Cursed (The Brookehaven Vampires #4) (16 page)

I had never seen Oliver pace before, but I had seen Oscar do so, and it was slightly unnerving how similar their movements were.

“You know I had no choice,” Felix defended. “That is the law. I cannot change things because
it’s you. I would be accused of favoritism, just as I will be accused of it now with this questioning if I do not include you. You were—”

Oliver
stopped pacing and was suddenly grinning at Felix, causing Felix to abruptly stop talking. “Are you saying that I’m your favorite?” Oliver asked, humor in his voice.

He caught Felix off guard. “I-uh
… Oh, shut up!” His cheeks were a bright shade of pink. He shifted and would not look directly at Oliver.

Oliver laughed to himself as he went to the fridge. He took out the blood he
’d ordered the previous night and flashed me a smile before he poured it into a glass and took a drink.

“We’re fine, Felix. I get why you did it
. I may not agree, but I know why.” He finished the blood and returned to sit on the arm of my chair.

Felix looked relieved. He sat back down on the loveseat and heaved a great sigh. “I am sorry,” he said.

“I know,” Oliver replied.

“Well, I have other news,” Felix told us. “I have received the damage assessment.”

“Email it to me. I will take care of it as soon as soon as I can,” Oliver replied.

Felix nodded. “Also, Levingston is returning early this evening.”

“And?” Oliver responded.

“He has requested your company. He would like for you to escort him from the airport, as usual.”

“I’m kind of on vacation, you know?”

“I know. This was explained to him, but you know how he is. Plus, he has grown comfortable with you. He trusts you.”

“It’s fine,” Oliver said. I saw him roll his eyes. Another act I had not witnessed in him before. It was hard not to laugh.

“He is returning for, well, you know…”

“Yes, I figured. She will not be happy,” Oliver said as he glanced down and took my hand in his. I was scratching at it again. Changing the subject, Oliver said, “Will you take a look at this?” He held my hand out for Felix to examine. “She was scratched by the angel, well, demon, yesterday. I could not heal it, and clearly it’s still bothering her.”

Felix leaned
across the table. Oliver pulled me forward so that Felix could get a closer look. He did not touch my hand, only peered at it for a long while, and then he looked at us.

“It is called a Demon’s Kiss. They are inflicted by angels—those who have slipped into madness. They must have shared blood,” he said, looking down at my hand once more.

I suddenly felt sick.

Felix’s eyes met mine. “Vampires and angels do not mix, especially our blood. The vampire blood flowing through you is causing your body to reject the angel’s. It will not heal until he is dead.”

My first thought, which almost burst from my lips, was
Then kill the evil son-of-a-bitch!
Instead, I said nothing. I just sat there, consumed by the sick feeling of sharing
anything
with anyone other than Oliver. I also didn’t understand how Zane and I could have shared blood. Unless he had planned this and had some under his nails…

“I will make an ointment for you. It will help relieve the irritation. Until then, keep an antibiotic on it, and a bandage,” Felix told me.

Super.
So, if Zane never dies, I get to live with an itchy, burning, irritated hand for the rest of my life. Just super.

Oliver looked concerned. His brow was wrinkled as he stared down at the back of my left hand. I may have been his, but the angel, who had been sent to save me, had left his mark.

“Do not fret, the angel is in custody. He will be evaluated. Give it time, you two. All will be as it should,” Felix said.

Felix then gave Oliver the flight information so he could
pick Levi up from the airport.

All the while, I wondered if Zane knew what he
was doing when he scratched me. Had he done it on purpose? I thought about the encounter again, and I could not recall him bleeding, not until after I had hit him with the frying pan at the house, but my hand had hurt immediately after he scratched it at the cemetery… I didn’t understand, but it didn’t really matter. There was nothing I could do. It was my payment for rejecting him—for refusing to help him get home and for refusing to give myself to him, or worse, him forcefully taking me away from Oliver. Again, I shuddered at the thought of what might have happened, had Oliver not been with me.

Felix stood to leave. He was at the door, and Oliver was just behind him when Felix turned to Oliver and said, in a “quiet” Felix voice, which was always far from
it, “You need to report your bonding.”

I felt my cheeks warm. I leaned forward and picked up a piece of toast from the breakfast tray.

“I know,” Oliver responded. “I will.”

I glance
d over as the door was opened. “You also need to tell her about Nikki,” Felix said with that same attempt to be quiet.

“I am about to,” Oliver replied.

“Goodbye, Delaney,” Felix called over his shoulder as he left.

“Bye,” I mumbled over my bite of toast.

Oliver closed the door and came back to sit in the chair next to mine.

“Who’s Nikki?” I asked.

He smiled crookedly. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“It’s not like Felix can whisper
.”

He laughed at my comment. He then took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. He leaned forward and rested his arms across his knees while I picked at my breakfast. I eyed him and he finally began telling me who this Nikki was.

“Nikki is Nicolette. She’s Julz’s younger sister.”

“Okay?” I said slowly. Oliver had told me once before that Julz’s sister was still alive and that she didn’t know that Julz was. I didn’t understand why he needed to tell me again.

“Levi’s bonded with her.”

“Whoa! What?” I choked on a bite of toast.

Once it was clear the toast would not be the death of me, he responded with a short huff of laughter. A half-smile formed. “That’s pretty much what I said when I found out.”

Then Oliver proceeded to tell me how the “Levi and Nikki thing” came to be.

Apparently, she’d been in Europe with her fiancé—
yep, she has a fiancé
—when she and Levi met. Oliver then told me that Nikki was not happy when she found out that Levi was a vampire. Oliver also told me that Nikki was not a fan of the vampire race considering her family had been killed by them. No thanks to Oscar.

