A Bloody Good Secret: Secret McQueen, Book 2 (27 page)

It was Nolan of all people who got to me first, pulling the headless corpse off me and lifting me from the ground as if I were weightless. He was joined by the three vampires, and Juan Carlos checked on Daria’s body to ensure she was dead. He seemed satisfied.

“Sorry,” I told him.

“Why?”

“You didn’t want her dead.”

Juan Carlos smiled, and I wished he hadn’t. It reminded me of looking at a demented jack-o’-lantern. His joviality was more sinister than his seriousness. “It no longer matters. You’ve done the job we asked of you as a council, and I believe we can consider your warrant fulfilled.”

Sig watched our exchange and tried to take me from Nolan, but the boy refused to hand me over.

“She promised to protect me,” Nolan explained. “The least I can do is the same for her now.”

Sig looked surprised by the boy’s courage and didn’t argue. After this, I would have to stop thinking of Nolan as a boy. I sagged in his arms.

“Holden is safe now?” I asked to no one in particular.

“Yes,” Sig confirmed.

“Okay,” I said, smiling, and then the world slipped into darkness.

Chapter Thirty-One

Three weeks had passed since my trip to Rhinebeck, and August had come to New York City.

The air outside was steamy hot and out for blood. News reports were discussing a wave of brownouts, and people by the dozens were succumbing to heat exhaustion. But in my apartment below street level, with a newly installed air conditioner humming away under its full power, I was satisfied to wait out the heat.

In the weeks following Daria’s death, my only contact with the council had been through Brigit. She told me that when she awoke in her shower and remembered her dream, she’d called Sig and relayed my message. While he would have been right to doubt a three-month-old vampire who claimed to have spoken to me in a dream, he had already received word from Christof, the witch. Christof, it seems, had received a fairly insistent phone call from a certain werewolf lieutenant insisting the witch owed restitution to a half-breed by the name of Secret McQueen.

Sig and Juan Carlos picked up Brigit, who refused to tell them where she was going unless she could come with them. The three were met en route by the witch, who relayed to them the confession he’d been able to overhear when I broke the window.

Brigit had driven Nolan and me back to the city in my car, and I hadn’t spoken to Sig since. Nor had I heard from Holden since Juan Carlos pardoned him. My sleep had been peacefully blank.

Plus, I had a new roommate to distract me from any concerns I had about the council. A roommate who was currently trying to annoy me to death.

“Where is it?” I demanded, digging through the fridge.

Since Desmond had moved in, my fridge had filled itself with strange things like vegetables and milk. My freezer was packed with frozen steaks and burger patties. My cupboards had spices and peanut butter in them. Plates and cutlery were being used. The kitchen smelled daily of cooking food.

“Where is what?” Desmond’s innocent voice replied from the living room. He was teasing me. I could tell by his tone he knew exactly what I was talking about.

“You
know
what.”

He appeared in the doorway. “Tell me why you need it, and I’ll tell you where it is.”

“It’s brand new,” I whined, shutting the door and opening the freezer.

“Cold,” he said, then laughed at his unintentional joke and decided to take it all the way. “
Freezing
.”

“Hilarious.” I slammed the door and stomped into the living room.

“Seriously, why do you need it?”

“I just want to know where it is.” I knelt on the floor and looked under the couch. Rio’s bright eyes reflected back at me.

“
Breow
?” she said.

“No. Not you.”

“
Purrrrrrr
,” she said.

I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and pulled her out. She purred in my arms while I petted her absently and stalked around the apartment. I heard the hall closet open and ran out of the bedroom still clutching the cat.

Desmond was holding my brand new SIG P229. He had the gun in one hand and the cartridge in the other.

“Now you know where it is.”

I tried to act nonchalant, which lasted all of two seconds before I placed Rio on the floor and jumped for the gun. He knew it was coming because he held it out of my reach.

“Gimme.”

“Shrimp.”

We’d been having this same fight for over a week. I thought I was ready to go back to work, and I knew Keaty would be thrilled to have me return. Nolan had begun to work for him in the meantime, and though the boy was a much more suitable student than I had been, I also knew Keaty needed me.

