Downs, Jana - Ravyn's Heart [Ravyn Warriors 2] (Siren Publishing Allure ManLove) (15 page)

“Kal, my love, please be reasonable. It is not as if they are getting married. They’re casually dating,” Alex murmured soothingly. Dageus leaned into his touch, and Damian looked on enviously. Why did everyone accept Dageus and Alex’s union so well and so thoroughly rejected Damian’s choice? Alex met his brother’s eyes over Dageus’s head. A slight shake of his head warned Damian not to say anything.

“Ally?” Salvatore’s asked. His face was a definite mask of concern. “May I talk to you for a moment? Privately?” he added as an afterthought. Ally glanced up at Damian. He looked like a whipped dog. It was the same look Kal had given Damian when he’d forbidden him to ever see Alex again. But Allasandro was not a fresh youth. He was a man. How dare Kal make him feel ashamed!

“Sure thing, my Prince,” Allasandro murmured. Damian leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Allasandro’s temple.

“I’ll be right here if you need me, love,” Damian reassured. Tony and Druas went to follow after Salvatore, but the Prince held up a hand to stop them.

“We’ll just be in this office. Please, give us a moment.” The two Ravyns nodded and took up posts on either side of the door. Germany hovered in between the two arguing groups, ready to interfere if the occasion called for it.

* * * *

The door shut behind the two men with a soft snick. Salvatore was silent for a moment. Allasandro he shifted from foot to foot in discomfort. The Demon Prince pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose as if staving off a headache.

“You’ve been out of sorts lately,” he said at last.

Ally’s eyes hit the floor. “I’ve been okay.”

Salvatore sighed. “You have not been okay,” he corrected. “You’ve been downright morose this past week. You haven’t been acting like yourself. You stopped clubbing, stopped joking, hell, you’ve stopped eating from what I’ve seen. Is this because of Damian?”

Allasandro’s face heated as he nodded. “I like him, my Prince.” He paused. “I like him a lot.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Salvatore wondered, running a hand through his bloodred hair. “You never hesitate to speak your mind. It’s the one thing I count on about you. If you felt so strongly for the vampire, why didn’t you just tell Dageus that you wanted to pursue the relationship with Damian anyway?”

“I didn’t want to compromise the bond. I mean, we just fixed it. It took us a while to get back in sync after we realized Dageus was Kal and he hooked back up with Alex. Dageus has been through a lot, and I thought that he didn’t need the stress. Pick a reason, Salvatore. There are a million why I shouldn’t be doing this. And only one reason why I have to do this.”

“And what reason is that?” Salvatore asked. Ally felt more serious in that moment than he had in his entire life. Everything seemed to hinge on the question.

“Because I can’t help it. Because I need him like I’ve never needed anything.” Allasandro cursed himself internally for everything he’d just said. It was cliché and touchy-feely and so…Hallmark. Yuck. He was beginning to sound like Dageus with all the lovey-dovey crap. It was probably the most emotion he’d ever put in a single sentence ever.

“I’m proud of you.” Salvatore’s words shocked him. He looked up into the lovely wine-colored eyes of his Prince and found a profound acceptance there. “I never thought you would settle on anyone.”

“For gods’ sakes, we’re just dating,” Ally muttered.

“You know, in all your incarnations, in every lifetime, you’ve never spent more than one night with any lover. You’ve never introduced me to them. Never even let us see them except in passing. The Ravyns didn’t even know any of them,” Salvatore mused. He petted Ally’s head and stepped around him to open the door. It was rare he talked about any of the Ravyns’ past incarnations. It was often too painful for him. “I’m glad you’ve found someone who you can enjoy enough to claim in front of your brothers.” He twisted the door knob.

“That’s it?” Ally asked skeptically. “No big long lecture about how he’s going to break my heart and I’m being too hasty and blah blah blah?”

Salvatore smiled. “Just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“You know Dageus got a lecture.”

“Dageus needed a lecture. He had no caution. You have too much.” He left Allasandro standing there with his mouth open.

* * * *

“I can’t believe this!” Dageus snapped, throwing his pillow at the wall. It thunked uninterestingly against the drywall before falling to the floor. Salvatore had forbidden him to interfere with Damian and Allasandro. Alex had even backed him on the “forbidden to interfere” rule that Salvatore had handed down.

“Please calm down,
mon tendre amour
,” Alex sighed for the fiftieth time from his position on the center of the bed. If he started going for his sword again, he was going to put a lock on the closet door.

“
No
. You took Salvatore’s side. You are officially the enemy.” Dageus stomped to the bathroom and started manically brushing his teeth. He had started doing that when he was upset.

“You’re going to wear the enamel off your teeth, Kal,” Alex chastised.

“Shub ub,” Kal snapped through a mouthful of toothpaste. Alex listened to him swish and spit in the sink.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little unreasonable?” Alex wondered as Dageus pulled off his shirt and threw it in his general direction.

“How am I being unreasonable? I mean, it’s just weird that my best friend and my father are boinking. Not to mention that Ally is just going to hurt Dad. I mean, come on, no one really believes that Ally is serious about this whole dating thing.” Dageus crossed the hardwood floor and the rug in order to flop down on the bed beside him.

“You mean
you
don’t believe he’s serious,” Alex said.

“He’s not!” Kal protested. He buried his face in his pillow and yelled his frustration into it. “I hate this!” The muffled shout made Alex smile. Sometimes his lover was so immature. He forgot how young he was until moments like these. He reached up and tickled Dageus’s side.