“I got to know Nikki when Oscar and Julz were dating, before he, well, lost his mind. She was young and
didn’t know Oscar and I weren’t…exactly human. Sadly, I could not hide the truth from her for long,” Oliver said, staring down at his hands. “I believe her engagement is a mask. I think she is so desperate for something normal, she is willing to sacrifice any sort of happiness for it. I do not believe that she loves the man she’s engaged to.” He looked to me, his gorgeous eyes showing a spark of sadness. “I have met the guy; he is actually quite an arrogant jerk. He kind of reminds me of Ashton, except older, and possibly even more of an idiot.”

Although Ashton’s name made me instantly uncomfortable, Oliver’s comment made me laugh. Hard. He laughed too. The sound was the best ever.

“Nikki has been through a lot,” he continued once our laughter had died. “I actually think she’s afraid of being happy, or of loving someone. I think she fears the pain that it can cause.” His eyes shifted away from mine, back to his fingers. “I get why she craves normalcy. I don’t blame her. But now, well, now that Levi has bonded with her, it has really turned her world upside down. He wants her to leave her life here in Sacramento and go home with him. She keeps turning him down. But as you know, a bonded male cannot be separated from his mate for too long.” His eyes lifted to meet mine, and he smiled the most heart-stopping smile. It made me want to lunge across the space between us and have him remind me that I was his. But I didn’t. I let him continue.

“Levi is the best thing to happen to Nikki in a very long time. I know she knows this. I also know that she fears letting anyone get close. She is guarded, and with good reason.” I raised an eyebrow. “She has been hurt, a lot. I have never seen someone so broken and still able to function,” Oliver said. “Sometimes, I can still feel all the pain that she carries.”

“The two of you are close?” I asked, feeling slightly envious, yet again. So many people knew my Oliver.

He shrugged. “Nikki lets very few get close. There are only two people Nikki speaks to who know the details of her past,
and I am one of them. I think I’m more of a stability and comfort to her, even though she hates what I am. I hear from her when she needs help. She knows she can count on me. And lately, she has needed a lot of help with Levi.” He smiled about that, apparently finding Levi’s rejected affection amusing. He then continued to tell me a little more about Nikki. He told me that she lived just outside of the city, in one of the outlying towns, and that she worked downtown a few days a week.

Once he was done telling me all that he was going to share about Nikki, I changed the subject and asked him why and when he needed to have our bonding documented.

“We are given three weeks to document a bonding. That gives us time to adjust to the bond, and time to get out to Brookehaven to have it documented.”

“But why does it have to be documented?” I questioned. Why did the coven need to know?

“It’s in our contracts. Bondings are to be documented so that our mates, and any offspring, will be cared for in case of death. It’s not a big deal,” he said with a reassuring smile.

“What do you mean when you say it gives you time to adjust? Do you feel different now that we’re bonded?”

Oh, god… The look that he gave me had me melting where I sat.

“I do,” he said, his voice low and smooth.

“How?” I breathed. I shifted in my chair.

A smirk formed on his lips. He knew what he was doing to me. “I was attuned to you before, but now, now it’s like we’re…connected, like I can feel you when you’re not even with me. I also feel even more protective of you. Even someone looking at you makes me…well, it makes me want to prove that you are mine, over and over again.” He reached for my hand. His eyes smoldered. He was fueling my need for him with his words, with his touch, with his eyes. “There’s just something about us now that I
can’t explain,” he said, his lips gently pressing to the backs of my fingers.

Then he stood. I thought he was going to show me the meaning of his words, but instead, he said, “I’m going to call downstairs and have them bring something up for your hand.”

It actually felt like I fell when he let go of my hand. I think he knew it, because he glanced over at me as he picked up the receiver to the phone on the table in the entryway and made a call downstairs. I saw the crooked grin that he was trying to hold back.

Oh, I would remember this. You can count on that.

Levi

We actually had to leave soon after my Neosporin and Band-Aids were delivered. The ointment seemed to help with the irritation, and the bandage prevented me from scratching my gift from Zane. Still, I was looking forward to it going away. If you know what I mean…

Levi was
due to arrive on a private flight early that evening. We sat in the car while waiting to be notified of Levi’s plane landing. We were parked in the parking area of the Sacramento Airport that was designated for private flights. It was an area that was designated for the Brookehaven coven.

While we waited, we played tic-tac-toe and hang-man on Oliver’s phone. He had me laughing pretty hard with some of the words that he was using on the hang-man game. Boogers, for example, was one of the funnier surprises. Then his phone rang, interrupting our game.

Oliver glanced at the screen before he answered, “This is Oliver.” He cast me a sidelong glance while the caller spoke. “She’s right here,” he said, and then he handed his phone to me. I raised an eyebrow at him. He encouraged me to take his phone, so I did.

“Hello?” I said, slowly.

“Delaney?” said a familiar voice that I could not instantly place.

“Yeah
…”

“It’s Phoenix.”

“Oh, hi,” I said, surprised. Why would Phoenix want to speak to me? I gave Oliver a questioning look. The corner of his mouth lifted for a moment before he looked away, focusing on his fingers in his lap while he waited for me.

“I heard about what happened with the angel. I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Phen said.

“Oh, uh, thanks. Yeah, I’m fine,” I responded, still totally confused.

“Great…” he replied. “Well, I guess
I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing. Goodbye.”

“Okay, bye,” I said. The call ended
, and I handed the phone back to Oliver. “That was…weird.”

He smirked. “It would appear as if you have an admirer.”