22. Cute and intoxicated

Chapter 22

Cute and intoxicated

Talon

F ucking gone… again!

"Holy fuck but how is she doing this?!" I snarled the second we found the door open and her not where she should have been.

"We tied her to the fucking bed, for fuck sake!" I added.

My brother was yet to say anything because he was too busy growling in his anger. We had purposely not slept long, both concerned that she would wake and be uncomfortable or distressed enough to hurt herself. So, we had fought against the pull of the sunlight and woken early, but once again we had been too late… she was gone.

"I don't know but I think it's time we fucking find out!" Victor snarled as his hand fisted in the sheets that still held her delicious and addictive scent. One he had needed to bring to his nose just to sate the need. For now, he would be even more obsessed with her just like I was. Now that we had both tasted her.

Last night, I had been surprised as much as I hadn't when Victor struggled to fight his blood lust. Normally my brother was the one to show restraint, but not last night. No, last night I had been the one to take care and good job at that, for any more blood loss and we would have been calling a doctor.

A fact I knew my brother felt like shit about. Meaning I didn't need to be the asshole who punished him further for it by voicing my annoyance. He had been beating himself up about it enough for the both of us and we had both come to the conclusion that we needed to take it slow with her. At least until we were used to her limits as well as our own. One inhale of her blood beneath her skin was all it took for us to want to gorge ourselves on her. With time, we both hoped it would become easier but first, we needed to find our little escape artist once and for all.

"Fuck, at this rate I will be locking her in our fucking vault," I snapped as we left the room, one that had been fitted with extra locks that had done fuck all. Gods, but what was she, a safe cracker in her spare time?

"At least we know her name this time," Vic commented dryly, making me grumble.

"Asshole."

He ignored the jib, instead grabbing my jacket and slapping it to my chest. A jacket that now smelled of our little peach.

"Come on, let's go get her."

"And?"

"Show her exactly what happens when she tries to run from us in our own city," Victor said, his dark tone promising punishment of the sweetest kind.

I wondered if he was doing as I did now, remembering not only the taste of her blood but the sweet taste of her lips. Gods, but that fucking kiss was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my whole life, and I was fucking old.

She was utter perfection.

Like some fucking wet dream, I kept having to remind myself at the time that it was actually happening. That there was no way I was going to just wake up and find her gone… No, that reality was the next day, I thought bitterly.

Of course, I knew I couldn't blame her too much for wanting to run. We were scary fuckers and, after all, we had kidnapped her. Last I heard about the dating scene, that sort of thing was kind of frowned upon. Although for a Vampire King, we usually took what we wanted regardless, so for us, kidnapping wasn't that unusual. But now, well, we had someone's else's feelings to take into consideration and that was new territory for us to navigate through… So was dealing with her friend and not just wrapping my hand around her slim neck and squeezing until she told me where my girl was. No, I had been left to dick around, and use my charm, while Victor had taken her phone and dealt with our girl.

"So, you live around here, sweetness?" I asked, making her blush, her big glasses sliding down her nose, forcing her to push them up before they reached the tip. She was cute and at one time I might have fancied a bit of Goth for dinner. But after little Peach, no one else appealed. No one else would even get fucking close! Because she had spoiled me for all others, and I was perfectly fucking happy with that.

"Something like that," she replied in a cagey way that impressed me because there weren't many that could deny me.

"You gonna tell me what it is you want with my best-friend?" she asked, at the same time stamping something into a pile of books, an action well practiced enough that she didn't even have to look at what she was doing.

"Let me guess, you're the protective best friend type?" I said, already liking this girl if she had my girl's best interests at heart. Something she confirmed when she told me,

"When it comes to Nessa, I am."

My look must have prompted her to say more because her shoulders slumped, and she lost that haughty, unimpressed look.

"She's been through a lot, okay?"

"With her ex?" I guessed, hoping she would think Peaches had told me about it and therefore felt comfortable telling me more. I had wanted to roar fucking murder when my brother had mentioned an ex, I even thought of tracking the fucker down and killing him for simply the offense of living.

"Try everyone that has ever supposed to care about her."

"Everyone?" I asked, my shock not an act this time.

"Look, all I am saying is that she had been hurt by every single person that comes into her life and well… she is still paying for it."

I tensed at that, desperate to get to the root of it all and make all the fuckers pay.

"All except you… you've been a good friend," I replied, knowing this to be true if she was here now trying to protect her. She shrugged her slim shoulders at that and told me,

"I haven't done anything for her that she herself wouldn't do for me. But she has trust issues and is guarded for good reason… that asshole, did you know she works every extra hour she can? All so she can pay off someone's else's debts?"

I frowned at that, quickly putting two and two together and making another assumption.

"He was a gambling addict, right?" I said, making her shake her head, but this wasn't done to tell me that he wasn't, it was because there was obviously more he had done to Nessa.

"He left her with nothing. Such a shame… people, I don't know how they can live with themselves, you know?" she said, and I looked to my brother, half listening to his conversation with our girl.

