One Lucky Vampire

Eleven

Jake paused outside the studio’s French doors and peered through the window. He wasn’t surprised to see that Nicole was not working. He’d expected the information she’d been given would disrupt her ability to concentrate. He was concerned though to find her simply standing in the middle of her studio, staring at her uncovered paintings. He suspected she wasn’t really seeing the portraits. Her shoulders were hunched and Jake was quite sure he knew exactly how she was feeling. It was the same way he’d felt when he was eighteen and had been told about immortals. Betrayed, confused, as if the world wasn’t the place he’d thought it was.

Jake didn’t knock, but simply opened the door. Nicole didn’t turn, but he could tell by the way she stiffened that she knew he was there.

“I came to see if you were all right,” he said quietly. “I know this is a lot to take in.”

She gave a little snort and Jake smiled wryly.

“Yeah, I guess that’s an understatement, huh? Believe me, I know. Been there, done that, and have a whole wardrobe full of T-shirts to prove it,” he said quietly.

“You said you were turned when you were attacked?” Nicole asked quietly.

Jake nodded, and then realized she couldn’t see him so cleared his throat and said, “Yes.”

“When was that?”

“Seven years ago, give or take six months,” he answered and wondered what she was thinking when she nodded. He wished he could see her face, but she still had her back to him.

“Was that the health crisis that made you run away?”

Jake sighed and pushed the door closed. He walked over to the nearest of the half dozen swiveling stools she had in the room and sat on it, before saying, “Yes, but it was just the last straw of many.”

Nicole was silent for a minute and then asked, “What was the first straw?”

The question surprised him and he took a moment before saying, “The first one was more of a tree than a straw.”

“Which was?” she prompted.

“It was when I was eighteen and my mother and stepfather sat me down and told me about immortals and that they, my brother, and every Notte I had ever met, which was all the family I knew, belonged to that select party.”

“All the family you knew?” Nicole asked, turning to peer at him curiously. “The Nottes are your stepfather’s family. What about your mother and father’s family?”

“My mother had a brother, sister, and parents, and my father had two brothers and parents. Apparently there were cousins and grandparents too, on both sides.”

“But you don’t know them?” she asked.

Jake shook his head. “They didn’t approve of my parents’ marriage. On my mother’s side it was because they were Jewish and my father was Catholic. On my father’s side it was a combination of that and the fact that as far as they were concerned my mother came from the wrong side of the tracks. My father’s family had money, my mother’s didn’t. Dad’s parents expected him to marry a nice girl from a comparatively rich, Catholic family, not a poor Jewish girl whose family didn’t even own their own home. So . . .” He shrugged. “After Dad died, Mom was pretty much on her own with me.”

Jake paused briefly, but when she didn’t comment, he said, “I guess she was struggling something fierce when she met Roberto, working two jobs to try to support us and taking night courses at university in the hopes of getting a better job, to better support us. I gather she had no time for romance and made Roberto work hard to win her.”

“He was immortal?”

Jake nodded. “And he turned her.”

“But not you?” Nicole asked with a frown.

“I was a child,” Jake said with a shrug. “I gather they frown on turning children.”

“But when they told you at eighteen, why didn’t she turn you then?” she asked.

“I gather that was the plan,” Jake admitted with a grimace, and then explained, “They told me on my eighteenth birthday. My mother thought it would be a grand gift to tell me all about immortals, and then offer to use her one turn to turn me into one.”

“But she didn’t,” Nicole said with certainty and then arched an eyebrow and asked, “You wouldn’t let her?”

Jake shifted uncomfortably, and then sighed and said, “You have to understand, I was a horror buff. I watched every monster movie ever made. They scared the crap out of me and I slept with a nightlight until I was twelve, but I had to watch them. I was crazy for horrors.” He shook his head slightly at the memory. He’d lost his taste for horror since then, but he’d been addicted to them then and that hadn’t really helped the situation. “Back when I was a kid, they didn’t have your Twilights and True Bloods. In every movie where vampires made an appearance, the vampire was the bad guy and the Van Helsing types were the good guys running around staking them and ridding the world of their evil.”

