Expression blank, he looked up from the adoring blonde and said, “I’ll stay here.” It could be his natural reticence. Or more storm and magic. “Will report as soon I have everything.”
There was something about the emptiness of his expression that reminded me of the lying, sneaky, former boyfriend, Rick LaFleur, but I knew that Bruiser wouldn’t cheat on me, so the lack of emotion was something else. “You want to talk about it?” I asked.
He looked at the curvy vampette on my kitchen table and then back to me. “I now have a bond scion,” he said unhappily.
“Another superpower?”
“Yes.” He said, “And I have no place for her to sleep.”
Edmund said, “I’ll care for her. She can sleep with me.”
“I’ll change then and go with you,” Bruiser said, his voice still empty. “Nicolle. Go with Edmund. He is the primo of Jane Yellowrock. You will do as he says and obey him in all things so long as they do not conflict with your service and vows to me.”
“Yes, my master.” She released his arm and slid her feet to the floor, standing, all vampy and slinky, like a rain-damp sex goddess. To Edmund she asked, “May we share blood?”
“I was counting on it. This way, Nicolle,” Edmund said, leading the way to the weapons room hidden behind the bookshelf. They disappeared into the dark cavern and the shelf clicked shut.
My sweetcheeks and I eased around the puddles and splatters of blood, stripped, toweled off, and changed clothes in the laundry, the only clean room in the downstairs. There was nothing romantic in the process, but I couldn’t help but see Bruiser in my peripheral vision. Long and muscled, yet lean and hard. Every inch of him. His face was haggard, however. “You want to talk about it?”
He paused in the act of pulling a long-sleeved T-shirt over his head, his skin pale in the darkness of the storm-shadows. His brown eyes were troubled. “I didn’t mean to bind her. I have no place to keep a blood-bound scion. And no desire to keep her. I only want you.”
For a moment my heart warmed, and then I figured out why he was so upset and all my happy-happy-joy-joy leaked away. “She’s going to want to sleep with you.”
“Yes. Constantly.”
Part of me wanted to laugh. Another part wanted to go drag her out of the weapons room and into the daylight and watch her burn. Beast murmured into my mind, Mine. My mate. Her claws extruded and she milked my brain. It hurt but the pain helped me to think. To Bruiser, I said, “Can you give her away?” She’s a thinking sentient being, not a slave, I thought. But if she was bound, that was exactly what Bruiser had created. No wonder he was upset. I had bound Edmund. I hated that. What were we two becoming?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I need to talk to Brandon and Brian. I’m still . . . new? . . . to the powers of an Onorio.” He pulled the tee into place and slid jeans up his legs and buttoned them. Tight and fitted to his butt. Bruiser had the best butt. And the best nose, Romanesque and proud.
I finished dressing in jeans and rubberized boots and layered tees. And all my weapons. It was daylight, which made us—mostly—safe from vamps, but not humans, though they were far easier to dispatch than vamps.
Kill, I thought, suddenly, stopping in the act of pulling my weapons harness over my shoulders. Not dispatched. Humans weren’t errands. Or targets. They were people, and if they fought for one side or the other it was because they were bound, not free-willed. And I had killed five tonight. There was a time when I’d never have killed a human. New Orleans had changed me. Being around vamps had changed me. Having things, possessions, friends, family had changed me. I now had people in my life worth killing over. Bruiser had changed too, in a positive way, no longer a brainwashed vamp tool, blood-meal, and plaything.
I pulled on an old leather jacket and said, “I’m here if you need me. For anything.”
Bruiser stopped, one hand just about to settle a nine-millimeter into its holster, his eyes finding me in the shadows of early morning. A faint smile touched his lips, lighting his eyes. “You have my heart.”
It wasn’t exactly the three little words, but it was dang close. I wasn’t sure how to respond, but settled on, “You have me. Pretty much all of me since my heart is stuck inside.” Oh crap. Did that last part come out of my mouth? Yes. Of course it did.
He snapped the weapon in place and reached me in one stride, an arm around my back, pulling me close, his body a furnace, his arm like heated steel. He hesitated, his lips hovering above mine, so close. His eyes held me closer, moving back and forth between my own, and his smile spread. His kiss was gentle, as if he had never kissed me before, as if he were unsure, uncertain if I would pull away. Something altered inside me. A thing, something I had no name for, filled me, soft and sweet as jasmine on the night wind.
I slid my arms over his shoulders and pulled myself into him. The kiss deepened and I sighed into his mouth. When he pulled away, we were both breathing harder, and Bruiser was still smiling, a strange light in his eyes. He said, “If your bed weren’t bloody I would have peeled your clothes away and taken you right now.”
“If the floor wasn’t bloody I’d have taken you on the floor.”
Bruiser spluttered with laughter and the moment was broken, though the sweetness remained as he dropped his head and laughed into my shoulder. His hold around me eased. “And that, my darling War Woman, is why you have my heart.”
? ? ?
We were almost back to HQ when I got a call. It was Lee. “Getchur butt to the Council Chambers. An emissary from the Europeans is on the way. There’s two on our shores and they’re headed here, ETA about twelve.”
CHAPTER 15
A Case of the Cheerfuls
We made it to the back entrance of suckhead command only two minutes before the EV emissaries arrived. Full daylight in the storm was dim and dreary, but it was daylight still, which meant human blood-servants as emissaries, not vamps. They would be someone’s primo blood-servants, which meant vampy protocols had to be followed, though the lack of notice also meant some protocols could be ignored. The difficult part was deciding which protocols might be ignored without accidentally resulting in insult. Deliberate insult was a whole ’nother matter. Vamps were weird.
Leo’s human delegation was gathered in the entry, watching on the security cameras as two human males drove up, parked, and stepped from their two-seater antique vehicle. It was the same two who were trying to come ashore when the Robere twins disappeared to hunt Grégoire. They were clothed in black, with purple shirts and ties, with black umbrellas shielding them from the rain.
Wrassler murmured, “Royal livery. But more important, where in the world did they get a Daimler in New Orleans? George?”
“A 1935 Straight Edge,” Bruiser replied. “And I have no idea.”