I raised my eyebrows. "We?"
He turned, tilting his head to the side as he appraised me. "You do not want me as your partner?"
The question had a hint of his power in it, and I knew he couldn't help it, but when I said, "More than you know," I was kind of disgruntled as it passed my lips. That was the thing about Nico. You could never tell what you were telling him of your own free will, and what was just a side effect of his power. I didn't hold it against him though. I shook off the remnants of his power. "What about your job as town counsellor?"
Nico shrugged. "Unless someone petitions to join, my job is pretty non-demanding. After your arrival, however, the Council has decided that a bit of a, err, hiatus may be necessary in regards to accepting new members."
I winced. My turning had brought a shitstorm, I couldn't deny it. First by outing the town's doctor as running a human farming racket. Which in turn brought the Enforcers, and then Lucius. No one liked it when the Enforcers had arrived, and they liked it even less when Lucius turned up.
Ughh, that reminded me. "Uh, I got another present from your twin this morning." Nico raised an eyebrow. "Yep, a dick and a head this time. Must have been a two for one special at Psychos-R-Us." I shifted so I was looking at him from the corner of my eye. "When I told him I didn't want any more heads, he stopped by to ask why."
Nico went completely still. "He was there?"
I nodded.
"With you alone? Are you okay?" Again, I nodded. Nico's body was frozen, like he didn't know if he should find Lucius and fight him or check to see if I was in one piece. Of course I was okay. Lucius was a crazy person, there was no doubt about that. But crazy or not, he didn't give me the feeling that he wanted to hurt me anymore. I didn't understand why not, what had changed his mind, but I wasn't fighting it.
Nico stepped closer to me, his hand resting on my spine again. "He's dangerous, Raine. I don't have to tell you that. Would you like me to go talk to him? To tell him to leave you alone?"
I shook my head. "Could you do that without one of you being maimed in some horrific way?"
He lifted a shoulder and that was enough of an answer for me. They would fight, and there would be blood and injuries, and I valued Nico too much to let that happen. And despite what Nico said about his brother being nuts, about not wanting anything to do with him, I think that seriously hurting Lucius would kill something inside Nico. That last glowing part of his humanity that he'd hung onto all these years would be extinguished, because fratricide wasn’t something you just got over.
Did I really want to be the cause of that, just because I didn't want to get the heads of murderers and pedophiles on my doorstep every other day? No.
Honestly, and I'd never tell the other guys this, but I thought it was kind of sweet. That probably made me all sorts of fucked up, but I like the symbolism.
X was right though. There was only room for one psycho in my life and the crazy Brit was it. I had a heated flashback to X tying me in literal knots. We hadn’t gone any further, X and I, but sometimes I caught him watching me with so much heat in his eyes I thought I was going to cook from the inside out.
I pushed the thought away and stepped closer to Nico. "It's fine. Lucius doesn't seem to want to hurt me or abduct me and keep me chained as a sex slave in some Siberian ice cave. I don't know what he wants, but I guess eventually he’ll tell us all and then we'll figure it out. Until then, I guess we let him clean up the streets of predators and scumbags until he gets bored and moves on."
Nico wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer until I could lay my head on his chest. "That's the problem, Raine. Lucius doesn't get bored. He gets obsessed and then he gets dangerous." He squeezed me tightly, his voice dropping to that scary tone that sent shivers down my spine. "I will not let him harm you. I love my twin despite the hate that has festered between us for centuries. They are intertwined in a way. But, you’re precious to me. The most precious thing I've held in my hands in a long time. I will kill him if he harms you."
Unease skittered down my spine, but I shrugged it away. I don't know what I'd done to deserve this kind of devotion from Nico. Hell, from any of them. Judge, Walker, Brody, they all loved me unconditionally. Even X wanted me, and he seemed like the kind of guy who'd murder a room full of people before he considered sharing a girlfriend. But they saw something in me that I couldn't see in myself, no matter how hard I stared in the mirror. The only one I was sure of was Tex. Tex had loved me when I was Mika. He'd loved me when I had two scraped knees and a permanently dripping nose in the third grade as they worked out I was allergic to the tree in the backyard. He’d stuck by me even though the sniffing must have driven him insane.
Tex was my mate. That I knew in my soul would never change. But even after all this time, all the declarations, all the crazy hot sex, I still wondered why? Why me?
As if sensing my inner turmoil, Nico nodded. "Let us test your pastry chef skills? Maybe you will be a natural."
I scoffed, but I was willing to give it a go. I wanted to make this work, and I would try my hardest to master the art of baking. After all, you just followed a recipe? How hard could it be?
Chapter Three
As I stared at my creation, I was a little in awe of it.
Nico stood beside me, his arm brushing mine. "I've never seen anyone with that much natural skill." He paused as we both gazed down at the tray. "That much natural skill at destroying something that should be foolproof."
I shook my head, poking at the burnt edges of the brownie, then swirling my finger around the still uncooked batter of the middle. It basically defied physics, and Nico was right, that was pure talent. I flopped forward, folding my arms on the stainless steel workbenches then pressing my forehead against them. This was a mistake. A massive, epic, failure. They'd write children's rhymes about how shitty I was. I'd kill the undead at this rate and a major case of Salmonella seemed like a bad way to go.
"What am I going to do?" I mumbled into my arms. "This was stupid. Maybe I should get someone else to reopen the store. Maybe you could do it and I could be counsellor?" I could work in that pop-culture horror show that Nico called an office.
He pulled me up, resting his hands on my shoulders. "You just need practice, and I am happy to do this over and over again until you get it right. First brownies, then a croque-en-bouche."
"Cock-in-what-now?"
Nico blessed me with another one of those smiles. "Not cock'n, croque en- you know what, don't mind that. You are going to master this, Raine, because you have conquered every other thing life has thrown at you and I know this is not even half as difficult as becoming a vampire and trying not to eat everything in sight."
Well, when he put it like that.
He stepped closer, his eyes so mesmerizing, I couldn't look away if I tried. "Raine, I'm going to kiss you. Would that be okay?"
Hell yes.
I didn't know if I said it out loud or just in my head, but I closed the gap between us. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine in what was an almost innocent gesture. Until his fangs scraped against my lower lip, the sting making me hiss and the taste of my own blood setting something off in my brain that I couldn't control. I deepened the kiss, purposefully piercing his lip with my own fangs. The taste of his blood hit me like a bus, knocking the breath from my lungs and flooding my veins like a shot of the 100 proof vodka that one of my classmates had snuck home from the Ukraine. My eyes crossed and I let out a ridiculous noise between a moan and a whimper. I wanted more.