Jake grimaced. “So, essentially, on my eighteenth birthday, my mother told me that not only was my stepfather and his entire clan a bunch of bloodsucking fiends, but that she’d allowed him to turn her into one, and that the half brother I adored and looked out for was one too . . . and I’d been living with them all, unsuspecting all that time.”

“Seriously?” Nicole asked with suspicion. “Before they told you what they were, you didn’t have a clue?”

“They made sure I didn’t,” Jake said quietly. “I suspect they used some mind control to keep me unaware while they fed, or fudged my memory a bit here and there, not erasing anything, but adding things here or there to explain inconsistencies.” He shrugged. “I didn’t have a clue before then that I lived with what I thought were monsters.”

“And you didn’t agree to the change at that point,” Nicole said quietly.

It wasn’t a question, but he treated it as one. “No. I was shocked, horrified, repulsed. They were all suddenly monsters to me, and I didn’t want to be a monster too.”

“It must have been hard for you,” Nicole said quietly, moving to sit on the stool next to his.

Jake hesitated and then swung the seat slightly toward her and said judiciously, “Probably no harder than it is now for you.”

Nicole smiled wryly, but shook her head. Swinging her stool to the side and back with one foot, she said, “It’s a bit of a shock for me to find out such things exist. But for you . . .” She frowned and stopped swiveling to peer at him solemnly. “It was your family. You must have felt—I don’t know, alone?”

Jake nodded. He had felt alone. He’d also felt betrayed, abandoned, lost. “I guess at that point I felt like I was just finding out that I’d really been orphaned at four and had been living in a fantasy world all the years since Roberto came into our lives. In truth, I suppose I ran away emotionally that day, and my actual leaving seven years ago was just me physically following up on what happened emotionally years earlier.”

“Why didn’t you run away back then, at eighteen?” she asked curiously. “I mean if you felt they were monsters . . .”

“My brother,” Jake said quietly. “I was angry at my mother for letting Roberto turn her, but I was close to my little brother, Neil, and it wasn’t his fault he was born immortal. Besides, logically, after she explained everything, I understood that they weren’t monsters.”

“But there was still a part of your mind that thought of them as monsters,” Nicole guessed.

Jake nodded. “Eighteen years of training via horror movies can’t be eradicated that easily.”

“And then you were turned to save your life?” Nicole commented.

“Yes.” Jake’s mouth twisted at the memory. “My boss, Vincent Argeneau, who also happens to be Marguerite’s nephew, was being plagued by someone who was trying to ruin his life. They attacked me, and stabbed me just to the side of the heart. When Vincent found me I was dying and he turned me to save my life. I woke up an immortal . . . and didn’t handle it well.”

“Why?” Nicole asked quietly. “Surely it’s better to be an immortal than to be dead?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Jake said with dry amusement, and then glanced down. After a moment, he sighed and admitted, “I was fifty-one years old, miserable, and bitter.” He smiled wryly and lifted his head again, meeting her gaze. She was silent, waiting, wanting to understand, so he had to explain. “I was in a pretty dark place at that time. I’d had a happy childhood, but after finding out about everything, it felt like that childhood had all been a house of mirrors. After that I went through life feeling like an orphan. On top of that, nothing had turned out as I’d intended. I had no wife or kids, no one but my family and they were monsters as far as I was concerned. By the time I was attacked, I felt alone and tired and, frankly, I guess I was at a place where I was just killing time and waiting for the end . . . and then I got attacked. I remember lying there on the office floor, thinking, this is it, the end of my story. No more loneliness, no more disappointment, no more betrayal . . . and, instead, I woke up a vampire.”

“You keep saying vampire, but you told me you guys aren’t vampires,” Nicole pointed out quietly.

“Yeah,” Jake smiled faintly. “But I’ve been thinking of them as vampires so long . . .” He shrugged. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Nicole was silent for a minute, and then tilted her head to peer at him, a frown growing on her face. “Fifty-one?”

Jake smiled wryly. “When I was turned yes. I’m fifty-eight now.”

“You do not look fifty-eight,” she said firmly and then asked, “Is that something to do with the nanos?”

