Successors (25 page)

He looked up and immediately looked back down.

“Well, who is she? A nut-job ex-girlfriend?”

“I’ve never met her before,” he said.

“Why did you look away so fast then?” Cori leaned back to look at his face. He looked flustered to say the least.

He pulled away from her. “I have to go talk to her.”

“Why? If you never met her…”

He grabbed her shoulders. “I’ll explain when I get back. Please wait for me at the bar.” Without further explanation, he disappeared into the crowd. The wake of people closed too rapidly for her to follow.

She went to the bar as he had asked and bought herself a drink so she wasn’t offered one by someone else. She sat on a stray bar stool that was only free because a cluster of people were blocking it from view. She kept her eyes fixed upstairs, dodging between heads to get the best shot.

Vince approached the woman, angrily shaking his finger and pointing vaguely in Cori’s direction. The woman remained calm. As the one-sided argument went on, the woman kept her calm, but Vince lost his ire.

He pulled his fingers through his hair and shuffled before her, frustrated as she took her turn in speaking. At one point in her dialogue, she touched his arm, which he sloughed off, but she grabbed him with a tighter grip, and he didn’t resist. He glanced down toward the bar, probably looking for Cori, but she was hidden by her people cluster.

Even with a full drink still in her hand, a man came to Cori and offered to buy her one. She glanced at him, held up her drink, and shook her head. When her attention returned to the balcony, she saw the woman kissing Vince. Open-mouthed and full tongue, by the looks of it. Vince wasn’t pulling away.

Cori’s eyes were locked onto the scene like a car crash. A head in her way left her craning to see around. She had no thoughts or emotions yet. She was in shock that the event was even taking place.

As soon as the embrace was done, the woman disappeared out of view. Vince looked over the balcony again, searching for her. He looked tired and distraught. He pushed off the railing and headed back downstairs to find her.

Upstairs, the French woman returned to the balcony. She looked directly at Cori, having no trouble finding her. She smiled down at her. The bitch was pleased as punch that Cori had seen the encounter. Before she could decide if it would be childish to flip her off, Vince reached through her protective people cluster and grabbed her by the arm.

He pulled her off the stool and dragged her away, much to the concern of the cluster, who up to that point didn’t know she was there. Her full drink was upset by the abrupt movement and wound up on the shirt of the gentleman previously offering her one. She mouthed “sorry” to him as she backpedaled through the crowd in tow behind Vince.

Vince stomped down the sidewalk away from the club still holding Cori’s wrist in his concrete grip. She knew better than to try to escape his clutches. It was hopeless.

With him in such an irate state, she didn’t dare confront him on the kiss, nor did she mention that the pace they were moving at was causing her to blister in her shoes.

After six unbearable blocks, an uncontainable squeak escaped her lips. It was quiet, but it made him stop. He looked back at her for the meaning behind her yelp. She didn’t say anything. He examined her, trying to see what harm had come to her. She stood silent, not willing to admit to any pain. His eyes settled on her shoes. Her heels were bleeding. The stilettos’ tight fit had rubbed her raw.

Vince shook his head and released his grip on her. He leaned down, gently removed her shoes, and handed them to her. Rather than make her walk the mucky sidewalks barefoot, he swept her into his arms and carried her the remaining five blocks to their apartment.

Once there, she still didn’t broach the topic of the woman. Vince seemed aggravated enough as it was. He focused his attention on her heels. He sat her on the couch and carefully disinfected her cuts, placed salve on them, and bandaged them.

When he was done, he crawled onto the couch with her and made love to her with a certain sadness, as if the next morning he would be gone.

47

To her relief the next morning he wasn’t gone. She found him in the kitchenette making her breakfast—French toast, her favorite. He usually refused to make it because he said it was like eating cake for breakfast. He always preferred eggs and toast, which she argued was exactly what French toast was, just without the syrup.

He turned from the griddle with his spatula in hand and smiled at her.

She couldn’t muster a smile. Too much of last night was still fresh in her mind. “Are you leaving me?” she asked, trying for mature honesty.

“No,” he said without any hesitation or confusion about her abrupt question. “I am concerned how long you will be staying with me after I tell you who that woman was.”

She sighed and tried to remain levelheaded, which essentially meant she had to wall off her emotions for the time being. “That bad?”

“I think you’ll think so.” He put down the spatula and turned off the griddle, letting the remaining heat finish off the batch of golden slices.

“So, who is she?” Cori sat on the step stool to hear his story.

“To clarify, I have not met her before last night. She is, however, a kindred spirit, in the sense that she’s a werewolf.”

“A female werewolf?”

“Yes, there are a good number in Paris, most of which I have met. Most of which I have mated with. They rarely choose the same male twice.” Cori said nothing. She realized all at once that werewolves were not sired like vampires, if that was even true, but birthed like all mammals. “A female chooses her partner for mating once a year.”

“Just once?”

“Once a year for the purpose of procreation. Beyond that, they often seek out human males. During their annual fertile time, they won’t touch a human male. They’d likely kill them if they did, anyway.”

“She’s chosen you as her mate?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve done this before, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“But not with her?” she verified.

“No.”

“I assume you told her
no
.”

Vince shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It usually is. No means no.”

“Not for a female werewolf. She has chosen me, just as all the others did; I had no choice in it.”

