Page 6 of New Nebraska Home (New Nebraska)

Callum

IT’S COMPLICATED

T he towel hung low on my hips as I stepped out of the shower, finally having enough hot water to feel truly clean. No one ever tells you the worst part of living with a water elemental is the stupidly long showers they take. The time in the shower was almost as annoying as the singing.

Though I had to admit there was something appealing about watching Brock in nothing more than a towel and watching the little droplets of water caress the smooth, tanned skin of his back as it trailed down to his…

I shook my head.

It was just the need to feed. I hadn’t drunk straight from a source in the longest time. And I hadn’t taken anyone to bed since Pandora. The pent-up sexual frustration had to be mixing with my blood lust. It left me on edge, my skin over sensitive. That had to be why my already heightened senses seemed more acute.

Pushing the feelings down and retracting my fangs—even as they tingled to slide into the throat of my best friend, or maybe the little morsel upstairs—I went to my bedroom to get dressed. My phone sat blinking on the nightstand with a voicemail.

Who called people anymore? Had no one heard of a text message?

I hit the button to play the message and heard Liz’s voice. She sounded panicked, her breath coming out in harsh pants between broken words. It was hard to make out what she was saying. She was clearly running, and there were taunts being yelled at her, jeers about human whores, and halfling abominations. My blood ran hot with anger as I listened, and then I heard a quiet whimper of fear that made my heart freeze.

Leif was with her. It was wrong for a bunch of wolves—I guessed wolves, the pack mentality was a strong giveaway—to corner a human who had no chance of defending herself. But she was at least an adult. Going after a woman with a child was a new level of low, even for wolves.

My fangs spiked again, this time not in lust, but rage. If any of them had hurt a single hair on either of those heads, then they would understand what it was to mess with a vampire who’d been around much longer than them. As a master vampire, I could not only drain them dry with my teeth, but I could warp their blood from afar, turning it putrid through my will alone. As long an enemy was within my sight, my focus was uninterrupted, and my rage was burning hot enough, they would drop dead from blood poisoning in under a minute.

And wolves were my specialty. They were my natural enemies, and I had absolutely no problem reminding them exactly where they were on the food chain.

I banged my fist against Brock’s door and yelled at him we had to go. Liz was in trouble. To his credit, he dropped whatever he was doing and immediately opened the door, ready.

He grabbed his keys and a knife that he usually carried with him, tucking it into his back pocket as we headed up the stairs at a full run. But just as we reached the front door, it opened and Liz was standing there, eyes wide, Leif, next to her and some big, mean-looking shifter behind her.

The shifter smelled… different. I couldn’t place what he was, and that was unusual.

“Oh, hey. I guess you just got Leif’s call?” she said, pulling my focus from the man behind her.

“Yeah, are you okay? We just got your message and were on our way.” I took a step back to make way.

“You would’ve been too late,” the big guy said, looking me up and down. “And underdressed.”

Brock snorted a laugh behind me, and I accidentally shoved my elbow back into his sternum, not hard enough to do any damage, but enough to make him shut it.

He coughed, but I was more focused on Liz. She looked unharmed, and I couldn’t help but notice the way Liz’s eyes traveled up and down my body, taking in everything the towel wasn’t covering. I liked the way her eyes felt on me. My fangs ached again, and I had to will them to stay put. She had been through enough. A horny vampire was the last thing she needed.

“Well, I was in a hurry, and just got out of the shower.”

“Clearly,” Liz said, then must have caught herself staring. The blush that colored her cheeks was absolutely adorable, and unfortunately reminded me of the blood running through her veins. It really had been too long since I’d had a proper meal.

“I’m going to go get dressed now,” I said a bit abruptly and headed back to my room, Brock following only steps behind.

I knew I was in for whatever smart-ass comments and hazing Brock had waiting. There was no avoiding it. God knows I had spent so much time trying to figure out how. But it just came with the territory.

“So,” Brock said as we headed back down the basement steps. “I have my knife and my water abilities to help fight off whatever evil monster was plaguing our little landlord. But what weapon exactly were you going to use? I mean, I’m pretty sure you only have one on you and I don’t know if that’s the kind of fucked up we were aiming for.”

I bit back a laugh, not willing to let him see my amusement. Laughing at his jokes would only encourage him.

“No, no seriously, what were you going to do? Dick-whip every single one of them?” Brock cackled as he followed me into my room, landing on my bed.

I ignored him as I went to my closet to pull out a pair of jeans and a fresh shirt.

“I mean, I’ve heard the tales of you having a weapon of mass destruction between your legs, but I didn’t think they were literal.” Brock and I had known each other a few years now, but it was only in recent months, with this whole relocating fiasco, that we’d been sharing a bathroom. The first time he’d seen my cock his eyes had peeled wide, big as clementines. I didn’t like to brag, but yeah.

“Shut up or I’m going to shove this weapon down your throat and make you shut up,” I snapped without thinking.

