everafter Read online

  “I took the liberty of ordering one of our specialties for you both,”

  Sebastian said. “It’s called a Waltz on the Moon.”

  I cradled the stem of the cocktail glass and took a small sip. A subtle blend of fruit flavors flowed over my tongue: banana liqueur, a hint of apples…and was that lychee, too? I would have to ask one of the bartenders later. “It’s very good.”

  Alexa had closed her eyes to taste it, and the sight of her savoring the concoction only heightened my need. I let my right hand rest on her thigh, just above her knee. “Mmm,” she said. “Yes.” I wasn’t sure whether she was responding to my comment or my touch, but it didn’t really matter.

  • 108 •

  everafter

  I took another sip and then leaned toward Sebastian. “Tell me. Why are you giving us the VIP treatment?”

  He laughed, throwing back the shot that the server had brought him with one practiced flick of his wrist. “Am I not allowed to be curious about the newest member of our little community?”

  “You’re no vampire,” Alexa said, before I could. She frowned as she tried to figure him out.

  But I already had. “What do you become, when you shift?”

  He had just enough time to salute me with the empty glass before it was taken from him and replaced with a full one. “How did you guess?”

  “You may not be a vampire, but you’re not beneath them on the food chain, either.”

  He flashed his teeth at my assessment. “Technically, it is possible for a vampire to take blood from a shifter. But exceedingly rare.” He shrugged. “The act of feeding usually triggers the change.”

  This was new information to file away. Remembering Darren’s reaction to our assault, I could imagine that Weres in general didn’t take well to being bitten. I looked him over again, trying to guess his animal half. He carried himself like a crown prince—confident in his superiority yet effortlessly charming. He didn’t seem like a loner, so it was unlikely that he was a feline. But neither did he strike me as a dependent person who wouldn’t feel whole without a pack.

  “So if you were to bite me, Valentine,” he said playfully, “it’s likely that I would transform into a large black wolf before your very eyes, and tear out your throat.”

  Very deliberately, I leaned over to kiss Alexa’s neck, just behind her ear. “Fortunately, you’ll never have to test that theory.”

  He smirked. It looked good on him. “Never say never.”

  “How were you bitten?” Alexa asked. I glanced at her, wondering what she thought of this banter. The city lights illuminated her hair, making it glow.

  Sebastian threw back his second shot, leaned against the wall, and crossed his arms over his chest. “I wasn’t.” He seemed pleased by our expressions of shock. “I’m a pureblood. Both of my parents are werewolves.”

  My brain was tripping over itself at the knowledge that the mutation caused by the lycanthropy virus could be inherited. At least

  • 109 •

  Nell Stark and Trinity Tam

  this explained his superior attitude. “Have you been shifting since…the beginning?” I asked awkwardly. It was hard to visualize what would happen to a newborn werewolf on his first full moon.

  “No. The transformation is triggered by puberty.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “Enough about me. You’re an intriguing—”

  But we never got to hear exactly what I was that he found so fascinating, because at that moment, a stunning South Asian woman wearing a dark red sari ducked inside our booth and crouched next to Sebastian. She murmured something that I was unable to hear over the music, and Sebastian immediately got to his feet.

  “I’m going to have to take my leave,” he said as the woman stepped away. “Something has come up, and I need to attend to it immediately. I apologize.” On anyone else, that might have sounded like an excuse, but he seemed genuinely regretful. “Please, feel free to stay in the booth. And your drinks are on the house.”

  “Take care,” I said. And then he was gone, the curtain swaying in the aftermath of his departure.

  I leaned back against the warm leather and fiddled with one of my cuff links. They were silver buttons—Alexa had given them to me for my birthday, along with the black silk button-up shirt that I had on right now. I ran my fingers along the hem of her dress, glad to finally be alone with her again. Sebastian was interesting, but his proprietary attitude was grating. The way he’d taken my hand downstairs, the way he had ordered our drinks…it almost felt as though he was treating us like escorts. I wanted to bring him down a peg.