“Baby, you and Damian are so alike at times it frightens me.” That shut him up. Dageus turned his face and glared at his lover.

“What. The. Hell. Does. That. Mean?” He growled out the syllables in a short choppy sentence.

“I mean that neither one of you like being told who to see and neither one of you have tastes that run in line with societal norms. And you’re both ungodly stubborn… You’re also terrified of being left behind and losing anything,” Alex explained. He tugged on Dageus’s shoulders so that he slid into his arms easily. “For not actually being blood-related, you two are just alike.”

Dageus sighed deeply. “I’m being the same kind of control freak that he was when I started seeing you, aren’t I?”

Alex chuckled and tilted his chin up to steal a kiss. “My love, control freak runs in the Entertainer line. I mean, Santiago wrote the book on how to be a control freak, and he has spawned and trained us all.”

They both giggled at that. Alex pressed another kiss to the now-smiling mouth of his lover, and it deepened exponentially with each passing second.

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Dageus murmured between kisses.

“Sure, darling,” Alex said in an appeasing tone. Then he started touch him in all the inappropriate ways that were bound to shut him up, at least until morning.

Chapter Fifteen

“I don’t care about missions or organizations or Ravyns or anything unrelated to the theatre,” Santiago said as he crossed his arms across his chest. He tapped his foot in impatience. “I have one week left to get the dances perfected, the voices in harmony, and the instruments in tune. To do so, I need Kal and Alex in their dance sections and Damian at his position as opera master. Now, what do I have to do to get those things accomplished?” The voice was deceptively agreeable. Even Allasandro knew they had to tread carefully in this situation. Satan had nothing on Santiago when it came to the perfection of the Entertainer line.

“You’ve nothing to worry over, Grandsire,” Alex reassured. His voice was smooth and silky in an effort to be convincing. “We will be at rehearsal tonight and for the rest of rehearsals leading up to the performance.”

Santiago waved a hand in dismissal. “You’re all very far behind. You’re going to need extra practices, as well as some additional technical assistance.” The look on the dancers’ faces did not lend itself toward looking forward to the “additional assistance” that Santiago was demanding. Damian almost snickered until those sharp dark eyes turned on him.

“And, Damian, the last time I heard you perform you were sounding like a cow with laryngitis. You are going to need the most work of all.” Dageus and Alex did snicker then. “Allasandro,” the head of the line addressed the other Ravyn with a look of absolute seriousness. “I trust you and Damian have worked out your differences?” The Ravyn nodded. “Excellent. Then I’m counting on you to be at the theater every day with Damian, helping him get his voice in optimum condition.” The older vampire sighed dramatically. “Even though it still won’t be the voice I know it could be by performance time.” Everyone rolled their eyes. Santiago was such a perfectionist that no one had
ever
actually stood up to his overly lofty goals. The vampire’s face spread out into a calculated grin. “Well, I see no reason why we shouldn’t begin immediately. Gents, grab your Ravyns and let’s go.” They all groaned. It was going to be a long night.

* * * *

“No. No. No. No. For the love of God, Damian, you are warbling. I’ve never heard you warble in your entire career! Are you nervous?” Santiago demanded. Damian’s blushing answered him. “Why? It’s just me. I saw you when you were a performing vagrant in London. I’ve seen your worst.”

“But I haven’t.” Allasandro’s words interrupted. Santiago slowly turned toward the Ravyn who was perched on a stool near the back of the room. Damian glared in his direction.

“Bloody hell, I’ve been singing for almost five hours straight. My voice is gone. I’m not nervous,” the vampire protested hoarsely.

“Well, you weren’t singing it correctly to begin with. So a rested voice had nothing to do with it.” Santiago tapped his chin thoughtfully.

“Maybe I don’t like sounding like a frog in front of my lover,” Damian snapped, grabbing his bottle of water up and draining it in two long gulps.

“You sound fine to me, Damian,” Allasandro offered. Both vampires looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

“I sound awful!” Damian shouted before wincing and grabbing his throat.

“You need a bit of blood to heal that.” Santiago waved at hand at Ally. “Please take care of that immediately. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Be prepared to go through the first half of the composition again. It still doesn’t sound right. Your intonation, diction, and tone are fine, but something is missing.”

“Emotions?” Damian asked dryly. It was Santiago’s usual complaint.

“Not at all. You’ve got plenty of that. Every time you say you love him in Italian, your voice thickens to a rich velvet purr. It’s lovely. Emotions aren’t lacking. I think it may be in the piece itself. Hmmmm… I’ll think about it.” Santiago turned on his heel and stepped outside the door, letting it shut behind him.

“Alex! Quit throwing Kalel around like a lumberjack! Really? What are you thinking?” They both winced as they heard Santiago tear into the other couple from the hallway.

“He’s on a bloody warpath,” Damian commented, taking out another bottle of water from the small refrigerator near Ally’s perch.

“I’m so glad that isn’t directed at me,” Ally said, hopping down off his stool. “Santiago is a maniac.”

“Only about the theater. He’s a perfectionist to the point of being slightly insane. It’s his way, and it’s the only thing he gets really fired up about. Most vampires his age are recluses, but he insists on being thoroughly involved. One of the reasons our line has lasted so long.” Damian reached for Ally and kissed him lightly on the lips. “May I have some blood, love?”