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My eyes dared to sweep back to the field, focusing on the man my father wanted me to go on this side quest with. To deliver a necklace. From a box. Without much more context than that.
I sighed.
Well, the first step would be to locate Ander Mendez. And from there, I would have to control my eyes and thoughts.
“But,” I sighed, “I’m willing to do this. For our families.”
Kiara beamed, relief sparkling in her oceanic eyes. “For our families. Exactly.”
***
My day with Kiara was rather typical of us—two friends wandering the pack land, exploring the forest, and then ending the day with takeout on the front porch. I scanned the house across the road with an eagerness that felt foreign to me. Anticipation seemed to follow me wherever I went, no matter how I felt.
It was probably road trip jitters or something. That was what I kept telling myself. Papa asked me to deliver a box, and then asked me to deliver what was inside the box to someone else entirely. Even for a Navarro, that was strange.
Yet it was a puzzle worth solving.
With what I already knew about Ander, I could easily locate his clan. Many of them were clustered in the south, surrounded by old money and memorabilia. War was profitable no matter the outcome—and many vampires, having been nearly laid to waste throughout the centuries during hundreds of battles, were apt to continue their wealth made by bloodshed.
Everything was based on blood. Everything was paid for in blood.
As I raised my fist to knock on Eric’s door, blood was all I could think about—and how there would be a sacrifice from one or both of us with this delivery. Whether we agreed to it or not.
That was just how vampires worked.
Crickets chirped in the grass near the patio where I stood. Hazy yellow light fell over my head as darkness drifted in behind me. In my arms was a binder with the information we needed for this trip—which would have to happen sooner than later, considering the instructions were to deliver it within a week of Papa’s death.
He died just last week. Were we too late?
The sound of a chain rattled on the other side of the door was followed by the clunky thud of a deadbolt and then the tiny click of a smaller lock—likely one on the doorknob itself—turning in place. Seconds after that, the door slowly widened, revealing a striking blue eye before a chiseled chin with a closely cropped beard appeared.
“You’re late.”
The squealed as it opened, and there stood the tank of a man whom I had watched dominate the pumpkin patch with his tensile strength.
In nothing. But. A towel.
The folder slid from my hands. The papers fluttered to the ground, followed by the clack of the folder landing right on top of my slip-on sneakers, the color of rich, creamy caramel. My lips tightened into a line as I stared directly into twin pecks carved like they were touched up with the skill of a sculptor. On his left peck—the right side from my perspective—were two white pinpricks marked the same distance and diameter as fangs.
Scar tissue. That must have been something from his time in the war. Guilt fluttered around my heart as I allowed my gaze to outline his thick abdomen with clearly defined muscle and distinct lines signaling his hips. Where the towel hung. So loosely.
“You’re late,” he snapped again, and then bent to lift what I had dropped. “Come in. Get your jaw off the ground. Stop gaping at me like you haven’t seen a guy half-naked.”
“Kiara would hate this.”
Boy, would she ever. Kiara was my best friend, my most sacred of friends, and it was fine if I wanted to ogle her father from a distance. But this close? Close enough to touch and taste him? Well, that would be a huge entry in the Guinness Book of World Betrayals as far as besties went.
He was off-limits in so many ways. So many ridiculous and irritating ways.
And I was starving for physical attention more than ever in my past.
I drifted into the house after him, trying to keep my eyes above the towel. The guy knew I was looking. He didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t tell me not to check him out. Just to do it like I knew he was ripped under those taut clothes he wore.
My brows tugged together as I rounded the simple couch and sat down. I knew I should have gotten a quick layout of the way before I came down here.
The kitchen was to my left, but I was already embarrassed by my reaction to Eric, so I didn’t want to happen upon him in his kitchen with the towel somewhere other than his appealing hips. Nope, that wasn’t going to happen. I was going to sit here with my hands in my lap and the folder—
Shoot, he had the folder.
