Secrets (The Forever series, Book 8) (15 page)

Chapter 6

Chester, England, 2013 – Devon

He stares at the ceiling and sighs. His thoughts are errant
and he just can’t concentrate on the matter at hand. I’m done, he thinks. He
pushes her head up from where she is sucking his cock and says, “This just
isn’t working for me anymore. It’s over.”

“What?” she squeaks. “You can’t finish it. I love you.”

He rolls his eyes inwardly at this admission as he sits up
and drops his feet to the floor. “Sorry, Veronica, it has run its course.”

“No, Devon, please.” She pushes her dark curls out of her
eyes, the tears welling up.

Please, not the crying thing. Have a bit of backbone, woman,
he thinks to himself, you are seven hundred years old. He didn’t really want to
come here today. He only came because he is in the country and she wanted to
see him. The three-hour drive was so not worth it. After Cole told them what
Liv had said, he left straight away. He was reluctant to leave Jess alone in
that house full of predators without Liv there. Especially Sebastian. He knows
they had a thing at the Vampire Club in Toronto, he didn’t think they slept
together, but that was probably only because they got interrupted. And now Cole
wants in as well.

“Devon?” She is weeping and asking him something, but he has
zoned out and has no idea what she is saying.

He stands and pulls his pants and t-shirt on. Shoes and
jacket next. He picks up the keys, wallet and phone from the nightstand, and
turns to leave, never to return.

“Devon, please,” she begs. Fuck. He hates begging. Why do
they always beg? Well actually he doesn’t mind when Liv begs him to fuck her
and to never leave her, he loves it, in fact. He loves that she needs him that
much. But the others...it is such a pain in the ass.

“Veronica, I’m to be married. I just think it’s time to cut
a few ties, that’s all. It’s nothing personal,” Devon says.

“Married?” Her tears start afresh and he wishes that he
hadn’t said that. He was trying to deter her, but clearly that didn’t work. He
turns to the door and with his hand resting on the handle, she is there in a
flash behind him, holding it closed. She is stronger than he is and he isn’t
going anywhere just yet. He doesn’t usually go for older Vamps. He gets enough
of the domination from his sire. He prefers younger, pliable Vampires, or
humans who will let him bite them.

“I can be just like her,” she says. “You can call me
Elizabeth and tell me how to make love to you like she does.”

He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. This is dodgy
territory. Yes, he likes his women to look like her, yes he wants them to be
her, but they don’t understand that he wants them to
be
her. Not a
pretend version of her. They could never be her. God knows he thinks about it.
Of course he does, but if she ever found out he had actual Substitutes stashed
away, she would stake him. Then she would find a way to bring him back to life
so she could stake him again. It’s a sore subject for her after what her sire
did, and Devon knows she had issues with Jess looking like her. He thinks she
has mostly gotten over that now as she knows he doesn’t want her to be
Elizabeth.

“Have a bit of dignity,” he says to her quietly. “You are
better than that.” She drops her hand from the door then and lets him go.

He leaves without looking back and the tension leaves him as
he opens the car. He swiped the McLaren this morning. It’s no Veyron, but it’s
the next best thing. Cole has driven it recently. He can smell his scent, along
with something or someone else. It makes him wonder who, when, and to where he
drove? The feeling he has been pushing away recently flares up, but gets
replaced as he suddenly jumps a mile.

“Hey, baby,” Liv says from the seat next to him.

“Fuck sakes,” he says and casts his gaze over her. “What are
you doing here?” he sneers at her. It’s not Liv, it’s Other Liv.

“I came to play. I did not expect you here though.” She
waves her hand around the car.

“How did you even find me?”

“Works the same as Astralling, in a way. I think ‘you’ and
here I am,” she explains.

“Well fuck off. Go back to your own me,” Devon says.

“Ooo, such nasty words,” she drawls at him. “He’s no fun. I
want to take you for a test drive.” She smirks at him as she draws her hand up
his thigh. In spite of how much he despises this woman, he feels himself go
hard. “Get your hands off me.”

“No can do. I know you can feel the bond we have,” she says
shrewdly.

He can. It’s slight, nowhere near the intense love and
passion that he has with his real sire, but it’s there nonetheless. That’s
disconcerting.

“I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole, now get your hands
off me,” he snarls at her, as he roars the engine to life.

She touches his cheek and he flinches. “How about now, my
darling boy?” she purrs at him in Elizabeth’s accent, and as he looks at her as
his true sire, he stalls the engine and they both rock forward. He grows harder
as he sees her blue eyes full of mischief and so help him, he wants to take her
right there. He can’t resist her. He can’t resist her when she looks like this.
Even though his brain knows it isn’t her, his dick has other ideas.

“Change back before I get her sire here to kick your ass,”
he says to her as he restarts the engine and pulls away.