  “Do you want another round?” Alexa asked.

  “Sure. Scotch?”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  I grinned at her wickedly. If we were on Crown Prince Sebastian’s tab, then I was going to go all out. I pulled aside the curtain just enough to flag down a server, and ordered two of the finest scotches she could produce—ice in a glass on the side.

  When the drinks arrived, Alexa picked out the most perfect ice cube she could find, dropped it into her glass, and crawled onto my lap. I groaned, my hands automatically going to her waist.

  “You feel so damn good,” I whispered, leaning in toward her.

  “He wants you,” she said.

  I paused inches from her mouth. That was not the response I’d

  • 110 •

  everafter

  expected. “He wants me? No way. Men like him are not interested in women like me.”

  “You’re wrong.” Alexa bypassed my lips entirely and gently took my earlobe between her teeth. My rational brain was screaming at me to back off, but I couldn’t stop my hips from bucking into her.

  “Doesn’t…matter,” I managed. “Just. Want. You.”

  “Oh?” She pulled back to look at me. “Well, I want my scotch.”

  I barely managed to stifle a shiver; assertive Alexa made me weak in the knees, every time. I reached for her glass, swirled it once, and then held it to her mouth. She swallowed, licked her lips, and kissed me. I sucked the scotch from her tongue, and when she clutched my hair in both hands, I growled. Need welled up hot and fierce like magma, bursting into my blood. When she broke the kiss, I tried to complain—

  but she pushed two of her fingers into my mouth and switched her focus to my neck. She sucked hard on my pulse point and my heart tried to beat its way out of my chest. When she dug in her teeth, I groaned her name.

  With one last nip at my tender skin, she eased her weight back until our eyes were level. “What do you need, Val?” Her voice was low and smoky, the words slow. Deliberate.

  I was going out of my mind. “You. Need you. So bad.”

  “You’re coming home with me tonight.” It wasn’t a request. The fear, the anxiety—all of it turned to ash beneath the blazing tide of my love for this woman. I looked into her fathomless eyes and found myself.

  “Yes.”

  The cab ride home was a struggle to remain clothed. I pushed Alexa’s dress up as high as I could without exposing her, teasing her smooth thighs with my fingertips until the heady aroma of her need was thick on the air. She retaliated by popping open each button of my shirt and pressing hot sucking kisses to the skin she revealed. I was going to have marks everywhere. I couldn’t get enough.

  We stumbled up the front steps and into the apartment, but Alexa didn’t give me any time to reflect on how it felt to finally be home again. She dug her fingers beneath the waistband of my pants and tugged, pulling me into the bedroom.

  “Watch,” she commanded imperiously, her hands going to the complex knot at the nape of her neck. A moment later, the dress was a

  • 111 •

  Nell Stark and Trinity Tam

  black puddle at her feet. Thirst ignited in my throat as I took in the pale lines of her naked body. I wanted her—all of her—with an intensity I’d never felt before. It was hard not to take control from her—not to press her into the wall and slide both my teeth and my fingers insi
de her body—but I forced myself to comply with her seduction. For now. She divested me of my shirt and undid the button and zipper of my pants with her teeth. And then she pushed me backward until my hamstrings hit the edge of the bed. I toppled. She followed, crawling up my torso until our breasts were aligned. I squeezed her hips hard at the so-soft sensation. She slid one thigh between my legs and we rocked together—hands stroking and bodies melding—until sweat slicked between us.

  “Need you, need you,” I gasped, clutching hard at her shoulders in an effort to get closer—to warm all the places inside me that had frozen without this. I had been so foolish. This passion was at the very heart of us, and to deny it, to refuse to feed it, was worse than folly—it was sacrilege.

