Page 17 of Hot Blooded

Chapter 5

After leaving Tessa, Amos spent an hour trying to track the thrall he’d chased off. But there was hardly any trail, and he eventually had to concede defeat. He didn’t like that Tessa’s attacker was still out there. The urge to betray his agreement with her, to remain near her workplace, keeping guard until the sun rose, was nearly impossible to resist. But the possibility of her finding out, feeling deceived, being angry and disappointed with him, was the stronger aversion. With great reluctance, he went home. He reassured himself over and over again that the sun would rise by the end of her shift, and she would be safe.

When Amos reached his front door, he paused, his senses tingling with warning. He couldn’t quite say what it was that alerted him. Nothing was out of place. There were no unfamiliar scents lingering. The house was quiet and dark. His awareness shifted, sharpened, as he silently eased the door open. As soon as he set foot inside the house, the scent of blood hit him like a slap. It wasn’t much blood. But it didn’t need to be. Like a shark, the merest speck of it called to his predatory instincts.

But he recognized this bloodscent. With a suppressed sigh, he moved down the hall, past the sitting room, to the living room where he relaxed on his own or with close friends. He hesitated before the doorway, taking a second to brace himself. When he finally stepped into the room, he was greeted with a joyful squeal and suffocating hug.

“Amos!” Loretta Brooks was over a century old, but would forever look nineteen. When she’d turned Amos, she’d been a tiny, knobby-kneed, hollow-cheeked, frizzy-haired waif. Now, her hair was thick and long, worn down to the small of her back in thin locs that transitioned from the natural black color of her hair at the roots, to hot pink at the ends. Her makeup made her look like the Hollywood interpretation of a vampire—glamorous and uncannily flawless—and decades of comfortable attachment to a bloodmate had put a healthy luster in her deep brown skin and a joyful gleam in her eyes.

“Hello, Etta.” He scooped her up in a crushing hug, lifting her feet off the ground and earning another happy squeal directly into his ear canal. He set her down with a grimace and rubbed his ringing ear.

“Sorry, honey,” Etta said with a sheepish smile. “It’s just so good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too. Hello, Fran,” he greeted his dam’s bloodmate.

Francine Piotrowski was Etta’s visual opposite. Tall and slim to Etta’s petite curviness, with ivory pale skin to Etta’s rich brown, she wore her coppery-red hair in the sort of severe undercut that had been popular among men in the days when Amos was first turned. In stark contrast to Etta’s electric-blue jumpsuit and silver-studded, high-heeled boots, Fran was dressed simply in an oversized white sweater with ripped jeans and the sort of boots Amos had worn in his mortal life. Etta’s claim mark, a silvery bright scar, was visible high on Fran’s neck, just below her jaw. She had been twenty-five years old when she’d met Etta, back in the early seventies, and thanks to the regenerative powers of Etta’s venom, Fran would continue to look twenty-five forever.

“Hey, Amos,” Fran greeted him with a slightly-drunken sounding drawl, her gaze a little unfocused. The marks where Etta had fed on her were still healing, but her bloodscent was dissipating from the air. Slowly, the acuity returned to her gaze as the feeding euphoria lifted.

“So, child of mine,” Etta began, catching Amos’s arm and dragging him over to sit on the sofa with her and Fran.

Amos scoffed at the endearment. “I’m older than you.”

“Not in vampire years,” she shot back with a self-satisfied smirk. “Now, my precious offspring—”

“Etta,” Amos growled.

“Leave the poor man alone,” Fran chided, failing to hide her amusement.

Undeterred, Etta cast him a saturnine smile. “Well, let me get straight to the point, then. I was surprised to find you weren’t home when we got here. Have you been going out? Have you been socializing?”

Even though it’d been three days since he’d fed from Tessa, he was apparently still capable of blushing. He felt his cheeks warm. “I go out,” he said defensively. “This is hardly—”

Etta stared at his reddening face. Her mouth fell open as her eyes went round as saucers.

“Babe?” Fran touched her shoulder, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re getting live blood,” Etta said faintly, wide eyes still fixed on Amos’s reddened face. “Did you find a bloodmate? And you never introduced me? Oh, Amos, how could you? How long has this been going on? Does the Council know?”

“I don’t have a bloodmate,” Amos said, forcing the words out.

Etta stiffened.

“And I’m not hunting,” he added.

She relaxed. “Then… how?”

“I…” He scrubbed uncomfortably at the back of his neck. His face grew warmer. “I signed up with a donor service.”

Etta’s brow furrowed. “No, not one of those mercenary blood-for-pay places?”

“Yes. One of those.”

“Amos,” she said softly, appalled. “Those places… they’re so… wrong. It’s such a violation of the intimacy of feeding. And there’s such a risk with exposing yourself to a stranger! Jesus, tell me you’re being safe.”

For all her bouncy cheer, Etta was as protective a dam as Amos had ever witnessed. He was simultaneously touched and annoyed by her concern.

“I’m perfectly safe, mother,” he said dryly. “My donor is trustworthy. And she may not be my bloodmate, but she’s… a friend.”

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