Page 11 of A Drink of Destiny
Alvis had already taken his socks and shoes off to reveal toenails painted a shade of crimson that made me want to lick them. Then again there weren’t many places I didn’t want to lick my mate. Inside his inner sanctum, my lion purred and the sound vibrated through my body. I had to get on with the courting gifts. Part of me wondered, if robbing a blood bank counted as hunting for a vampire?
“Is Preston the only bear who hangs out here?” Alvis asked, interrupting my mental planning.
“Uh… Yeah. I mean him and Andy. I don’t think they’ve had any other bears over while I’ve been away. Is this a bear thing? Did she catch some hibernation sickness?”
“There has been another bear here,” Alvis announced, turning the lights back out and stepping away from me. I took a step toward him, and he took another step away, holding up his hand for me to give him some space. My cat murped, needing to be closer to him, but work was work and this wasn’t mixing drinks so people could get laid. This was for Annila and she was family.
I leaned back against the sparkly blue and green wallpaper and watched my mate through the dark room. Alvis stood tall with his feet hip width apart and his eyes half-closed. Whether he was grounding and centering himself or squinting at something I couldn’t see, I wasn’t sure, but he was definitely doing something. The energy inside the room shifted. A breeze ruffled through the air, lifting strands of my mate’s hair.
He took a big step forward and I fought off the urge to follow him. He wasn’t leaving the room. No, he was walking toward the bed with his hands out in front of him, palms facing down. His eyes glowed a bit in the dark and I bit my lip. That was hot too. Sure, I knew plenty of big cats who wanted other big cats as their mates. I knew some who wanted prey animals to ‘hunt.’ Not me. There was something deliciously beautiful about the tiny traits that gave away Alvis as a hunter and I’d be his prey any day.
He ran his long-fingered hands through the air above the sleeping dragoness. I blinked. Did the air just ripple or was I seeing things? No, the air definitely rippled. Then it did it again. Alvis walked his fingers through the air as if shuffling through files, searching for the right page of notes to tell him what exactly was going on with Annila.
“Hmmm….” He said a second later. “I’ll need to hook her up to the equipment but that’ll have to wait until I have my car. I don’t have definitive answers, but I have my theories. Do you know if she’s taking food while she’s under?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “She eats whenever we put food in her mouth. Not much, though, because Nic is afraid that she’ll choke.”
“Makes sense. Hmmm… I’ll need to talk to Nic in the morning. Let’s leave her to rest,” Alvis said, taking my hand and leaving the room.
He led me downstairs, into the kitchen, and out of the back door. Then across the backyard and out the gate. He led me so far up the street that for a moment I feared he was running away from the job all together.
“Whatever we do about this we don’t talk about within earshot of Annila. It’s hard to know what earshot is for a sleeping dragoness. That’s what Nic and Beal need to know too. Someone is listening in. They’re using her like a hidden microphone.”
“Do you think it’s her?” I asked.
Alvis shot me a confused look. ‘Her’ had come to mean Sharon Claudis in our house and within our circle of friends.
“Sharon Claudis?” I rephrased the question.
“Probably. Unless Annila has crossed some other shebear,” Alvis nodded.
“To the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t crossed Sharon. She just showed up while Annila was doing her revenge thing.”
“If I had to make an educated guess on the information I have, Sharon sees something of herself in Annila. She’s probably wrong about what she sees but she sees it. Annila woke for the birth of her grandchild. I’m pretty sure that happened because Sharon let her go. That part of life she gets. A man who wasn’t as good at making plans as I am might even suggest using Baby Antonio as a way of waking her up.”
“Could we? I mean, not in a way that would hurt him, but in some way?” I asked.
“Probably but there are other ways.”
“When do we do it?”
“It will take planning, and I will need to be much less distracted,” Alvis said, flashing me a knowing smile.
“Do I need to go away? It won’t be easy to be away from you, but I can go and stay at home. Not the house but like in the Other World.”
“No,” Alvis said, the word escaping his mouth fast and hard. “No,” he said it softer the second time. “I was thinking we use the time leading up to our claiming vows to our advantage. She’s using Annila as a piece of spy equipment. With a little help from the others, we can set up a test to see if it’s actually Sharon or not. We won’t have to be apart at all to test it. Hell, we won’t even go there.”
“I love your smile right now.”
“I love a good hunt and I think we’ll have plenty of opportunities to invite Mori to help too. As rude as it was that he dumped his drink on me, I think he needs some guidance. He’s in over his head with this dead wolf guy and needs to remember he’s the one in control of his life. Not some dead man. I’m not saying this guy sounds shady, but doesn’t he sound shady?”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“The dead are who they were when they were alive. At least for a while until they move on. Sure, he probably did work with some sketchy magical organization,” he took my other hand in his. Now he had them both and it was hard to follow what he said. I was staring at his lips but not hearing a word that tumbled out of that kissable mouth of his.
“Courting gifts,”my lion reminded me, snapping me out of whatever trance he’d unknowingly put me in.
“Are you even listening?” Alvis laughed, squeezing my hands. “You’re smiling like I promised you a blow job and a lap dance. I mean, I’m down for either. I just didn’t know sketchy organization talk made you so happy.”
