, my mouwth ith numb from da dentist.”
Excellent. Wyatt paid their tab and they set out for the club.
Stella had very little hope that this wasn’t going to result in total disaster.
* * *
WYATT GAVE A polite smile and refused the girl in the doorway who offered him a lap dance the minute he walked into the gentlemen’s club. It smelled like sweat and desperation in this particular place, and the dim lighting didn’t completely mask the grimness of the setting or the boredom of the girls dancing. He reached back for Stella’s hand, feeling the need to make it obvious they were together. Even if they weren’t together exactly. They would be. He hoped.
Though he wasn’t sure who he was trying to protect—Stella or himself. The predatory look on some of these dancers’ faces was a little scary. He had faced down thieves and guns and other vampires, yet women looking to make a buck off him were not who he wanted to deal with tonight. So he just cut to the chase. “Is Bambi here?”
The girl who had been smiling so suggestively a second ago made a face and dropped her arm from her hip to lie limply. “We don’t take personal requests.”
“I just want to talk to her.”
“She don’t work tonight. She’ll be here tomorrow.” The girl messed with the strings of her bikini bottoms and Wyatt got a flash of flesh he would have preferred not to see.
“Okay, thanks.” Dragging Stella, he got out of there. Hopefully Saxon and Drake were following them.
“You’re about to break my hand, Wyatt.”
He glanced down at Stella, whose face was pinched. “Sorry.” He loosened his grip on her, not really sure what his problem was. “We’re just getting more questions than answers, aren’t we? This is frustrating.”
They paused on the sidewalk a few feet down the uneven cobblestones from the doorway. Saxon was staring into the window of a T-shirt shop and fiddling with his bangs with one hand, applying a layer of ChapStick with the other. He must have the smoothest lips of any vampire in Louisiana. Drake looked distracted, poking his cheek with his finger and working his jaw.
“The last forty-eight hours have been nothing but frustrating,” Stella said, her hands going into her front pockets.
Wyatt’s eyes were drawn to the ribbon of skin that was exposed above her waistline from the action. He wanted to lick her flesh. To really have the opportunity to lay her down and kiss her from head to toe. That was frustrating. “You’ve had some satisfying moments in the last forty-eight hours, too.” He leaned forward and whispered, “You liked it when you came, didn’t you?”
He felt, rather than saw, her shiver. “That goes without saying.”
Wyatt took her hand in his and stroked the inside of her palm with his thumb. “We’re going to figure this out as quickly as possible so we can put all this behind us and get back to the bedroom.”
“You make it sound so simple.” She licked her lips in what was probably a nervous gesture, but it served to turn him on.
“It can be simple.” Now he found he wasn’t talking about just sex. But he also was a quick learner. He knew it was time to back off. He took a step back and gave her space. “Okay, so where is this place? Benny better have some information, that’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s in the eight hundred block of Bourbon. Let’s go before Saxon hurts himself.”
If Wyatt wanted to be responsible for a loyal and not-so-bright living creature, he’d get a dog. But he sighed and called to Saxon and Drake. “Yo, come on!”
Normally Drake was a little swifter, but the numbing medication seemed to have gotten to him. He was wandering as aimlessly behind them as Saxon was. Wyatt walked beside Stella and steeled himself to be annoyed by Benny all over again.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t quite prepared for the sight of Benny dancing on a bar in his infamous orange underwear, gyrating suggestively. Nor was he prepared to pay a five-dollar cover charge at the door.
“What the hell?” he said to Stella. “I’m annoyed on behalf of gay men. Why do they have to pay a cover charge when no other bar on Bourbon charges one? That sucks. It might even be discrimination.”
“Maybe it’s because there’s entertainment.”
“Um, what are we? We’re not on that stage every night because we wandered up there by accident.”
Stella made a face. “You’re right. I don’t know. I guess they figure if they can get money they’ll charge it.”
“If someone hits on me, you have to pretend to be my girlfriend,” Drake said to Stella, his slur improved dramatically.
“No one is going to hit on any of you. Trust me.”
Should they be insulted? “And why is that, exactly?”
Wyatt crossed his arms over his chest and stood on the edge of the dance floor. The music wasn’t really that loud, because it wasn’t meant to be danced to. It was just setting a beat for the dancers on the bar and on the elevated stage while allowing customers to still talk. Benny had spotted Stella and had enthusiastically waved, but other than that they didn’t seem to be attracting any attention. Whenever a guy glanced their way, he quickly dismissed them.
Well. Apparently none of them were attractive to men. Wyatt was a little insulted.
“This is a sweeping generalization, but scruffy musicians seem to be something only women find hot,” Stella said.
“Scruffy? You think I’m scruffy?” Yeah. Insulted.
She rolled her eyes. “I mean longer hair.”
That didn’t soothe his feelings in any way. “Alright. Whatever. I see how it is.”
“I refuse to deal with any of your wounded egos tonight.” Stella moved away from him with a fair amount of attitude and sway in her hips.
Bewildered, he turned to Drake. “What the hell did I do?”
“You spoke. That’s what you did. Hey, uh, what’s going on with you and Stella?”
“Something’s going on with you and Stella?” Saxon asked. “Dude.”
