“I don’t have anything else to wear, do I?” I asked in a high tone.
“You don’t need panties to sleep. I won’t assault you or push the issue. We’re going to sleep so that when you wake, I don’t have to hold your hand. How do you manage the curse without a Van Helsing around?”
“I have a cell that I use in my room at E.V.I.E. that’s safe for me to be within, but my whole room is pretty much a safe zone. It’s reinforced steel, and once the curse becomes active, I retire there until it has run its course. I try not to use more than a tiny amount of magic when crafting weapons. That way I don’t have to deal with it for very long.”
“How did you end up at E.V.I.E.? I doubt your mother supported your choice to hunt vampires and other creatures before immortality claimed you.”
“Elizabeth hates that I joined. She spent my entire childhood running from your bloodline, and I just wanted to stop running for a little while. Every story and every lesson was about how to prevent detection until I couldn’t take it anymore. I left at seventeen, and I remained hidden until Winchester found me and made me call my mother, who had gone mad during my disappearance. I guess it was rather selfish to run from the one person who had stuck around to make sure I survived to adulthood. I was a child running from a parent who was a little more than smothering, I guess.”
“Who is Winchester?” he asked, reaching for the whiskey beside the bed. He sat beside me, pouring us both glasses.
“She’s no one,” I swallowed, knowing she’d use to me to test out her newest arsenal if I discussed her with a Van Helsing.
“Judging by her name, I’m guessing another of Eliza’s daughters?”
“How do you know it’s a girl?” I demanded.
“You said she was no one, meaning female. I guess in this day and age, it could be otherwise. I’m guessing you never entered a public school or got to see much of the outside world. Knowing Eliza, you would have been raised off-grid, kept out of the eye of the world. You never learned how to be human because she never intended to leave you alone until you turned twenty-five and ascended to immortality. She’d have taught you how to survive in the wild, but on her terms. She probably taught you to control silver from childhood and use magic. Your mother was a fierce woman and had the patience of a saint for her children.”
“You knew her after you burned her home and family to ashes?” I asked curiously. He flinched, filling my glass before doing the same to his. “You didn’t know her after, because you said she died—” I cringed, lifting my eyes to lock with his. “My mother had other children, didn’t she? She never spoke of them if that is the case.”
“It was war, and both sides struck fast and hard, Remi. Grief makes people act out, and most of the time, it’s with the intent to inflict the most amount of pain you can cause. We set their house on fire without warning. We hit your family fast and hard, and we offered no mercy. Your mother lost her mate and children in the fire, or so we assumed. Considering we thought she was dead, it is possible others made it out alive as well.”
I swallowed, nodding while biting my tongue. I lifted the glass to my lips, chugging his expensive whiskey without stopping to sniff or swirl it as he was doing. I didn’t care if it cost fifty grand. Personally, I thought it was stupid to drop that much on whiskey when people worked their asses off just to make enough to live day-by-day. He and I wouldn’t be friends under normal circumstances, I realized.
I had spent hours one day watching people stand in line at a check-cashing place. They were exhausted from long hours of working tirelessly. Yet there they were, standing in line for a payday loan just to be able to afford things for their families.
I’d added money to accounts of strangers, paying off layaways for school or Christmas with the checks that were wasting away in my account from E.V.I.E. since I needed very little to maintain my lifestyle. It was something I could do to give back, and, well, the animal shelters only accepted so many donations before they started to think I was obsessed with them, as most were run by men around Seattle.
“This is where you start to hate me, and it gets tediously awkward,” Rhys sighed.
“I don’t hate you,” I admitted, lifting my eyes to his, which were narrowed on me as if he didn’t like my answer. “What happened was because both sides made mistakes. I wasn’t there so I can’t say who was wrong, but I know our bloodline has a lot of hotheads because I am one of them. Do I think you’re faultless? No, because there are always two sides in every war throughout history. And on each side, there are always two varying beliefs on who is right and who is wrong.”
“For someone so young, Remi, you think beyond your tender years. Your leg is bruising,” he stated, not looking away from me.
I looked at my thigh, and I scrunched up my nose. “Perk of being mortal and fair-skinned. I bruise easily. A perk of being me. I don’t feel it, not much anyway. You could kiss it, though, make it better for me?” I laughed only to have it get stuck in my throat as I gazed up, finding him smirking devilishly. “That was a joke.”
“That isn’t where I want to kiss you, Remi.”
“Where do you want to kiss me?”
His lips turned up at the corners, and heat filled his pretty eyes. “I want to push you down on this broken bed, spread your legs apart, and devour your pussy until you come for me.”
“You want to kiss my pussy?” I asked in a high-pitched tone as my nipples hardened and my body heated.
His smile turned blinding, and his head tilted slightly to the side, staring at my erect nipples through the white nightgown that hid very little. Butterflies exploded in my belly as he leaned closer, brushing his mouth against the shell of my ear.
“No, I want to fucking devour your pussy until you drip down my chin because you come so fucking hard that you’re soaked with arousal. Would you like that, Remi?” he asked, and in the same breath, he asked, “care for another drink, Love?”
“Yes,” I mumbled.
“Yes, to me devouring your pussy, or yes to a drink? Or both?”
“Drink me.” My eyes rounded in horror as what I said echoed in my ears. “Pussy my whiskey—oh my God, shut up, Remi!” I groaned, covering my face.
“I’m willing to drink my whiskey from your pussy, if you’re game.”
“Pour me another drink, Rhys, and stop taunting me. You’re flustering me on purpose.”
“I enjoy your blushes, Love. Not many women I know still blush or grow flustered when I speak to them. Let me enjoy it.”
“Do you often ask women to drink from their vaginas?” I asked, feeling as though he’d dunked my head in a bucket of ice, forgetting to add the water first.
“Actually, no,” he said huskily. “That’s a new one for me. Surprising, considering my age and the fact that your bloodline cursed me to fuck to feed. Hungry? I’m starving.”
“Make that drink a double,” I whispered while swallowing down my embarrassment mixed with desire. Rhys’s lips tipped up, and his attention dropped to where my body physically clenched under the intensity burning in his eyes. “This is going to be the longest night of my entire life. You should probably know that I’ve never slept beside anyone before, other than my mother. So I might snore, drool, or even kick in my sleep.”