Part 3 (2/2)
”Why? We're twins. Remember?”
”Vaguely. So what's your point?”
She laughed. ”You are entirely too suspicious, Andrei.”
He shrugged. ”What do you expect from a vampire?”
Moving across her living room floor, she sat next to him on the sofa, slipping her arm through his. ”I need a favor that only you can do for me. Will you do it?”
He pulled away from her and rose to his feet. She watched him stalk over to the patio doors, tension clear in every step he took. He turned to face her, his long, dark lashes sweeping down to conceal the look in his blue eyes. ”That rather depends on what you want, doesn't it?”
”It's nothing of any great consequence.”
”I'll be the judge of that. What's the favor?”
She shrugged. ”A friend of mine has a very important engagement coming up and she needs an escort-” ”No!” He shook his head, leveling a pointed finger in her direction. ”And no again, Tatiana.”
She arched a brow. ”You haven't allowed me to finish.”
”I don't need to. I can tell you right now that I am not escorting your plain-Jane friend anywhere. So don't waste your time or mine finis.h.i.+ng.”
”By refusing to meet Coda, you are missing out on a woman I know could be the best thing that ever happened to you!”
”If you don't mind, I'll be the one who decides what's best for me. And I can tell you here and now, that is not your plain-”
She sucked in an angry breath. ”That's enough with the plain-Jane comments, Andrei! If I thought for one moment that you meant to be unkind, I'd backhand some manners into you.”
He bared his incisors. ”Since when do you duck the truth, Tat?”
”It's not the truth!”
”Then why the h.e.l.l can't she get her own date?”
For all his charm and innate kindness, Drei was still stuck on looks. Why else would he refuse to meet Dacoda while jumping to do the bidding of the bony, flat-a.s.sed, t.i.tless Veelee? ”Okay, so she's not supermodel gorgeous, but then most women aren't. That doesn't make them any less desirable or worthy of love and affection.”
”Worthy of whose love? Whose affection?” His gaze narrowed. ”No matter how much you go out of your way to imply I'm fickle because I like pretty women, I will not be shamed into dating your friend. If she can't land her own dates, let her hire a professional escort. With the overblown salary you pay her, she should be able to afford it.”
She tightened her lips. ”Andrei, you are being totally impossible! Dacoda is executive editor of two of my most popular magazines. Do you know how much work that job demands of her? Do you know how much of herself and her time she pours into each and every issue? She earns every penny I pay her.”
”Then let her use some of her well-earned salary to get herself a date for her d.a.m.ned reunion!”
She tossed her head, sending her hair cascading around her shoulders. ”It's not as if I'm asking you to become her lover.”
”Not yet, you're not,” he shot back. ”But I know you. If I give in and agree to escort her, the next thing I know, you'll be tossing her in my face every chance you get. And I am not having that, Tatiana. I will pick my own woman.”
”I've given up trying to get you to stop judging women by their looks, Andrei. I'm not asking anything except that you help the person who helped me when I needed the understanding and comfort only a woman can provide. You were there for me when Tim and I broke up and I love you for that, but having never had your heart broken, you couldn't understand my pain. Even if you had... women feel things differently than men do. She crawled into my pit of despair with me and lessened my hurt by a.s.suming some of it herself. Even in hundreds of years, friends.h.i.+p that deep happens rarely and needs to be cherished.”
She paused, taking a moment to overcome a wave of pain at the memory of being rejected by her lover of three years when she confessed that instead of being a wealthy thirty-something publis.h.i.+ng magnet, she was an over-three-hundred-year-old fullblood vampire. Despite Tim's recent pleas for forgiveness, she was uncertain if she was prepared to entrust her heart to him again. Even if she did, the sweet memory of her encounter several weeks earlier with Eric Jason taunted and teased her. How could she want them both at the same time?
”So she's a great friend, why does that follow that I have to accompany her anywhere?”
Andrei's brusque question interrupted her morose thoughts. She blinked. ”From the moment I told Coda what I was, she accepted me. Of course she was surprised...” She shrugged. ”Shocked and a little disbelieving, but never disgusted. She fully accepts me. When I needed her, she was there for me. How can I not try to return the favor and help her? If you knew how much grief that family of hers gives her, you'd understand why she can't show up without a handsome man on her arm.”