“I don’t really know what’s going on with us. Maybe something. Maybe nothing.” Brooding, he stood with his legs apart, arms crossed, and watched Benny bend over and talk to Stella. Neither of them seemed concerned that they were interrupting his work, such as it was.
“What’s the deal with the guy? She have a thing for the priest?”
Wyatt glared at Drake. “No.” And he didn’t really appreciate having his secret fear pointed out—that she would find another man more to her liking.
Stella felt a sense of responsibility toward Benny, that’s all. She wasn’t attracted to him. But was she attracted to Wyatt? None of these guys here were. Maybe he wasn’t attractive.
And maybe he was a moron.
Her conversation with Benny was taking way longer than it should. Wyatt strode over to them.
“Hey, what’s going on?” He nodded to Benny.
Benny’s smile disappeared when he saw Wyatt. “Oh. Hey.”
“Everything taken care of?” he asked Stella.
“Yes. Benny said he’ll go get his phone for us to look at after this dance. He said he hasn’t looked at the pictures so he doesn’t know what, if anything, is on there.”
“Okay, cool. Thanks, man.”
“Anything for my Dark Angel.”
Oh, please.
Benny stood back up and went back to throwing his hips around. Dancing was a bit of an exaggeration in Wyatt’s opinion. Leaning against the bar, he studied Stella. “So what was all that conversation about, Dark Angel?”
It wasn’t the right thing to say. He knew it the second the words were out of his mouth. Her expression confirmed this. She looked like she wanted to hit him with her purse again.
“The jealousy thing? Not cool. Knock it off.”
He wanted to protest but he wasn’t sure there was much point. “Sorry. Do you want a drink?”
“I’d love a diet soda.”
Wyatt tried to flag the bartender down, but the guy ignored him. He wasn’t used to that. He knew half the bartenders in the Quarter and he always got good service. Being ignored yet again was not what he wanted when he was trying to be cool and smooth things over with Stella. Looking around, he realized most of the men in the bar were well-dressed and aloof. It seemed to be a theme. Maybe Wyatt needed to wave a twenty to the bartender and act pretentious to get service.
Saxon seemed to be having the same problem with the bartender. He made choking motions and said, “Dying. Of. Thirst.”
Which was, of course, ridiculous. Vampires weren’t going to die of anything and definitely not of human thirst. They didn’t need to drink liquids besides blood at all. Most of them did it as a habit more than anything else or used it as a mixer for blood.
Wyatt didn’t need to feed more than once a night, or sometimes even for several nights, given his age. But Saxon was a young vampire. He probably was struggling with true hunger, and Wyatt knew that if you were craving blood, a bar was as torturous as it was for an alcoholic. All those sweaty, aroused bodies dancing and flirting and moving. Their blood scent hung over the room like a London fog, surrounding them with its enticing sweetness.
Saxon was hard to take seriously because he was such a goof, but he was a vampire and he did struggle with the same urges they all did. Wyatt had the feeling he needed to take Saxon seriously right now. “Hey, you okay? You want to go home and get a bag?”
“That might not be a bad idea.”
Saxon lived on Decatur above a souvenir shop, and if he cut down Dumaine they weren’t that far. “We’re only five minutes from your place so you might as well. Meet us back here, okay?” Not that he wanted to hang around indefinitely but he still thought it wasn’t a bad idea to stick together.
“Why does he get to wander off when you nixed me coming here alone?” Stella looked put out.
Which seemed to be her look of the evening except for when she had been riding him.
“Because I’m not sleeping with Saxon,” he told her. No point in putting any other spin on it.
Drake, who had been playing with his phone, glanced up. “You two are sleeping with each other?”
Though he didn’t sound particularly surprised or concerned about the idea. Which really made Wyatt wish he’d kept his mouth shut. Drake, that is. Wyatt was glad he had said something. Stella needed to know he wasn’t playing around here—he could be patient but he did want a relationship with her.
“No,” Stella sputtered. “Well, yes, actually. But only twice. Why do you care?”
“Can’t say that I do,” Drake said, going back to his phone. “I figured you’d get around to banging each other sooner or later.”
Wyatt watched Stella for her reaction to Drake’s nonchalance. Maybe Stella was the only one who hadn’t noticed Wyatt’s lengthy crush on her.
“Don’t be crude,” was her scathing, prudish response.
“What, banging each other isn’t what you’re doing? Is Wyatt making love to you, Stella?” Drake teased her.
She looked embarrassed. Wyatt felt embarrassed. If Drake started calling him her lover he was going to have a real problem with it.
“You know, just mind your own business.” Stella looked relieved when Benny hopped down off the bar and came over, his cell phone in his hand. “Thanks, Benny, we’ll just take a peek and get it right back to you.”
“Whatever you need, goddess.” Benny used a stool to leap back up onto the bar, earning him a few catcalls from patrons.
“You sleeping with him, too?” Drake asked.
“No. How’s your fake fang?” Stella paused in navigating Benny’s phone to glance up and wrinkle her nose at Drake.
“Ouch.” Drake laughed. “It’s actually pretty damn sore, but I’ll be fine. And I get the message. You want me to back off. But how often do I get to give you a hard time? Indulge me.”
She started to speak, then her eyes went wide as she looked at the phone. “Oh my God. Wyatt, you really are wearing a corset.”