Page 3 of A Drink of Destiny
I started to put it on, but he gently pressed both of my hands to my stomach and did it for me before shutting the door and circling around to the driver’s seat. He started the car without ever telling me where we were headed.
Chapter Four
Raiel
Moonscale London
I’d once told Beal I’d take my true-mate straight back home with me if I ever met him. Only now it wasn’t that simple. I didn’t care if he slapped Mori or punched his lights out. Sometimes Mori was annoying. He went around acting like he knew secrets that the rest of us mere mortals would never fathom. One of those secrets was probably the reason behind him dumping the beer on my mate.
“Shirt off,” I said, reaching across him to the glove box to pull out one of the black t-shirts I kept stashed in there just in case.
“Huh?” he blinked.
“Change. You’re slick enough without having your belly covered in beer,” I said, tossing the shirt on the dash just in time to look up and stop at a traffic light.
“Yeah. I smell like a pear tart soaked in beer,” he sighed. “At least, I think I can still smell my pheromone blocker spray.”
“I can only smell you. Whatever magic drives the true-mate response won’t let me focus on anything else. I could barely smell my own blood back there.”
“Thanks for that,” he said, grabbing the hem of his shirt.
I watched him wiggle out of his shirt out of the corner of my eye. If I looked at him head on, we’d never make it anywhere and my car wasn’t big enough for a romp. Plus, I hadn’t given him his courting gifts. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what to gift a vampire for courting. I also wasn’t sure where we were going but moving a vampire into our feline community would takeplanning. I had enough blood for now, but everyone knew you couldn’t have just one donor for a healthy vampire. Why hadn’t I paid more attention when Beal and Pierce talked about those blood replacement shakes. I had enough money to buy a store filled with them.
Still, I couldn’t totally ignore my true-mate sitting in the car next to me. He was within touching distance and that was surreal. So F-ing surreal. He had long brown hair and inquisitive honey-colored eyes. His hair had been soft wound around my fist. His mouth even softer as his tongue probed the holes his fangs carved into my wrist. I glanced down. The bite wasn’t bleeding but the impressions of the holes were still there. Alpha genetics healed a lot of things but when it came to vampire venom it could take its sweet time from what I heard. After all, my mate was the first vampire to bite me. Now he sat shirtless with his little pink nipples and lean muscular torso on display. If not for the courting gifts I might’ve devoured him right there. How had Beal waited so long with Nic? Was it the danger that distracted him? Had knowing that we had to wait made me more impatient?
“Where are we going?” he asked, pulling my clean, black shirt over his head and folding the beer sodden tee up.
The car behind me lay on its horn. The light had changed but until his seatbelt was righted, I wasn’t budging up. He could blow it out of his ass all night long.
“I’m trying to figure that out. Look, my first thought was to steal you away to where I come from, but we have to plan your blood supply. I’m just playing this by ear. We could go back to where I’m staying but there’s a conked out dragoness and a newborn there.”
“Annila?” he asked.
“What? How did you know? Did my blood tell you that?” I blinked and the car honked behind me again.
My cat growled inside his inner sanctum. A little growl. A warning growl. It was small now, but a roar wasn’t far behind if that idiot didn’t give us two minutes to figure out what we were doing. If we made it anywhere without me chomping into someone it was going to be a good day.
“No, I don’t possess that gift,” he shook his head and leaned back in the passenger seat, making himself comfy. “I’m the sleep specialist her son hired to come take a look at her this week. I arrived in town early to visit the friend who recommended me to them.”
“Pierce?” I blinked.
“That would be the one,” he grinned.
“Small world, huh? Is that where you’re staying?” I pulled the car forward.
“Yes. Well, it’s where I was planning on staying. I stopped in at the bar first to unwind a bit and not show up a whole night early on a young couple with a new baby. They would’ve welcomed me, but I didn’t want to put them out. We can go there now, though. They have a whole estate. Well, Pierce’s parents have a whole estate but they’re somewhere in Europe. I know this little place to get a good burger. They can even cook the blood out of yours if you want.”
“They’ll have blood for you there?” I asked, reaching out for his mind as if I’d done it a thousand times over but our link wasn’t open yet.
“They will. Though, I don’t need blood at every meal. Not at my advanced age.”
“Have we met before?” I asked him. “Like in one of my past lives?”
“Not in the seven hundred years I’ve been alive,” he said, letting out a little sad sigh. “I’ve had a couple husbands of course. All of them have moved on. I was over the whole dating thing.”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you before getting your courting gifts,” I said, feeling sheepish that I hadn’t stopped the kiss and hoped it wasn’t a test.
“Have courting gifts come back into fashion?” he asked.