He nodded. “They were programmed to keep their host at their peak condition. I don’t think the developers intended that to include age, but the nanos are basically fancy, hybrid computers, and computers are pretty literal. Every immortal looks somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.”

Nicole considered that and then said, “So Marguerite . . . ?”

“I’m not sure of her exact age, but I know it’s over seven hundred.”

“Oh cripes.” Nicole sagged on her stool.

Jake eyed her worriedly, but waited, and then she suddenly straightened and peered at him accusingly.

“You said she wasn’t even in her forties.”

“I said she wasn’t in her thirties,” he corrected. “And she isn’t. I haven’t lied to you about anything, Nicole. I knew almost from the start that we were life mates and didn’t want to lie.” Jake grimaced and added, “I have kind of a thing about lying anyway . . . ever since finding out I was lied to for so long while growing up . . .” He shrugged.

Nicole was silent for a few more minutes, and then sat up straight again and asked, “So what is this life-mate business anyway?”

“Well . . .” Jake paused and swallowed. This was the tricky part, or perhaps it was just the most important part so felt tricky. If she didn’t accept that they were life mates, and agree to be his, or at least agree to consider it, then it could very well be decided that she should have her memory wiped and be left as ignorant of their existence as she’d been before he’d explained things. It would be necessary to ensure the safety of their kind. But if that happened, he wouldn’t be allowed to be around her again. None of them could, in case their presence made the memories return.

It was an odd thing. Jake felt odd and somewhat confused. While he knew that she was a life mate, or could be if she agreed, he hadn’t really known her long. Jake liked Nicole, or at least he liked everything he knew about her so far. He also found her attractive. But he wasn’t experiencing any mad, passionate desire to have her or anything, and he was wondering about this life-mate business himself. Shouldn’t he feel more? Want her more? Shouldn’t his every waking thought be about her?

That last question made him pause, because Jake suddenly realized that his every waking thought had included her in one form or another since meeting her. Still, he supposed he’d expected more.

“Jake?” Nicole prodded.

“Oh, sorry,” he murmured, and then blew his breath out and tried to gather his thoughts to answer her question. Finally, he said, “Well, I mentioned that the nanos didn’t just give immortals fangs, but other skills to help with survival.”

“You said mind reading and mind control,” she recalled and didn’t look pleased. He understood that. He hadn’t been too pleased himself to know that his mother and everyone else could read his private thoughts. It had been pretty inhibiting to an eighteen-year-old full of raging hormones. Made aware that they might all be reading his thoughts, Jake had suddenly become aware that sex played a huge role in most of his thoughts at that age. And forget about masturbation in the same house with them. Dear God, what if they all knew? Or read it in his head in the morning? Even thinking about that now made him shudder.

“It’s not just mind reading and control,” he said when Nicole shifted restlessly on her stool. “We’re faster, stronger, have better hearing, sight, night vision, et cetera.”

“Okay,” she said patiently.

“But, the mind reading, that isn’t just of mortals. We can read each other’s minds too. Usually it’s only older immortals able to read younger ones, but it can go the other way too if the older immortal is distracted or not blocking their thoughts,” Jake explained. “So, it means when we’re around each other we have to constantly guard our thoughts, and of course mortals can’t really guard their thoughts from us. It can make relationships tricky.”

“I would think so,” Nicole said dryly.

Jake nodded, but added, “Any relationship. I mean, you can’t imagine what it’s like to be eighteen and know your mother can read your thoughts.”

“I think I know,” she said grimly. “Perhaps not what it’s like to have a mother reading your thoughts or control you, but if you, Dante and Tomasso can read and control me—”

“I can’t,” Jake interrupted.

Nicole tilted her head and peered at him uncertainly. “Why? Is it because you were only turned seven years ago?”

“No. I have gained the skill, and can read most mortals,” he assured her, and then grimaced and added, “I resisted it at first. I didn’t want to be like my family. But in my job it’s a handy skill and so I eventually gave in and have used it pretty regularly . . . on the job,” Jake added to ensure she didn’t think he ran around reading and controlling people willy-nilly.

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“However, I can’t read or control you,” he added.

“So you said,” Nicole reminded him.