"Dark fucking souls indeed… but tell me, what was his name again?"

She gritted her teeth and said a name that I would not be forgetting so soon. Not when I had his heart pumping in my hand after ripping it out of his god damn fucking chest!

"Dexter… Dexter Armitage."

The evil smirk I gave her must have prompted her to say,

"But please don't tell her I told you that, she would kill me."

My grin grew because, oh yes, there would be death because of it… but not her own. Which is why I ran a single finger across my lips and told her,

"My lips are sealed."

Yeah, and they soon would be over the asshole's carotid artery as I drained the fucker dry. Naturally, I didn't add this part or the part where I would beat him near to death before I consumed my meal. And no doubt my brother would have his own ideas of torture to inflict once we hunted the soon to be dead fucker down.

And speaking of my brother, he ended the call after forcing Nessa's hand and ensuring she would once more come to us. Something I knew thanks to my advanced hearing and listening in, when her friend couldn't. It also looked like Vic was getting her number and programing it into his own phone. His thoughts of tracking it no doubt already in his mind.

Fuck, but I loved the hunt.

Fuck, but I loved the hunt … Ha, that thought only ended up biting me in the ass and being named fucking karma.

Hours after she was supposed to turn up to the penthouse, we were still fucking waiting and growing angrier by the minute. Of course, she had turned off her phone, so it was taking time to track her after the small messages exchanged between her and my brother.

"Where the fuck is she?!" Victor snarled, and I had lost count how many times this had been asked by one of us.

"You definitely had a lockdown on her name?" I asked, making him look at me as if I was simple.

"We have a fucking army of our people at every bus station, train station, and any other way she may think to escape the city."

"At least she doesn't have a passport, nor a driving license," I added, knowing owning a car in the city was pointless and expensive for many, and long-distance travel even more so for someone like Nessa.

The state of her finances made me grit my teeth, knowing what that bastard had done to her. Victor had been too invested in the call to hear what I had discovered from her friend, so I had the not so pleasing job to inform him the true reasons for all her debt.

Victor had ended up smashing his fist through the car window, making me raise a brow at the unexpected fury. Oh, I knew he would have been furious, but it wasn't exactly my brother's style to display it so openly.

No, that was usually me.

But our anger at this only grew by each passing minute she was not here. So now we had a choice to make. We could turn up once more at her place of work and let our intentions be known with the use of her friend, giving her another chance to come to us. Or we could stalk her friend, who would eventually lead us straight to her, and kidnap them both. We'd keep her friend as leverage so she would finally fucking do as she was told.

I honestly liked option number two the best. But then again, I was a ruthless bastard that had long ago wanted to stop fucking around and just take what was ours. Because I didn't know how the fuck she kept escaping us. I did, however, know that if we had her friend, then the likelihood of her trying to escape would be zero. Not when she was so loyal to the skinny goth chick.

Of course, Victor was the one to point out that our aim here was to get her to fall for us, not hate us. Kidnapping her was one thing, but bringing her friend into this was another thing entirely. Although the longer we waited the more I thought my brother was having other ideas.

We were fucking furious. In fact, the only solace in all this was the part where Victor shared with me what Nessa had admitted to him on the phone. That she kept thinking about us both, despite her wishing this wasn't the case. Obviously being our Fated, this was the way it was for mortals. For us, it was a thousand times worse because every breath we took without her was a painful one. That was the depth of our own obsession.

"We are needed at the club," Vic said, his tone speaking of untold murder.

"The fuck we are," I grumbled, swigging back my beer, doing so for the flavor.

"There is news on the missing shipment."

"So?" I retorted, unconvinced. Victor's murderous tone rumbled by my ear and he added all I needed to hear.

"We have something to kill."

At this, I grabbed my jacket and said, "Let's go."

We arrived at the nightclub in Midtown that we owned called Vyssiní, which meant ‘Crimson' in Greek.

We approached the red front doors, past a long line running along the street filled with hopefuls all waiting in the cold for the chance to get inside despite their name not being on the guest list. The doormen bowed their heads respectfully as they unhooked the corded rope before we got closer, knowing we would not have been happy to wait.

We had places to be, people to kill…

A girl to kidnap.

Speaking of all three, once inside, we made our way toward the back doors, and where we conducted all our ‘business' far away from prying eyes. Our main office was here, despite the building we owned being not too far from our apartment building. Here was where we conducted most of our more, should we say, nefarious business dealings. A room we now walked inside to find Andras waiting for us.

The information he had to give didn't take that long, but it was long enough that I was growing tired of waiting until I had a victim to make bleed. My mood soured the longer I was without my little Peach. And from the furious tick in my brother's jaw, I would say that he felt the same. Most of the time we let our foot soldiers deal with low level shit like this, but Andras knew we most likely needed this right now.

And he was right.

However, what none of us expected was for Andras to get a call telling him that our little escapee had just been spotted. But then even more shocking than this news was when she suddenly burst into the room.

Burst in…

Cute and intoxicated.