  “I’m right here,” she said against my lips before moving back down the length of my body. “I love you, Valentine. And I need you. I need us—like this, always.” One hand remained at my breasts, twisting and tugging, connecting twin points of fire. And then she dipped her head and made love to me with her mouth, drinking me in. I the chalice, she the priestess. Helpless, I could do nothing but sob out her name in relief, in ecstasy, in love.

  I shouted my triumph, my surrender, as the world turned to molten flame.

  When I opened my eyes, she was lying next to me, lightly running her fingers through the sweat-dampened hair at my brow. She smiled brilliantly. “Welcome home, love.”

  Home. Yes, this was home—not this shabby apartment on the Lower East Side, but Alexa. I was driven by one imperative now: to claim her as my own in all possible ways. To hold nothing back. To come to her as wholly myself and to be embraced, body and soul. Galvanized, I rolled on top of her and bent my head to her breasts. Beyond words, there was this: the salt-cut sweetness of her skin, the low whimper that caught in her mouth, the frantic glide of her heat against my stomach. It was hard, so hard, to make my mouth soft against her when the thirst

  • 112 •

  everafter

  flared, goading me to sink my teeth in and take. But not yet. Instead, I flattened my hand between us and filled her.

  I kissed my name off her lips, cupping her face gently with my other hand. My arm rose and fell in a strong rhythm—I the tide and she the moon. My heart was bursting, seeping gold, shedding its old skin and donning a new. When she was beyond the ability to return my kisses, I pulled away just enough to look into her soul. You are my home, I told her silently. Not this place, but you. You—

  my anchor, my lodestone, my sunrise. My ambrosia. Trembling as though she could hear my thoughts, she threw back her head. My gaze dropped to her neck—to the pulse thundering beneath her skin. “Take me,” she groaned, driving herself down on my fingers. “Do. It. Val—”

  Finally, I gave myself over to instinct, sheathing my teeth in her jugular in one powerful, surging motion. Her scream was staccato, the air suddenly forced from her lungs as her smooth muscles contracted around my hand. I drank without remorse, savoring the aromatic richness of her blood as she leaned her forehead against my shoulder, gasping. Bearing down hard against her thigh, I groaned into her skin as the ecstasy found me a second time.

  Finally, her body quieted. As intoxicated as I was by the very essence of her sliding down my throat, I managed to pull away. She shuddered at the sensation of my teeth leaving her, and I tenderly stroked the back of her head with one hand.

  “Where’s the ointment, baby?” I asked, letting my tongue dart out to catch the blood that was still welling up from each tiny wound. So good. Blindly, she fumbled with the drawer of the nightstand before handing me a fresh tube.

  “Prepared, I see,” I said as I quickly smeared the oily paste over the bite.

  She kissed my temple. “Just hopeful.” She stretched, throwing her arms around my neck. “I should have seduced you two weeks ago. That was so much better than you biting me in a sterile room with the world looking on.”

  I completed the job with a Band-Aid and pulled back just enough to meet her gaze. “Does it bother you that my thirst gets all tangled up with, you know, wanting you?”

  • 113 •

  Nell Stark and Trinity Tam

  She smoothed the hair back from my eyes and gently kissed my lips. “Not in the slightest. And in case you haven’t noticed, I react pretty strongly to your teeth in my skin.”

  I shivered at the promise in her voice and leaned down to press a kiss behind her ear. “You’re amazing, you know that? So. Fucking Amazing.”

  “And you,” she said, punctuating each word with a kiss, “are mine.”

  We yanked back the covers then, and slid beneath them. Alexa cuddled close immediately, and didn’t stop moving until she was lying half on top of me. For the first time since I’d come home from the hospital, I felt at peace. There was no trace of the incessant lowgrade panic that had been tearing up my stomach like an ulcer. I was complete.

