Page 28 of Sassy Embrace

Leigh had enough. Her confidence was shot.

“You have to step up on this more," she said, folding her arms over the other. “I’m always going to get more criticism than you because I’m a woman. That’s the reality. But you hanging there in the background isn’t going to help. I feel like a used-up piece of meat."

Claude didn’t like that one bit. He slid off the stool he was sitting on and rubbed his forehead hard. It was nice to see an emotion on his face for once.

“I’m sorry, Leigh. Like I said, I am used to Aria being in the limelight. I know she wants me on this, too, because she won't be able to do it when she has a baby to care for. I’m sorry. Come here."

Claude pulled her into his arms by her wrists, and she instinctively swathed them around his waist. His mouth went to her neck, and just before the rapture of lust could take over, she pressed her fingers into his chest and pushed him away. The words from observers on social media were harsh and cruel, but she thought maybe they had a point.

His expression was pallid, even for a vampire.

“Claude. Maybe these people are right. Maybe we are forcing this to work. Maybe it's not a great way to keep this going."

Claude took a step back, and he let her go. Leigh felt her heart turn to stone.

“Maybe you're right,” he replied. “I’ll head home. We can talk about the club later if you want."

Leigh stood there as he disappeared into the burning light.

FOURTEEN

CLAUDE

Claude drove out on a bleak gray day up to Aria’s mansion. He dreaded it the entire time, like the wedge of some big stone was caught in his throat. The reaction to Embraced had not been ideal.

In the moment, he felt that Leigh had done the right thing, taking over for him. It truly wasn’t his thing being in any kind of limelight. Though he hated the idea of disappointing Aria, and Leigh, at the same time.

Thoughts of Leigh and the way that she recoiled from him haunted his every movement. Logically, she hadn’t been wrong about her proposal to call off their relationship.

A vampire and a wolf working together in a vampire and a wolf club? Despite both being in a supernatural world, they were both immensely different. Leigh was ambitious and bright; he was cold and settled best in the darkness.

But the way she’d looked at him was a knife to his chest. He had never felt that way about any other woman in his life. Dalliances ended, but that was life. He had lived long enough to know that. But the idea of never seeing Leigh again gave him a gnawing feeling, a nagging misery.

The pain was awful. And the only salve, it seemed, was Leigh herself. That was an odd remedy to consider.

The vampire squeezed the wheel as he edged the road just before entering the gated driveway. It hung there in the gloom.

But when Claude got to the door, the housekeepers gave him a confused scowl.

“Aria isn't here, sir,” one of them said. “She went to the Central Pack this morning to visit Emma."

Claude glowered, puzzled. He had no idea why Aria, the vampire leader, would travel somewhere so late in her pregnancy. Though Aria was her own woman—she wouldn’t ever let someone advise her against something she was dead set on doing—Claude also knew she wasn’t stupid. The child, after all, was going to be half-vampire, half-wolf, and there were bound to be some complications.

It struck him as strange, as even a little telling.

“When did she leave?”

The woman peered up at the grandfather clock that rested on the landing between floors.

“I would say less than an hour ago, sir."

Vampires had as much intuition as wolves despite the lack of general knowledge about it. It wasn’t exactly supernatural, per se, but garnered over a long life of studying and observation. He could walk in the sun and he didn’t require rest, but not needing to eat outside the synthetic blood truly freed up a lot of time. Claude found most human’s and supernatural's behavior to be outrageously predictable. One just had to be willing to look hard and long enough.

The intuition then felt more scientific rather than mystical. He felt it, crawling along his shoulders and settling along his spine.

Claude was reaching for his phone in his pocket when it began to buzz. It was Aria.

He held a finger up to the housekeeper and pressed the phone to his ear. Aria instantly sounded like she was in distress.

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