He holds my eyes and murmurs, “Let’s go, then.” We step out of the dining room just as Koen calls John a fuckwaffle.
“Does he like to make enemies? Start fights? Watch the world burn?”
“Koen’s big on . . .” Lowe searches for the right words. “Unfiltered honesty.”
No shit. “Who did he challenge? To become Alpha, I mean.”
“No one. His mother was Alpha before him. When she passed, Koen just ascended.”
“How delightfully monarchic. And the pack was just okay with it?”
“Not all of them.”
“And?”
His hand presses on my lower back, wordlessly asking me to take a right. “There were challengers.”
“And?”
“He’s been Alpha for well over a decade, has he not?”
“Mmm. True. Are he and Amanda doing it?”
“She’s his second.”
“Well, are they?”
A brief pause. “Traditionally, the Alpha of the Northwest pack takes a vow of celibacy.”
Oh, God. “Did you?”
Lowe shakes his head. “Feels like it, though,” he murmurs, just as we reach the office. I immediately unhook a pin from my nape and drop on my knees in front of the lock, letting my dress bunch up my thighs. A few seconds later I open the door with a butler-like flourish.
“What?” I whisper, noticing the upturned corner of Lowe’s mouth.
He slips in first, scans the room, then gestures me inside. “Just picturing you doing the same . . .” He closes the door behind him and turns on the light. I see a fireplace so large it could comfortably sleep a midsize family—and a suspicious amount of antlered wall decor. “To break into my room.”
“Ah. Right.” I flinch. “About that, I am sorry that . . .”
“You went through my underwear?”
“Yeah, that.”
He points at the computer on the desk with a small smile, and I dart there, giving the antlers a wide berth, glad to have something else to focus on. “I’ll hide your scent, but make sure you touch as little as possible,” he reminds me.
We don’t have much time, so I nod and hurry. Lowe already bugged several spots in the house, but what I’m doing will allow us to track and rifle through any communication from all of Emery’s devices. And since she doesn’t have an Alex, she’ll never realize.
“Need anything from me?” Lowe asks while I slip into the network, voice pitched low.
I nod between keystrokes. “Set up the Ubertooth and hand me the LAN Turtle.” I snort at his wide-eyed I-didn’t-know-the-essay-was-due-today-and-my-dog-ate-it-anyway expression. “I was kidding. Just keep guard.”
“Thank fuck.” His relief could jump-start a truck’s battery. “How long do you need?”
“Six minutes, tops. Too long?”
“No. I doubt they know how little time it takes you to feed.”
I beam up at him. “Why, thank you.”
“Was that a compliment?” His head tilts in confusion.
“Wasn’t it?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Weren’t you trying to say how low-maintenance I am?”
“No.”
“Bummer.” I bend my head and quickly type the code. “Well, I rescind my warm acceptance of your non-compliment.”
“If you think that’s what it was, you need better ones.”
“Better what?”
“Compliments.”
I look up once more. He’s staring, his eyes halfway between unreadable and indecipherable. “What do you mean?”
“You need to be told the right things.” He shrugs casually, but the movement feels the opposite of casual. “That you’re intelligent, and incredibly skilled at what you do, and brave. That despite your weird belief that you’re heartless, you’re more genuinely caring than anyone I’ve ever met. That you’re so resilient, I can’t quite wrap my head around it. That you’re very . . .” He pauses. Wets his lips. My heartbeat skips. “Very beautiful to look at. Always so beautiful. And that—”
He pauses abruptly, lifting his palm. His shoulders tense, shifting to acute vigilance.
“Someone is coming,” he whispers.
“Emery?” I mouth. I can’t make out any noises, but Were hearing is better than mine.
Lowe shakes his head, and two seconds later I hear them, too. Voices. Two voices. Two men, coming down the stairs.
“Emery’s guards,” he says, barely audible.
The possibility of being caught freezes me. Then the image of Ana pops into my head—the way Emery tried to take her, how terribly she might have hurt her, and fear, real fear drives through me like a spear. We can’t go back home empty-handed.
“Don’t,” I whisper when Lowe is about to turn off the computer. The steps sound terrifyingly closer. “It just needs a couple more minutes.”
“If they come in and find us—”
“They won’t.” I turn off the monitor. “And we’ll—”
I have an idea, but it’s easier shown than explained, so I grasp Lowe’s hand and tug him closer, walking backward until I hit one of the square columns on the sides of the fireplace. The cliché almost makes my teeth hurt, and if Emery’s guards are media literate even just at a third-grade level, they’re not going to fall for it. But it might buy us a couple of minutes, and that’s all that matters.
“Kiss me,” I order, pulling him farther into me. He needs to be inside my space, towering over me.
“What?” Lowe’s brow is one deep furrow.
“Let’s just pretend we got—we’re newly married and got, I don’t know, horny, and—” And ended up in a random office. Maybe we’re kinky. Maybe we’re idiots. Maybe we’re pathetic.
Shit, the guards are never gonna fall for it. And they’re coming.
“They think you’re feeding,” Lowe hisses from above me. If I could devote any brain cells to not panicking, I would roll my eyes.
“I know, but since we’re here, and they are basically here—”
“Feed. From me.” He looks dead serious.
“What?”
“Pretend that’s what we came here for.”
“No! It’s—”
Actually, a pretty good idea. A really good idea, even. Still doesn’t explain why we’re in here. We could say we got lost and it was the first unlocked door we found.
“Okay.” I nod. The steps are getting closer. “Tilt your neck, I’ll pretend I’m drinking from your vein.”
“Misery.” His eyes drill into mine. “You have to bite me.”
“Why?”
“They’re Weres. They’re going to be able to smell it if you’re not really drinking.”
“What? What? I’ve never—”
“Misery,” Lowe orders, or maybe it’s a plea, or maybe my name is just a word he likes to say, a word he likes to think of.
A second later, my fangs sink into the vein at the base of his neck.
Two seconds later, the door to the office opens.
CHAPTER 17
The past year notwithstanding, he was always comfortable with sex and everything that came with it. He knew what he liked, and he knew how to get it. He was content.
Now he can’t remember what satisfaction felt like.
It’s surprising how smoothly it all goes, especially considering how new we both are at this.
There’s Lowe, who cannot possibly have a clue of what to expect. There’s me, a notoriously bad Vampyre. And then there are some very shitty circumstances. Like how mauled we’re about to get.
And yet, even without knowing what to do, I know exactly what to do. I know to draw the tip of my nose across the base of his throat to find the perfect spot. I know to stop where his blood smells the sweetest and his skin forms the thinnest veil. I know to press my lips to his flesh in a brief, indulgent moment of silent gratitude. Above all, I know without any trace of doubt, or hesitation, or fear, to bite. My canines might be unused, but they are plenty sharp, guided by instinct if not experience. And after a brief, suspended moment of screaming disorientation, Lowe’s blood fills my mouth.