Jake grimaced and nodded. “And that is the sign of a life mate.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Which is what?”

“It’s—” He frowned, wanting to get it right, to find the perfect words to make her understand and at least be open to the idea of being his life mate. “A relationship wouldn’t work if both parties could read each other, or even if one could read and control the other.”

“You said that,” Nicole pointed out quietly.

“Yeah, I guess I’m struggling here,” Jake admitted on a sigh, and then shook his head and said, “Forgive me, this is the first time I’ve had to explain any of this.”

“Right. Sorry, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said wryly.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and then said, “Look, basically a true life mate is someone that an immortal can’t read and control. It’s the one person they can relax around and not constantly guard their thoughts.”

“Surely you don’t have to guard your thoughts around mortals?” Nicole asked. “We can’t read you.”

“No, but some mortals think really loud and we have to put up guards against that too. Otherwise it would drive you crazy. People are always thinking, and sometimes just the stupidest, most nonsensical things. We have to keep our guards up against that as well, filter it out, basically.”

“I see.” She tilted her head again. “But you don’t have to do that around a life mate?”

“No. We can relax around them,” he said. Jake gave her a moment to consider that and then added, “Of course there are other things that are special about a life mate.”

“Like what?”

“Well, actually, nobody’s ever explained it to me and I’m not sure what they all are,” he admitted on a wry laugh. “But I know from watching my mother and Roberto that . . . well, it’s a special relationship. They seemed to have mostly the same tastes and values. Like the same things, enjoy each other’s company. They still had disagreements and such, but much less often than I think most couples do, and they seemed to get over them really quickly. They just seem so bonded . . . and apparently, if Dante and Tomasso are to be believed, the physical relationship is much more intense.”

Nicole was silent, which made him worry that she wasn’t getting how important a life mate was, but then he wasn’t sure he fully understood himself.

“It’s also very rare, or hard to find,” Jake added. “Some immortals wait centuries to find one, and some never find one at all.”

She was still silent.

“I’ve heard that the nanos have something to do with selecting a life mate, that they recognize them as a good mate for the immortal and are the reason the immortal can’t read that particular mortal or something. So that it works, I guess.” The conversation where he’d been told that had been a while ago and he hadn’t paid much attention.

Nicole stared at him.

Jake stared back, his mind racing around in search of something to say to help convince her that being a life mate was a good thing, or at least not reject it out of hand. But he feared he had an uphill battle ahead of him. Nicole had just come out of a terrible relationship. She wouldn’t be interested in getting involved again so soon. This was really bad timing.

“I don’t—” Nicole began and Jake was sure she was going to tell him she wasn’t interested, and if she did, he was screwed. He’d lose her. Jake didn’t want that. He wanted what his mother and Roberto had. He’d always wanted that. It was why he’d still been alone at fifty-one. There had been women he’d cared about, and even maybe loved somewhat in his life, but having watched his mother and Roberto together all those years, nothing less than that kind of relationship would do. So when she started to say, “I don’t,” he flat-out panicked and resorted to Dante and Tomasso’s advice. He stood up, stepped forward and bent his head to kiss her.

It was very effective. Not just at silencing her either. Certainly, it did that, but that wasn’t all. Had he wondered and worried about the fact that while he found her attractive he had no great desire for her? Had he really thought that? The question ran through Jake’s head, free-floating around the passion that exploded up within him the moment his lips touched hers. Honestly, it felt like it slammed up from the ground, through his feet, up his legs and straight to the groin. Talk about your instant erection, Jake was very aware that the loose joggers he had pulled on before dinner were now a pup tent that had sprung out from between his legs and, damn, but it felt good.

Nicole had stilled when he first covered her mouth with his, but the moment she relaxed, allowing her lips to slip open with a little moan, Jake moved one hand up to catch her hair in his hand. Using that hold to tilt her head to where he wanted it, he thrust his tongue into her mouth even as his other hand slid around her back and urged her closer against his chest.

Now that she’d given in to the kiss, Nicole wasn’t still either. He felt her arms slide around him, to dig into his back and grasp at him, and then she scooted forward on the stool, her legs sliding along the outside of his thighs until she bumped into the pup tent in his drawers. She hesitated then, but Jake reached down and shifted himself as he moved right up so that his legs pressed against the stool and his erection was pressed flat against his stomach between them.

