Page 48 of Absolution

“He’s fine,” Jamie said.

That was wishful thinking. Seiran was not fine.

“He will be fine,” Jamie amended. “I’m working on a few things. I’ll catch you up later. Go get some sleep. If I had two attractive men waiting for me, I’d be moving my ass a lot faster.”

I gaped at him. How had he known?

“They haven’t been subtle, and I’m not blind,” Jamie said.

“Do you think it’s stupid? Am I making the wrong choice? My relationship history is for shit.”

He shrugged. “No one can really know until you try, right? Love is always a crapshoot. Either you win or you lose. But you never know until you play the game. I know they are both interested in you for you, not because you have some weird amplifying power. I’d say that’s a good start.”

“Even with all the vampire chaos going on?”

“Only time you have guaranteed is the present.”

Fuck. When did the muscleman get so damn smart? Dammit. “You’ve got Sei.”

He nodded. “I do.”

I shouldn’t have cared so much. Seiran had been my arch enemy for a while. Only that had been in my own head. He never felt that way about me. More annoyed that I bothered him. Now I guess I considered him a friend. Fuck but life, or unlife if that’s what I had, was complicated.

“Go,” Jamie insisted quietly. “They’re fine.”

I rubbed the bracelet Seiran gave me and tiptoed to the elevator. “The dinger on this thing is really loud,” I remarked when I pushed the button and the box appeared a few seconds later.

I sent Luca a text,Coming.

“Only to vampires,” Jamie said. “The tone is set for your hearing range. I don’t even notice it. I think Seiran hears it, but not the same way the rest of us do.”

Well fuck. Something else to make me weird. I stepped into the elevator, waved goodbye and hit the button to jump up a floor. Sei and Kelly’s apartment was on the inner courtyard just across the lobby. I hoped Seiran hadn’t change his wards too much because there was about fifteen feet of direct sunlight separating the elevator and their front door.

The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in the lobby outside the door feeling like my skin was on fire. How long would it take before my skin actually began to burn? I hadn’t braved being outside in the sunlight long enough to know.

Luca stood beside the elevator door when it opened. He had a blanket, which he wrapped around me and guided me into the apartment. As soon as the door closed we were encased in darkness and he took the blanket back. He turned the light on over the sink in the kitchen. I headed to the freezer to store the packets of blood.

“I can doctor that stuff up for you later, but it still won’t taste as good as me,” Luca said.

I was pretty sure that was true. “I don’t want to freak out Con.”

Luca nodded. Once I’d put the blood packs away he tugged me toward the bedroom. Technically it was Seiran’s room. There was nothing of him in it since he lived mostly downstairs. I think the only thing that really reflected him in the room was the last remaining bookshelf filled with a handful of romance novels. My vision adjusted to the darkness enough to see Con’s outline in the bed. He could have been sleeping, and I might have thought that’s what his stillness was, if it hadn’t been for his heartrate, which I knew was higher than his regular sleeping rate.

“You okay with this?” I asked Con, kicking off my slippers. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“Come to bed,” he said.

Luca climbed into the bed, setting himself in the middle. I was okay with that. If Con needed a buffer from remembering I was a vampire, that was fine. I couldn’t change what I was, and he’d had just as shitty of an experience with vampires as I had.

I made my way to Luca’s side of the bed and crawled in beside him. The queen-size bed should have been enough for all of us to have our spots, but Luca wrapped his arms around me and tugged me closer, throwing the blanket over us and snuggling until his face was buried in my neck. “Sleep,” he said.

I could hear Con’s breathing. He shifted around until he spooned Luca and could touch me. His breathing hitched a little, but he didn’t bolt. I closed my eyes, bowing to the sleepiness and the heat of the bed. Their problems weren’t mine, I reminded myself as I let sleep take me. I couldn’t save anyone and wasn’t obligated to. All I could be was me.

Chapter 15

Iawoke in a sandwich of limbs. Luca mostly, though Con perched over us playing some sort of game on his phone. The sun was still up, which felt odd, like a tingling in my veins. A reminder perhaps. The one perk of being a vampire—or maybe it wasn’t a perk—was that I never woke up hard. My dick did a little tiny jolt of “hey, that’s nice” when I realized Luca’s hand rested on my hip right next to it, but that was all. I’d need blood before any games were had.

Had Luca gone to bed in just a pair of tiny undies or had he stripped down to them as I slept?