Cori laughed. “Fine, she wants you, but that doesn’t automatically mean she can have you. Tell her to find someone else. She can’t just force you to do it.”

Vince’s head lowered to hide a certain shame on his face.

“What? She will make you mate with her? You can’t tell me she is stronger than you.”

Vince nodded.

Cori shook her head.

Vince nodded again.

“This woman will force you to have sex with her, and you aren’t strong enough to fight her off,” she said, losing a few bricks from her emotional wall.

“Strength in female werewolves fluctuates, but they are generally stronger than males. If she is looking to mate, the hormones running through her will make her even stronger. I tried to fight off a female once. She nearly killed me, and in the end I still ended up doing her bidding.”

Cori stood and took a few steps away from Vince before proceeding. “This sounds insane. It sounds made up. It sounds like an excuse for you to just sleep with some other woman. How would I begin to verify this? This could be a load of bullshit and I wouldn’t know, because I’m just a stupid human!” Down went the wall.

“Cori, I love you. I could have met up with this woman on the sly and never told you. It might have spared your feelings, but I need you to know that this is the downside of dating a werewolf, at least one of them, and if you don’t want to deal with this, then you shouldn’t stay with me.”

Cori’s mouth dropped. “You’re just begging me to break up with you.”

“No!” Vince reached out before she could move away. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. She fought but his arms wrapped around her, holding her captive in his embrace. For the first time in a long time he showed his dominance. “Please understand what I am seeking from you. I want to know if I should simply deal with her and go back to life as usual, or do you want me to fight her off?”

“You just said you nearly died last time.” Despite his clutches, she continued to struggle, a marker of the warrior within her… and the fool.

“What will make you more comfortable: a half-dead raped man or an unfaithful one?” He released her and she nearly fell back.

She recovered somewhat ungracefully and shot him a scowl. Her face softened when she looked at his. He looked miserable with worry. He wanted to do the right thing, but he honestly didn’t know what that was. She shook her head. “I don’t know what you should do.”

“Neither do I.”

For the first time since they were together, Vince didn’t have the answers. He wasn’t leading her. He wasn’t giving her the solution. He wasn’t strong enough to fix this problem. And if Vince wasn’t strong enough, then all hope was lost.

Vince grabbed his spatula and tossed the remaining French toast onto his platter, each scrape on the pan a little more aggressive than the last. She moved behind him and touched his arm. He tensed, but didn’t turn to look at her.

She tugged on his bicep. He stopped moving, but he still didn’t turn around. She gave up and wrapped her arms around his stomach. “Vince.” She stood on tiptoe to whisper into his ear.

“I’m sorry,” he said before she could continue.

“I’m not leaving you, Vince,” she said. “Not ever. I love you. That doesn’t just go away when things get tough. We’ll figure this out, together.”

He turned to face her. His eyes were red and skirted with moisture. It was the second time she had seen him this upset, and she got the distinct impression that it was a rare spectacle.

Despite the grief in his eyes, a slight smile crossed his face. He brought his arm around her waist, slower this time, in case she wanted to pull away. He lifted her up onto the counter beside the plate of French toast.

He tossed the spatula away and pulled her face down to kiss him. His hands gripped her waist and pulled her just to the edge of the counter against him. She knew he wanted to have her right there; his apology for the events to come, and his celebration of her devotion to him. But she couldn’t.

She pulled back and smiled. “That French toast smells really good,” she said, glancing at the plate of warm soft buttery bread, soon to be sticky sweet with syrup.

He glanced over at them, having no idea what she was talking about. With visible disappointment, he backed away from her. “I made them just for you.” He smiled and gathered the remaining ingredients for breakfast.

He glanced over at her a few more times, and she smiled at him. She pretended that it was just the French toast that had put the damper on their intimacy, and so did he.

48

Cori thought about the choices Vince had given her. It wasn’t even a choice really. Sleep with the woman, or be beaten to death by her. Hmm, which one would
she
choose?

She also thought about how he could simply justify sleeping with another woman because she was a werewolf.
Oh, sorry honey, I ran into another werewolf at the store today, had to mate with her.
How many “werewolves” could he sleep with and still be the innocent victim?

She trusted Vince, but her insecurities kept telling her that she was being used. She tried to rationalize that if he told her about it, it was proof of his honesty. But in the back of her mind, she knew that it just made her culpable in the affair. She could hardly deny him the second werewolf if she had told him to sleep with the first, and so on and so forth.

On top of all the questions brought on by mistrust, self-esteem issues, and general paranoia, she found one question that couldn’t be pushed away by rational thought. Could she forgive or forget once it was all said and done? If she knew anything about herself, she knew she was selfish. Vince wasn’t the only one with territorial instincts.

Sitting around with this final question in mind, she knew she only had one choice.

In Vince’s black trench coat and hat, Cori fled from the apartment. She waited until he had laid down for a nap. He hadn’t let her leave the apartment without him for two days. She was feeling overburdened with the stress of this decision, and being cooped up wasn’t helping matters.

Strained conversation and a dead sex life were starting to take their toll. Since Vince had not left the apartment alone either, she assumed that the nefarious werewolf was casing the place in case an impromptu opportunity arose to molest Vince on his way to work or the store.

She got the impression a hotel wouldn’t be required for the type of meeting the woman had in mind. With that thought, Cori dodged through people and traffic, making her way to a small park only a few blocks from the apartment.