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Obviously, I couldn’t tell him any of the vamp shit. There were laws forbidding anyone from revealing our existence to humans. But maybe talking about it would help. Maybe I could just choose my words carefully.
“I accepted a job without knowing exactly what I was getting into,” I started.
Jaxson scooted closer, amber eyes alight. Almost like he knew I was about to spill something big. “Go on,” he encouraged.
“It pays well.”
Jaxson frowned, sensing the half-truth.
“Okay, it pays a lot. I mean, like life-changing a lot.”
“But you have to kill someone?”
“No.”
“Oh.” He tapped on his chin. “Sleep with someone?”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from flushing at the thought of what it would be like to be pressed against Julian’s body again. At what kind of lover he might be.
He was a total soft dom. All the way. No doubt.
“Earth to Eden, come in, Eden.”
“Yeah, sorry. I don’t have to sleep with anyone.”
“But you want to.”
“Not the point, Jax.”
He speared me with a knowing grin, but thankfully moved along. Kind of. “Okay, why don’t you make your point instead of getting all hot and bothered daydreaming about doing some dude?”
Julian was not just some dude.
He was a king.
And a literal box of red flags.
And Jaxson knew it. Only he didn’t know he knew it. I moved on. “The job is super-dangerous. Like, life-threatening danger.” And I’d have to face the awful vampire who took my maker from me.
“Okay. What else? Cause in my book, life-changing money is worth life-threatening danger.”
Yeah. That was a point. “I’d…”How to put this?“Doing this job will require me to confront stuff I tried to bury a long time ago.”
Jaxson nodded, taking a small sip of his margarita. “Dealing with our own shit is hard for a reason. But we usually come out the other side better for it.”
Another good point.
I turned the problem over in my head for a minute.
I wanted the money and I wanted nothing to do with Titus. And since I couldn’t get one without the other, I had to figure a way around it.
The idea of taking more money than I’d expected from Julian made me positively giddy. That was a good starting point.
So maybe I could frame taking something from Titus the same way. Maybe I could put Titus in the “fat cat” box and ignore the “you killed my maker” box. And maybe I could do it all from a healthy distance, never setting foot in Titus’s territory.
* * *
Two pitchers and several hours later, Jax and I were on my bed, the only furniture I owned that could accommodate us both. I’d changed into short-shorts and a cropped tee, my usual sleeping attire, and had just begun to doze, the steady rhythm of Jax’s slow breathing and even slower heartbeat lulling me into oblivion when a sharp sound came from the hallway.
