"Expected what?"
"Your changing directions. What I was unclear on was how it was going to make me feel."
"I'm not changing anything."
God, that was a lie even to her own ears: She wasn't sure what her future looked like, or who precisely she was going to be at the end of the training program--however long it lasted--but she wasn't going back to the way she had been.
Those nights of being a proper female sitting in this house, or any other, waiting for the chance to come down to some social gathering was not it. And yes, that decision not to get mated--except to Craeg--had stuck.
"I wish your mahmen was still with us."
"Me, too." But for another reason than the one he was thinking of, no doubt. Paradise could have used some love advice. "I miss her."
"Do you know that we were well and truly in love? We had been appropriately matched by our families, but . . . we really did fall in love. She was my everything."
God . . . damn it, she thought. His subtle advocating for Peyton didn't so much miss the mark as drive a stake through her heart--because she wasn't fooled. That statement, while true and important, was without a doubt uttered in the hopes that she look favorably upon a traditional betrothal with her friend.
She had suspected for a while that that was something her father wanted for her. He liked Peyton, approved of the male's bloodline, and knew that there was already a friendship in place. In the eyes of an aristocratic head of household, what could be better for a daughter than a setup like that.
What would he think if he ever met Craeg?
Craeg, the son of what the humans would have called a blue-collar family. Would her father even see the strength of character, the soul beneath the lack of trappings?
"I can adjust to almost anything," her father said grimly. "I can adapt to whatever you want your life to be--up to a point. The one thing that I won't budge on is your finding the kind of love your mahmen and I had. That is the non-negotiable for me."
Read: a male who was from the same class she was, who could provide her with the same life she had grown up in.
"Oh, Father," she said sadly.
"I'm sorry, that's just how I am."
"I know."
As the grandfather clock out in the foyer began to chime eight times, she cast off the pall that had settled in the room and got to her feet again.
"I have to be off." She straightened the clothes she had chosen for the evening. "I'm going to go out with my classmates, and then there's a project we're working on during the day, so I'll be home tomorrow night after class? And yes, there will be chaperones."
As she stared across the perfectly appointed room at him, the ambience of old wealth and distinction that hadn't been bought, but had been curated over the hundreds of years her family had had money, truly sunk in on her.
Would Craeg even be comfortable here?
Probably not.
"Father?"
"Forgive me." He looked down at the papers on his desk. "But of course, I understand you must needs be gone. Do know you are missed, however. Also know that the Brothers do not tell me much, yet what they have shared . . . makes me very, very proud of you."
That now-familiar pain in her chest, the one that came from her lying, lit off again as she thought that actually, he would not be very proud of her at all.
She intended to lose her virginity tonight to a male he would never approve of.
The trouble was, the Brothers had given no indication of how long this training program would last or what the long-term prospects for the class sticking together were. And her need for Craeg's body was making her desperate--and very conscious that time was passing with alacrity.
She wasn't going to miss her chance. And she had the sense that the more they were together, the more Craeg's priorities were changing, too. He was becoming attached to her.
Paradise could feel it.
If it weren't for the omissions with her father, she would be on cloud nine.
"I'll see you tomorrow night after class," she said in a rough voice.
"I'll be here. Do take care of yourself."
"I will." She nodded to him. "I promise, Father."
Chapter Thirty-eight
Craeg couldn't remember the last time he'd gone out with "friends." In fact, he might never have done it before.
As he pulled on his jeans and cursed the holes, he told himself to get over it. He'd never been into "fashion"--one, he couldn't have afforded it even if he had given a shit, and two, worrying about what you put on your body had always struck him as a criminal waste of brainpower.
"You look so incredibly average."
Rolling his eyes, he turned around to Axe and--
"What the fuck are you wearing, asshole?"
The male looked like he'd been hit with the freak bat harder than usual, his big body wearing a shiny black skin suit that smelled like chemicals and made a strange creaking sound as he walked. Black piercings were in his ears and his face, a chain running from one lobe to his fucking nose, for crissakes.
He didn't look like a pussy, though--Craeg had to give him that. Something about the bastard radiated aggression, power, strength. Sex.
Kinky sex, that was.
Axe shrugged like he was in nothing more unusual than a granhmen's housecoat. "I'm going to hang out with my kind. If I don't get laid my way soon, I'm going to kill myself--hell, much more of you vanilla types and I'm going to need Cialis to get it up. You're killing my burn."
"Well, no offense, but an open flame is not what you need around that getup."
And out came the mask. It was black, of course, but like he'd expected something pink and green? And it fit over Axe's features like a glove, changing his not-bad-looking-at-all face into something downright hideous--a morphing that was no longer vampire, but another species.
Alien.
"To think I assumed you were fugly before," Craeg remarked.
"Again I say, you normals are killing me."
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd that was how he and a whatever-the-hell-it-was ended up riding out of the training center together.
As the bus went along, pausing at all those gates, they were both quiet, but he was damn sure they had the same things on their minds: Axe was clearly looking to get his freak all over some Goth variety of a heart-n'-a-hole, while Craeg was trying desperately to convince himself he could keep from losing control with Paradise.
