Page 10 of Blood and Magic (RBMC: Helena, MT #2)

Maeve

I didn’t see Vermillion again that day. I showered, dressed, and meandered into my father’s office to do the work Sol had left for me. I approved some invoices and replied to a few emails, but running the ranch didn’t fill my soul the way it had my father.

He’d been a hard man, more likely to chastise his children in the name of discipline than to show us a kind word. I had only a few memories of my mother, but I didn’t remember her being very happy. The only people the Vanderbilt siblings had were each other, and even that rested on shaky ground.

Percy had grown to be an evil maniac, Liam had a spine made out of Jell-O, and the jury was still out on Galahad.

Though he did seem to be shaping up well enough.

Guin, Sol, Ava, and I were the glue that held this family together, even if I still suspected Guin and Sol were keeping something important from the rest of us.

Once the bills were paid and I’d finished my meetings, I wandered around his office, admiring the ancient tomes on the bookshelves and reminiscing about the photos scattered around.

Judging by these mementos, one might believe the old man cared about us.

Perhaps he did, in his own way. He was never the touchy-feely type, made even colder by our mother’s untimely death.

Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have children, and he was one of them. Growing up, I often wondered what life would have been like had our mother survived. Would she have softened him? Would she have been a rock for him to break himself against? Or would this world have dimmed her light, too?

A few hours later, I forced myself to eat lunch on the veranda, sketching in my notebook and watching as the ranch hands worked the barn and corralled the horses.

An unbroken stallion jumped in the training pen while two men circled it, trying to bring it to heel.

Mill stood on the outside, arms over the metal barrier, his hat covering his eyes.

But I could tell from his height and stature it was him.

I shouldn’t stare. It was incredibly rude to watch someone while they worked, especially when that someone happened to be an employee.

But something about him drew me in like a tractor beam.

His broad shoulders gave way to a narrow waist and hips, his jeans complementing the muscular curve of his ass and legs.

Almost as if he could feel my gaze, he turned and looked up at the balcony.

We were several hundred yards away from each other.

There was no way he could have known I’d been looking or even that it was me eating all alone.

But when our eyes connected, a shiver raced down my spine and landed between my legs, reminding me I’d once adored him and that young girl inside still did.

I’m ridiculous. Truly and utterly ridiculous.

Here I was, ogling some poor man while he was trying to do a favor for his buddy. He didn’t want to be here any more than I did.

Feeling a strange pang of shame, I finished my iced tea, stood, and went back to work.

Only after I sat at my desk and looked at my sketchbook did I realize I’d drawn a replica of his intense gaze at the breakfast table that morning.

Disgusted, I ripped the page out, crumpled it into a ball, and started throwing it in the trash.

Just as I would have released it, something stopped me.

I didn’t want to throw it away. I wanted to keep working on it.

I wanted to cherish it, even if I kept it in a deep, secret part of my notebook.

Hating myself for it, I smoothed the page out, stuffed it between the last page and the back cover, and told myself I’d get to it some other time.

At the end of the day, I ate dinner alone. Damn near at my wits’ end with this quiet house, I begged Ellen to sit with me.

“Please.” I gestured to the food and the empty seats around the obnoxiously long dinner table. “There’s more than enough. Gather the rest of the staff. I’d love to get to know you all better.”

Ellen only shook her head. “No, ma’am. I can’t. It wouldn’t be proper.”

Whatever that means.

“We’ve already eaten,” she explained, “and our shift is almost over.”

I accepted her excuse and drummed my nails on the wood while I chewed the oven-roasted chicken she’d prepared.

I’d never considered myself an extrovert.

I’d lived alone in my apartment for several months, and some people could be entirely draining.

But never had the ache in my chest been so impetuous as it was in this enormous house with no one to fill it.

One day in, and I wanted to jump out of my skin. How would I make it an entire two months?

My phone buzzed, and I glanced down at it, furrowing my brows when I saw a text message from an unknown number.

“Hey, Big Sis,” it said.

“Who is this?” I wrote back.

“Your real brother-in-law.” A chill went down my spine, but I ignored it.

It’s probably someone playing a prank, or maybe a wrong number.

I reported the message as junk and deleted it from my inbox, feeling no less despondent that the only person blowing up my phone was someone I didn’t even know.

When I went to bed, I left the French doors to my balcony open so the summer air could clear out the musky, stale atmosphere from the day.

Just as I’d been about to climb into bed, the sounds of jeering and country music echoed in from behind the house.

Dressed in my silky white nightgown, I walked to the patio and glanced toward the ranchers’ quarters.

Chris Stapleton blasted from the brightly lit windows, accentuating male laughter and the clinking of beer bottles hitting each other. The workers were gearing up for a party.

I tried to imagine Mill cutting loose. Years ago, maybe he’d have partaken. But now, it took all of my comedic chops just to get a smile. Was he out there now, carrying on with the rest of them?

It wasn’t a huge dormitory, and the workers slept in bunks. Since Mill was lead and Orion had moved into a different house with Sol months ago, I suspected my favorite tall, blond, and grumpy biker was staying in a separate cabin afforded to someone in the head position.

