Page 41 of Your Coffin or Mine
“For fuck’s sake, I haven’t put on any sunscreen yet,” I grumble, waving my arm as it heals. “And why do you look like you’re about to tear out of your shirt?”
“Sorry,” he mumbles in response, his size diminishing to his normal state as he resumes pacing like a caged tiger.How strange.
I arch a brow at him before settling into my chair, annoyed but amused by the hostility coming off him in waves. It must be that woman.Oh, how the tables have turned, old friend.
“The things I needed to do to Aubrey were much more enjoyable than what we need to discuss, I assure you,” I tell him. And will be again if he will leave me be.
“Be serious, Vlad,” he says, concern coloring his expression, and his mouth is in a hard, thin line, so unlike his usual affable self.
I wave my hand back and forth in front of my nose. “Who are you and what have you done with Doyle?”
Wolfish fangs drop down, far too large for his mouth, as his eyes begin to glow a bright yellow and fur spreads along his temples and cheeks. His face turns feral as rage explodes across his expression.
“This is important, and if you cannot listen for five minutes, well, I guess you’ll get what’s coming to you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Doyle sighs loudly, and I watch the anger melt away, leaving only tiredness and concern. “It means that we have more guests on the way, and you need to control yourself with her.”
My body stiffens and I lose the calm that had washed over me the night before.He dares to reprimand me?“Control myself or what?”
He clenches his teeth and his nostrils flare.
“Please, Doyle, tell me. Control myself or fucking what? I found you in a ditch in shithole London three hundred years ago. You were uncontrollable and lost, and now you have the nerve to tell me to control myself?” It has been so long since anyone had the temerity to question me, and that he would dare at all has my hackles raised with the need to dominate him into submission.
The blood roars in my veins, and I realize that at some point my fangs have made an appearance. Silence and tension thicken the air.
“You forget yourself,” I mutter coldly.
He shakes his head. “No, Vlad, I am only trying to do what I have always done—protect you.”
“I don’t need your fucking protection. Our friendship means much to me, but do not forget to whom you are speaking. I haven’t lost control in half a millennium, and I don’t intend to anytime soon.”
“If she finds out what you are, we will be done for, which is why I say sample the local women. You say you can’t touch her mind. I’m not questioning your control so much as I am reminding you of what is at stake. Maybe if worse comes to worst, Hyde may have a solution.” His tone is beseeching as his hands squeeze the back of the centuries-old chair.
My stomach immediately rolls with nausea and rage at the thought of anyone other than me daring to touch her.
“No one is to touch Aubrey. Especially not that manwhore Jekyll.” I let the image of him with his filthy hands on Aubrey take form and a bloodred haze fills my eyes. I would rip them apart so not even Frankenstein’s maker could put them back together. “You will leave her out of this.”
“She has bewitched you,” he says, moving to sit in front of me.
Utterly. My chest swells at the memory of her cries of pleasure, her sighs, and even the enchanting way she laughs. I am besotted and don’t even understand how.
I sigh loudly and run my fingers through my hair in frustration. “Yes, I am bewitched. I want her as I have wanted no other.”
Doyle’s brows raise in shock. “What?”
My lips flatten as I look away. “I fell asleep.”
I hear his gasp and his phone, that seems to always be in his hand these days, falls with a clatter onto the table. “Come again?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t hear her when she woke up this morning because I was in such a deep rest.”
It has been years since I have fallen asleep naturally, so long that I cannot remember if I have ever trusted anyone enough to allow myself to sleep for more than minutes at a time.
My gaze darts back to Doyle, and it’s comical the way his eyes are almost bugging out of his head. I nod and fall back into my chair wearily. “No one can touch her, Doyle.”
The rattle of bones pulling across the stone steps in the opposite room causes me to groan inwardly.
