Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“They look so real,” I murmur, reaching out to trace the edge of a fang extending past Leif’s lips. When I do, he shudders before catching my wrist in his hand.
There I am. Naked in a hall. Sated, with a softening cock still buried inside my ass.
That’s when reality shows up.
Not quickly. Slowly. One brick at a time.
Behind me Enzo sits up, placing that same forearm around me as he has been all night.
Both of them this time.
Davi leans in closely, kneeling beside us.
Still Leif holds onto my wrist as I stare at him, letting the seconds tick by. One by one. Slow and steady.
And for the first time. I feel… not quite fear.
Not exactly.
It’s more confusion. As though the entire bedrock of what I know just exploded.
“What are you?” I whisper, the question hangs between us like a fragile thing. Except I do know. They’ve been showing me what they are this entire time.
I dismissed them.
I didn’t believe them.
Thought they were crazy, psychotic, deluded.
Leif’s eyes do the thing again. The fangs don’t retract.
They sit where canine teeth used to be, and the difference is small enough that anyone not looking would miss it.
I am looking and it’s causing my reality to blur.
The hallway behind him has gone thin at the edges, like it might give if I leaned on it.
“I think you already know,” he says, his voice dropping to a register that makes my skin prickle.
Enzo’s arm tightens across my body. Davi shifts closer, his breath warm against my neck. The three of them form a triangle around me, and I’m the center point where all their lines converge.
Or they’re trapping me. Hard to tell. Either way I’m naked, so really, where would I even go. Also I have this problem when it comes to curiosity.
“You can’t be,” I say, but my voice lacks conviction. “Vampires don’t exist.”
Davi laughs, the sound rich and musical. “And yet here they are.”
“They,” I parrot back to Davi.
“Just them,” he says, winking. “I’m what’s for dinner. Also, I can tell you they’re vampires, they cannot.”
Leif makes a strangled noise that tells me exactly what he thinks about the word dinner.
I pull my wrist from Leif’s grasp, but only to touch his face again, to feel the impossible reality beneath my fingertips. “How?”
“I cannot tell you that,” he says softly.
“Right, Davi just said that.” I need to know why.
I pull my hand back and slowly rise from Enzo to sit on the side of the sleeping bag. “I don’t know I believe you. Any of you.” I frown, looking at Leif. “You’re in the sun all the time,” I point out. “And you are the one driving him,” I tell Enzo.
Enzo’s dark eyes meet mine, steady and unblinking. “The sun doesn’t kill us. It weakens us.”
“Like how?” I ask, wrapping my arms around myself, suddenly aware of my nakedness.
“We cannot…”
“Say,” I finish for him. “What can you tell me?”
Two years of files open in my head all at once. The business dinners where Leif never eats but drinks wine. Red wine. The way Enzo moves through a room without making a single sound. The way Davi has been reading me since the door.
Quirks of powerful men.
I have been so fucking stupid.
“You are a very special woman, Hadley.”
“I told you not to say that word.”
“I know.”
He reaches for my wrist and for the first time I flinch before giving it over. But he sees it, he notices.
“It isn’t always noticeable,” Leif whispers. “But right here,” his fingertip rolls over the smallest of moles beside my right thumb. “Tells me just how special you are.”
“A mole.” I snatch my hand back. “A mole.”
“A birthmark,” he argues. “A half-moon-shaped birthmark. And even if it weren’t there, I’d still know. There are other ways.”
“What does that mean and know what?” I’m getting frustrated with them.
“You are a Bride,” he says simply.
I laugh. I can’t help it. Laughter echoes all around us. Bouncing off the walls. Echoing back to me. “A what now?”
Leif sighs as though he’s annoyed at my reactions.
“When a Coven is complete, they can sense a Bride,” Davi explains. “Unlike me.”
“You aren’t a Bride?”
“Just a donor.” He shrugs. “A blood bag. Though I’m not sure I’ll ever transition.”
“Davi,” Enzo warns.
Oh, he’s said too much. He’s my way in to get more information.
“Hadley.” Leif turns back to me. “Be our Bride.”
“No.” Now this is diving into weird territory. “I need to get dressed,” I say suddenly, feeling too damn exposed while naked. I don’t even understand their words or this bullshit Bride claim.
“We wouldn’t hurt you,” Davi says, his brown eyes serious for once. “Never you.”
“You’ve been lying to me for two years,” I snap back, realizing I need to walk to the locker room, naked, to get my dress.
Fuck it. I walk back naked.
“Not lying,” Leif tosses at my back. “Omitting.” They follow me. Wonderful, they can get one last view of my perfect ass before I cover it up.
“That’s a distinction without a difference.” My voice shakes slightly.
“Hadley,” Davi calls to me and I don’t know why I almost stumble when he says my name.
“Why now?” I ask, finally. Swinging open the locker room door. I find my bra first and snap that on. My panties are ruined just hanging around my waist. Spotting my dress, I grab it carefully and face the three men who just walked in, holding it in front of me like a shield.
No. Vampires.
Which I’m still not sure I believe is real.
It’s just so impossible.
Leif swallows as though he is weighing his words very carefully. “A Bride becomes insatiable near a,” he pauses.
“Just tell her.” Enzo steps into his pants, zipping them and leaving the top button undone.
I won’t tell him how hot that is.
“Tell me,” I challenge Leif as I step into my dress. I can’t get it completely zipped and I’m not asking them. So it’ll stay partially open.
“Near a compatible Coven,” he mutters under his breath like he’s embarrassed by the words.
Which. Fair.
“So you two have some kind of vampire pheromones. That what? Trigger me to want your dick?” I laugh at how ludicrous that is.
