him hanging over my head any longer? I need to mark him off as a suspect and yet I still wonder at the sincerity of his request to join us. Why? He doesn’t know us from Adam, for crying out loud.
Get on with it already! You’re going to do as you please anyway.
I turn to face Rafe as we walk through the bar and give him a beaming smile. As long as we’re both clear on my touching Drew, I can refrain from a sharp-assed rejoinder to let him have the last word.
“Thanks, hon, you’re the best.”
“Uh-huh.”
Drew has escorted Olivia ahead of us and they are already moving into the gentleman’s lounge. Rafe and I follow, giving Charlie a goodbye call as we head out for the night. The new guests and off-duty employees are all still in party-till-you-drop mode. After twenty years of non-stop dark in the winter, a gal can go with a little normalcy in her schedule. After all, we do have a business to run.
Have I told you tonight that those leather pants fit your heart-shaped ass like a glove?
I hear the smile in Rafe’s thoughts and know our disagreement is in the past. One of the best things about Rafe is he doesn’t hold a grudge against me. We bicker, we snark, we occasionally have knock-down drag-out fights, but I know he’ll never let me down.
By the time we get to the next room, Drew’s already saying his goodbyes to Olivia. By her flushed and rosy-cheeked appearance, it’s safe to say she had a great night with him and is still leaving with all her blood intact. Good for him. He managed to do the job and leave her blood for Antonio to take another time. I’m impressed in spite of myself.
Olivia turns to leave and sees both Rafe and me approaching.
I address her before she gets a chance to go first. “Good night, Olivia. I look forward to our tea tomorrow morning.”
“I’m excited about it as well. And good night to you both, too. This is one of the best evenings I’ve had in a long while.”
“Glad to hear it, my dear.”
Olivia heads out the double doors leading back to the stairs, leaving Rafe, Drew and me alone in the lounge.
“Well, Drew, mission accomplished, and I have to say, I’m impressed.” I reach my hand out to shake his in a congratulatory gesture, and Drew extends his own in response. Rafe tenses beside me, watching us both carefully.
Drew’s cool clasp over my warmer Were-blood-infused hand sends my mind racing into the pool of his hidden wants and desires. On the surface of the swirling mass of thoughts, I see a cool blue thread snaking in and around a larger, darker, writhing nest. The cool blue reflects the desire Drew shared with us both earlier. Touching on it, I see his request to join our seethe appears forefront in his mind and it was an honest one. What hides beneath it?
I stare into his brown eyes while plunging deeper into his private thoughts. I must get to that darkness and unearth it for what it truly is, and propriety won’t get in my way.
Reaching in, past the surface desire, I delve further into that nest of twists and turns. Pain reaches back through our connection and grabs my heart like a vise. The crushing strength of anger mixes in with grief and hate. Bleak, dark solitude and the loss of a spouse trigger a chain reaction in my own mind.
Pictures of a beautiful, brown-haired woman overlay a buried memory of my first husband. Her pale, freckled skin appears ripped and torn, so like my Aidan’s. Body parts are scattered in a bloody mess of death and destruction. The shock of seeing this death in Drew’s memories, wrapped around his desires, is like nothing I’ve ever encountered.
The waste of life and the despair of the moment freeze me in place. I can see what he wants above all else! I know intimately what that desire is. I have felt it myself in the past, and the pain I initially experienced in our union is nothing compared to what’s fully inside him.
A sharp smack reverberates up through my body and the brown eyes are ripped from my vision, but my hand still holds Drew’s. A small cry reaches my ears and I feel a wetness course down my cheeks. The pain pulls me in and I know I must let go of his hand, but I can’t