I smirk at him, but I’m only pretending to be irritated. In reality, I did have a good fucking time last night…er…last day? Eh. You get what I’m trying to say. It felt kind of good to have someone stay in bed with me, talk about meaningless shit. It’s been so long since I’ve done that with anyone. Hell, maybe I’ve never done that with a man? I think the last person I stayed up all night and shot the breeze with was my mom.
Speaking of, it’d be awfully nice to know if these men had anything to do with her death before I go getting all attached to them and shit.
“And what are your plans for tonight?” I ask the three handsome men, remembering how incredible it felt to have two of them in my bed, let alone three. Dear God, how awesome would it be to have all three tucked between the sheets with me? “I assume you’re all staying with me?”
“Now that we have official clearance from House Stiltz, yes.” Vyce smiles as Sorrow walks a small circle around me and Wolfe, his black trench billowing out behind him.
“No, they’re not,” Wolfe corrects, the corner of his lip twitching. “We agreed to one day each in the beginning.”
“Wolfe doesn’t like to share,” Sorrow teases, poking his friend in the shoulder…and getting a revolver pressed to his temple in exchange. Wolfe moves so goddamn fast that I didn’t even see him reach for his weapon, but Sorrow doesn’t look surprised. His blue eyes find mine and he grins. “Although it’s so much more fun that way, don’t you think?”
“Piss off.” Wolfe tucks his gun away and tries to steer me deeper into the garden and away from his ‘brothers’. They follow along anyway.
“So, what are your plans for tonight?” Vyce asks, sweeping up alongside of me. “Lord knows Wolfe isn’t much of a conversationalist.”
“If you have to be here, then be here and make yourself scarce,” Wolfe snarls at him, his muscles tense and his gray eyes steely and dark. There’s a hint of possessiveness in his words that surprises me. I mean, the man doesn’t even like me and he’s playing keep away from his brother, a man that he considers more worthy than himself to take the throne? I don’t get it.
I look between the three men and shrug, trying to move the conversation along a bit.
“You could show me a few moves.” I make a few faux punches in the air, but as soon as I say moves, both Sorrow and Vyce get these pervy looks on their faces. Too bad their perv looks are super sexy, too.
“She doesn’t mean sex,” Wolfe growls out, but the other men look like they could care less.
“We could practice some fighting techniques. Not that Cam really needs them. She seems to be a bit of a bad ass.” Sorrow grins and mimes my punching moves right back, tagging me lightly on the shoulder.
“She needs proper training,” Wolfe says, like he actually cares to teach me. But that’s okay. If I need to up my bad-assery, I’ll take a Krav Maga class. Oh. Wait. I’d probably kill the instructor or one of my sparring partners on accident. And no supernatural class would want a dhampir in their midst.
Fuck my life.
But whatever.
I’d rather be queen anyway.
“I don’t suppose there’s anything wrong with a bit of training?” Vyce looks me up and down, his blood-red eyes sparking with lascivious memory. Ugh. This is why one-night stands are supposed to stay one night. If the sex is good and the person is interesting…then things get muddled, confusing. And I’m supposed to hang out with this man for how long? Too long is the answer. Or…maybe not long at all when they realize that even with their boss’s fertility spell, I’m not going to end up pregnant. I’m just hoping at this point that I’ll be past the coronation stage and in a position to fight back if Rumpel comes for me. “What do you want to learn?”
Wolfe scowls and says something about his brothers under his breath that would make a sailor blush—and not in a good way either.
“Lay out my options,” I say, leaning into Wolfe when he tries to pull away from me. I like how he smells, like leather and musk and…human. He smells a little bit like human and that’s comforting to me. Mom always said I was born with the strength of a vampire and the heart of a human. Now, I’m not sure that I’d go that far, but there’s definitely something in me that’s a little mushier than it should be, a soft spot in my chest that shouldn’t be there. If it wasn’t, maybe I wouldn’t miss my mother so much?
If it wouldn’t give me away, I’d ask these guys about her, if they knew who killed her, if they did it themselves. Gods, I hope not.
“That hellhound got the better of you, didn’t it?” Vyce asks as Sorrow bends down and adjusts a few decorative white rocks that’ve been kicked slightly out of place. I think it’s safe to say he may have some slight form of OCD. But when he stands up, he plucks a white rose from the bush and tucks it behind my ear, making me smile. What a shameless flirt.
“I suppose you could say that…” I hazard, the feel of Wolfe’s eyes on the side of my face an almost irresistible lure. I want to turn and look at him, connect with his gaze, slide my hands inside his trench coat and feel his warmth. Gross. What the hell is so interesting about these guys? I should want to shuck them like old corn and yet, I’m intrigued.
“You use weapons a lot?” Sorrow asks, tucking his hands into his trench coat and looking me up and down—and not in a flirtatious way this time. He looks like he’s scanning me for strengths and weaknesses. When he nods his chin and crosses his arms over his broad chest, I have to wonder if it’s that friggin’ obvious.
“Always,” I say, finally letting go of Wolfe’s arm and bending low to grab a handful of purple fabric. Slowly, purposefully, I drag the skirt up the pale skin of my legs and flash both Ethel and Lucy in sheathes strapped to my calf and thigh. The vamps don’t care if I’m locked and loaded. Like I said, none of them expect to be taken unawares by a dhampir and most especially not with something as banal as a gun. “Sword’s upstairs though. Too hard to hide a falchion blade in a skintight dress.”
“Can you fight without them?” Vyce continues, tracing the lean length of my calf, my thigh, flicking his gaze up to mine and making my breath hitch.
“Depends,” I say, letting the fabric tumble back to the gravel path beneath my feet. “Do I have to?”
“Wolfe is super dependent on his guns, too,” Sorrow says, hooking a thumb in the scowling man’s direction at the same moment the tail of his tattoo flickers across his throat and disappears again. “But it leaves you with a pretty big disadvantage if you lose them—like you did your sword.”
I move over to a nearby bench and take a seat, my stomach rumbling slightly. As a dhampir, I need both food and blood to survive. I’ll be okay for a few more days without eating, but my body isn’t going to like it. Maybe I can fill myself up with sex instead? Yeah, yeah, sex is good.
“If I specialize in hand-to-hand combat and then lose my hand, wouldn’t that also put me at a pretty big disadvantage?” I ask with a cheeky little smile. Training with these guys, picking their brains and stealing a few tips and tricks, that sounds like fun.
It sounds like more fun to take them all upstairs and see if Wolfe can’t be persuaded to share…
“You’re half-vampire,” Vyce says, his voice like shadows in the night, black on black. Just the sound of it makes me shiver, and I close my eyes. When I do, I can imagine lying on his chest and listening to him talk. We could have a conversation about cheese crackers and it’d turn me on, that’s how pretty his voice is. How dangerous. “Your entire body is a weapon.”
“Even this?” I ask, pointing at my crotch and noticing that Wolfe’s expression gets even more shuttered and closed-off. Guess he’s nursing a pretty big crush for you-know-who. “The muscles in there are so strong, I could probably take a man’s cock off.”