Ostensibly, this whole meet-up-with-the-class thing shouldn't have been a big deal--they were just going to a regular club, with music and booze. Nothing close to where Axe was heading, for sure.
But sex was going to be front and center, at least for him.
Shit, Paradise was killing him--and he'd identified the essential problem. Since the first night of the program, he'd set up barrier after barrier to keep her away, and each one of them had crumbled. It was like he was a mountain climber and had taken a fall--and every tethering of the rope that was there to save his life had popped, one after the other.
"You know, you look like shit, and not just because you're wearing that ridiculous getup," Axe muttered.
Craeg looked across the aisle. "I look ridiculous? Have you checked in the mirror? I didn't know that crank case oil was a fashion statement."
"Stop avoiding. What's up, my man."
As they trundled along, heading for the dematerialization spot, he found himself talking. "I can't . . . You know, it's not right."
"What isn't."
"I can't do it."
"Still waiting for a noun. I know you're a redneck, but you do have a vocabulary, if rumor serves."
Craeg just shook his head. There was no way he was going to disrespect Paradise by laying their private business out--even to a guy like Axe, who seemed, if only because he was, in his own words, a committed narcissist, likely to keep shit tight.
"I don't know," Axe said as he stretched his legs out across the seats and leaned against the bus's darkened windows. "She seems diffe
rent from her kind. I don't think you have to worry."
Yeah, females were totally opposite from males, weren't they.
And in this case, he was the one being a pussy. She was not. She was ready for their next level--and he suspected he might just be hiding behind her virtue: Once again, he was protecting himself. And when he thought about how she made him feel?
Still seemed like a smart . . . if perhaps unsustainable . . . plan.
Christ, they were going to end up alone at some point tonight. It was fucking inevitable. And after two phone sex seshes with her, he was more desperate than ever, a panting, starved, crazy male with an ever-ready cock, and enough orgasms on backup to dehydrate him to the point of needing Gatorade through a vein.
He wanted to believe he could keep to his resolution, he really did.
The trouble was, nothing made him more shortsighted than his name leaving her lips on a gasp.
One syllable and nothing fancy, his was not a regal name. But all she had to do was say it and he was gone, gone, gone. Putty in her hands. Blank of any intention other than getting inside of her and staying there.
Oh, man, he was in such trouble here.
*
As Paradise entered the human club, shAdoWs, she looked around and thought . . . yeah, no. Loud music was thumping to the point where she heard it in her skull. Dark purple and red laser beams shot this way and that through air that was thick with human smells. And the overwhelming attention she got was not anything she was interested in.
Having no idea where Craeg, Boone, and Novo were, she walked through the gyrating crowd, and as she went along, human men watched her, assessed her, hoped to catch her eye. She supposed some of them might have been considered attractive, but it was more along the lines of her wandering through someone's room and noticing a chair with a good slipcover.
The fabric might be nice, but she'd never take it home.
Or in this case, sit on the damn thing.
The building that housed the club had been a warehouse, it looked like, and there was something incongruous about its three-story-high open space nonetheless feeling claustrophobic. Then again, there were just too many people crammed into the center. Where did you just hang out, she wondered. And how did all of them know each other? Everybody seemed to be touching . . . everybody that was around them.
Working her way across the floor space, she discovered there were booths along the perimeter of all that writhing. Maybe her people were there? Jeez, did she even have the right club--
"Hey, baby, come with me."
A rough hand grabbed her waist and hauled her up against a sweaty body. Glaring at the human man, she tried to push him away, but he latched hold on her wrists, yanking her in close.
"I know you want this," he slurred, rubbing his hips against her. He smelled like old cologne, older cigarette smoke--or maybe that was weed?--and a very-not-hot kind of desperation. "Kiss me."
"You've got to be kidding."
"Come on, you want it. I know you want it."
Fuck this, she thought.
With a quick jerk, she freed her right arm and punched him in the throat with her knuckles--and as he bent over and grabbed at his neck, she had to stop herself from breaking his nose with her knee.
Leaving him to gag, she turned and--
Ran smack into Craeg's enormous chest.
"I was coming to save you," he said dryly. "But I already learned firsthand you can hold your own--so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you don't need me."
Instantly, everything about the club changed. The air was no longer stuffy; it was filled with sexual heat. The lasers weren't blinding; they were scintillating. The music wasn't loud; it was erotic.
The humans were still annoying, but come on, even true love could only do so much.
God, he looked amazing. Tall and broad, big and strong, that Orange cap on his head just like the night they'd first met. That simple white T-shirt showing off his muscles. Those jeans . . . Jesus, those worn, soft-as-skin jeans that gave her peeks of his thighs in the places that were torn.
"Dance with me," she said as she leaned into him so he could hear her over the din.
The bill of the baseball hat kept her from seeing his eyes, but she felt them running over what she had changed into before leaving the house: her low-cut blouse and her short little skirt and her tight little jacket were all for him, and they had obviously captivated the guy. He also seemed to like her hair, that she'd left loose, and what she'd done with her makeup.
