Aaron's Kiss Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 7) (23 page)

“I don’t want to simply hold her hand. I want her to obey me. I am—”

“Going to be drained and hung upside down over the bath tub if you try that ‘obey’ shit on me again, Aaron Xavier MacManus,” Sara snapped back at her mate.

Colin watched the steam literally roll off his friend, but Colin wisely kept his mouth shut. For now anyway.

“I didn’t get you your cook. I ran into a small problem. Well, she ran into me, the little thief. She was stealing bread and apparently some cheese from the restaurant, when she came barreling out, hell bent for leather, and slammed into me. Bloodied my friggin’ nose—twice. She knocked me on my ass and yelled at me for getting in her way.” Colin looked at Aaron when he burst out laughing.

“Did she hit you with her car? You aren’t exactly a small, movable object, you know.” Colin chose to ignore Aaron.

“Then when the whole kitchen came out after her, she just scoops up her spoils and takes off without so much as a thank you. The cheeky little lass just tipped right over and bowed like I was a fucking queen or something.”

“Oh, I like her. So that’s why you missed Penny? Chasing a skirt? Colin, whatever am I going to do with you?” Aaron asked as he sat and pulled Sara into his lap.

“Me? I dinna do anything to her. I was going to do a job. A job you sent me to do.” Colin stood and started pacing. “The police were called in. I was questioned for so long I dinna think I was gonna make it back before sunrise. They thought we were in it together.  Can you believe it? Me with her! If I see the little urchin again, I’m gonna paddle her butt but good.”

Colin was pacing faster by now, throwing his arms up, gesturing wildly and pointing. He knew he was doing it, but couldn’t seem to help himself.

Aaron didn’t say much. Just watched him, and for whatever reason, that made Colin nervous. Then when Aaron spoke, his question caught Colin off guard.

“So, Colin, what did she smell like?”

“Hydrangeas and vanilla. Why? Oh no! No, no you are not going down that path. No way in hell. I will not have it, so just get that thought right out of your fucking head right fucking now.”

Aaron laughed for a good ten minutes, tears of mirth running down his face. Colin wanted to pound him and had actually stood to do so when he saw Sara move too. Colin sat back down and scowled. He wouldn’t admit it to just anyone and especially not these two hyenas, but he was a bit afraid of Sara. More so than he was Aaron on some days.

“You know,” Colin said. “You dinna think it was so funny when it happened to you a few months back, Aaron.”

Aaron simply snorted and pulled his mate closer to him. Colin felt he’d made his point.

Sara was less rude, but no less blunt. “So, you’ve met your mate, huh? What’s she like? Will I like her? I think that is important, but not a deal breaker, seeing as to how you’ll live here with us. Oh, go out and find her, Colin. Bring her home to meet the family. We could get to know each other so much better that way. Waiting for you to come to realize that fate has other ideas than the one you’re entertaining could take forever. So you might as well get it over with and go get her.”

“No, we will not be living here. I have a place of my...wait. Damn it, I don’t have a mate. I don’t know a thing about her, what she looks like, where she lives or anything. So you can just take that out of your head right now!”

Colin was very sorry he had even brought the girl up; he should have just said he ran into problems and let it go with that. Next time he saw the woman, he was going to cross the street and get as far away from her has he possibly could. Duncan came into the room a few minutes later to see Colin glaring at the master’s mate.

“What is going on, Sire? Did something happen last evening? I did not see the cook when I went into the kitchen. I do hope that she has not changed her mind. She seemed so happy to get out from over the restaurant and move here.”

“Colin found his mate late night and got waylaid by her. Oh I can’t wait to meet her. Isn’t this grand, Duncan?” Sara was forever helpful, Colin thought sarcastically.

“I did not find my fucking mate! I’m going out.” With the proclamation, he stormed out of the house, but not before he heard Aaron burst out laughing again.

~CHAPTER TWO~

Colin was at the same restaurant again two nights later. It had turned colder throughout the night and snow was supposed to fall again before sunrise. Not that he could really feel it, but his breath was fogging in front of him. Colin waited outside for the new cook, Penny Shelf, to gather up her things to go back to the mansion with him, as she had agreed to be the in-house cook. She’d had an apartment above this place as part of her wages for years, so Sara was offering her a place to stay as well. Plus, a substantial increase in pay. Penny’s cooking was supposed to be what kept the little place running. As most bosses were like, this one felt he had Penny just where he wanted her because she had no other family and lived there practically rent free. But as it turned out, she was working for nothing. Penny barely made it from check to check, as her boss would not allow her a cut in the electric bill. Penny told Sara that she believed she was paying for the entire place to be heated and cooled, and was probably correct in that.

Colin found himself thinking about that woman again. That was how he always referred to her in his mind, “that woman.” She had been stealing food, not money, food. All he could think about was why. Was she stealing for the joy, or was there a more basic need involved? If she was stealing to eat, where was she living? Did she have a husband, family? She had seemed so slight to him when she plowed into him, all angles and sharp points. Well, he mused, not all of her was angles and sharp points. Her body had its softer places as well.