That brought another moan from Nicole and he felt her legs close around him, her heels pressing into the backs of his calves. Encouraged, Jake pressed himself more firmly against her, his right hand now moving around to her back and down to clasp her behind and urge her closer still as his hips ground against her.

“Jake,” she gasped, tearing her mouth from his, and the excited plea incited him further. Turning his lips to her neck, he nibbled and sucked and licked there as his hands shifted to her top and began to work at the buttons, slipping them quickly from their eyelets until he could pull it open and get to what was underneath.

Urging her backward, one arm under her back for support, Jake closed his other hand over one generous silky cup of her bra and moved his mouth down to run his tongue along the top of it. When Nicole groaned and shifted her hips against him in excited reaction, he caught the edge of the bra and pulled it down until her breast was free. He then lavished the hard, rosy nipple with attention; licking and suckling at it with feverish excitement . . . and then he suddenly froze.

“Jake?” she said uncertainly, her voice shaking, and he raised his head, letting her nipple slip from his mouth to peer at her with confusion.

“I’m sorry, I just . . . never mind,” he murmured, sure he was wrong. But rather than bend his head to her breast again, he covered it with his hand, squeezing and kneading and then plucking at it. Nicole groaned, her eyes dropping closed, her body shifting against his again and he almost closed his eyes too as pleasure shot through him as well.

This wasn’t the first time Jake had done this. He loved women’s bodies and had enjoyed many lovers in his life, but it had never been this intense for him in the past, and he had certainly never enjoyed the sensation this way, not as if he himself were experiencing the pleasure he was giving her . . . but now he was. Earlier while he’d been suckling, and now, every time he plucked at her nipple, it sent a shaft of pleasure shooting through him that just ratcheted up his own pleasure.

Fascinated, he released her breast and slid his hand down between them to cup her between the legs through her jeans. Nicole cried out, and Jake sucked in a startled breath at the sharp excitement and need that shot straight through his groin. Was it the nanos? Were they somehow communicating her pleasure to his body? Jake had no idea, but this was . . . Hell, he didn’t even know how to describe it. It was incredible, amazing, fricking awesome! And he wanted to explore it fully.

Nicole gasped with surprise when Jake suddenly picked her up with one hand behind her back and one between her legs and under her bottom. She grabbed at his shoulders nervously as she was lifted off the stool, and then glanced around with surprise when he set her on the edge of her desk and used one arm to swipe the papers, stapler and other odds and ends out of the way, before shifting her to sit on it more fully.

Her gaze slid back to Jake then, but before she could say or even think anything, he kissed her again. Nicole kissed him back at once, with all the passion and need he’d stirred in her. Her own tongue tangled with his briefly before she withdrew it to suck at his, and then Jake broke the kiss and stepped back to pull at her jeans. It was only as they began to slide off of her that Nicole realized that he’d undone the button and zipper while he’d kissed her.

He made quick work of removing them, which was probably a good thing. She didn’t get a chance to protest that way, and didn’t really want to, but if she’d had time to think, Nicole might have felt she should.

Tossing her jeans aside, Jake stepped back between her legs to kiss her again, his arms slipping around her and hands dropping to cup her behind through her panties to squeeze and knead her cheeks as he pressed her against him again. The sensation was even more exciting without her jeans there buffering it somewhat, and Nicole gasped and shifted eagerly against him as much as she could. Her own hands slipped down to cup his behind and urge him on briefly, before she began to work at the top of his jogging pants, first tugging, then pushing them down off his hips in the back until his bottom was bare.

Nicole squeezed hard, pressing him tightly forward until it was almost painful and then jumped in his hands and gasped when one of his hands slid far enough under her to press between her legs through her panties.

“Oh God,” she groaned, and then released a small disappointed sigh when he stopped doing that and eased his hips back from hers. In the next moment, she cried out with surprise and pleasure when his hand slid between them again. This time he didn’t just cup her, but tugged her panties to the side and slid his fingers beneath the thin material to caress her hot, damp skin.