Desmond, on the other hand, loved to point out that my wounds from the silver katana were still healing, and he as Queen’s Guard decided it wasn’t wise for me to go back to work just yet.

I kept scrambling for the gun until I managed to irritate the healing scar on my ribs.

“Ugh.” I stopped fighting for the gun and placed a hand on my side. “Fine.”

“Don’t make me start hiding it outside the apartment,” he threatened.

“Don’t make me drain you in your sleep.”

He
pfft
’d at me and angled me back to the couch, leaving the gun on the hall table for the time being. I had to admit, once I’d gotten used to having Desmond here, I remembered how pleasant it was to have someone next to me when I woke up every night. It was different than living with Gabriel had been, because with Desmond I could keep blood in the fridge and he wouldn’t find it weird.

Though I liked Desmond’s presence, I had played up my annoyance with Lucas a little longer than I should have. I told him I would accept a live-in guard, so long as it meant Lucas didn’t make any further decisions about my life without discussing them with me. He’d agreed on the condition I had to become a more active part of the pack. We were trying to work things out, but Lucas and I were like gunpowder and a lit match. Sparks flew whenever we were together, and it wasn’t always for the good.

With Desmond it was different.

I sat on the loveseat, and he knelt on the floor in front of me, pushing up my dress to look at the scar. I no longer tried to stop him when he did things like this. One, he was only trying to help, and two, I sort of liked it.

His warm hands brushed over the snow-white scar running in a three-inch line below my fifth rib. On my back the scar was only an inch and a half long and almost completely healed. A similar mark trailed ten inches down my forearm. They were all getting better, but with the aching slowness of silver wounds it felt almost like healing at a human pace.

I would never take my speedy recovery skills for granted again.

All the glass cuts were only memories, and my eyes were back to normal again. I had looked like a human punching bag/pincushion the day after the incident, but the smaller wounds healed within a day.

Seemingly satisfied I hadn’t ruptured the scar, he bent down and kissed the white mark. A telling shiver thrilled through me. He must have felt it, because his eyebrows rose and a dangerous smile was on his lips. We hadn’t had sex since the night of my fight, owing to the precarious manner in which I was healing. I’d been willing, but he didn’t want to risk hurting me.

I ran my hand through his hair and gave him my best seductive smirk.

“Are you sure?” He was already starting to second-guess it.

“Desmond.” My voice was loaded with heat. “You’re not going to kill me.”

He rose on his knees, hands seizing my face and pulling me in for a soul-jarring kiss. It was the kind of kiss long-lost lovers share when decades of time have passed since they were last together. He buried his fingers in my hair, and I held him close while his tongue explored my lips, gently at first, and then finding them willing to open for him, he deepened the kiss with a breathless intensity.

His cheeks were rough, having not been shaved in days. I dragged my fingernails against the short hairs, then down his neck, over his back and to the hem of his shirt, which I tugged upwards and off.

He broke away from the kiss to allow for the shirt to be removed, then reclaimed my mouth as he pushed me backwards on the couch. He held my thighs firmly, pushing my legs upward, and his fingers trailed with teasing lightness down the outside of my thighs, before backing up as he raised the skirt of my light cotton sundress.

I was so interested in touching his skin my fingers fumbled stupidly with the fly of his jeans, until I was able to release the snap and lower the zipper. Without hesitation, I slipped my hand inside and cupped his erection within my hot palm. He growled against my lips, lowering his mouth from mine to let his teeth graze my neck. This brought a gasp from me, and he teased my pulse with the flick of his tongue.

I clawed at his back, and he arched his hips against my grasping hand. I released him, which made him bite down harder on my neck. Ignoring his protests, I pushed him backwards off me, and before he could question why, I climbed onto his lap, hiking my dress up so I was nestled against the hard length of him.

