As soon as I thought of that bastard, red hot fury hit my insides like a brand, and they sizzled.
Yup.
That was it.
I didn’t know why they were connected and I didn’t like it.
But Callum wasn’t the sharing type, and I knew exactly what he’d want in exchange for that information. He’d want to know how Matthew had become a shifter.
I wasn’t even telling my brother that.
So we were at an impasse, and we were going to stay there.
Discomfort or no, I had no basis to break our alliance, no reason to give up our truce other than a niggling little emotion in the back of my head. Emotions were annoyances I’d suppressed for years, so I simply quelled this one, writing it off as hatred of Claude that transferred and morphed into suspicion.
That night and the next day, I tried to focus on enjoying having a brother again. I taught him everything Lundy had taught me about running, forcing him to jog down a dirt road with me in the moonlight.
Of course, he didn’t need my lessons, he could race and beat me whenever he wanted—he had the speed of the wind now. But it was nice to have the company. And it was epic when he raced ahead and then smashed face first into the ground because he hadn’t noticed the tripwire I’d strung up that afternoon between two trees.
“Bitch!” he’d moaned. But his broken nose had been healed within minutes and then Matthew proceeded to grab me by the arms and swing me in a circle so fast that my feet lifted off the ground and he dislocated my shoulder.
“Dick!” I’d cursed in fond, familiar fury as he’d carried me through a short meadow, back to the country house Gray had procured for us, safehouse number four post-rescue. Z and Andros had been able to heal me in record time, which annoyed Matthew, because it made his new vampire healing that much less special.
I’d blown a raspberry at him.
Days turned into one week, then two as we moved from location to location, the guys starting up a one-on-one round robin soccer tournament in between listening to police scanners and waiting to see if the Pinnacle had caught up to us. But, without Muller, it seemed there wasn’t a bloodhound among the pinheads. No one seemed too obsessed with finding us, particularly since this final breakout had wiped out so many vampires. As far as the Pinnacle seemed to be concerned, some rogue citizens had taken it upon themselves to relieve the government of this “problem” and gotten carried away. It turned out that most of the frozen officers hadn’t been quite dead. So the damage we’d done was far smaller than we’d thought.
We’d won.
And I found myself at a loss.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I shouldn’t have worried.
While I was busy looking over my shoulder, Gray was busy making a plan.
I woke up one random Tuesday evening (we’d become as nocturnal as the vampires), I turned over in bed, clutching the furnished rental home’s flowered comforter, intending to fall right back asleep. But I found Gray sitting on the mattress beside me instead of Evan, who’d fallen asleep with me in his arms. Immediately, I was wide awake.
Gray was the only holdout of the crew.
And since we’d rescued Matthew, he’d avoided my bedroom like the plague. It didn’t matter what house or apartment he dragged us to, as soon as a room was declared mine, he acted like it was a nuclear fallout zone. He would not step foot inside.
He’d kissed me and fooled around with me on the couch. He’d fingered me up against the bathroom wall the other day. But we hadn’t gone all the way. And the only damn excuse he’d given was, “I want it to be right.”
According to his hot, stubborn ass, it never was. At first, I thought he was just paranoid about the Pinnacle, trying to do his part by staying alert. After a while, part of me worried he wasn’t over his ex—that part of me selfishly didn’t even want to remind him about her, so I kept quiet and took out my sexual frustration on the other four. They didn’t seem to mind.
But this, planting himself in my bed, that seemed like a pretty damn big statement for Mr. Mars, so I made sure I stretched nice and long, arching my back and sliding the covers down to give him a good look at what he was missing or—hopefully—what he was about to get.
“Get dressed,” Gray’s eyes were distracted by the way my nipples peaked through my shirt for only a minute before he tossed a little black dress and some black stilettos onto the bedspread. “Do your hair and makeup. Be downstairs in ten.”
I shot up in bed. “In ten? Are you joking?” That wasn’t enough time to shave even one of my legs. Not unless I used—
He tossed a disposable wand on the bed. “Ten, that’s it, or I’m carrying your ass down.” Gray left my room, closing the door behind him.
I scrambled off the bed and into my cramped little en suite to use the facilities.
Then I wrote spell after spell as fast as I could to get my sweaty, tired ass sexy for Gray. Because if he was finally ready to play, then dammit, I wasn’t giving him an excuse not to.
He knocked on the door after exactly ten minutes and I was standing there waiting for him. My hair was piled up on top of my head with twenties-style pin curls held in place by nothing but magic in the hope that he could run his hands through them later and just make them tumble down without any issue. My eyes were smoky and my lipstick was a tempting cranberry. The black dress he’d given me was too tight and low cut for a bra, so I’d left it off, letting the fabric cling to my breasts. Under the thigh high skirt, I wore a tiny lace thong, one that was easy to pull aside or rip in half. I hoped he’d do the latter.
Gray’s eyes scanned me from head to toe, zeroing in on the juncture between my thighs. I hoped like hell that meant he was thinking what I was thinking.
He wore a suit, like we were going on a date, so my hope ratcheted up another notch.
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
“You’ll see.” He took my hand and led me down the narrow, uneven carpeted stairs. The lights to the stairwell were off for some reason so I lifted my hand to give us some illumination, but he covered it up. “Nope, not yet.”
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I realized the entire living room was dark, the couches shoved up against the walls, coffee table missing.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“The vampires all took off for the night.” Gray said.
“You bribed them, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
A beautiful suspicion started to build inside my head that Gray wanted to be alone with me.
But then I heard Z’s whispered whine, “How long are we going to have to wait to see her?”
I leaned into Gray. “You didn’t get rid of the rest of them?”
“They’re unbribable when it comes to you.” He sounded put out, like he’d tried and failed, which made me smile and squeeze his hand.
“Hey, this is our date, right? We can pretend they aren’t here if you want.”
He chuckled and turned to nuzzle my ear. “That sounds perfect.”
“What are you saying?” Zavier called out in the darkness. “I can’t hear.”
There was a thump and an “ouch,” and I was pretty sure he just got smacked in the chest.