“Okey dokey.”
Koun’s head tilted to one side. “You are never going to act like a monarch, are you?”
“Nope.” A black SUV pulled up, Bruiser driving. There wasn’t a trunk. Too bad. I really wanted to see the two malcontent love birds curled up in one. Instead they crawled to the floor behind the back seat and pulled a heavy-duty tarp over themselves, just in case of an accident that resulted in a stray sunbeam. Koun and I got in the back seats.
Moments later, we were still forty minutes from the inn, and the sun rose behind the morning’s clouds. Koun and the travelers were old enough to stay awake if they had to, but the two in back fell asleep, a sign of trust maybe. I pulled a reflective tarp over Koun, who grumbled that he was awake, and he was, sorta. I patted his arm soothingly. Satisfied that I wasn’t going to damage the expectations of my scions and guests, I removed my weapons and headgear, crawled into the front seat, and snuggled with my honeybunny. He slipped an arm around me and nuzzled my head near my furry ears, all the while not taking his eyes off the road. Now that was a queen’s life. Not that it would last.
At the inn, we backed into the winery fermentation room—which had several huge steel fermentation tanks, two filled with table wines—a white and a red from this year’s very first grape harvest. There was a small windowless room just inside the door, nominally a lab to test when the grapes had high enough sugar content to pick. Bruiser also used it to taste and test the wines at various points in the fermentation process and to combine various types of grapes for different sugar content and tastes. Bruiser’s winey stuff. And to dump vamps when sunlight made it necessary.
He waved away the new manager, Josue Gagne, a French winemaker he had hired to run things while we were in New Orleans. He backed the SUV into the narrow room, easing in beside the long workbench. Together we dumped half-snoozing vamps onto the concrete floor, leaving Kojo and Thema in a tangle of arms and legs as they twisted themselves into more comfortable positions, and Koun slumped against a wall. We disarmed them, just in case they woke up testy and wanted to fight some more.
“Thank you,” Koun murmured as he curled to his side.
“We need an underground garage,” I said, not for the first time, “so we don’t have to keep dumping our friends here.”
“Yes, My Queen,” Bruiser said, again, not for the first time, sounding serene.
“Will you do me a big?” I asked as we got back in the SUV. “Don’t challenge Giovanni to a duel today, okay? Get some rest? Eat a meal or two? Drink some vamp blood?”
Bruiser pulled me into a one-armed hug and kissed my fuzzy ear, his fuzzy chin scraping me. “I have already been fed by Linc.” He kissed my other ear. “You can ask me anything, my love.”
I could think of a lot of anythings I might want, but not while I was furry. That would be just—ick. So I hugged him back, liking that even in this form, he was still just a little bit taller and a lot broader than me.
Bruiser maneuvered the SUV out, closed and locked the door to the windowless room, parked the SUV, and we walked toward the inn. Thirty feet out, the skies opened, and a cold fall rain shower inundated us. At least the rain washed the vamp blood from my armor, which had begun to stink.
CHAPTER 3
This Idiot Man Has Your Back
I woke alone again, in Jane form this time, and checked the clock. I had slept three hours.
I climbed out of bed, did all the girly things I had to do after I shifted shape, and pulled on comfy sweats. The bedroom hadn’t changed a whole lot except for the rugs. The floors were now covered with tribal rugs, primarily ultra-antique Tabriz and Hamadan rugs in all the shades of the color spectrum. Bruiser had a collection he had stored for decades with a family of rug collectors and brokers, and he had begun bringing his possessions out of storage to actually use, live with, and enjoy together with me and our extended family. I figured that was a good sign, that it meant he was getting over losing Leo, losing his job, losing his place in a changing society and culture. His whole world had been turned upside down when he left Leo and came to me. And then Leo, who had been his entire life for decades, ended up dead.
I liked the rugs. They made me want to walk around in my bare feet no matter the season, sliding my soles over the different nap depths and designs, some of which had a feel of magic to them, though why that might be so, I had no idea. The wool rugs were especially nice on rainy, chilly days like today.
Barefoot, I padded out of the bedroom wing, down the stairs to the kitchen, which smelled wonderful. Inside the ovens, I saw three big loaves of bread cooking in one and several quiches in another. In the quiche oven, I counted shrimp, mushroom and spinach, four cheese, and a meat lovers that had bacon crisscrossed on the top of the eggy mixture. The kitchen—the entire lower floor, actually—smelled heavenly.
I rinsed out one of Bruiser’s whistling kettles, poured in water to heat, and rinsed out a teapot to prepare tea, opening a tin of lavender black that was a little too floral for me but that some of the vamps particularly liked. As the water heated, I studied the kitchen, which was strangely empty of people for the time of day.
Bruiser had received more deliveries, and his stuff was piled on the island: an antique French coffee maker, two old carafes, a twelve-piece set of Spanish-looking fancy gold utensils, a new stack of china that matched the original blaze orange Le Creuset cookware, and some in a post–World War II color called Élysées Yellow that had come early on. Bruiser was nesting, building a home of his own for the first time in his life. With me.
The water was taking its time, so I wandered the inn, snacking on beef jerky and PowerBars, seeing more rugs, tables, shelves, couches, and chairs in the various seating areas offered by the sizeable inn that had become our mountain home and my official winter court. Bruiser had put original art on the walls and art objects on the shelves, some bronze statues of naked women and bucking bulls and little children squatting, looking at flowers. I stopped and wrapped my arms around me, my toes buried in colorful wool, and turned in a circle, studying the house from the central area. All this stuff . . . Stuff Bruiser loved. Modern stuff he had wanted and never bought until now, or stuff he had bought long ago and never used, because he had lived in Leo’s house. I didn’t give a lick about stuff, except a comfortable bed, squishy sofas, and a nice shower. Bruiser liked stuff. But he had been Leo’s and never his own.
Now he was his own man for the first time in his long life. He was making this place home. This once-an-inn, tucked away in the mountains of Beast’s hunting territory, was his home, giving Bruiser space to put out all the stuff he had collected and never used. Tears gathered, hot in my eyes. His very first home. I breathed deeply and pushed the tears away. This was good stuff, not girly cry stuff.
Maybe someday Bruiser would bring his collection of motorcycles here, though I was pretty sure they would be harder to transport from New Orleans than the smaller items.