His heartbeat had quickened and his breath came in short huffs as he panted with anticipation.
Right before I drove my teeth into Cade’s throat, I heard the angry hiss of Bo’s breath through his teeth. It was fol owed by the frustrated stomp of his feet as he paced behind me, an animal caged by his situational impotence.
There was nothing he could do and he knew it.
That was my last thought for a few mindlessly satisfying moments. When Cade’s blood squirted from his artery and coated my tongue with warm, sticky sweetness, I lost al thought of anything or anyone else. I pul ed the heavenly fluid into my mouth in great gulps, reveling in the feel of it sliding down my throat, putting out the flames of my need.
At first, I thought nothing of strong arms coming around me and hauling me up onto a hard chest, of wide hands roaming my back and burying themselves in my hair. But then, a face drifted through my mind. It was Bo’s. In my mind’s eye, I could see the hurt on his face, the discomfort of having to watch me so intimately embraced by another man. And enjoying it, no less!
It was that realization, that shocking and painful thought that drew the curtain back from my mind and opened it up to clarity of purpose. Shifting atop Cade, I let my legs fal until my knees hit the floor again and I focused al my attention on sifting through a fuzzy mountain of images for the familiar face of my friend.
Final y, I saw Sebastian and Heather. They were standing in front of a dirt wal , staring at something. There was a lantern hanging from a hook buried in a wooden support beam to the left of Sebastian’s head and I could make out the hint of a shimmer in the dim light. There were several stakes emerging from different points in the vague shape, from what would’ve been shoulders and thighs I imagined.
A horrifying image from my own memory overwhelmed the picture for an instant. It was the picture of Bo, staked by Sebastian himself, hanging helplessly in just such a position only one floor above where I knelt in the floor.
Before I could get lost in the demons from my own mind, voices brought my attention back to the scene from Cade’s blood. Sebastian and Heather were walking away.
They made their way through what looked like a mine shaft, replete with dirt wal s and floor, and Y-shaped support beams spaced evenly along the length of the earthen tube.
“We’l keep him here until we find the other blood elements that I need,” Sebastian said.
“If you’l tel me what they are, who they are, I’l help you find them.”
Sebastian stopped, turning to Heather in the darkness.
He rubbed his thumb in an arc from her temple to the corner of her mouth and he smiled. The gesture was a bewitching curl of his lips that gave me chil s as if someone had just walked over my grave.
“Oh, my dear, even your presence here has helped me more than you know.”
Heather looked radiant in the face of his compliment, but there was a light in Sebastian’s eyes that gave me the impression that he meant something far more than Heather understood.
Hands pul ing gently at my shoulders brought me back to Sebastian’s living room. Someone was tugging at me, cal ing my name. It was Bo.
“Ridley, that’s enough. He’s getting faint,” he was saying.
With a start, I withdrew my teeth and leaned up to look into Cade’s face. His eyes were closed and he was chalky white beneath his tan. I tapped my fingers lightly on his cheek and softly cal ed his name.
“Cade.” No response. Again, I tapped. “Cade.” Stil no answer, so I slapped my palm lightly against his firm cheek.
“Cade!”
Drunkenly, Cade rol ed his head, turning his face toward the ceiling. He smiled once without opening his eyes and then his head dropped off to the other side.
“He’l be fine,” Bo said. “He just needs to rest.” Wrapping his fingers around my upper arm, Bo urged me to stand.
Once on my feet, I turned toward him and he used the backs of his fingers to wipe my mouth. “What did you see?”
“I saw Sebastian and Heather. They’re holding Devon in some sort of abandoned mine I think. He’s staked to the wal , like you were upstairs.” I couldn’t quel the shudder that racked my body.
“Did you see them leave? Do you know where it is?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Although Bo looked a bit disappointed, he quickly moved past it.
“That’s alright. It just so happens that we have a source who knows the woods like the back of his hand. If there’s a mine shaft out there, Lucius wil know where it is.” One side of Bo’s mouth lifted in a lop-sided grin. “You did good, baby.”
His words ran through me like warm sunshine coursing through my veins. We looked into each other’s eyes for several seconds in one of those great romantic moments before Bo started to frown. Before I could ask what was bothering him, his frown deepened, instantly bringing al my senses to high alert.
Slowly, Bo raised his hand and traced the skin of my cheek with his fingertips then lightly brushed them over my jaw and down my throat. He pushed my hair back over my shoulder and spread the neckline of my shirt, examining my chest. As he did, I could feel my skin tingle a little, almost prickle.
Abruptly and wordlessly, Bo reached down, took my hand and led me from the room. When I saw that he was leading me to our room, I found my tongue.
“Bo what is it? What’s wrong?”
Stil , he said nothing, merely hurried me through the bedroom door and closed it behind us. Final y, he turned to me and spoke.
“I need you to take off your shirt.”
Even though the circumstances were alarming, a twitter of excitement fluttered in my stomach. Without questioning him again, I reached for the hem of my shirt and pul ed it over my head.
Bo stepped toward me and leaned in, his face so close that I could feel his warm breath on my skin, caressing me like the delicate wings of a butterfly. Once again, he raised his hand and dragged his fingertips over my neck and chest.
I looked down to see what had captured his attention so completely, but I saw nothing. At first. It wasn’t until Bo shifted, al owing the low light to play across my skin in a different way that I saw the iridescent sheen.
Even upside down, I could see that the shapes were familiar to me. Cast in pearly, barely-glistening strokes, if Bo hadn’t been looking so pointedly at them, I’d probably never have seen them. They were that faint. But I had caught a glimpse of them. And I recognized them. They looked like the symbols I’d seen in the book in Sebastian’s office.