“Mm, her sire is delicious,” she draws the word out as she
licks her luscious lips. “If you can call him here, I wouldn’t object to a
three-way.”

“He wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole either. Say what
you like about the man, but he has high standards.”

“You still have some fire to you. My Devon lost his a long
time ago.” She sighs.

“No doubt stamped out by you and your whoring ways.”

“Ouch,” she says with a sidelong glance. “Does she know you
talk about her like that?”
Devon slams the brakes on suddenly and turns to her. “I am talking about you,”
he hisses. “My sire is nothing like you.” He pulls away again, lucky to be on a
quiet strip of road. Liv would kill him if he damaged her car.

“Isn’t she? Seems she is almost exactly like me,” she says,
and he wants to throw her from the moving vehicle.

“Get out,” he says to her again.

“Not until I get what I came for,” she says as she slides
her hand closer to his crotch. She leans closer to him and all he can see is
Elizabeth. Encouraged when he doesn’t push her away, she unzips his pants and
slides her hand inside, breathing in deeply as she strokes him. Fuck. If he
could just pull over, close his eyes and let her get on with it, no one has to
know. He could let her do everything she wants with him and no one would ever
have to know. He twitches in her hand at that thought and she moans slightly
before she pushes her tongue in his ear. He runs his hand through his hair in
agitation. This woman gets to him. He grips the steering wheel tighter and he
almost loses it when she rubs her thumb over the tip of him and wipes the bead
of moisture off and licks her fingers. The last time he got a hand job in a car
it was with Liv. She leaned over and took him in her mouth and that thought
alone gives him the strength to push her back. His dick cries out in
frustration. That’s twice he has denied himself release. Jess is going to be in
for it when he gets home. Jess. Ah, Jess. Almost as if she knew he was thinking
about her, his phone rings through the sound system.

“Hey, baby,” he says to her softly.

“Hey, are you coming home soon?” she asks hopefully.

“Awhile yet, love. I have something to do and the drive is
long. Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah fine,” she says.

“Is everybody leaving you alone?” he asks.

She chuckles. “If you mean Sebastian, then yes. He and
Constantine have gone out.”

“Good,” he says forcefully and she laughs again.

“So jealous,” she teases and he smiles. “Ring me when you
are on your way back. I will be waiting for you.”

“I will. I love you,” he says.

“I love you,” she whispers and hangs up.

Thanks the gods Other Liv has Shifted back to her normal
self and snarls at him, “And here I thought you were going to be fun. What’s
with the lovey dovey with the girl? You know in my world she is my sibling. She
lives with our sire.”

“Not with you.” Devon struggles to do his pants back up with
one hand and balks at the idea of that man having his hands all over her. He
knew Constantine was her sire, but he didn’t know that they lived together. She
is too young. He is such a pervert in every universe.

“Well you can’t deny that you want me. I have seen the
evidence. Think about all I can give you and when I come looking for you again,
maybe you will think differently,” she says.

“Never,” he says unconvincingly. He sees the sign for Helsby
and takes the exit. He hasn’t been back here since Elizabeth took him away. The
memories are just too much. Finding her, being happy and human, making plans to
be together in the Holy union, and then it was all shot to Hell when his own
mother took it all away. Even after all this time, he has never forgiven her
for taking that away from him.

“You’re going back?” she asks him. “My Devon hasn’t been
back in five hundred and seven years.”

“Neither have I,” he says through gritted teeth. “Now get
out. It’s something I have to do alone.”

“I get that,” she says softly and he looks at her in
surprise. “I have compassion, Devon. I’m not the monster you all seem to think
I am.” And with that she leaves him alone and he sighs in relief. He knows this
place is going to be nothing like he remembers it and he gets a pang of nerves
as he drives down the main road. Just a regular English country village. No big
deal.