In an instant, Brock was on his feet, and in my face, his easygoing attitude made it easy to forget he was a master in his own right, even if water elementals didn’t call it that, or even have a name for it. He was strong, dominant, and demanded respect. We had butted heads a few times, but this felt different. The air was charged but not with anger. It didn’t feel like aggression, but I didn’t dare put a name to it.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he said, his body inches from mine. I was sure he meant that as a threat, or some kind of taunt, but that wasn’t what it sounded like. He stared at me for a moment. I stared back into those impossibly ocean-blue eyes, my fangs itching and my cock getting hard under my towel.

I broke first, looking away, not wanting him to see my arousal and mistake it for anything other than blood lust.

“What did you think of the guy standing behind Liz?” I asked, changing the subject.

I could feel Brock turn away from me and go back to the bed. I watched his reflection in the mirror, and for a second, I thought I saw disappointment flash across his face.

My mind had to be messing with me.

“I think he smelled like smoke, sex, and bourbon. My mouth is still watering.”

White hot jealousy tore through me, and I had to stop myself from grabbing Brock by the throat and growling ‘mine’ before I claimed him with a bite.

Fuck, what was wrong with me?

I hated the idea of going to one of those blood diners and feeding dens that some other Vamps were setting up. The idea of biting someone who I paid just seemed impersonal. It was just a slightly warmer version of drinking from a blood bag. Not the experience I wanted, and although it would satisfy my nutritional needs, it wouldn’t satisfy the overwhelming thirst that I felt when Brock’s body was too close to mine, or when Liz accidentally brushed against me in the kitchen.

Sinking my fangs into someone I didn’t know, who I didn’t want, it felt like something that was too personal and a violation even if they were consenting.

“Really? Is that what you want in a man?” I tried to say casually, but I knew I missed the mark. “It’s been a while since you’ve been with someone. Big, mysterious bikers your thing now?”

“There’s something intriguing about him, right?” Brock said, nothing but casual cheerfulness in his voice, convincing me that anything I had read into that moment or may or may not have seen was clearly all in my head.

“I know he’s a shifter, but…”

“You have no idea what kind, right?” Brock finished for me. He either didn’t pick up on my jealousy, or he was ignoring it. Either way, I was thankful.

“None, and we keep an eye on him, until we know what he is and what he wants with Liz.” It wasn’t my place to babysit Liz or tell her who she could or couldn’t invite into her own home, but that didn’t mean I was going to stand by and let some unknown entity near her with no protection.

“Agreed,” he said, and I watched in the mirror as he stretched over my bed, his dark blue shirt riding up, showing the flat of his abs, and the soft little trail of hair that led from his navel and disappeared below his jeans.

I had never noticed that before, though I don’t think I’d ever looked at my best friend quite that way before, either. I’d never looked at any man like that before. For sure, a man had never made my entire body hum with power, and my fangs ached to sink into him. Not just to drink, but to give him the bliss that can come with my bite.

Pushing those thoughts out of my head, I grabbed my clothes and headed back into the bathroom to get dressed. I silently begged my fangs to vanish back to where they belonged, and my cock to go down.

Soon I would have to go to one of the vampire dens. I couldn’t keep living like this, starved for fresh blood and sex. I might even have to break my self-inflicted celibacy with some fang-loving fangirl—now that they had confirmation vampires were real, and knew where to find them, I’d heard some humans had flocked to the new state for that very reason—though the idea made my stomach turn and my skin crawl.

Once I dressed and had cleared my head a little, we headed upstairs. Liz was sitting at the kitchen table, her fingers pressed into her temples as she tried to rub away the stress.

Brock let out an annoyed huff, and I looked over to see the big, strange shifter with Leif in the backyard showing him how to throw a punch.

“Do you see this shit?” Brock waved a hand toward the sliding glass door. “Just this morning it was all Brock’s the greatest, Brock’s so much fun and then the second someone else comes in, it’s nope. I’m going to hang out with my new buddy. Just like that, I’m yesterday’s news.”

Liz and I both turned and stared at Brock for a moment and when he cracked a smile, both of us burst out laughing.

“Children can be so fickle,” he said dramatically, draping himself over one of the chairs.

“You are ridiculous.” Liz sat back in her own chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know he really likes you. Stop being silly.”

“Yeah, but I’m cute. So I can get away with silly,” Brock said, giving her a saucy wink.

I rolled my eyes and took the seat next to Liz, then reached out and held her hand, trying to offer her some comfort.

“What happened?”

She gave us the rundown about what had happened at the store, and I had a sinking suspicion that she was glazing over a few details, but the important parts of it were that she was home, she was safe, and the big, weird-smelling shifter proved—to her at least—that he could be trusted.

“Look, it happened. I lived. Now I would like to move on,” she said when Brock tried to get the details on who was there. “And besides, there’s something else we need to talk about.”