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“Plans? She could never be yours. Rexes don’t have that option.”
“While she was a teen, I fantasized about moving to the middle of nowhere with her. No pride, no territory, because we’d be in lands no one cared about. Just the two of us. Later, I understood that would never happen with a woman who needed to work in a theater, and a man who needs physical therapy patients.” He sighed. “And yet, I’ve always hoped. When she moved in with me, my hopes were out of the stratosphere that somehow things could balance out with my nontraditional pride.”
“Looking back,” Gavin told him,” I’ve always been a little mesmerized by her. Abbott had me watching over their house at night, sometimes, and I could hear her phone conversations with her friends, and more than a few personal conversations with her mom. In some ways, she seemed a normal teenager, but she was not. Her time in China without a mother gave her perspective none of her friends could understand.”
“Not to mention having a mother who raised her a little outside of society,” Nick said. “Shifters can’t be normal teens. We have to learn the kind of control most human teens can’t fathom. Lauren was never a normal human, though. She was a responsible grown-up at five, from what I can tell.”
“It’s possible that’s what fascinated me about her. So mature, so practical, and yet still a kid.” He shrugged. “It’s also possible I’ve always leaned towards anything forbidden, but I don’t think that’s it. I was never interested in her sexually until I realized she was interested in having sex with two bears at once, and then I saw her in a whole new light.”
Nick frowned. “Two bears? I thought you and I were her first threesome.”
“The first actual threesome, but she’s certainly fantasized about it before us.”
Gavin told Nick the story of following Lauren to the coffee shop, and Nick was a little flabbergasted. His Lauren had wanted a threesome with strangers? He’d heard a little of the coffee shop story, but what he’d gotten out of it was that she wanted to go dancing, and Gavin had run them off and then taken her dancing in the coterie’s limo. Somehow, the fact she’d wanted a threesome with fuckingstrangershad been skipped over.
“What the fuck was she thinking? People who didn’t know her, and wouldn’t understand why they had to back off?”
“Maybe that was the point,” Gavin noted.
“Maybe, but that brings me back to the present, and I don’t think the rest of our night is going to go as planned.”
Gavin was about to agree with him when Nick said, “Wait. Sex slave? Don’t they usually belong to a specific vampire, and not to the coterie in general?’
“I’ll be gifting Jason to Dax.”
Nick had been itching to ask about Dax, and this gave him an opening. “What’s up with him? I have a feeling the two of you have quite a history.”
“We do, but that is Dax’s story to tell. If he wants you to know, he’ll share.”
“It’s your story, too.”
“It is. Still, I will allow him to decide who knows his history. He’s around five hundred years old, and he will be a powerhouse eventually. You have to know there’s a way for me to give you long life, which means you may still be around in five hundred years, when he’s in a position to decide whether to use his powers for good or evil. Let’s do what we can to aim him towards the good side.”
“As Abbot, now Zander, once did for you?”
“Exactamente.”
The vampire went into Lauren’s closet and exited a few moments later with a purple dress and matching shoes. The dress was on a hanger, so Nick could see it was mostly laces up one side, and on the midriff. She’d be more naked than clothed, and yet, she’d be mouthwateringly gorgeous in it.
“Something tells me she’d get pissed if I dared select her clothes, but she’ll be fine with that.”
“She will understand that wearing this to be seen after her ordeal will make the statement that she is fine. No bruises, no damage, and she’s confident as fuck. If I’d shown this to her to wear to the party prior to her being thrown from the roof? She’d have sneered.”
Nick chuckled. “She has an excellent sneer.”
Gavin smiled. “She absolutely does.” He sighed. “Queenie tells me our party has smoothed out around the edges. Most who left have returned, and there’s an expectant air.”
Chapter 46
Twenty-five minutes later, Lauren walked down the grand staircase between her two men, with her warm right hand on Gavin’s cool arm, while Nick’s arm was warmer than her left hand.
Her thespian experience told her the theatrical necessity of the threesome descending the dramatic staircase, coming into view as a unit. She’d wanted to walk out alone, to show the crowd she was fine, but Nick and Gavin had been in agreement they needed to show a united front. They were probably right, so she’d stopped arguing.
They had, however, compromised that she could hold them, rather than them holding her hands.
Lauren stopped when her feet were at the approximate level of their guests’ shoulders, and told the gathering, “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
The room laughed, and Lauren added, “Seriously, I’m fine. The water broke my fall, thankfully.”