”If her family treats her badly, then she's better off telling them to f.u.c.k off and was.h.i.+ng her hands of them. Why should she go out of her way to give herself grief by trying to placate a bunch of idiots?”
”Because they are her family! You, of all vampires, know the importance of family.
Remember how miserable we both were when we were trying to deny who we really were because that meant distancing ourselves from Sei and Vlad?
”When all is said and done, family is all there is. It doesn't matter if you are vampire or human, it all comes down to the importance of family.”
”Really?” He gave her a long, probing look.
She steeled herself, certain he was going to come back at her with a question she'd find difficult to answer. ”Yes,” she said slowly, only just resisting the urge to probe his thoughts.
”Then why didn't you forgive Mother at the celebration of the birth of Sei's daughters?”
The question, totally unexpected, caused her to suck in a quick, painful breath. Days earlier, she and Drei, along with the rest of the family and close friends, had gathered at Aleksei's mansion to celebrate the birth of his twin daughters Pali and Lexi.
Because those with vampire blood, whether full, half-blood or latent, rarely had the privilege of having children, each birth was a cause for great celebration. All available family and friends gathered to watch the birthing. Afterwards, those gathered engaged in a s.e.xual fest that her younger siblings quaintly called a family f.u.c.k fest. Each person attending usually had the pleasure of f.u.c.king and ingesting the blood of their own partner as well as that of their siblings' bloodl.u.s.ts.
Although the thought of f.u.c.king her younger sister Katie's bloodl.u.s.t Mark and maybe Vlad's bloodl.u.s.t Adam had intrigued Tat, she had been in too much turmoil to remain for the s.e.xual festivities. She had recently learned her belief that her mother had deserted them, held for well over three hundred years, had been incorrect.
She gave Drei a cold look. ”What's the matter, Drei, annoyed because you couldn't stay and f.u.c.k Erica and Derri until they walked bowlegged for weeks?” The women were the bloodl.u.s.ts of their younger siblings, Mikhel and Serge Dumont. Both baby vamps were fortunate enough to have a human latent father, Matthew Dumont, who showered them with all the love and protection that Tat, Drei, Aleksei and his twin Vlad had been denied when their father had been murdered some three hundred and fifty plus years earlier.
The annoyance in Andrei's blue eyes vanished. A lecherous smile touched his handsome face as he reached down to fondle the outline of his c.o.c.k lying along the inside of one leg. ”Erica is a pretty, fertile young blonde honey. She got pregnant almost immediately after Mikhel f.u.c.ked her for the first time.” His smile widened. ”Derri doesn 't appear nearly as fertile, but d.a.m.n, she's a hot vixen. No wonder Mikhel is halfway in love with her.”
She frowned. ”Mikhel is in bloodl.u.s.t with Erica.”
He shrugged. ”Did I say he wasn't?”
”Then what are you implying?”
”Hey, you're old enough to know that love and bloodl.u.s.t are not the same creature, Tat. He's in bloodl.u.s.t with Erica, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if he's not more than a little in love with Derri. Didn't you see the way he looked at her, as if he could eat her up? I'll bet he's f.u.c.ked her almost as much as Serge has. You can just look at her and know she has some delicious p.u.s.s.y. Little brother Serge has a hot mama in his Derri.”
”And Dani?” She asked, thinking of Aleksei's bloodl.u.s.t.
”Oh, I won't neglect her. Vlad tells me she's a sweet f.u.c.k.””And Adam?” Adam was Vlad's bloodl.u.s.t.He gave her an annoyed look. ”I don't do men, but you haven't answered my question. If family is so important, why didn't you forgive Mother?”
Her lips quivered. ”I should have. She didn't abandon us.” She sighed. ”But after allowing myself to almost hate her for so long... it's difficult to feel anything... real for her.”
”It wouldn't be if you hadn't left so quickly.””What do you mean?”He shrugged. ”She looked so small and so...hopelessly sad after you left...andsince she didn't actually abandon us, there's no reason to prolong her agony. Is there?” ”No.” ”So I think I'll go see her...soon.”
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