He attracts stares with the car as he inches it slowly down
the road looking for a parking space. Never short of admirers--usually he
welcomes it--but today he just wants to be left alone. He parks up and gets
out, locking the car, slowly turning around in a circle. He sees in his mind's
eyes exactly how it used to be. He can see himself and Elizabeth walking down
the street, so much in love. His heart clenches and he needs a drink. He finds
the nearest dark watering hole and slips inside. It’s a nice, typical English
pub, quiet and dark. Perfect. He orders a pint of Guinness with a Scotch chaser
and takes it to the empty table in the corner. He has a lot of thinking to do
and now is as good a time as any. Cole completely threw him off guard this
morning asking about Jess. He had no idea he even fancied her, let alone wanted
to fuck her. She is the exact opposite of Liv, obviously, as she looks like
Elizabeth. He gets that Cole needs someone, especially in his situation. He
feels for him. It must be so hard. He doesn’t honestly know how he manages. But
Jess? Can he do it? Can he give her to him? He feels a lot for the man. It’s
weird. He had so much resentment for Cole when he first came into the picture.
He knew Liv was going to sire him long before she did. He had been expecting it
for centuries, but was lucky enough that she didn’t want anyone that way.
Except Fraser and he turned her down. To this day he is thankful even though it
ended up causing her so much pain. And, of course there was Pierre. He still
hates himself for hurting her in the way he did by going behind her back to his
grandfather to tell him what she was. Devon knew his son and daughter-in-law
had been killed by a Vampire, seeing as the Vampire in question had been him,
and Devon also knew the grandfather would do everything in his power to keep
Pierre away from her. It hurt her, but she got over it. He wasn’t ready to let
her go, so he did what he had to. He thought about it, briefly, with Cole. He
would listen to them fucking and want to rip his throat out, but he had never
seen her so much in love before. He just couldn’t do that to her again. So Cole
lived and she turned him. He had no idea what to expect. He had never had
siblings before, he had never wanted any. He did not expect to feel anything
quite like he does. Without getting all “Lancey” about it, he considers Cole as
close as a brother. Gregor said in the beginning that siblings rarely bond, but
they were drawn together by the Power of One magick in their sire. He grew to
like him and they got on once they got past the petty jealousy stage. When Liv
asked him into their bed to share her, he had never experienced anything like
it. He lives now for those moments that they both take her, when his hands are
on her as she rides Cole and vice versa. Oh god, he’s getting hard again just
thinking about it. The last time he and Liv shared a feed and drained her seems
like eons ago. He wishes that she was as she used to be. But that one day, that
one stupid day that she came across a human who looked like Lance and she lost
control and killed him. And never again. She turned it off. Completely. And
that day he lost a part of her that never came back. When Jess asked him to
give up seeing her regularly, he wasn’t going to do it. He had finally got her
to focus on him again, but after the switch, when he had taken her so
desperately that he didn’t even know it wasn’t her, that was like a ton of
bricks had hit him. He knew then that he needed to turn away from her as much
as he could. Even giving up this one thing and focusing on a life with Jess
felt like a weight had been lifted. He thinks grimly that he is obsessive by
nature. He finds something to focus on and nothing else matters. So can he give
the woman he is going to ask to marry him to Cole to ease his pain? Yes. He
can. Cole did it for him. Even though he had no choice or say in the matter, he
still accepted it when he agreed to the three-ways. It’s the least Devon can do
to help him. Strangely it hurts him to know that Cole hurts. He has never
worried about anyone else’s feelings before except his own. But will Liv agree
to it? Will Jess agree to it? That he can’t answer. He can understand that Cole
feels a connection with Jess. Not a bond, but something born out of them both
being…how did he put it…two goldfish in an ocean of Great Whites. It would help
Jess to have someone her own age – Vampirically speaking - to learn things
with. He knows she doesn’t like to ask, but he tries to help her as much as he
can without making her feel naïve. He knows she doesn’t get, really, how old he
is. Obviously she knows, but she has no way to grasp what it really means yet.
He was born in 1486 and that is something so far out there for her, she just
has no idea. He can only imagine that Cole must feel even more at a loss when
it comes to Liv’s age. He can’t even really imagine what it must have been like
to be born in 996, so how can Cole? Neither of them have any clue what it was
like. He takes out the ring that he has been carrying around with him for days
now and taps the box on the table. He opens it and stares into it at the
diamond. He has held back on asking Jess, not only because it is something so
huge, but because he has been hoping that in spite of everything, Liv would
still choose him. She has always chosen him. Except when she chose Cole. He has
been waiting with the faint glimmer of hope that she will leave her husband and
say she will be his again. Everything he told her at the pool the other week
was a big, fat lie. He just wanted to see if it would kick-start her into
action if she knew that he was giving up on them. But it didn’t, so now he has
to move on. She has Cole, and after that she is going back to her sire, a man
Devon despises more than anyone with maybe the exception of her first husband
and Gregor. Oh, and of course Lance, but that goes without saying. They smile
at each other and pretend they are getting along like one big, happy family
when Liv is there, but underneath there is a searing hatred that has only grown
more intense since that first time he saw Constantine with his hands on her at
Versailles. Devon knows Constantine feels the same way, that he wishes he
didn’t exist. He said it in Sibiu and even though he backtracked when Liv threw
a shit fit at him, he meant every word. It disgusts him that her sire made her
exactly to his liking. That every little sexual act she performs, he taught her
to use on him. Devon doesn’t know if Cole has figured this out yet. Probably
not and he won’t hear it from him. It will destroy him to know that that little
clenching thing she does that makes you just explode inside her whether you are
ready to or not, Constantine taught her to do that. Devon likes his women
pliable and to do certain things, but to take an innocent girl who knows no
different and mold her as your own little sex toy is despicable.