Go out there with them, that reckless part of me whispered, the part that had died and come back to life and never wanted to waste another opportunity. Go party and have fun.

It would certainly be better than staying cooped up here with no one to talk to.

But I had a lot of work to do tomorrow, and I didn’t want to cross any boundaries.

My father had been adamant about keeping the workers separate from the family for a reason.

We were their employer. We were the Vanderbilts.

Most of them were drifters, and more recently, members of the Royal Bastards.

Never the twain shall meet.

I snorted at that outdated elitist mentality and went back inside, settling into bed with a hot chamomile tea and a smutty romance novel before drifting off to sleep.

The next morning, I ate breakfast alone. Uncomfortable and wanting to fill the silence, I called Ava to see how her first day in Paris went. She reported that the conference was going well.

“It’s just like we remember from boarding school,” she said, recalling the class trip we’d taken overseas in eleventh year.

She’d spent the whole time brooding in museums and visiting historical sites.

I’d hooked up with as many French boys and girls as possible.

“Artsy and beautiful, and the people?” She sighed. “The same.”

I laughed. “Does this mean you’re finally going to let someone between your legs?”

She gasped. “Maeve Eleanor Vanderbilt, I would never.”

I shook my head. Sometimes, I couldn’t believe we shared the same DNA.

“How are things there?” she asked. “Are you keeping everything afloat?”

“It’s only been one day. I can’t do that much damage.”

“Uh-huh.” I could almost see her eye roll from across the ocean. “And what about Vermillion?”

“What about Vermillion?” I stuffed a piece of strawberry into my mouth and choked it down. Despite not drinking last night, my hangover was taking its grand ole time in dissipating.

“Don’t feign ignorance. Everyone saw how you two stared at each other at the wedding.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “Truly.”

I meant it. Especially after breakfast yesterday. He’d been grumpy and distant, and even if I didn’t remember him being that way seventeen years ago, a lot had changed for him in that time. A lot had changed for me, too.

Christ, get a grip.

He’s just a man. A stupid, growly man.

She hummed, as if to suggest I could keep my secrets if I must. “Be good. Don’t get into trouble.”

We said our love and goodbyes before hanging up.

Three days went by like this. If I was feeling up to it, I rode Molly in the mornings, and if I happened to see Mill in the pastures, we ignored each other.

I ate alone. I worked alone. Then I listened to the boys partying every night from my bedroom balcony, a solemn part of me working up the courage to join them.

What would they do if I did? The Vanderbilts never mingled with the help.

..but weren’t we about starting something new?

Wasn’t that what Sol and Guin were working toward?

On day seven in captivity, the dream came again.

I raced through the woods on the balls of my feet, exhilaration in my blood, the wind in my hair.

I was running from something… no, someone.

And they gained on me quicker than I’d thought they would.

When they caught me, they tackled me to the ground face up, and I stared into fiendish crimson eyes. No, not crimson.

Vermillion.

He smiled, holding my wrists above my head, pressing his hips between my thighs. My nightgown had pooled around my waist, now soiled with sweat and undergrowth.

“You’re such a bad girl. You need to be punished,” he said, leaning closer to run his nose over the column of my throat. “Didn’t you listen the last time? Running from me is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“I like when you chase me,” I whispered, barely able to get the words out over the drum of my beating heart. “I like it when you catch me.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said, dragging his tongue up my neck to my jaw. His soft, warm tongue made me tremble as I imagined what it might feel like on other parts of my anatomy. “Don’t tease the wolf, baby. You won’t like what happens to you.”

“Are you going to bite me?” I raised a playful eyebrow.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Maybe I’d like it.” I rocked my pelvis into his, gasping when my cunt pressed up against the long length of his erection behind his jeans. He was so hard, and he jerked at the contact, trailing his mouth down the side of my face to the spot where my throat met my shoulder.

“And what would you do if I did, huh?” he growled. “Would you scream? Would you cry?”

Vermillion kissed the tender skin, and I shook in anticipation.

“What if I drank every last drop of your blood?” He hummed and licked the spot, rolling his pelvis against me, dragging the hardest part of him over the softest, wettest part of me.

I moaned, bucking into the connection. I wanted more.

So much more. “You have no idea what I could do to you, baby girl…what I want to do to you.”

“So do it.” The quiver in my voice betrayed the terror in my chest. I should have been afraid of him.

I should know better than to taunt someone as strong and dominant as him.

But deep down, I knew he’d never hurt me.

He could never hurt me. We were tethered on a molecular level, bound by fate and blood and magic.

When the universe formed itself, we were one atom of stardust that had split apart to create our separate souls.

Now that we’d found each other again, we would never be apart.

“Such things you say.” He pulled his lips back over enormous fangs extending from his canines. His pupils had blown so wide, they eclipsed all of the red.

Then he struck.

On a gasp and a cry, my eyes snapped open to bright moonlight seeping in through the French doors. I wasn’t in the forest, being attacked by my childhood crush. I was in my room. In my bed. And it had only been a dream.