"Craeg," she repeated. "Dance with me."
"I can't," he muttered.
"Why?"
"I don't, like . . . you know, move that way."
Such a lie, she thought as she remembered the feel of him on top of her. He moved just frickin' fine.
"Do it anyway." She grabbed his hips and pulled them in close. "Dance with me."
Moving against him to the beat of the music, she felt his immediate response, his arousal popping up, rubbing against her belly because he was so much taller than her.
"People are going to know," he ground out--but his hands were already on her waist, squeezing, holding their lower bodies together. "From class."
"Who cares. Like they don't already."
Novo knew. Hell, the female was part of the reason they'd kissed for the first time. Peyton? As she'd decided before, she could deal with him. Boone? He cared only about the training; she wasn't even sure the male knew anyone's name. And Axe wasn't even coming tonight. Nor Anslam. And no member of the glymera would ever show up in a place like this.
Live now, she thought, losing herself in being with him, close to him, held by him.
Pulling his head down to her, she whispered in his ear, "I'm not wearing any panties."
The groan that ripped out of him was louder than even the music.
"Pardon me," he said, straightening. "I gotta go do something."
"Mmmm," she purred, imagining him in the bathroom, taking care of that arousal. "And what might that be?"
"I have to go kill all the human men in this club who are looking at you. Won't take long, they're weak and can't run fast."
Throwing her head back and laughing, she felt her heart soar, especially as those strong arms wrapped around her even more tightly.
This was going to be the best night of her life. She could feel it.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The key turned out to be nothing that you put in a lock. It was more a tangible pass that got two people through a mountain of security that stood around a nondescript door to a nondescript garage structure in a seedy part of downtown Caldwell's mostly abandoned industrial park.
Following behind Butch, but ahead of the trainee he'd brought with them, Marissa found that with her mask in place, she had a confidence she might not otherwise have felt. There was something liberating about hiding your features when you were going into an environment that you didn't know how you were going to handle. It meant you didn't have to self-monitor your expression and fake composure, for one thing. For another, you could more freely try on a persona that could take whatever was thrown at them.
Because who else was going to know the truth?
In the dense darkness of the club's interior, Butch's reassuring hand reached behind and patted around to take hers, and the instant the connection was made, she felt even more confident. Nothing was going to touch her, harm her, unsettle her. Not with him here.
The first thing she became aware of was a growing thumping sound, and she assumed it was the bass beat of some music. As they rounded a tight, architecturally random corner, she discovered it wasn't a concert-worthy set of speakers doing their duty. It was the rhythmic chopping of a grind wheel that seemed to serve no purpose other than to--
Oh. Okaaaaay.
There was a woman with her legs spread underneath it, and the machine was penetrating her with . . .
Looking away, she found a male squeezed into a Lucite box, his naked body contorted, one side
open so that people could . . .
Shifting her eyes elsewhere, she saw a row of exam tables, people in latex bodysuits just like hers strapped to them one after another in contorted positions, sexual organs exposed for the consumption of lines of anonymous strangers.
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, they were in a sex club. Yup.
And it was weird, the interior space was twelve times the size it had appeared from the outside, so it must have been created by knocking out walls of other buildings, that garage thing just the start of a lineup of facilities that had been merged. Everything was dim, everyone was in costumes and masks, and sex in all its permutations and combinations was everywhere.
It was one nonjudgmental experiment and expression of eroticism after another, the moans and groans offering a soundtrack that the techno music complemented rather than overrode.
Bizarrely, she found the whole thing curiously . . . unshocking. And not really ugly, either. The people seemed genuinely turned on--and God, they were so nice. Unlike the few times she'd been out at human gatherings and been gawked at, here, people would meet you in the eye and smile, like you were part of their . . . well, club. And when she bumped into someone, the response was relaxed and nonaggressive.
It all seemed so . . . normal?
Maybe it was the unapologetic nature of it all. Maybe it was the mask hiding her identity. Maybe it was the dead-serious purpose of her being here. Whatever the combination, she was relieved.
Deep into the club, Butch, Axe, and she formed a circle. As Butch looked to her in his skeleton mask, she patted his hand and nodded, giving him the thumbs-up sign.
After he nodded back at her, he turned to Axe. The two of them leaned in and traded some words. In the meantime, she looked around for some pattern of dress that indicated who was staff.
Had the dead female come here before she died?
A series of flashes lit off over to the left and she narrowed her eyes. Someone was taking photographs of people who were strung up on rotating wheels and incapacitated as men ejaculated on them, whipped them, drew blood.
And that was when she realized . . . the farther they went, the more hard-core things had become.
Had someone taken a game too far with that female? she wondered. And killed her by mistake?
*
After Butch was sure that Marissa was doing okay, he was all business--and without distraction. That erotic moment with her in the foyer of the mansion had been sexual to him. Everything here in the club? Might as well have been a lawnmower for all he cared. A bowl of oatmeal. A book on Chemistry: As he started to develop a strategy in his head, he was back on his old job, his brain stepping into a set of mental clothes that at once made him hyper-aware and utterly detached from his environment.