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Shit.
He really is in pain.
As he meets my gaze, sensing exactly what I’m doing, I slam the gates back up and deliberately do not offer to help him as he eases into a stool at the counter. Instead, I pass him my coffee and he nods appreciatively.
“You know this guy?” Sam asks.
“I know of this guy.” Mack slurps the coffee then asks Kole to pass him some potato chips from the cupboard above the sink. “He’s a scholar, an academic, with a special interest in shifters. He’s a collector, too.”
“A collector?” Nova asks, leaving Luther’s side and taking the stool next to Mack instead.
“Artefacts related to shifter lore and history. To the humans, he’s simply a professor of magickal history. Curator, I think, at one of the Cambridge museums. Below ground, rumor has it he keeps his own private collection of occult relics.”
“Then we should ask for his help.” Nova’s entire face brightens with optimism.
Mack offers her a wry smile and shakes his head slowly. “He’s also a vampire,” he says, “and part of the mafia family that runs pretty much everything in a sixty-mile radius of London.”
“Mafia?” Nova almost laughs, but stops when she realizes Mack’s serious. “Well, he sounds…”
“Like someone we shouldn’t be messing with,” Luther gruffs. Having finished his coffee, he takes the whiskey from beneath the sink and pours a glass.
Nova narrows her eyes, clearly mulling over the new information. “But if he’s our best shot at figuring this out, then we might not have a choice.”
Sam, still playing the skeptic, raises an eyebrow. “So, let me get this straight. We’re going to ask for help from a vampire mafia lord who lives half way across the world. This is your plan?”
Luther gulps down his whiskey, his eyes flicking between the group. “It’s not the ideal scenario, but we can’t just sit around and wait for Mack and Snow to get worse.”
Nova cuts him off. “Then we approach carefully. We do our homework. We figure out what he wants, what he needs. We find a way to negotiate and make him help us.”
Mack grunts, taking another sip of his coffee. “Trust me, Little Star, Thornfield is no fool. From what I’ve heard, he’ll see through any facade in an instant. If we’re going to approach him, it needs to be with honesty and a show of respect.”
Luther scoffs. “Respect for a bloodsucking mafioso?”
Mack meets his gaze evenly. “Respect for someone with the power and resources to help us… or hurt us.”
8
NOVA
As dawn breaks over the lake, I stand on the edge of the jetty and watch the sun creeping up over the trees on the far side of the water. I sense Kole before I hear him. His presence fills my entire body and turns it into a velvety mess of feelings I can’t name.
“You fucked Tanner last night,” he whispers in my ear.
I stiffen, heat instantly flooding my core.
“Do you still taste of him?” he asks, hands gliding over my shoulders and dipping beneath my shirt to gently palm my breasts.
“Do you want to find out?”
He leans down, almost growling into my ear as he whispers, “Turn around, panties off.”
I do as he says, turning to face him then easing my skirt up and my underwear down over my hips. Kneeling in front of me, Kole gently lifts my leg and rests it on his shoulder. I brace myself on the wooden post beside us, and sigh a breath of warm air into the cold morning.
Gently, Kole trails a torturous finger from my knee to my inner thigh. When he reaches my pussy, he stops.
“Ask for it,” he whispers.
“Please,” I breathe.
