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Lucas’s kiss was gentle, inquiring and exploratory. He hugged me tighter, keeping me close to his body, and lifted my feet off the floor entirely. The last time he’d done this I had tangled myself around him, but tonight I was still too hyperaware of having made love to Desmond and the strange overlap that had shown up with Holden. I wasn’t ready to go through it again. I also wasn’t quite ready to be the kind of girl who could have sex with two different men in one night. At least on the physical plane.
Call me old-fashioned, but having two boyfriends was already hard enough for me to wrap my head around.
He continued to kiss me, and I let him, enjoying each delicate kiss we shared. The way his tongue tasted like cinnamon hearts when he licked my lower lip was a small treat I had forgotten, and it made me long to make each kiss more lingering. But the beard was weirding me out a little, and I couldn’t ignore every other part of the evening.
I was also acutely aware this bedroom was smaller than the one he had in the city, and we were a hell of a lot closer to the bed. I didn’t want to tempt fate too much, and the longer I let him kiss me like this, the more likely I was to say fuck it and, well, fuck it.
“Put me down. ”
He ignored me, holding me closer and kissing my earlobe.
“Lucas, please. ”
He stopped, pulled his head back and looked at me with those searing light-blue eyes. They didn’t hold the same kind of pain Desmond’s always seemed to, but Lucas’s were now less innocent than they had once been. I didn’t want to think about the last time I’d looked into his eyes. He lowered me back to the ground, but he didn’t let me go. He put one hand on either side of my face and kissed my forehead.
“I’m glad you’re back. ”
“About that. ” I looked up at him and tried to ask the question that had followed us in from outside. I still wasn’t sure how to word it. “Jackson?” It was the best I could do.
“You don’t want to know about that, Secret. ” Lucas let his arms drop and stepped away from me. The disappearance of his body heat left me chilled in my soaking-wet shirt. Or maybe something else was leaving me cold.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know. Do you know what Jackson did to me?”
“Yes. ”
It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. “You do?”
“Of course. Your boss, your vampire boss…the blond one?”
“Sig?” Why was that name coming up everywhere I went tonight?
“He came to me, and we had a little chat about a mutual friend of ours. ” He shot me a meaningful look. “It seems he was very grateful to me for saving your life. ”
“Oh?” This was an interesting turn.
“Yes. ” Lucas sat on the edge of the bed, but I chose to remain standing closer to the door. “He asked me if it would be of any interest to me to help bring you home again. ”
“I beg your pardon?”
He raised a hand, and I let my question hang unanswered. “I’d tried to find you, I even went to see your friend Mercedes, but she wouldn’t give me anything. Then Sig came to me and told me that with a little help he was certain he could bring you back. He said all I needed to do was let him use one of my wolves, someone you didn’t know well. He said he had someone close to you who would take care of the rest. ”
My mind began to spin. Of course, I’d been totally naive. Any fool could see the whole kidnapping was a setup, but I had assumed Sig had worked alone to facilitate it. Sometimes lone wolves worked with vampires for the money, and I’d assumed Jackson had been one of them. But he was part of the pack, and Lucas had asked him to kidnap me. That meant the shape-shifting witch was on someone’s team too.
Someone who knew a thing or two about how hard transfiguration magic was. Someone who had told me the very night I vanished how she thought it was time for me to go home. My hand flew to the necklace dangling from my throat. Ward against evil, my ass. My grandmere had led them right to me.
I slumped to the floor, and in an instant Lucas was crouched in front of me. He tried to help me up, but I pushed him harder than I meant to, and he stumbled backwards onto the floor.
“I spent an entire day locked in the trunk of a car. ” I glared at him. “I smashed that kid in the face and got my own split open in the process. ”
His eyes went wide with sudden rage. “Did he—?”
“No. God, do you think that scrawny thing could have beaten me up? It was an accident, and I healed. But that’s not the point, Lucas. You helped the head of the vampire Tribunal kidnap me. And you know who was helping him on my end? My own goddamn grandmother. ” Out of frustration, I began unbuttoning my shirt, unable to stand the feel of the wet cloth on my skin anymore. I stood and threw the shirt on top of his on the floor.
“I’d like to go home,” I said bluntly. “Your driver left, and I’d like to leave. ”
“Secret—”
“I have a rogue vampire to find. Apparently it’s so important that everyone I trusted snuck around behind my back and dragged me home against my will. So I should probably get it done. ” I was standing in my bra, dripping wet, but I managed to make my point serious enough he didn’t question it.