I looked down, smiling, and kissed him again while I rocked my hips against his. Reaching one hand in between us, I released him from his underwear. He pushed my panties aside with rushed, deft fingers. Neither of us was interested in wasting time undressing. I raised up on my knees enough that he was positioned below me, then lowered myself onto his shaft with a painfully slow restraint that made his head roll back against the couch and a low moan escape his throat. I went as low as I could, until he was lodged as deep inside as I could take him, then I began to lift up again, but he grasped my hips and held me.

He was looking right at me, and what I saw in his eyes made my heart pound.

He released me so he could brush a strand of hair off my face, and he drew my mouth to his for a kiss that was almost too delicate, given our current position.

“I love you,” he whispered against my parted lips.

My pulse quivered, and my heart beat faster than I’d ever felt before. It was what I’d wanted to tell him before I left that night, and what he’d told me not to say. Now my words were coming out of his mouth. I stared at him dumbly, robbed of my ability to speak. Any movement threatened to take me out of the moment by reminding me what we were in the middle of doing.

“I love you too,” I said when I was finally able to form words.

He smiled, kissing me softly, his hands brushing over the bare skin of my arms, making me shiver all over. When he held my waist again, the rhythm had changed into something slower and more deliberate than our previous frenetic efforts. We were building towards a perfect finish when the first knock came.

Desmond paused, but I wasn’t so willing to stop.

“Ignore it,” I begged, my teeth worrying at the sensitive skin of his throat.

He began again, but the second knock came. Followed by a much louder third.

“Fuck,” I breathed hotly against his neck. “Hold that thought,” I directed before climbing off him and smoothing out my wrinkled dress the best I could.

My hair was in disarray, and even with the blanket pulled over his lap my disheveled boyfriend and I left nothing to the imagination for whoever had come calling. Oh well, I wasn’t going to pretend they weren’t interrupting.

I yanked the door open in the middle of the fourth knock with an unimpressed, “
What
?”

Holden, hand still raised in the air, stood smirking on the other side of the door. Being a vampire, he knew perfectly well what he’d interrupted. Smug bastard.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said, his voice sweet with charm.

“No you’re not.” But it was difficult to stay mad at him. Seeing him in my doorway, his hair cut and his clothes clean, looking like his old self and no longer a wanted man, made me joyful. Unable to contain myself, I wrapped him in a fierce hug. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

He hugged me back, then pushed me away. He gave Desmond a polite nod from the doorway. The werewolf waved halfheartedly. “Sorry, chap. I need to borrow Secret. Won’t be but a minute.”

“Sure?” What else could he say, though? Holden had already pulled me through the door and shut it behind us.

Outside the apartment the wall of heat I’d been hiding from in the air conditioning sucked at me like a hungry ocean, threatening to drown me. Holden walked me up the short staircase to street level where, parked in front of my BMW, was a long, sleek, black stretch limo. The overhead streetlights reflected in each of the glossy windows.

I looked questioningly at Holden.

“What’s this?”

He opened the door for me. “Just get in.”

I followed his instructions and he climbed in beside me. Sitting opposite us against the driver’s window and half-hidden by the low lights inside the cabin were Sig, Juan Carlos and Rebecca the French vampire I’d met at Havana.

I shot a glance at Holden, but he leaned back in the leather seat and laced his fingers behind his head like he was settling in for a good movie. I looked back at the trio of vampires, all of whom were watching me patiently. I didn’t have much to say to them, so I watched them right back.

Sig broke the silence. “We want to thank you for the excellent job you did.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied. Something was wrong with this. The Tribunal had never come to thank me in person for anything. Come to think of it, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been thanked, period.

Silence again. Juan Carlos was looking especially unhappy, his jaw clenched so tight I thought he might break his own teeth. Rebecca was staring at Holden.

“Well.” I slapped my hands against my bare legs. “If that’s all.” I moved to climb over Holden, who stayed put, letting me attempt to clamber over his lap.

“Not quite,” Rebecca said.

I sat back down.

“I want to thank you personally,” she began. “You see, I may have neglected to mention when we met that Holden is of my line.”

I turned from her to Holden. He gave a small nod. “Must have slipped your mind,” I mumbled.