“Oh-please-yes-God-Jake.” The words were gasped in one long slurred sound and almost unintelligible, but then Nicole didn’t really have a clue what she was saying. Didn’t care either. The only thing she knew was that what he was doing felt so damned good. It was instinct alone rather than any conscious thought that made her slip one of her own hands around to find his hardness through the joggers. They had been trapped between them in the front when she’d pulled them down in the back, but had ridden down somewhat when Jake had put space between them. He was still covered by the cloth, but barely.

The moment her hand closed on him through the material, Jake sucked in sharply through his teeth and stilled. Nicole hardly noticed what he was doing, however. She herself had gone stock-still at the sudden sharp stab of excitement that shot through her.

Confusion hard on the heels of that excitement, she hesitated, and then jerked his joggers down so that he sprang free and closed her hand over the velvety skin of his erection. That sent an even more powerful wave of passion shooting through her, but Jake was no longer caressing her.

“What . . . ?” Nicole raised her head to look at his face. “I feel—It’s like—”

“I know,” Jake ground out when she faltered. “So do I when I touch you.” He slid his fingers over her again as if to prove it, and groaned out loud, but it was the way his erection jerked in her hands that told her he was experiencing her pleasure along with her. Though it was rather amazing that she was aware of his body’s reaction with her own body reacting to his touch.

“But how?” she asked breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” he panted and began to caress her again. “And right now I don’t care. I’ll ask Dante and Tomasso later.”

With her mind already losing its grip on her attention, Nicole thought that was fine. Later they could find out why this was happening. Right now—she slid her hand along his shaft again. Dear God, right now all she knew was that she wanted more of this.

Jake gave a grunt of surprise when Nicole suddenly released him and gave him a push away from her. Before he could ask what she was doing, she’d slid off the desktop and dropped to her knees before him. She’d always wondered how she was as a lover, and now she could find out.

“Nic—” Jake cut himself off with a curse as she closed her mouth over his erection.

Nicole moaned at the sensation she sent rifling through them both. She was aware when his legs began to shake, and wasn’t surprised when he bent over her to grab for the desk behind her to steady himself. However, she was caught completely by surprise when Jake suddenly jerked himself free of her, caught her under the arms and drew her to her feet even as he headed for the daybed. He swung her around as he reached it, almost tossing her on top of it and then he was on her, kissing her almost violently before starting to slide down her body.

Suspecting what he was up to, Nicole caught him by surprise and rolled, shifting him on to his back on the daybed. She had started this and wanted to continue. Not giving him the chance to roll her back, she shifted quickly off of him and turned to take his erection in hand again. Jake had started to rise up, no doubt to grab her again, but fell back with a gasped protest as she closed her mouth over him again. He was as stubborn as she was though, and she wasn’t surprised when he grabbed her upper leg and tugged her hips toward his head.

For one moment, Nicole had to stop what she was doing and balance herself with her hands as he shifted her knees to either side of his head. She nearly toppled over when Jake suddenly ripped her panties off, tearing the sides away to get the thin cloth out of the way. Nicole was glad he did that rather than shifting her about to remove them properly. In fact, it kind of turned her on . . . and then he pulled her hips down and buried his face between her legs and she forgot her poor panties.

Groaning, Nicole dropped her head briefly, her hair trailing over his upper thighs as his tongue rasped over her sensitive skin. With the second rasp, her nose bumped against his erection, and— recalled to what she’d been doing—she returned to it, taking him in her mouth and helping to drive them both crazy.

What followed was quite the most amazing, mind-blowing thirty seconds of her life. If it was thirty seconds. Nicole couldn’t be sure. It went so fast, passion crashing down over her in wave after hard wave, making the tension building and growing in her body expand exponentially until every nerve in her body was strained and tingling and her brain was a pile of worthless mush.

The release when it came was like a nuclear explosion in her body. White lights went off in her head, blinding her to everything but the pleasure blowing through her. She was vaguely aware that someone was screaming their head off and thought it must be Jake, but while some of the sound was a man’s deep timbre, she recognized a woman’s higher pitch in there too. Just as she realized it was herself, the white light dimmed quickly to black.