He was going nuts. For as much as he didn’t want to think about her, it seemed as though his mind had a will of its own where she was concerned. And he didn’t want to think about the fact that could be his mate, as Aaron had suggested. The arrogant ass would be hard to live with if he was correct. Again.

It was not that he had a problem with being mated; it was great for all of the other mated vampires he knew. He just didn’t want to be tied down to just one person. And one person for all eternity was a hell of a long time; especially when one did not want to be there in the first place. If he was honest with himself, it wasn’t even that so much as he had seen other relationships go to the crapper so many times it frightened him, and this was even before he had been turned. Admittedly, they had all been humans, but still... And living as long as he had, he had seen more than his fair share of what happened when things went wrong in a marriage. People, humans, had no concept of how fragile their short lives were.

Colin drove Penny back and helped her carry her meager belongings into the little house on the estate that Sara had had cleaned out just for the cook to move into. It was close, within walking distance to the big house, so it worked out well all the way around. The woman fussed and touched everything in the rooms, remarking on the pretty paper, how nice the kitchen was. When she started on about the living room throw that lay across the back of the couch, he made his excuses and left her on her own.

A few hours later, he found himself back at the restaurant. He was sure she would not show up again, but he was there all the same. It had been a couple of days now, but he could still smell her scent lingering in the air. He was following it before he knew what he was doing, much less thinking. He ended up at the apartment complex where she had stopped first that night. Her scent hung heavily near the rear door and then again along the stairwell just inside the door. He noticed she never spent as much time going in and out of the front door to the building as she did around back. When he went into the building, he could sense that she had been there numerous times in the past few days; her smell was stronger here. He guessed that she needed to make several trips out to get food, especially if she only took bread and cheese when she went out. Colin started up the stairs to the second floor.

The door where her scent was the strongest had an odor he was familiar with—drugs. Apparently, she was a frequent drug user, and if the high concentration was anything to go by, he figured she was an addict, using daily. He stepped back from the door and pulled a shadow around himself when a small child came down the hallway.

She was a cute little thing, blondish red hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. She was clutching a ragged dolly, which had seen much better days, like it was her lifeline to something. He could sense that the child was ill, but not overly so, not anything a good dose of antibiotics wouldn’t cure, and probably a good meal or two. When the child stopped outside of the apartment door he had sensed was the woman’s, he saw red, his fangs dropping in response.

So, he thought. She had a child she was neglecting while she got high. He could just see it; see just what was happening on the other side of the door. He imagined the little girl huddled in the corner eating her bread crumbs, clutching the doll while good old mom shot herself up on the tattered dirty couch. The bitch probably ate her fill then tossed whatever was left to the little girl. No wonder she was ill; there was no one to care for her.

He knew that he was probably exaggerating the situation, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Colin had lost his true life for a mother and her children and it went against everything he was to see a child abused even now.

He left as soon as the little girl went inside the apartment. He didn’t think that the fates could be so cruel, to finally show him his mate and this is what he would end up with. Not that he was ready to admit to anyone she was his just yet. When he looked up from his brooding, he found himself in the seediest part of town, abandoned apartment complexes and warehouses. He was spoiling for a good fight and figured this was just the place to let off some steam. Besides, going back to the house only meant that he would have to be around Aaron and Sara, and he so was not going there.

Colin Larimore returned to his bed just as the sun was rising a few hours later. He had had a hellish night, and just wanted to sleep. If only he could get “that woman” out of his head and her little girl. He had smelled her all over the child, so he knew she was hers. Why a woman would use drugs like that when someone depended on her for her very life was beyond anything he could ever understand. Colin was now a vampire because he had taken a beating for a woman who had stolen a loaf of bread for her children. He had claimed that he had taken it and eaten it so that it could not be returned. The beating had cost him his life. As he lay dying, his life draining away from the hundreds of blows to his body, a vampire came to him offering him a different life, a better life.

