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“Me, too. So what time is the party?”
Havily glanced at her watch. “In half an hour. The warriors won’t be going out till seven or so, which means we get them here until then.”
Marcus saw movement in the kitchen; then Medichi appeared in the doorway. His expression was tight around the eyes as he glanced first at Parisa. He looked her over from head to foot then said, “You okay up there? Is the ladder steady? You want me to finish up?”
Parisa’s expression also grew very tight, her lips pinched. “I’m fine. Really. You have nothing to be concerned about.”
The tension in the air stretched to just this side of breaking.
Marcus looked back at Medichi. The vampire was in hell, 100 percent flaming hell. Oh, he looked normal, but Marcus knew exactly where he was at right now—the need to be close, to have his arms around his woman, but no possible right to get within fifty feet of her.
“We need to get changed,” Havily said. “How about you men finish this last streamer.” She held her hand out in Parisa’s direction.
So that’s the way it was. Havily had placed herself between the couple, probably on Parisa’s request.
Marcus sent, Was this Parisa’s idea? You playing go-between?
Havily didn’t look at him as she returned, Antony’s. He’s in agony on many fronts and Endelle put him on guardian duty … indefinitely.
Jesus.
Exactly. No one knows what do with Parisa and she’s lost here.
Parisa climbed down the ladder.
“Ready?” Havily asked as Parisa slid off the table.
“Ready. Are you going to wear the new dress you bought?”
“Absolutely.”
Marcus watched Havily leave the room. It took considerable willpower not to follow after her. Her honeysuckle tugged at his soul. He had so much to say to her. Everything seemed settled but he knew he walked a fine line here and she seemed somehow different to him, as though she’d made a decision or two herself.
Maybe words would help but he hoped, he hoped, that what he’d brought her from Vancouver Island would show her the intention of his heart. The real question kicked his anxiety up a couple of notches—would she go for it, all of it? Because that’s what he needed from her now, everything, the whole damn enchilada. For him, from this point forward, it was all or nothing.
He turned to Medichi, who had moved to stand next to him, so that he, too, could watch the women, arm in arm, head to their respective rooms. His eyes blazed, and his body gave off heat in waves.
Marcus laughed. “Need a cold shower?”
“The waters would have to be arctic to calm this down. Jesus H. Christ.” In a voice that sounded ruined, he added, “She won’t even talk to me. I mean talk, as in talk.”
Marcus slapped him on the shoulder, “I feel you, brother.”
* * *
Havily dressed slowly, but her mind whirled.
Marcus seemed so different, and he stopped the kiss. He stopped the kiss. Usually he initiated, then complained if she even so much as tapped the brakes.
She had expected him to take her straight to the bedroom and get her good and naked. Instead, he’d basically told her to back off. Had the fierce driving need of the breh-hedden lessened in him? Did he no longer want her as desperately as she wanted him, needed him, craved him?
Her body melted into a weak puddle as she thought of just how much she craved him. His absence for the last three days had been like fire on her skin and in her belly. She had picked up her iPhone to call him, oh, about a hundred times. But she was the one who had told him to go, even though she hadn’t wanted him to. He said he would return and he had, but he seemed so different now and she just didn’t understand. Although he did shed enough fennel to set her heart on fire, but maybe for him that no longer mattered.
Oh. God.
Well, maybe her dress would help. She had bought it yesterday because he hadn’t called her and she intended to wear it for him to remind him she had certain assets he valued. The V of the dress was low, very low, and gave full expression to her cle**age, which she knew he enjoyed … a lot.
The length was short as well and she’d bought stilettos, five inches tall, which would put her almost at eye level with her man when he kissed her. She would be able to slide her arms around his neck and hook him hard, hold him plastered against her mouth … she groaned at the thought.
If that was even what he wanted anymore …
* * *
Marcus stood outside the door of the bedroom he shared with Havily. He didn’t know whether to knock or walk in, but when a wave of honeysuckle punched at him through the narrow spaces between the door and the frame, he took a step back.
Damn, that scent got to him, as it had from the first, tingling in his nose then working like lightning down his chest and abdomen to strike straight into his groin. This was his woman, his mate, his breh. He needed her, wanted her, craved her.
But they had some stuff to get settled. So instead of joining her in their shared bedroom, he turned away from the door and went south to the next wing. He folded a Tom Ford suit from his Bainbridge house then he took a shower, a goddamn, ball-and-dick-shrinking shower until even his teeth were chattering.
But if all went as planned, he’d suit up in flight gear this very night, rejoin the Warriors of the Blood, and begin his new life battling death vampires.
However, as he soaped up, the thought of resuming that part of his life emptied his chest of all feeling. He knew he was needed, but fighting like that was going to be hard for him, very hard.
He straightened his shoulders. But he would do it. Just as Endelle served in ways she hated, so would he.
Change rides in
On the galloping back of wisdom.
—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth
Chapter 24
Havily really did want to raise her glass to Warrior Zacharius, since Thorne was making a toast in his honor, but she was trapped. “Marcus,” she whispered. “Can you let go of my arm?”
She heard the faint growl, a sound that pleased her much more than it should have, as he lessened his grip.
The moment he’d seen her dress, his gaze had landed on her cle**age and stayed there. Since then, he’d been in a state, caught between a rock and a hard place called desire and jealousy and … she loved it.
She’d definitely gotten the response she’d been looking for—Marcus had released a roll of fennel that caused her knees to shake. So at least in this she was reassured that his need for her hadn’t changed.
As for Marcus, he was the only vampire present who wore a tie. He looked sexy as hell and his clothes, so at odds with the warriors present, so much a reflection of how he’d spent the last two hundred years, gave her a measure of confidence that her conversation with Endelle had been the right one.
