Page 21 of It's in His Bite
“If she’ll have you,” he said slowly. He pursed his lips and then frowned. “You haven’t talked about it?”
“We… I mean, I meant to. She was nervous that you were all getting here. I thought calming her down first would help. I—” I swallowed the word, skipping over me eating her out in the kitchen to get her anxiety under control enough to even attempt a conversation about it.
Joshua’s eyes flashed in understanding anyway, that muscle ticking in his neck.
“I don’t want to know, Landon.”
I groaned and dropped into one of the chairs.
“She heard you guys laughing outside, and all the nerves came back. She asked me a point blank question and I… panicked,” I said roughly. “Since then, it’s not like there’s been a lot of opportunities to have a secluded conversation.”
He pursed his lips and crossed his ankles, looking at the ground. His hand picked at the edge of the desk. “You panicked? How bad?”
The memory of Harlowe splayed over the counter, her cheek pressed to the cold stone, her body trembling from the aftershocks of the orgasm I’d wrung from her, filled my mind. Her quiet question, my damning silence. My idiotic retreat.
My stomach twisted.
“Really fucking bad.”
There was another long stretch of silence, but it felt different. This wasn’t Joshua’s anger brewing. This was him focusing, thinking through all the possibilities of whatever problem he’d been presented. After a while, he sighed.
“You want my opinion?”
I tilted my head back. “You’re going to give it regardless.”
“Fair.” His chuckle was dark. “Look, it’s not just because she’s my daughter that I’m telling you this, okay?”
I raised an eyebrow and stretched my neck. My throat was starting to burn with renewed thirst, the healing process taking its toll. It hadn’t burned at all since the first time I’d tasted Harlowe’s strawberry blood. Damn, I’d forgotten what it was like to not have to feed everyday.
“Harlowe’s going to need a big gesture,” Joshua continued, cutting through my thoughts. “It’s just how she is. Being a non-vampire-presenting dhampir is hard in a clan, and her gift doesn’t make it any easier.”
I growled at that. No, being a reader didn’t make her fitting in any easier, but it didn’t stop my anger that she lived on thefringes of most groups. Joshua raised an eyebrow, and I forced myself to settle.
“You know her gift now, I assume?” he asked. When I nodded, he sighed. “Right. Look. She doesn’t need a stage or anything. But you’re going to have to do this with other people in the room if you panicked hard. She’ll need the commitment a public gesture insinuates, the feeling that you won’t renege later on.”
Renege later on.
Fuck, that’s exactly what I’d done yesterday. Freaked out, froze, and then didn’t give her the same agreement I’d give her the previous night. God, I was shit at relationships.
“All right,” I said, agreeing easily. Whatever it took for her to listen to me after I left her in the kitchen. “Know anyone who could get me the pendant here in time?”
Blood rubies were a bitch to get hold of. This wasn’t going to be cheap in the best of circumstances. But Fated were worth it.
Joshua heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, but you’re not allowed to bitch at me about it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Landon
The last place I wanted to be on Christmas Eve was begging a werewolf for a damn favor. The memory of Miles Brown flirting with Harlowe galvanized me, though. No way in hell was I leaving this to after the holiday. Who even knew if I’d get a chance to speak with her once we all left this cabin in another week? Her internship began in only a few short weeks, and there was an immense amount of planning still needed to coordinate her move to Europe.
No, this needed to be done today, regardless of who it meant I had to bribe and cajole.
Joshua slid the car to a stop along the curb of the large cabin an hour the other side of the small mountain town. It was large and domineering, an old-style log design with an enormous deck that wrapped around the entire main floor. Three cars were parked in the long driveway, all of them buried in the snow that had fallen. Footprints littered the snow immediately around the cabin, but none led to the cars. I supposed there wasn’t much reason for them to travel into town if they had what they neededfor Christmas. A curtain fluttered, and a hand flashed in the window, but no one opened the door.
Joshua didn’t move to get out of the car. He stared straight ahead, his eyes unfocused, that worry line between his eyes. His hands flexed on the steering wheel, his claws sharpening and receding at even intervals, almost like they were their own heartbeat in his body.
“Joshua?” I asked, keeping my voice level, neutral.