And that was how Colin had met and been turned by Aaron. Aaron had been so impressed that the then human Colin had done something so honorable that he had saved Colin from a slow death and changed him. Aaron had been the enforcer for the then Master of the Realm, or parts of Paris, Vald deMorass, and Colin had joined the fight. They had become fast, tight friends, and had remained so since. When Aaron, a now fourteen-hundred-year-old vampire, had approached Colin about following him to this realm when Aaron became the master, Colin had made the move with him. They had been covering each other’s backsides for so long that it was just second nature for Colin to do so now.

~~~

Shade had been out all day job hunting. One place after another, “Sorry, we need a permanent address.” “No, sorry, you’ll need a phone to work here.” “No transportation, no job.” The list was endless. And the jobs that would look the other way were with people, men especially, who wanted to have sex with her rather than hire her. No, thank you.

Up until a couple of years ago, she’d had a job for about six years, helping out in a pizza shop making pizzas for five bucks an hour. The older couple was nice, and she could take home any pizzas that got screwed up. She had never messed one up, but it happened sometimes. More and more mistakes had been made toward the end of their being open. Once she thought about it, she realized that it happened almost nightly toward the end. She often thought that they knew she didn’t have a lot of food money and messed one up weekly for her to take home. The pizza was always an extra meat, extra large and it always seemed to happen at the end of her shift.

One of those bigger joints had moved into town and ran them out of business with their lower prices and cheaper ingredients. Then about three months ago, they, too, went out of business.

She had an apartment then, well, a single room really. There was hot running water when the pipes didn’t freeze up every winter. It also had a communal kitchen that she never used for fear of catching something from one of the other fifty people living there with her. Rats and bugs that lived there pretty much had a run of the place anyway and there was a single bathroom per floor. Yeah, it was a dive, but it had a good, sturdy lock on the door that she had put there and a window fire escape just in case someone got over zealous when they were high.

Shade was walking up the stairs of the warehouse when she felt a disturbance in the air, a heart beating frantically. It was faint, but a quick pace. She carefully pulled out one of the knives she had gotten at the Army/Navy store. No one was sneaking up on her without a fight. As soon as she had been able to afford it, she had bought several means of protecting herself.

Shade was always armed with at least two knives at any given time, and was really quite good with them. She practiced daily throwing it into the bull’s-eye she had set up in the warehouse, and seldom missed the red circle. Whether she was throwing underhanded, over handed, it didn’t matter, she was always dead on. A girl living on her own just couldn’t be too careful in this neighborhood. She had also set up an obstacle course that ran through two of the other warehouses that were close to the one she lived in. She ran the course every day, rain or shine. It kept her in top shape and it also helped her relieve the stress of being homeless. She had also set up a few bolt holes just in case situations like this one arose.

Creeping along the largest open area on the second floor where she lived, she could feel she was getting closer to whatever or whoever it was. Shade carefully opened her mind to the being closest to her and breathed a deep sigh of relief. The dog was back, the stupid mutt. He only came into the buildings when it was cold, or someone had frightened him, which was his own shadow most of the time, if she were truthful. So she started toward him with a smile and her hand out to pet him. When she felt the other presence, it was too late to react. The last thing she saw before she fell to the floor was an ugly man with nasty teeth and his large fist coming at her at an alarming rate.
Well, fuck
was her last thought as she went down for the count.

Shade lay very still when she woke up. She didn’t want whoever was around to know that she was awake just yet. Her head pounded like a sledge hammer had hit her, and it might have been for all she knew. Again, Shade gently reached out and beyond the tiny room she was in. She realized she hadn’t felt the other man until it was too late because it was extremely difficult when someone’s mind, like his, was too everything. He had felt fear, rage, anger, hunger, and happiness at such intense degrees, running so quickly through his mind, that she could not track him.

She realized that she was still in her building, and that for the most part, she was alone on this floor. The dog was nearby, but he wouldn’t come any closer to her than he had to. As easily as she could, she moved to a sitting position to take inventory of her injuries, and nearly threw up, the pain shooting from her cheek to her head, making her sick.

After several minutes of breathing through her mouth, trying to steady her head, she was able to get to standing position. Dizziness swept through her and, again, she had to breathe deep or pass out. Searching her body, she noticed her weapons were gone, damn it. She hoped, suddenly, that if she met the guy who had hit her, she was not going to be killed by her own knife. That would
so
suck!

It was full night now, Shade noticed, so she must have been lying there for a couple of hours. That explained why she was so stiff. She was cold too, she realized with a shudder. Keeping close tabs on the surrounding area mentally, she went in search of her attacker and her knives. Shade would like to try and avoid whoever hit her, thank you very much. She would have to find another building to live in now; this one was too dangerous to stay in any longer. The man knew where she was and that she was a female. She was not worried so much about him, but that he may say something to the wrong person, and that person would come find her.

The Hitter had made himself right at home in the area where she found her knives, if his things there, too, were any indication. It looked as if he was planning to stay awhile. He had put up some of his things, a couple of cans of food and an opener, and there was a pair of mismatched gloves. There was an assortment of other things, too, things she was sure only meant something to him.

Shade knew that he had not meant to hurt her really. He was just cold and he was probably just as frightened as she had been when she had walked in on him. Him coming inside like he had hopefully meant that he had enough sense to stay warm, for which Shade was thankful for. He had tried to hide himself away, but she had an advantage over most people in that she could feel where his body heat had been, his signature as it were. Plus, he smelled really bad. It had been a very long time since he had had a proper bath or any other kind of clean up, she realized.

Shade didn’t disturb anything of his things. She just gathered what she wanted of hers and left. After she had stuffed her little bit of home into some bags, she looked around where she had spent the last couple of years.  She was moving on, taking nothing that he had touched. This was not really saying much; she made the entire move in one trip and carried all her belongings in a plastic grocery bag. A few clothes were all she really had.