  • 114 •

  everafter

  Chapter teN

  But even Alexa’s embrace couldn’t protect me from the nightmare. The next morning, I woke, gasping and sweating, from the memory of my leg crumpling beneath me as I tried to run. Blinking in the warm light that filtered through the blinds, I pressed the heel of my palm over my racing heart until it began to calm. Fortunately, I hadn’t woken Alexa. She had turned onto her back during the night and was snoring lightly. Adorable. My fingers itched to brush away the dark smudges under her eyes.

  I rolled out of bed cautiously so as not to disturb her and pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Somehow, while brushing my teeth, I migrated from the bathroom sink to the doorway so that I could continue watching her sleep. I couldn’t stop smiling, which made me drool toothpaste onto the floor.

  “You were really stupid for staying away,” I admonished my reflection, once I had spat and rinsed.

  Finally, I decided that I could tear myself away from her long enough to prepare breakfast ingredients for whenever she woke. I was thinking omelet. A huge, cheesy, ham-and-veggie-laden omelet, chock full of everything that her body so desperately needed to replenish what I was taking. Maybe now that her prodigal chef had returned, she’d put on some weight.

  Ten minutes later, I was chopping up a red pepper and humming along to my favorite U2 album when a knock came at the door. I glanced at the clock over the oven and frowned. Who the hell would be visiting us at ten a.m. on a Saturday? Keeping the chain on, I cracked the door. The tall man standing behind it was probably the last person I would have expected.

  • 115 •

  Nell Stark and Trinity Tam

  “Penn?” I undid the chain and let in Jack Pennington, my father’s head of security. Dread punched me in the gut as my brain cycled through the potential reasons for him being here. “Is my father—”

  “He’s fine,” Penn said brusquely, and I sighed in relief. Despite my complete disillusionment with everything my father stood for, he was still my dad. A part of me would always care.

  “You look like you’re making a smooth recovery, Val,” Penn said as he took a seat on my couch and set his briefcase on my coffee table. He looked like a former NFL linebacker—strong and huge, but starting to go soft. His thinning salt and pepper hair was cut in a military style. He probably would have seemed intimidating if I hadn’t known him since I was six years old.

  “Alexa’s taking good care of me.” I could never resist flaunting my queerness in front of my father and his cronies, despite the fact that it was a juvenile move—like poking your older siblings repeatedly until they blew up in your face.

  Penn didn’t answer. Instead, he flicked open the briefcase to reveal a gun. The weapon was sleek and black. My first thought was that he had come to kill me, and I was a fucking idiot for being so trusting. Adrenaline blazed down my spine, and I took a step backward, hoping that he wouldn’t realize Alexa was home. I couldn’t fight—the enhancing effects of her blood had worn off by now. In the wake of my attack, why hadn’t I decided to learn a martial art? Why was I still so helpless?
<
br />   But then he gestured toward the weapon, palms up, and I realized that something else entirely was going on, here. “Fucking hell, Penn,”

  I muttered breathlessly. “You should warn a mugging victim before busting out a gun.”

  Naturally, he found this funny. “After what has happened, it’s good that you’re paranoid.” He ran one thick finger along the barrel in a loving gesture that really creeped me out. “The Colt M1911A1—singleaction and semiautomatic. The gun of the Armed Forces for decades, until it was replaced in the nineties by the Italian piece of shit Beretta.”

  Penn looked like he wanted to spit on my carpeting. Thankfully, he refrained. “Compliments of your father, who wants you to be able to defend yourself.”

  I didn’t feel like admitting that I’d just been thinking along those same lines a split second ago. “Wow, you know, thanks ever so much

  • 116 •

  everafter

  for this. Daddy dearest sure knows how to make a girl feel loved and cherished. What says ‘get well soon’ better than a fucking gun, one whole month after the incident?”

  “Your father is a busy man, Val,” Penn said, unsmiling. “He’s doing what he believes necessary to keep you safe.” From a folder in the top pocket of the briefcase, he extracted a manila envelope. “Fifteen lessons at the firing range on Twentieth, between Fifth and Sixth. And the certification necessary to own any weapon you want.”