They aren’t laughing.
“Not exactly,” Leif says, his voice dropping lower. “It’s more primal than that.”
I turn to Davi, who’s looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. “And what about you? You’re human?”
“Very much so,” he nods.
“But bound to them.”
“Ah.” He looks to Leif, then Enzo before answering me. “Bound, yes.”
I fumble with my dress, my fingers suddenly clumsy as I continue to attempt to zip it up. “Bound how?”
“Blood exchange,” Enzo answers for him, his voice rough and deep and oh so sexy.
My stomach drops. “Like... what we just did?” The last thing I need in my life right now is three men. Two of which are vampires.
“Similar concept,” Davi explains, moving closer. “But the bite is different. More permanent.”
“You’re telling me vampires are real, I’m apparently some kind of... Bride, and you’ve all been drinking each other’s blood? And Davi works in HR. Allegedly.”
“All of it,” Leif says, stepping forward. “Except Davi owns a bar, he’s not HR.”
I want to deny it. Deny their claims. Except, the receipts are everywhere. Blood on their chins. The fangs. The weird eyes. The speed.
“It’s real, Hadley,” Davi says softly. “You are the one woman in the world who can sustain their life. You have to feel how much you want them.”
“The pull is mutual,” Leif says, his voice low and careful. “We’re drawn to you as well in ways we can’t control.”
“So you’re telling me that my attraction to all three of you, the most inappropriate professional situation I’ve ever been in, is because of vampire pheromones.” That’s kind of bullshit.
Davi steps closer. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“It always is,” I snap, struggling with the zipper and finally giving up. “That’s what people say when they don’t want to admit they’re predators.”
Davi takes a step toward me. I take a step back, and that step back says more than I want it to.
Enzo makes a sound in the back of his throat, not quite a growl, but close enough. I glance at him, catching something fierce in his eyes.
“Hadley,” he says my name the way he said it in the hallway hours ago, when this was still a job and I still had my dress closed. “Two years of watching you and you never once turned my way. Then tonight.”
I laugh again, but it comes out hollow. “You’ve known what I am this whole time. You’ve been waiting to spring this on me. Haven’t you? And you used the most important night of my career to do it. That’s selfish, Leif, and you fucking know it.”
“That’s not—” Leif tries and fails.
“Not waiting,” Davi says. “Leif could only sense you tonight.”
“Sense me?”
“I couldn’t sense what you were, who you are to us, before tonight,” Leif admits.
The locker room suddenly feels too small, the fluorescent lights too harsh. Three powerful men, vampires, if they’re to be believed, surrounding me. I should be terrified. But the part of me that recognizes danger is strangely quiet.
My intuition is quiet and I have no idea what that means.
“We need to protect you,” Leif answers. “From others who may claim you.”
Over my dead body.
I smooth my dress down with my palms before sighing. This conversation is over. “If you will excuse me.”
I turn to leave but Leif is there. Too fast.
How did he move so fast?
“Hadley, you don’t understand,” he says slowly. “You’re ours now.”
I pause and take the longest inhale of my entire adult life because there isn’t an ounce of patience left in my body. And then I hear Angela’s voice whispering through me about complete sentences and the ability to just simply say no.
Six months ago I sat in her solarium and watched her tell me goodbye, and I told myself she was just tired.
She wasn’t. And I’m not the woman who walks past that now. Because that entire afternoon holds a different meaning now. And I need more information than just this moment.
“No.”
The word lands like a gong that splits through the air of the locker room.
Leif’s face falls before he reasserts himself. “I believe…”
“He came on way too strong.” Davi tries to smooth over Leif’s failures. I only give him a brow raise. It’s all he gets. “Date us.”
“Us.” I swing my finger to all three of them. “No,” I say it this time with far more confidence. “No.” Just one more for good measure before I push past Leif and step into the hallway.
Fucking them is okay.
Dating all three?
How would that even work?
And I would have said no to one man. I can’t deal with a relationship right now. I have my career to think about and…
Judy. Shit.
“Hadley, wait.” Davi jogs up to me, half-dressed, jeans pulled on but unbuttoned, no shirt.
“Send the human. What? So you can empathize with me?” I snort, jamming my finger to the elevator.
Davi stops walking. For a second, he just looks at me. His jaw grinds back and forth, the muscle along it pulls tight and lets go.
“I’m not playing vampire messenger.” His voice drops, quieter than I’ve heard it all night. “But I am the only one here who remembers what it’s like to be in your position.”
I step inside the elevator, jabbing the button for the lobby. “So you’re their recruiting agent now?”
Davi catches the door before it closes, slipping inside. “I’m trying to help you understand what’s happening.”
“By telling me I’m some kind of vampire Bride? That’s helping?” The elevator begins its descent, and I lean against the wall, suddenly exhausted. Whatever was holding me up an hour ago is checking out.
“You felt something tonight,” Davi says quietly. “Don’t try to deny it.”
“What I felt was lust. Good sex. That’s all.”
“Is it?” Davi moves closer, his warmth radiating toward me. “Then why did you let him bite you? Why did you ask to see his fangs?”
The elevator dings. I look up at the panel.
Rooftop terrace.
I pressed the lobby. Fuck, I’m losing it.
“Because I was drunk on power and orgasms,” I say, because I am not asking how that happened. I am not giving him the satisfaction.
The doors open to the starry night sky.
“Hadley, wait.” Davi catches up to me, his hand gently grasping my elbow.
I pull my arm back and I don’t look at him.
“No,” I say it again, and every time the word leaves my mouth I feel more like myself. “Don’t follow me.”